The Dark Crusader Read Online Free PDF Page B

we stood and looked round our stateroom.
    It was a dark and noisome dungeon. Well, not quite dark, there was a dim yellow glowworm of a lamp behind a steel-meshed glass on the deckhead, enough so that you didn't have to paw your way around, but it was certainly noisome enough. It smelled like the aftermath of the bubonic plague, stinking to high heaven of some disgusting odour that I couldn't identify. And it was all that could have been asked for in the way of a dungeon. The only way out was the way we had come in. Aft, there was a wooden bulkhead clear across the width of the vessel. I located a crack between two planks and though I couldn't see anything I could sniff diesel oil: the engine-room, without a doubt. In the for'ard bulkhead were two doors, both unlocked: one led to a primitive toilet and a rust-stained wash-basin supplied by a tap that gave a good flow of brown and brackish water, not sea-water: the other opened on to a tiny six by four cabin where nearly all the floor space was occupied by a low made-up bunk without sheets but with what seemed, in the sputtering light of a match, to be fairly clean blankets. Near the two for'ard corners of the hold were six-inch diameter holes in the deckhead: I peered up those, but could see nothing. Ventilators, probably, and they could hardly have been called a superfluous installation: but on that windless night and with the ship not under way they were quite useless.
    Heavy spaced wooden battens, held in place by wooden slots in deck and deckhead, ran the whole fore-and-aft length of the hold. There were four rows of those battens, and behind the two rows nearest the port and starboard sides wooden boxes and open-sided crates were piled to the very top, except where a space had been left free for the air from the ventilators to find its way in. Between the outer and inner rows of battens other boxes and sacks were piled half the height of the hold: between the two inner rows, extending from the engine-room bulkhead to the two small doors in the for'ard bulkhead, was a passage perhaps four feet wide. The wooden floor of this alleyway looked as if it had been scrubbed about the time of the Coronation.
    I was still looking slowly around, feeling my heart making for my boots and hoping that it was not too dark for Marie Hopeman to see my carefully balanced expression of insouciance and intrepidity, when the overhead light dimmed to a dull red glow and a high-pitched whine came from aft: a second later an unmistakable diesel engine came to life, the vessel began to vibrate as it revved up, then as it slowed again I could just hear the patter of sandalled feet on the deck above-casting off, no doubt-just before the engine note deepened as gear was engaged. It didn't require the slight list to starboard as the vessel sheered off from the jetty wall to tell us that we were under way.
    I turned away from the after bulkhead, bumped into Marie Hopeman in the near darkness and caught her arm to steady her. The arm was goose-fleshed, wet and far too cold. I fumbled a match from a box, scratched it alight and peered at her as she screwed her eyes almost shut against the sudden flare. Her fair bedraggled hair was plastered over her forehead and one cheek, the saturated thin silk of her dress was a clammy cocoon that clung to every inch and she was shivering constantly. Not until then did I realise just how cold and dank it was in that airless hole. I waved the match to extinction, removed a shoe, started hammering the after bulkhead and, when that had no effect, climbed a few steps Up the ladder and started beating the hatch.
    "What on earth do you imagine you're doing?" Marie Hopeman asked.
    "Room service. If we don't get our clothes soon I'm going to have a pneumonia case on my hands."
    "Wouldn't it suit you better to look round for some kind of weapon?" she said quietly. "Has it never occurred to you to ask why they've brought us out here?"
    "To do us in? Nonsense." I tried out my