SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. (12 page)

'Ten-eight,
sir! . . . Six-five, Mr Patterson! . . . Seven-seven, sir! . . . Six-three!'

The dust in the lower part of the stone-yard seemed
thick as smoke, rising from the fractured rock at the hammer blows of the men.
Joe O'Meara choked suddenly as he drew a lungful of it. Dust was the only cover
he would ever have, enough to make it worth the chance. He would run and run.
Of course they would fire at him but they might miss. If not, he would as soon
die here and now as suffer what lay ahead of him.

He had
nerved himself for the dash across the quarry, up the rock-face and over the
turf beyond. Then he heard MacBride's 'Seven-six, sir!' not two yards behind
him. And even in his desperation, Joe held himself in check.

Once
the chief officer had made his rounds, MacBride and his two subordinates
relaxed. There would not be another check upon them before five o'clock. One of
the warders went off behind a corner of the quarry to relieve himself. The
other subordinate was far away, not looking in Joe's direction. But MacBride
was at his back. Then, to Joe's astonishment, MacBride spoke to him, very
gently.

'You, O'Meara! Lay your hammer down and step to me!'

Joe
propped the long-handled hammer against the rock and turned about. MacBride
stood over him, dark whiskers clipped short, the pale blue eyes watching keenly
under the polished cap-peak.

'Obedience!'
said MacBride softly. 'Obedience to those put in authority over you. Y’ have
have that lesson by heart, have you!'

The
voice was that of the Celt, overlaid by the intonation of an industrial slum.
MacBride laid down his carbine, as if to tighten the belt of his tunic. Joe
stared back at him, not daring to believe that the most savage of all his
guards could be Sealskin Kite's man.

'Don't
mess me about y' focker!' A bitter resentment of O'Meara and his own complicity
sharpened the tone of the words.

'No,
sir!' Joe's heart beat faster, his eyes measuring the distance to the
rock-face. He knew that he could climb fifty feet of it in less time than it
would take some men to go up a flight of stairs. MacBride's voice grew softer.

'Hit me, Stunning
Joe!' he said. 'Hit me, and run!'

In a
few seconds more the warder who was relieving himself behind the rock would
reappear. MacBride's other subordinate might turn round at any moment. With his
hands hanging beside him, MacBride faced the little spider-man impassively. Joe
locked his hands together, as if in a gesture of indecision. Hardly raising his
head, he brought his double grip up, like a rock from a catapult, to connect
with the angle of MacBride's throat and jaw. It was not at all what the warder
had expected. With a long choking sound he stumbled forward, going down on
hands and knees. Joe's locked fists smashed downward on the exposed nape and
MacBride lay still.

For a
split second, Stunning Joe thought of the carbine, but he knew it would impede
him. If they got close enough for him to use it, he would be taken anyway.
Already he was racing across the quarry, through the clouds of hot dust and the
glare of the white Portland stone. The wind roared at his ears and the scarred
face of the quarry was twenty yards ahead of him, rising to the open turf
above. He glanced back once, long enough to see MacBride still lying motionless
and the other warder unslinging his carbine. Joe ducked his head and began
weaving across the remainder of the quarry. A single
twing-g-g-g
,
sang past him like an insect
and he saw the bullet smack into the rock-face ahead of him with a spurt of
pale dust. It was no easy matter to hit a man at this range, a target moving as
quickly and erratically as he had done. On the rock-face itself it would be a
different matter.

The
broken wall of limestone came under his fingers, and he began to pull himself
up, the deft little hands and feet finding their crevices as easily as a
monkey. Behind and below him the shouting had begun, the warders holding their
carbines over their heads with both hands, which was the signal of an escape.
MacBride had risen to his knees but only the officer who had fired the first
shot was still taking aim at the fugitive. The carbine cracked like a whip as
Joe seized a sharp ledge of rock above and his feet trod the crumbling
limestone into a shower of fragments. A bullet chipped the white surface a
dozen feet to one side. At first he thought the officer with the carbine must
be Mr Kite's man too, firing deliberately wide of the mark. But as Joe pulled
himself to the rim of the quarry, where the turf began, he saw that his escape
had been well timed. In mid-afternoon, the July sun was directly over the
quarry face, shining into the eyes of those below. Shooting into the colourless
glare, the marksman would be lucky to get a bullet anywhere near his target.

In any
case, Stunning Joe now had the turf under his hands, as he wriggled upward over
the final ledge and lay for a few seconds on the high downland to fill his
aching lungs. The softness of the turf was like a carpet under his feet after
months of stone floors and the decking of the hulk. As he ran onward the sounds
of voices and pursuit died away. It would take them a good while to follow him
by the quarry path.

He
looked to right and left. On the one hand was the glimmering sweep of Chesil
Bank. When darkness came he would follow its shore, wading waist-deep, his
movements concealed by the roar of the tide. The other way led along the
cliffs, towards Portland Bill and the end of the peninsula. A man who was
running for freedom would hardly be expected to choose that direction. With
the glittering channel stretching away into the horizon glare, Joe followed a
path which skirted the cliff edge. His pursuers would search the more likely
escape routes first. It would be dusk by the time that the armed warders and
the dogs began to drag the cliffs on this side.

Stunning
Joe knew that there were two lighthouses at the tip of Portland Bill,
constructed on the high ground. They were known as the Upper Light and the
Lower Light from the difference in their locations. From conversations among
other prisoners, Joe understood that they were not manned, merely visited by a
Trinity House engineer once a week. The Lower Light was on sloping ground,
where the land dipped towards the sea. It was almost the last place that the
hunters would reach. By then it would be dark. Stunning Joe would have slipped
out, retraced his route to the start of Chesil Bank and begun his eight-mile
walk to the mainland at Abbotsbury. By the next day he would have stolen
clothes and money, reaching the safety of Dorchester or one of the market
towns. On the following night he would be back with Mr Kite and Old Mole.

He
devised the plan as he ran, with the quicksilver of the afternoon tide below
him. Not more than ten minutes later he saw the two lighthouses before him. At
the end of the peninsula the expanse of turf sloped gently towards the last
cliff, and the tall finger of the lighthouse tower was clearly visible. The
Lower Light was sixty or seventy feet high, the glass lantern rising above
deserted fields and distant whitewashed farms. Stunning Joe was alone under
the summer sky, knowing that he was free at last. The lock of the lighthouse
door was so simple that he could have picked it with his finger-nail. He was
studying it, thinking that he would lock himself in and make them believe he
had never been there, when he heard a movement behind him.

Joe
turned slowly, dreading to see a dark uniform with crowns on the lapels. But it
was an unshaven man in an oatmeal-coloured smock and leggings, his grey hair
dishevelled. There was a shotgun in his hands as he bared his gums and grinned
at the fugitive.

'You'm a runner!' he said humorously.

Stunning
Joe looked blankly at the ragged man in the smock. There was no hint of
intention behind the yellowed teeth in their shrewd smile. Joe, bracing his
narrow back against the lighthouse door, met the eyes of his adversary and
found them expressionless.

The
man passed his tongue slowly across his lips, as though he found this an aid to
thought.

'You'm
a runner,' he repeated quietly, 'from the hulks! You'm took your ticket o'
leave!'

'Stop
a bit,' said Joe reasonably. 'You've no cause to take a part. Act sensible and
you shan't suffer by it. A week or two shall see you richer than you are now.
It ain't your quarrel.'

The ragged man's
mouth widened in amusement.

'See
me rich?' he sniggered. 'You don't look to me like a man of substance, my
friend. Where's the proof?'

Joe
measured the distance between himself and the barrels of the shotgun. He slid
his right foot forward and the man drew back at once, keeping the aim of the
gun steady.

'You
stop that nonsense soon as you like, young shaver,' he said quietly. 'Right
then, Mr Will and Master Harry! If you please.'

Two
more figures stepped round from the far side of the lighthouse, where they had
been concealed during the brief conversation. One was a fair-haired man in a
smock similar to the first. The other was a boy of seventeen or eighteen with
weak limbs and blotched complexion. They both carried guns, blunderbuss
muzzle-loaders. Stunning Joe knew all too well that they fired a hail of metal
fragments at each shot, enough to drive a dozen iron fragments into his body at
this range. The ragged man turned to Will, speaking as though Joe O'Meara could
not hear them.

'Ten
sovereigns was give for the last,' he said thoughtfully, 'but then that was two
year or more since. ‘Twould be fifteen or twenty now, p'raps, having a new
governor that don't want to dirty his snotter!'

He
turned again to Joe with the same humorous grin. Beyond the ridge above them there
was a long hollow booming sound.

'Warning
gun,' said the fair-haired man philosophically. 'They knew 'e gone, then.
They'd give twenty to 'ave 'e back. Least that.'

Joe
stood with his back still pressed to the wooden planking of the door, the
three guns held in a semi-circle before him.

'Twenty!'
he said incredulously. 'You could have two hundred in a week more!' His eyes
were anxiously upon the crest above them, fearing the first appearance of dark
uniformed figures.

'Never mind a week
more,' said the man with the shotgun. 'What's in 'ee pockets now?' Joe shook
his head.

'
'at's the problem, 'at is,' said the man thoughtfully. 'Two hundred what might
come next week or never. And a good chance of being had for aiding an'
abetting.'

'Twenty's
safer,' said Will. 'Twenty's sure, an' no questions to answer either. If he
could toss two hundred around as easy as tha', wha's he doin' on the hulks?'

'Wait!'
said Joe urgently. 'Take me where it's safe, and let me send a message for the
money. Keep me till it comes. If it don't, then ask your twenty guineas of the
law.'

He
watched them, looking for the glint of greed in their eyes. But they grinned
back at him, unbelieving.

'You'm
shy of the cat, my friend,' said the man with the shotgun jovially. 'They d'
all get their backs skinned when they'm fetched back. You'm shy o' that!'

'If
I'm took back, my son,' said Joe bitterly, 'them that's got the two hundred
sovs and more shall know why. And you shall hear from them in good time!'

The threat was
lost upon them.

'Oh-ah?' said the
man with the shotgun, as though the matter hardly concerned him, 'S'posing they
can find us, and s'posing they don't hear from us first.' He stepped back,
while the two blunderbusses were trained on Stunning Joe, and pointed the
shotgun at the blue summer sky. The blast of the first barrel rocked and
reverberated from the cliffs, its echoes hardly dying before the explosion of
the second barrel woke them again. From beyond the rising ground there was an
answering howl of dogs and presently the black figures appeared in silhouette
against the hot blue of the afternoon sky. In a long moment of stillness before
they came to the little group at the Lower Light, Joe listened to the full
swell of sea breaking on the rocks below. Now, surely, it was all over.

MacBride
himself was with the men. Perhaps he had deliberately exaggerated the effect of
Stunning Joe's attack upon him at the time. But why? Joe looked stupidly at the
officer as the cuffs were locked upon his wrists and his legs were ironed. Why
had MacBride been bought for an escape attempt which was doomed to fail? Then,
for the first time, Joe O'Meara saw the matter in a new light. MacBride had not
been bought. He had allowed the escape for his own cruel sport, the hunting
down of the felon and the terrible vengeance which the rules of the hulks would
exact from him once he was caught.