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last cargo.'
Bond watched carefully for a while and then they walked quietly up through the
trees, leaving Quarrel to report developments.
They sat down in the living-room, and while Strangways mixed himself a
whisky-and-soda, Bond gazed out of the window and marshalled his thoughts.
It was six o'clock and the fireflies were beginning to show in the shadows.
The pale primrose moon was already high up in the eastern sky and the day was
dying swiftly at their backs. A light breeze was ruffling the bay and the
scrolls of small waves were unfurling on the white beach across the lawn. A
few small clouds, pink and orange in the sunset, were meandering by overhead
and the palm trees clashed softly in the cool Undertaker's Wind.
'Undertaker's Wind,' thought Bond and smiled wryly. So it would have to be
tonight. The only chance, and the conditions were so nearly perfect. Except
that the shark-repellent stuff would not arrive in time.
And that was only a refinement. There was no excuse. This was what he had
travelled two thousand miles and five deaths to do. And yet he shivered at the
prospect of the dark adventure under the sea that he had already put off in
his mind until tomorrow. Suddenly he loathed and feared the sea and everything
in it. The millions of tiny antennae that would stir and point as he went by
that night, the eyes that would wake and watch him, the pulses that would miss
for the hundredth of a second and then go beating quietly on, the jelly
tendrils that would grope and reach for him, as blind in the light as in the
dark.
He would be walking through thousands of millions of secrets. In three hundred
yards, alone and cold, he would be blundering through a forest of mystery
towards a deadly citadel whose guardians had already killed three men. He,
Bond, after a week's paddling with his nanny beside him in the sunshine, was
going out tonight, in a few hours, to walk alone under that black sheet of
water. It was crazy, unthinkable. Bond's flesh cringed and his fingers dug
into his wet palms.
There was a knock on the door and Quarrel came in. Bond was glad to get up and
move away from the
window to where Strangways was enjoying his drink under a shaded reading
light.
'They're working with lights now, Cap'n,' Quarrel said with a grin. 'Still a
tank every five minutes. I figure that'll be ten hours' work. Be through about
four in the morning. Won't sail before six. Too dangerous to try the passage
without plenty light.'
Quarrel's warm grey eyes in the splendid mahogany face were looking into
Bond's, waiting for orders.
'I'll start at ten sharp,' Bond found himself saying. 'From the rocks to the
left of the beach. Can you get us some dinner and then get the gear out on to
the lawn? Conditions are perfect. I'll be over there in half an hour.' He
counted on his fingers. 'Give me fuses for five to eight hours. And the
quarter-hour one in reserve in case any- , thing goes wrong. Okay?'
'Aye aye, Cap'n,' said Quarrel. 'You jes leave 'em all to me.'
He went out.
Bond looked at the whisky bottle, then he made up his mind and poured half a
glass on top of three ice cubes. He took the box of benzedrine tablets out of
his pocket and slipped a tablet between his teeth.
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'Here's luck,' he said to Strangways and took a deep swallow. He sat down and
enjoyed the tough hot taste of his first drink for more than a week. 'Now,' he
said,' tell me exactly what they do when they're ready to sail. How long it
takes them to clear the island and get through the reef. If it's the last
time, don't forget they'll be taking off an extra six men and some stores.
Let's try to work it out as closely as we can.'
In a moment Bond was immersed in a sea of practical details and the shadow of
fear had fled back to the dark pools under the palm trees.
Exactly at ten o'clock, with nothing but anticipation and excitement in him,
the shimmering black bat-like figure slipped off the rocks into ten feet of
water and vanished under the sea.
'Go safely,' said Quarrel to the spot where Bond had disappeared. He crossed
himself. Then he and
Strangways moved back through the shadows to the house to sleep uneasily in
watches and wait fearfully for what might come.
CHAPTER XIX
VALLEY OF SHADOWS
BOND was carried straight to the bottom by the weight of the limpet mine that
he had secured to his chest with tapes and by the leaded belt which he wore
round his waist to correct the buoyancy of the compressed-air cylinders.
He didn't pause for an instant but immediately streaked across the first fifty
yards of open sand in a fast crawl, his face just above the sand. The long
webbed feet would almost have doubled his normal speed if he had not been
hampered by the weight he was carrying and by the light harpoon gun in his
left hand, but he travelled fast and in under a minute he came to rest in the
shadow of a mass of sprawling coral.
He paused and examined his sensations.
He was warm in the rubber suit, warmer than he would have been swimming in the
sunshine. He found his movements very easy and breathing perfectly simple so
long as his breath was even and relaxed. He watched the tell-tale bubbles
streaming up against the coral in a fountain of silver pearls and prayed that
the small waves were hiding them.
In the open he had been able to see perfectly. The light was soft and milky
but not strong enough to melt the mackerel shadows of the surface waves that
chequered the sand. Now, up against the reef, there was no reflection from the
bottom, and the shadows under the rocks were black and impenetrable.
He risked a quick glance with his pencil torch and immediately the underbelly
of the mass of brown tree-coral came alive. Anemones with crimson centres
waved their velvet tentacles at him, a colony of black sea-eggs moved their
toledo-steel spines in sudden alarm and a hairy sea-centipede halted in its [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]