The crew! It was the crew, of course — the crew of the Aurora B. That’s why nobody had been allowed on the bridge, why there was a guard on the deck. They had been imprisoned in the chain locker, and now they were bringing them up and hustling them across to the starb’d rail at gunpoint. But why? For exercise? For air? They were at the rail now, a dozen or more, still with their hands on their heads, and above them the cliffs towered black against the stars.
I stood back from the peephole, resting my eyes and thinking about that chain locker, what it would be like down there in day time with the sun blazing on the deck above, the stifling heat of it, and nowhere to lie but on the coiled, salt-damp rusty links of the anchor chain. A hell hole, and nothing I could do about it, not for the moment at any rate.
The ship shuddered slightly, the beat of an auxiliary growing, a faint clanking sound. I put my eye to the peephole again. Everything was the same, the prisoners against the rail, their guards, three of them, standing watchful with automatics in their hands, the bows, lit by the flicker of torches, like a stage set with the cliffs a towering backdrop. There were two men by the anchor winch now, bending over it, and another with a hose playing a jet of water on the open vent of the hawse hole. The beat of the auxiliary slowed, it was labouring and I saw the cliffs moving.
And then it happened and the sweat froze on my body as one of the crew turned suddenly, another with him, their hands coming away from their heads, both of them reaching for the rail. Another instant and they would have been over, for the attention of the guards had been momentarily distracted by the winch and its turning and the anchor chain coming in. The first was half over the rail when a guard fired from the hip. The clatter of the automatic came to me faint as a toy, a distant sound like the ripping of calico, and in the same instant the man straddling the rail became an animated doll, his body jerking this way and that until suddenly it toppled over, falling into the widening gap between the ship and the cliff.
A thin cry reached me, like the scream of a far-off seabird, and the other man had gone, too. Out of the corner of my eye I had seen him leap. He must have been a young man, for he had been quicker, just the one hand on the rail and vaulting over, and all three guards rushing to the ship’s side, searching and pointing. More firing, and one of them running to the point of the bows, clambering up and standing there, braced against the flag post.
There was silence then, except for the clank of the anchor chain, the rest of the prisoners standing as though petrified, their hands still on their heads. For a moment nobody moved. Then the man in the bows raised his automatic to his shoulder and began firing single shots. He fired half a dozen, then stopped.
I stood back, resting my eye again. Had the second prisoner got away? I wondered who he was, whether he had found any place to land. When I looked again the bows were well clear of the cliffs and I could see the dark shape of the heights above us climbing in jagged pinnacles towards the Jebel al Harim. I could imagine what it would be like climbing those bare rock hills in the heat of the day, no water and the sun burning the skin off his back, the oven heat of the rocks blistering his feet. I didn’t think he had a hope in hell, and the only people he would meet up there would be the Shihuh who were supposed to be distinctly hostile to Christians trespassing in their barren fortress.
The time was now 01.34 and low down by the entrance to the khawr the stars were being blotted out one by one. It took them just on twenty minutes to inch the ship away from the cliffs so that she was lying to her anchor bows-on to the entrance. By then the whole sky was clouded over and it was almost impossible for me to see anything except when the figures in the bows were illuminated by the flickering light of hand torches as they secured the anchor chain.
I had another shower, towelled myself down and put on my clothes. By then the ship had fallen silent again, the engine noise reduced once more to the faint murmur of the generator, and no sign of anybody on the deck below. I couldn’t see the bows now and no torches flickered there. A wind had got up, a line of white beginning to show where waves were breaking against the base of the cliffs. The sbamal — that was why they had decided to haul off in the middle of the night. The holding here was probably not all that good. The anchor might well drag if they tried to haul off in the teeth of a gale, and if they had stayed put, they might be held pinned against the cliffs for several days. Now we could leave at first light.
It was past two now. Four hours to go before the first glimpse of dawn. I opened the door of my cabin and peered out into the alleyway. There was nobody there, the lights glimmering dully, the ship very still now and quite silent except for the faint background sound of the generator. I had no idea what I was going to do, I hadn’t even thought about it. I just felt I had to do something. I couldn’t just lie there, knowing what ship it was and that the crew were held in the chain locker.
My first thought was to contact one of the Pakistani seamen. It was information I needed. How many guards on duty, for instance, where were they posted, above all, how long before we left and what was our destination? I closed the door of my cabin and stood listening for a moment, alert for those tiny sounds that occur on a ship at anchor so that I could identify them and isolate them from any other sounds I might hear as I moved about the ship. Somewhere a slight hissing sound was just audible beneath the low-toned persistent generator hum. It came from the heads where the urinal flush seemed to be constantly running, and now that I was outside Rod Selkirk’s cabin, I could hear the sound of his snoring, a regular snort followed by a whistle. Occasionally a pipe hammered softly. An airlock, probably. And sometimes I thought I could hear the soft thud of the waves slapping against the ship’s sides.
Those were the only sounds I could identify. A torch; I’d need my torch. The quick flash of it in a man’s face could save me if I suddenly ran into one of the guards. I went back into my cabin, and after getting the torch from the locker beside my bunk, I had a last quick look through the peephole. The line of white marking the base of the cliffs was further off now. The wind must be coming straight into the khawr, the tanker lying wind-rode, stern-on to the cliffs. The deck below was a long dark blur, only discernible as a blank in the sea of broken water that glimmered white around it. I could see no movement.
Back in the alleyway outside my cabin, I pushed through the fire doors and started down the stairs to A deck. It was a double flight and I paused on the landing. The deck below was lit by the same low wattage emergency lighting as the officers’ deck. Nothing stirred. And there were no unusual sounds, the hum of the generator a little louder, that was all. I continued on down, through the sliding fire doors to the alley that ran transversely across the ship. I hesitated then, seeing the closed doors and trying to remember visits I had made in various ports to tankers of a similar size. This would be the boat deck and usually there were offices facing for’ard at this level.
I tried one of the doors. It was locked. They were all locked, except one, which, as soon as I opened it, I knew was occupied. I cupped my hand over my torch, moving softly past a desk littered with papers to an annexe where the body of a man lay huddled in a blanket, breathing softly, a regular sighing sound.