Firefly Gadroon (23 page)

I swallowed hard to get my mind moving. Flamethrowers. They were only big cylinders of gas, weren’t they, with some kind of lighter at the front end, and a valve with a trigger. I’d seen them in the army. Nobody liked using them because of what they did and the risks you took. People were always getting burned in training. But I didn’t even want to be on the cold end. I wanted to be nowhere near it. Everybody knows that these characters that make homemade bombs are always the first to get themselves crisped. What a rotten thought. I was shaking still, but rage had taken over. I wasn’t thinking so much as doing.

I reached up and shut the water off at the cock. That left a long plastic tube, transparently full of water itching to run into the sink. I opened the tap and it glugged noisily out, air bubbles blubbering upwards.

‘Hear that?’ somebody said nearby.

‘Shhh.’

They’d heard the waste water fall into the sea. I’d not had the sense to plug the sink as I’d run the water tap. The boat swung suddenly again, sending me off balance. My knee caught on the bloody bunk. It wasn’t much of a noise, but in the state I was in it seemed like the clap of doom.

They’d know by now. I tore the plastic tube away from its fixture and bit savagely through. The end went on the gas bottle’s nozzle. No time to fix it there for good with wire, even if I had any wire. A light. I needed a light. I searched frantically, throwing caution aside and scrabbling in the supplies for matches, a cigarette-lighter. The bent plastic tube was about six feet long. I needed a pole, a boathook,
anything. Surely there’d be a boathook on a stupid boat? I found an unused mop and tied the tube along its length with a feverish series of twists, using the orange-coloured strings from a life-jacket to keep it there. I emptied the quarter bottle of brandy over the mophead. Brandy burns. But I still needed some means of igniting the thing, preferably when I was some distance away. I found matches, the sort you have to strike and keep hold of when you’re setting fire to something. Sodding hell. I really was a goner.

Lugging the mop and the gas bottle I crept out into the cockpit. I couldn’t let it slip at this stage, not now. Then I had a brainwave. Collingwood, Nelson, the fireship tricks. If I was going to go I could go as a fireship. The least I could do for Drummer. And up here there were plenty of ropes, wires and a railing I could tie my weapon to.

Fog all around still, but thinning. I peered about and wobbled precariously forwards, never thinking that they might come at me from the side or behind. I’d have to get the engine started up again if I was going to do any good – or any bad, whichever way you saw it. Silently as I could, I lashed the mop pole to form a kind of bowsprit, sticking out at the front. Once tied, it projected somewhat sideways, but that would have to be. That made it easier to strap the gas bottle through its brass screw top and round its neck to the low railing that ran round the boat’s entire edge. Great. I was almost pleased.

‘Over there!’ The shout came from behind. ‘I saw something!’

‘Where? Where?’

They hadn’t started their engine, which meant they weren’t certain yet. I crouched by the gas bottle with my matches, wishing I could be at the controls as well as up front. Then I might have stood some chance.

The fog swirled, waved across my tired eyes in great
clouds. A definite wind was coming up. People often say the tides change our weather. I peered about, but only saw that terrible daunting opacity. The sea was gurgling now, and the waves had decreased into millions of rapid ripples. The tide race was starting, washing into the creeks and obliterating the coastlines again with its sinister swift onslaught.

Another shout from one side but I was too exhausted and bewildered to make sense of it. My mind had one scheme and this was it. Any further planning was beyond me. I clung miserably to the railing while the boat scraped and rocked its way helplessly into the reach, whisked in on the speeding tide.

‘Got him!’ They’d seen me. I looked frantically about. An engine roared so close it sounded on board with me.

For a second of panic I almost left my matches and leapt over the side. If I hadn’t been so weary I probably would have, but my mind was programmed to its single plan. As it was, I saw Devvo’s boat loom out of the fog some forty feet off, going past at slow speed. It looked enormous. The wave at its front showed they were moving against the tide. I saw a dim dark blob of grey in the cockpit cabin. Another was holding on at the front. I struck a match, let it fall and swore. I turned the brass screw on the gas bottle and heard the hissing sound of the escaping gas at the front of the projecting mop. And I couldn’t reach the frigging thing. It was sticking so far out from the bows that I couldn’t reach where the gas was escaping. Flame-thrower, match and fireship, all together, and I couldn’t use any of them. I moaned at my stupidity.

‘I see the bastard!’

‘
Take him!
’

Devvo’s boat suddenly sounded different. The engine roared, settled into a deep thrum as its screws churned the
sea. I swore and clawed at the mop, pulling it back through its lashings. I’d light the bloody thing if I had to hold it in my teeth. I cursed and swore. I’d done it in a hurry but the bloody thing wouldn’t come back in. I struck another match and held it out, clinging with one hand to the brass railing and trying to reach from the front. And I did it. But I’d never checked to make sure the gas being released was a reasonable jet. The whoosh of the igniting gas flung at me. I let go at the shock, away from the roaring heat, and fell with a splash. I was in the sea, done for differently but just as surely finished. They’d get me now.

I came up spluttering near the boat. It wasn’t moving and I could see it clearly by the furiously roaring spray of fire in the bows. Something was dripping from the mop head, maybe the plastic tube melting under the flame. I felt the heat and flailed clumsily away. Devvo’s engine shook the water. The vibes trembled through me as his boat neared mine. Somebody shouted again. I struck out for the opposite side, away from the sound of the engine, using breaststroke because it’s what I’m best at and it shows least when you are in the water. The flame’s sheen on the sea gave me some guidance but only relative to the boat. Something bumped.

‘Pull her in. He’ll be in there—’

Metal clanged on metal. Boats rubbed. A bump of fibreglass on solid wood or something. Another few clangs and scrapes and the engine muted to a mutter. It was exactly then that the explosion came. I was lifted by some enormous force, the sea squeezing me before I heard anything at all and the blast thumping on the back of my head. The sea sank almost the same instant, plunging me under and setting me fighting for the surface and air. Suddenly things were spattering about me. And behind a sustained roar and heat and noise, a screaming and somebody splashing
in that roaring. I thought I heard somebody scream a name but wasn’t sure. The ochre-coloured blaze made the sea visible underneath the fog for some distance. I was too bewildered to reason what might have happened. I knew that somebody else was in trouble out here in the fog-filled creek besides me. For once I wasn’t dying on my own. From the horrible sounds behind me somebody else was at it too.

I struck feebly away from the fire, never mind where. Another, less intense whoosh sounded. The sea sucked, dipped, swelled but less severely this time. I couldn’t keep swimming for long. The cold and my tiredness were making it difficult enough to float, let alone move. For a second I trod water, peering underneath the fog with the gilded sea surface reflecting the fires. I had to look. The boats seemed gigantic, piled almost in one heap. Both were blazing. Even as I looked some glass shattered with a crack, perhaps the heat. I don’t know what had caused the explosion, whether it was my gas thing or the boats colliding and the petrol . . .
Petrol.
Terror-stricken, I saw it on the surface, a pure yellow heat spreading towards me. I gave a squeal of alarm, tried to turn feebly . . . and then I heard it. A donkey’s coarse braying, up and down, over and over, to my right. It sounded near, very near. Germoline’s voice.

I tried to shout again, excitedly drawing in a breathful of sea in my anxiety to get Germoline braying again, and almost sank. I splashed up again coughing and vomiting water, weakened further. I tried using my hands merely to keep me level, drew a long breath and yelled at the top of my voice: ‘
Germoline!
’ Almost instantly a succession of donkey brays came, but I was on my back and couldn’t place the direction. Stupid. I struggled wearily vertical, treading water again, but she’d shut up again, probably listening as hard as I was.

I tried shouting from this position but was too breathless to get up steam. I flopped exhausted on to my back again, to draw breath, let out her name in one despairing bellow and pushed myself vertical again, treading water.

‘Keep shouting,’ I yelled, turning towards the bray. ‘Germoline!’

She gave three steady brays almost as though she knew what to do. I homed on them, finding after each one I was successfully pinpointing the next.

‘Germoline!’ I gasped. ‘Germoline.’

I couldn’t shout any more. I floundered blindly on, flopping my arms over and splashing like hell. I kept trying to shout but managed finally nothing more than a sort of weak talking, gasping out her name as I went. Several times I thought I saw something up ahead but no longer had the strength to hold my head out to see. I felt I’d been going for days before I realized I could not hear her braying any more. Gone. I must have lost her. I gave up, stopped swimming, lying on the water and trying to concentrate all my energies in keeping my face up to breathe. The current was pulling me now, probably running round at the full of the tide inside the creek and starting me out to sea. I swear I’d practically nodded off, when I was swept against these four hairy legs. I was so frightened I let out an almighty yell, but it was Germoline, standing in the tidal shallows. I clung gasping to Germoline’s lovely legs and flung an arm over her neck, standing rocklike on the mud-covered flats.

‘Darlin’,’ I gasped. She stood there, bracing breast deep against the flood. ‘Up, love,’ I wheezed. She was just turning, her tethering rope trailing where she’d pulled it away from her stall, when I heard a cry from seawards.

‘Lovejoy!’ Devvo’s voice.

‘Devvo?’ My shout back was a mere wheeze. I tried taking a few waded paces but fell and had to sprawl against
Germoline for support. My legs were rubber. I couldn’t move without Germoline.

‘Lovejoy.’ The voice was feeble but real and solid. He always did sound in charge, Devvo. Always so bloody sure of himself. ‘Lovejoy! Help, for Christ’s sake . . .’

‘Keep shouting!’ I yelled, finding some strength from somewhere. ‘Keep shouting! I’ll get a rope.’

‘My leg’s gone, Lovejoy,’ Devvo shouted in a hoarse gurgle. ‘I’m burned . . .’

‘Hang on, hang on!’

I turned Germoline and urged her out of the sea and up on to the flats, geeing her more decisively than I’d ever done. She splashed across the muddy shallows with me clinging to her neck. We came to the hut before I had time to focus. I staggered inside, grabbed a couple of rope hanks, and drove Germoline down the way we had come, following our trailing marks back towards the water. I could still hear the crackling of the blazing boats but could see nothing. I rasped a bit but got out a respectable shout.

‘Devvo! Where are you?’

Nothing.

‘Devvo!’ I screeched. ‘
Devvo!
’

A feeble shout came, sounding some thirty yards off. ‘I’m here, Lovejoy. The water . . . I’m burned . . .

‘Which way are you going, Devvo?’ I shouted. ‘Looking towards me, which way are you going?’

‘It’s pulling me . . . left, left.’

‘I’ll wade out, Devvo!’ I got hold of Germoline’s mane and urged her to our right, tying the rope round her neck as I splashed along the sea’s edge. I got her maybe a hundred yards, shouting all the while, before taking hold of the free end. I reeled out into the water, all but knackered. It was surprisingly shallow, coming slowly up to my chest
as I flopped and waded out. And I found Devvo, or rather Devvo found the rope.

I felt a weight behind me on the rope, simply turned and there Devvo was. He’d drifted against the lifeline which linked me to Germoline. At least, I thought it was Devvo. He was a ghoulish mess of blisters and burned skin, blackened around his face and all his shoulder, floating on the surface about ten feet off and just keeping his mouth up. His hair had gone.

‘My legs, Lovejoy,’ he groaned. ‘I can’t move.’

‘Here. It’ll hurt.’

I slid along the rope and tied it round his waist, lifting it to settle under his arms the way seemed best. He cried out in agony a few times as the rope bit. The sea was just too deep for me to stand. With each attempt I became weaker. I hooked my arm under the rope and let it come on to my shoulder. My arms wouldn’t work any more. Germoline brayed again, worried for me.

‘One more second, Devvo,’ I gasped, craning my neck up for air. ‘I’ll go and we’ll pull you in, mate.’ I called him mate. Him, that had murdered Drummer.

‘I can’t hold on . . .’

‘We’ll get you in.’

‘I can’t see, Lovejoy. You won’t leave me, eh?’

‘ ’Course not.’

I dragged myself weakly along the rope until I touched the bottom and crept forwards, utterly done, pulling myself weakly back to the fogged shore. Germoline was waiting patiently as I crawled on to the mud beside her. I honestly thought I was dying from exhaustion. I lay there, unable to move a muscle. I couldn’t even support my own weight, but I’d done it. I’d saved Devvo, atoned for killing the owner of those oily hands out there on the black sea. All it needed now was for Germoline to pull him in. And thank
God Germoline was there, bracing solidly against the rope as the tide tried to drown Devvo. She was just waiting for my command, bless her loyal little donkey heart.

‘Right, love,’ I gasped up at Germoline’s dependable form above me. ‘Pull.’

Nothing happened. Not a muscle.

‘Germoline,’ I wheezed. ‘Please, cockie. I can’t do it.’ I was looking up at her.