Thunder at Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

came then but it was enough. Memory functioned and the pieces clicked into place.
    Her sister, Alice, was a governess in London and wrote her long weekly letters in copperplate about the War and Society and The Town. Sarah read them fascinated by an alien world. And one small item concerned a Commander David C. Smith, “a handsome, charming young gentleman they say …”
    Sarah had looked to find a man in command of this ship because she felt Thunder might soon need a man. Instead there was this poodle-faking, social climber who had stared at her with horror as she shot the renegade Englishman. Oh, she knew the man and that he carried a pistol in a shoulder holster and his empty hands meant nothing. She had never before fired a shot in anger and the memory would haunt her the rest of her days. It haunted her now but she would not explain to Smith. He could think what he liked.
    She was frightened, fear coming late to shake her, miserable. She was lonely, curled small in the bed and she cried herself to sleep.
    *
    Knight brought the decoded telegram to Smith. It came from the Consul in Guaya, Chile: “Request urgently your presence this port. Extreme importance.” Cherry would not know Thunder’s whereabouts. This telegram would be one of several sent to ports along the coast where she might call for news or orders. Smith handed it back to Knight without comment, grunted “Goodnight,” trying to sound like a man who wanted his sleep and was unmoved by the adventures of the day or this telegram. But when Knight had gone he lay awake. “Extreme importance.” “Request urgently.” Cherry could only request but Smith would need to have a good reason to ignore that request. In the event it did not matter. He had to be rid of the girl and that meant Guaya and Cherry. Thunder had a rendezvous with a collier to the north but that was two days hence and she held coal now for eight days’ cruising.
    Cherry’s telegram had come on the heels of the girl’s message but each carried its own warning. Of the same danger? What danger? The girl knew of no danger. Cherry spoke of none. But Smith was certain that danger was there. He lay wide-eyed, staring sightlessly at the deckhead above him with its slick of condensation and rust breaking through the white enamel in a red rash.
    He slept, to wake sweating as the big ships roared down on him out of the night and a white-faced girl shot a man again and again.

 
    III
     
    In the morning Horsfall woke Smith with a cup of coffee. Smith had inherited him. Tall and thin and lantern-jawed, he was obviously sometimes called Horse-Face but usually it was Daddy.
    Now he fussed around the cabin like an old hen.
    Daddy was a reservist, not a grandfather like Davies, the Engineer, or some of the others but he looked the oldest man aboard. He had been one of Thunder’s caretaker crew; the only one of that ancient little band who had somehow wangled his way to sea and they said he had been scraped off the dockyard wall along with the ship. He shuffled about in an old pair of plimsolls by express permission of the Doctor because his feet troubled him greatly. They also served him and a lot of the crew as a barometer because he claimed he could predict the weather by the feel of them.
    “Lovely morning, sir. Sky’s cleared beautiful but I reckon it won’t last. I can tell. Me feet, you know, sir.”
    “Yes, I know.” Smith sipped at the coffee and thought about Sarah Benson and Cherry.
    “Gabriel, that’s the Doctor’s mate, sir, he says that young lady woke up and ate a breakfast near fit for a horse and turned over again.”
    “Good.” He would be rid of her.
    “Funny her coming aboard like that, sir.”
    There was nothing funny about it. Two dead men. Smith might have been another.
    “All the lads are wondering about her, sir, keep asking me they do, what about that young lady? ’Course I can’t tell them anything.”
    “Of course not.”
    “No, sir.”
    “Well, when they ask