Sea Thrillers 4-Book Collection Read Online Free PDF Page A

it?’
    â€˜Sabotage.’
    â€˜I beg your pardon, sir.’
    â€˜Sabotage. S for Sally, A for Arthur, B for Bobby, O for –’
    â€˜Good God! Whatever – I mean, why –’
    â€˜I do not know why.’ Captain Bowen spoke with a certain restraint. ‘Tell them that. I’ll tell you what I know – which is practically nothing – when I come up to the bridge. Five minutes. Maybe ten.’
    Archie McKinnon, the Bo’sun, came in. Captain Bowen regarded the Bo’sun – as indeed many other captains regarded their bo’suns – as the most important crew member aboard. He was a Shetlander, about six feet two in height and built accordingly, perhaps forty years of age, with a brick-coloured complexion, blue-grey eyes and flaxen hair – the last two almost certainly inheritances from Viking ancestors who had passed by – or through – his native island a millennium previously.
    â€˜Sit down, sit down,’ Bowen said. He sighed. ‘Archie, we have a saboteur aboard.’
    â€˜Have we now.’ He raised eyebrows, no startled oaths from the Bo’sun, not ever. ‘And what has he been up to, Captain?’
    Bowen told him what he had been up to and said: ‘Can you make any more of it than I can, which is zero?’
    â€˜If you can’t, Captain, I can’t.’ The regard in which the Captain held the Bo’sun was wholly reciprocated. ‘He doesn’t want to sink the ship, not with him aboard and the water temperature below freezing. He doesn’t want to stop the ship – there’s half a dozen ways a clever man could do that. I’m thinking myself that all he wanted to do is to douse the lights which – at night-time, anyway – identify us as a hospital ship.’
    â€˜And why would he want to do that, Archie?’ It was part of their unspoken understanding that the Captain always called him ‘Bo’sun’ except when they were alone.
    â€˜Well.’ The Bo’sun pondered. ‘You know I’m not a Highlander or a Western Islander so I can’t claim to be fey or have the second sight.’ There was just the faintest suggestion of an amalgam of disapproval and superiority in the Bo’sun’s voice but the Captain refrained from smiling: essentially, he knew, Shetlanders did not regard themselves as Scots and restricted their primary allegiance to the Shetlands. ‘But like yourself, Captain, I have a nose for trouble and I can’t say I’m very much liking what I can smell. Half an hour – well, maybe forty minutes – anybody will be able to see that we are a hospital ship.’ He paused and looked at the Captain with what might possibly have been a hint of surprise whichwas the nearest the Bo’sun ever came to registering emotion. ‘I can’t imagine why but I have the feeling that someone is going to have a go at us before dawn. At dawn, most likely.’
    â€˜I can’t imagine why either, Archie, but I have the same feeling myself. Alert the crew, will you? Ready for emergency stations. Spread the word that there’s an illegal electrician in our midst.’
    The Bo’sun smiled. ‘So that they can keep an eye on each other. I don’t think, Captain, that we’ll find the man among the crew. They’ve been with us for a long time now.’
    â€˜I hope not and I think not. That’s to say, I’d like to think not. But it was someone who knew his way around. Their wages are not exactly on a princely scale. You’d be surprised what a bag of gold can do to a man’s loyalty.’
    â€˜After twenty-five years at sea, there isn’t a great deal that can surprise me. Those survivors we took off that tanker last night – well, I wouldn’t care to call any of them my blood-brother.’
    â€˜Come, come, Bo’sun, a little of the spirit of Christian charity, if you please. It was a