SPEED BOAT

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 194, 18 August 1933, Page 13

SPEED BOAT

CHAPTER XW. A Night in the North Sea, In the boathouso they selected oilskins, spanners and similar tools that Tanner expected to require, and then pushed the Whooshter out. Tanner steered while Garrison poled her into the creek and down-stream to the Byewater. They took a fill of petrol from the barge— "Enough on board now to take us 300 miles if necessary," was Garrison's informative comment when this operation was concluded. A couple of strokes of the quant sent them slowly out into mid-stream, where the mechanic was instructed to start up the engines while the other shone a torch over them from amidships.

The port engine went off with a will. To Tanner she sounded so healthy that he doubted if even on a testbed it would be possible to effect much improvement. He ran the starboard engine up through the oilgcar, and then switched off the port one. A moment's listening convinced him that she was late by "less than a tooth." He explained this to Garrison.

"I can give you half an hour," he was informed. "More if essential, but I don't like having to go all out in the dark. Things loom up before you have time to avoid 'em. " You'll need a better light."

They fixed up a portable light on a flex from the battery and hung this over the timing casing. In less than half an hour they were (making a second test, after which the timing only needed a hairsbreadth adjustment. But the running was not good enough to satisfy Tanner, and he had to apply himself to the carbulcttor before he could agree that the job was as good as it could be made in the circumstances. He worked steadily, trying to forget that he was rocking about in a thin steel cradle on an open estuary, but he found it a cramped and awkward job, and for some time he was conscious that he had overrun the half-hour allotted. Garrison remained quiet, puffing calmly at his pipe and gazing out over the dark waters. When at last he did speak, Tanner had been anticipating his inquiry for at least 15 minutes.

"Much longer ?" "It depends on what sort of a noise she makes after this."

"She'll have to run, noise or no noise, inside five minutes."

He forbore to reply. He was trying not to get rattled, but inanimate things such as spanners and gaskets were beginning to display that awkwardness they conceal until one's nerves become frayed and one's fingers numbed with effort. It was now completely dark. They had drifted a mile or so towards the open sea, and the little waves were slapping greedily at her flanks at the urge of a rising breeze. His back ached from waist to scalp. At last everything was made tight and tools collected tidily. "She'll have to do now, whether she's all one would like or not," he told his companion, and switched on the starting motor. The starboard engine ran better. Perhaps not entirely as well as he would have liked, but sufficiently well not to shame him. He ran up the port engine, also, and, moving forward, slid the hatch over the engine compartment. fr We're forty minutes late," shouted Garrison in his ear as he accelerated. The two engines found themselves with a fierce "zoom." Great walls of water reared themselves about her beam, and a high wave, very white in the surrounding blackness, rushed furiously upon her stern. There was no longer any slapping of waves now the Whooshter was away, only a shrill reverberating whistle as her hull tore through the water—a whistle that seemed to penetrate the brain.

Tanner moved up to a seat against the instrument board and watched the oil gauges, crouching alongside the halferect figure of Garrison at the wheel. There was a shrouded lamp over the instruments, and the light from this lit up, from time to time, his .bent head, now helmeted and protected by goggles. The effect was to render him to Tanner strangely inhuman and remote, so that he at once lost the sense of companionship and began to feel ridiculously alone. After the first exhilaration of their dash he realised only the extreme thinness of the hull, and reflected that, hurtling blindly forward at this pace, they needed only to touch something, a floating spar or even a porpoise, to be either holed or diverted so as to drive furiously to the bottom. There was panic in such imaginings, but there was worse to come, and his misgivings increased a thousandfold as the whistle began to change from its monotonous continuity 1 to a series of sharp, quick shrieks.

It was.some time before he comprehended that they had reached the open sea, and Were meeting a heavy swell, leaping across the troughs and smashing through the ridges like a projectile. AVith each shriek of penetration the beam waves rose to meet in a roof above their heads, an instant roof the collapse of which they seemed to evade by inches. He was more afraid than he had ever been before, far more than when confronted with the muzzle of a revolver, but there was nothing for it but to concentrate over the oil gauges and to try to restrain his imagination. "But as their wild rush continued and nothing calamitous accompanied it, his confidence! began to come back, and no doubt ho would have reached a stage of indifference to his dangers had not these been terminated for the time by a sudden switching off of both engines. As the speed died" away, Garrison swung her parallel to the swell; the whistle of the hull died out and in the ensuing quietness lesser noises slowly became audible, the sough of the wind, a lapping at their bows, and at length a lowpitched distant throbbing. The swell rode mightily under them, flinging her from trough to crest disdainfully. Tanner rose and looked around, seeing nothing but the night sky with a few intense stars, and then, over on the port bow, a towering mass of tiered and glowing ports that was evidently a big passenger steamer, whose screw made the thudding he had noticed. "Antwerp boat making for Harwich," explained Garrison. "We're half an hour late. You could set a chronometer by them. I don't care to go blinding past them. Our engines do really make the devil of a din, and I don't want them to start using their searchlights." As soon as the steamer was well astern they restarted. This time Garrison was content to drive easily northward, and within a quarter of an hour they picked up the lights of another vessel, towards which, this time, they steered. This was evidently a cargo boat. There was light from the windows: of her deckhouse, but, the single line of portholes was broken fore and

By p&REMAN * WEH2S.

aft by two wide gaps that defined her holds. Garrison ran gently up to her, sidling against her stern. The silhouette of a man blotted the stars above her high rail. He did not haiL He just leaned over as if staring down at them.

Suddenly something fell, it seemed, from the rail and landed at Tanner's feet. He picked up a brown paper parcel weighing about half a pound. It was attached to a thin line from above. Garrison bent over to take it and cut the line. The figure overhead moved away from the rail. Their engines slowed until they were no more than ticking over, and tho imminent overhang of black hull surged past them into tho night.

"Now we can take it easy going home," remarked Garrison.

It was decidedly pleasantcr taking it easy. The Whooshter rode well at slow speeds in spite of a pitching that made Tanner thankful he had never been subject to seasickness.

Nevertheless, after an hour of steady progress, tossed by the swell, he found the discomfort of that harsh hull exhausting beyond anything that their earlier projectile dash, with its thrill of apprehension, had provided. All was chill and saltily damp, and he had developed a host of aches. Garrison might have guessed his feelings—perhaps he was in a similar state himself though he was the sort that never groused or relaxed until the job in hand was completed, and it was hard to know what he was feeling. At any rate he produced his flask and a packet of hard biscuit. Tanner drank new strength from the neat spirit, and, munching biscuit, recovered an interest in life sufficient to carry him through.

The light was already grey when the engines were at length switched off abreast tho petrol barge and Garrison permitted himself a weary stretch. "Care to pole her a bit?" he inquired. "It will warm you up."

Tanner went astern and, bestriding the propeller shafts, began to drive her along with steady lounging strokes. The exercise drove the cramp out of his muscles, and the ache disappeared from his brow. Garrison steered negligently, just a touch of the wheel from time to time to correct their course. Presently, he left his place to flash his pocket torch amidships. Carelessly, he stooped and picked up a parcel wrapped in glazed paper and sealed all over with great splashes of red wax. He tossed it forward under the cavernous hollow of the bows.

"You don't seem to value it much," Tanner remarked, "and yet I suppose it's worth the cost of our trip."

"Probably worth many times what it's C9st up to now to my employers. Worth more than our lives to them, at any rates. , No, I don't know what it is and don't want to. Dope of some kind, I suspect. I imagine the incoming cargoes are generally dope. I can't think of anything else sufficiently valuable and compact to make it worth while. Dope, diamonds, and swindlers, they all go in and out by way of the back cloor, and it may be all quite innocent and harmless for anything I definitely know. I do my job and ask no questions." Ho took a pull at his flask and remained musing for a-space. "The best fun is when it's a man or a woman," he resumed. "I always try to put the wind up the men, "nasty fellows for the most part, and that's not difficult as a rule. I've known them so green with fright and seasickness that if the dock at Bow Street had suddenly heaved up alongside they'd have been glad to see it. I'm a bit kinder when it's a woman, but you can't make a picnic of our trips even under the best of conditions." "Sounds a pretty nasty business," was Tanner's candid comment. "Teh! It's my job. The only job I can get or rather the only one I'm qualified for. Wa fellows who've got used to an active life based on muscle and wits and nerve, what use has society for us? What is there left for us but boredom and poverty and—well, whisky 1 If society can't make better use of the sort of thing that I can do, I don't hold myself to blame." There was a sense of interrogation in Tanner's silence and his steady poling. "Oh, I admit the ethics of the thing aren't very highbrow," Garrison broke out savagely, "but a war training teaches you to obey orders and leave the argument to those whose business it is. That's what war training does for one, and I had a pretty heavy dose of it just when I suppose I was most impressionable. As a result I've never found the least compunction against killing anyone in the execution of my duty. I daresay you thought I was bluffing a while back. If so you were mightily mistaken. I'd taken a risk with you, risked my employer's secrets, and if I'd found out you were playing false it would have been my duty to put you out of the way, and out of the way you would have gone." "I never was in a worse funk in my life." "I guessed as much." He grinned, took another pull at his flask, and held it invitingly out. Tanner shook his head. Now that his blood was circulating again he found he had no need of whisky. "There are one or two things that still puzzle me," he confessed, "though I don't know if it is completely tactful to mention them." > "For instance?" "Well, for instance, how on earth did you know that that was your boat?" "Porthole lights. Three amidships, one dark, then two more lit up. You haven't forgotten the signal for the clay—three, one. two. Easy, isn't it?" "Perfectly. I won't ask any more." They were nearing the opening that led to the boathouso. Tanner gave one last vigorous stroke. Garrison put the helm over, and in a moment their steel flank? were brushing against the reeds on either side of the entrance to the lagoon. (To be continued daily.)