Nick of Time Read online

  Which is precisely what Kate thought the cat had in mind now, until she noticed that a foolish seagull had taken up residence out over the passing waves at the very end of the boom, thereby shortening its life expectancy by a very considerable margin, given the cat’s fondness for seagulls and robins.

  As Kate watched spellbound, the little drama seemed to unfold in slow motion.

  The cocky bird, perched out over the sparkling sea at the end of the boom, facing into the breeze, unaware of the silently approaching cat.

  The dangerous cat, creeping slowly out along the boom, low and deadly, barely moving, an inch at a time.

  About three feet to go now, and still the bird remains, incredibly bold …or incredibly stupid.

  And Horatio lunges with lightning speed. The bird sees him, feels him coming and darts into the air with a fierce shriek, and Horatio has finally met his match, his paws grabbing at nothing but air, and this time it’s not a reliable crabapple branch with some soft garden grass waiting below but the yawing boom of a moving sailboat over the cold blue sea, and in an instant the cat has landed, on its feet to be sure, but only for an instant before disappearing beneath the waves.

  “Cat overboard!” Katie screams, just as Nick taught her, and she jumps to the gunwale, her finger pointed to the spot where Horatio hit the water, watching the tiny area of foam as it quickly disappeared astern. The seagull was hovering over the spot, cawing in victory. Nick had also heaved a floating cushion to mark the spot.

  “Take the helm, Kate!” Nick shouts, thrusting the tiller into his sister’s hand. “Come about immediately and douse the sails, main and jib, these two halyards here, d’ye hear? Gunner! Please don’t take your eyes off me! Stand by with a line!” Luckily, the crew has practiced exactly this man-overboard maneuver dozens of times over. There is no reason it shouldn’t work for cats.

  But Katie has never seen Nick move this fast. In the blink of an eye, he is on the stern, stripped to his canvas britches, eyes on the spot where the cushion floats, and then a blur, arching out over the water and entering a large blue wave, clear as blue glass, with barely a splash to mark his entry.

  It was a lovely dive, Kate thought.

  Air, then water.

  It was shockingly cold, and Nick felt that his heart would stop or explode from his chest as he dove deep and opened his eyes, half expecting to find the cat right in front of him. He was amazed at how clear the water was, this many feet below the surface. He could see the sun, a dancing, misshapen yellow ball hanging above him. And below, brilliant blue going darker and darker. Nick knew the sun could penetrate to a depth of fifty feet, and he could see down to where daylight ceased.

  But no Horatio.

  He spun himself through three-hundred-sixty degrees, looking above and below, left and right, until he thought his lungs would surely burst.

  Still no Horatio.

  Sheer instinct told him he had mere seconds to search, then swim for the surface and grab some air. If he didn’t find Horatio on the next dive, they’d be having a cat funeral tomorrow. And a dog one as well? He had scant few hours before his appointment with Billy Blood, and he had begun to wonder if Blood had harmed Jip just for spite.

  He shook the thought out of his head as he clawed for the surface.

  Air. And brilliant sunshine. No cat, anywhere. Just the slender mahogany bowsprit and mast of his boat bobbing in the distance. Amazing how far it had traveled in such a short time. But Kate now had her headed up into the wind and lying dead in the water. Good old Katie. Quite properly hove to, the little sailor!

  The icy cold again and he dove down, eyes open. This was it. Time’s up, Horatio, ready or not …

  There! Below and to the left! A small shadow, maybe another ten or fifteen feet below him. He didn’t have enough air to get down that far. Too deep. But he pulled his way down anyway, down toward the shadow, kicking hard, too. His heart was on fire. And his lungs.

  Five more feet. It was Horatio. He reached down, straining for the cat, feeling his brain starting to swim inside his head. He felt himself blacking out. Edges of blackness creeping in around his watery blue circle of his vision. And then he had the lifeless cat in his hands and was turning for the surface and that is when he saw the other shadow, the much, much bigger shadow.

  It was moving.

  Whale? Maybe … maybe too big for a whale. Huge, and black and menacing. What on earth could it be?

  He burst into the sunlit air and felt the fire in his lungs as he gulped fresh sweet air by the gallon. He held Horatio aloft, no idea whether the cat was dead or alive, and screamed in the direction of the Petrel.

  He was dizzy, gasping, and still stunned by the vision of the huge dark shadow moving slowly down there below his bare feet.

  He hung there forever in the icy cold, waiting. And, dimly, he saw a sail hoisted, and then Petrel gradually getting larger, and then Gunner’s expert toss of the line, a loop at the end, three feet away. He grabbed it, and heard his sister’s “hooray” as if in a dream, and then he was beside his boat, handing the limp Horatio up to Gunner, who was leaning out over the starboard gunwale.

  “Well done! Well done, Master Nicholas!” cried Gunner, who reached down and roughly patted his head. “And as fine a cat-overboard rescue as ever I’ve seen, little Kate!” Katie gave him a huge smile, and tenderly took Horatio from Gunner, cradling him in her arms and whispering to the limp wet form.

  “I need more line, Gunner,” Nick gasped, tying the line in the water around his waist with a bowline knot. “Another fifty feet, please!”

  “Lord in heaven, Nick, what for?” Gunner said. “Stay in that water much longer and yer blood’ll freeze! Here, grab hold and I’ll hoist you up. Stick yer foot in the loop!”

  “Can’t right now,” Nick said between breaths. “Have to go back down.” He concentrated on his breathing.

  “Back down? Thankee kindly, Master Nick, for saving my old tom, but now you’ve got to get aboard and make for Castle Hawke. That’s the plan, lad, remember?” Gunner started to pull on the line, worried about the boy’s state of mind. “We be running out o’ time and there’s pirates likely about, remember? Here, get yerself aboard.”

  “Can’t now, Gunner. Going back down for another look. Something down there. Something big.”

  “Down there? What’s that? What’s down there?”

  “Not sure, Gunner. Something big. Sperm whale maybe, or a blue whale. Maybe something else, but big. Biggest thing I’ve ever seen! A leviathan!”

  Nick took a deep breath and dove back down into the cold blue. And he was gone, Kate saw, again.

  “What’s Nicky doing?” asked Kate, cradling the slowly reviving Horatio in her arms. “Why has he gone back down?”

  “Your brother’s seen somethin’ down there under the briny, little miss, and apparently it’s somethin’ as merits his full attention,” Gunner said, peering over the gunwale and watching Nick’s shadowy form descend.

  “Is it pirates?” Kate asked, looking a bit nervous.

  “A big fish is more like it, down where he’s headed, Miss,” Gunner said, patting her bouncy red curls and then rubbing Horatio’s soggy head with his own huge paw.

  Nick swam down to the depth where he’d found Horatio, his eyes closed against the burn of salt water until the last instant. When he finally opened his eyes, he felt his heart leap in his chest.

  It had risen.

  The long black shadow was enormous now, and it had moved much closer to the surface. Nick closed his eyes and with a few powerful kicks, swam down to within twenty feet of the menacing black vision.

  It was a leviathan of sorts.

  It was a monster.

  Nick kicked along its black length. He now knew what it was, of course, he could have recognized that black profile in his sleep. He knew packs of these monsters were stalking his home waters, but he could scarcely accept the terrible sight of one hovering just beneath the warm teak decks of his tiny sloop. Just beneath the
tiny bare feet of his little sister and his old friend Gunner.

  The thing was enormous. It had to be at least three times longer than any sub Nick had ever seen, English or German, and probably half again as wide! Although its black skin was dull and lifeless, Nick could hear faint creakings of steel, and small pings of noise coming from somewhere inside the monstrous dark hull. There were, too, beautiful jets of tiny bubbles streaming upward from various points along the broad sweep of black steel.

  “I have met the enemy!”

  Nick willed himself to stay down until he had confirmed with his eyes what his mind knew to be true. His lungs were on fire, but he forced himself to ignore them and kicked along the monster’s side, taking it all in.

  A second later, he found what he’d been looking for.

  A German swastika, emblazoned in blood red, high on the beast’s broad black flank.

  And then, on the huge conning tower rising above the deadly black hull, he saw the legend U-33.

  Contact, Nick McIver thought. I have met the enemy.

  A gargantuan Nazi U-boat, hovering beneath the keel of his tiny sloop Stormy Petrel! Could this be the experimental Alpha-Class sub? Yes, he thought, it had to be!

  Nick hung in the water, willing himself to stay down another minute and make observations.

  It hung motionless in the sea, about twenty feet below the surface, streams of bubbles rising from its hull like underwater fountains. Its great flat deck was bathed in dappled sunlight and the massive conning tower loomed high above the midships deck. Nick saw giant fore and aft diving planes and, beneath them, the torpedo tubes. On the bow was the huge deck gun, a five-inch rapid-fire cannon that would be used, Nick knew, against aerial attacks or surface enemies. It was altogether the most awesome sight Nick had seen in his young years. He shuddered at the sheer power and majesty of it.

  Nick tried to examine his feelings and certainly there was excitement at seeing such an amazing and potentially unfriendly vessel at such close range. But there was something else, too, something he could only guess at.

  Was this the beginning of something too terrible to imagine? Or the beginning of a boyhood vastly more exciting than he’d ever dared dream of on his peaceful little island?

  He kicked for the surface, lungs afire, his air exhausted and his mind racing.

  One thing was certain, he thought, reaching at last the sundappled surface above. It was going to be quite a summer.

  Pirates on top of the water, Nazis below.

  CHAPTER X

  The Nantucket Sleigh Ride

  · 6 June 1939 ·

  OFF THE SOUTHWEST COAST

  Nick sat on Petrel’s bow beside Gunner, dangling his feet in the glassy water. There wasn’t even the smallest breath of breeze to move his boat. “We’re going to sit here twiddling our toes while that big U-boat slips away and we miss that rotten Billy Blood’s deadline, too,” Nick said glumly, looking at the sun’s diminishing distance from the horizon. “I’ll likely never see old Jip again, Gunner. The best dog a boy ever had.”

  “We’ve still got some hours left, Master Nick, we’ll make it. Besides, we couldn’t give that submarine much of a chase even in a tooth-rattlin’ blow, d’ye think? And what’s the point of that old pirate harmin’ yer doggie? Besides, you know well as I do there’s that westerly breeze that kicks up every afternoon.”

  Nick was a staunch boy, Gunner allowed, but like all boys, he needed a little bucking up every so often.

  “That westerly never fills in until just before sunset, Gunner, you know that,” Nick said, kicking at the mirrorlike water in frustration.

  “So I’ll whistle her up early,” Gunner said, and began whistling his favorite sailor’s ditty. The two friends just sat side by side on either side of the bow, wiggling their toes in the water, as the hot sun dipped ever lower in the western sky. And nary a breeze to ripple the surface despite Gunner’s attempt to whistle up a wind.

  Suddenly, Gunner grabbed Nick’s arm with his massive paw and squeezed, hard. “Don’t look now, Master Nick, but yer new Nazi pals have popped up from the briny to eyeball us personally.” Gunner nodded silently to his right and then Nick saw it.

  The U-boat periscope, water still streaming from its jet black–hooded top!

  Glistening in the sun, it had emerged from the water not ten feet from where Nick and Gunner were sitting on the sailboat’s bow. Gunner stared in open-mouthed wonder at the nearness of it. Why, he could spit and hit this one!

  “An evil eye, all right. German,” was all Gunner said. And then he did spit into the water, narrowly missing the scope itself.

  “Can he see us now, do you think?” Nick asked, still in a whisper. The periscope was facing almost completely away from them, but Nick could still see a little bit of the lens.

  Gunner adjusted his little gold spectacles and peered closely at the top of the motionless periscope. “Not likely. I think we’re just outside his field of peripheral vision. Five degrees to port, though, and he’s sighted us all right. That might give the young Herr Kapitän down there a start, right?” Gunner laughed softly. “An old navy man with a half-drowned cat and a young lad sittin’ right on top of his bleedin’ head!”

  “What’s he up to, d’you suppose?”

  “Spying, what else?” Gunner said.

  “He’s looking at our shoreline all right,” Nick whispered. “And he’s in awfully close. As close as he’s going to chance going in, if he’s seen the Seven Devils on his chart, I mean.”

  “Aye. He gets any closer he’s going to end up as the island’s number-one tourist attraction,” Gunner said, getting a laugh from Nick.

  “Right, and now he’s got himself in here, how’s he going to get himself out?” Nick asked, as a crazy notion popped into his head.

  “Well, assuming he can get his bow around in here, he’ll have to take her out dead slow to the southeast, inside of them shoals over there, lyin’ in the general direction of Hawke Point. And then a hard turn southeasterly to open sea.”

  “Just what I was thinkin’, Gunner, just what I was thinkin’.”

  And at that moment, the periscope began to move through the water.

  It was moving slowly, barely causing a ripple, distancing itself from the Petrel, and it was moving southeast, precisely the direction Nick and Gunner had anticipated. For Nick’s purposes, he calculated, it was precisely the right direction.

  “Hand me that bowline, Mr. Gunner, if you please,” Nick said under his breath. “Easy does it, sir, but very quickly, thank you very much. Thank you.”

  Nick took the line Gunner handed him and, with eyeblinding speed, tied an expert slip-knot into one end, made the other end fast to the bronze cleat on the bow. He then coiled the line, stood in the bow, swung the loop twice round his head to get the feel of the line, and let the loop fly.

  “Slip-knot, Gunner, just in case.”

  “Case o’ what?” Gunner asked, but he knew soon enough. The boy had had another one of his patented ideas.

  Nick’s artfully thrown loop flew out straight and high and it caught the periscope perfectly. The line to the periscope went quickly taut, snapping loudly where it was cleated on the bow and suddenly the Stormy Petrel leapt forward in the water. She was soon steaming along at a good five knots, right in the wake of the German periscope! And they were headed south-southeast and right for Hawke Point, their original destination!

  “Hooray!” cried Gunner, a huge smile on his jolly face. “A free ride, courtesy of Herr Hitler himself!”

  He was glowing with pride over his young friend’s ingenuity and indeed it was suddenly glorious to be surging along over the glassy water under a bright blue sky, all owing to the unwitting German submarine up ahead, moving through the water at periscope depth!

  Some twenty years earlier, Gunner had been in the business of sinking these things and he now took special joy in Nick’s ruse.

  “I’d give three cheers for old Adolf himself right now, if he weren’t s
uch a black-hearted dog!” Nick cried, hanging out over the bow from the forestay. “So I’ll cheer my old dog Jip instead! Hip, hip, huzzah, Jipper, wherever you are, we’re on our way!”

  “And here’s to us our noble selves!” Gunner cried, joining Nick and leaning out over the pulpit. “None finer …and many a damn sight worse!”

  “Hooray!” cried Nick, when suddenly the deck was yanked from beneath his feet and he felt himself hurtling backward through the air at an amazing speed. He had about one second to wonder about it and then he struck something hard and solid with the back of his head and all the lights went out at once, even the nightlight.

  He was down a deep dark tunnel, lying on the bottom, and up at the top he could hear Gunner calling his name and he must have been in a very deep tunnel indeed, because the sound seemed to be coming from very far away.

  “Nick … Nick, are you all right? Wake up, Master Nick! Can you hear me?”

  Gunner swam into focus inches above his face. It occurred to him that he was lying flat on his back on the foredeck of his sailboat and his head hurt like the dickens. Gunner was asking him a lot of questions about something. It was all very confusing. His sister! Where was his sister? Did Blood have her?

  “Katie!” Nick cried. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine, Master Nick. She and her dolly are back in the cockpit, snugged up with a good lifeline round her middle. Enjoyin’ the sleigh ride, I’m sure. It’s you I’m wonderin’ about, lad. That mast you took a shine to is solid spruce, a hard, unforgivin’ wood. Let me feel your head, laddie.”

  Gunner lifted Nick’s head gently and felt the emerging bump, already about as big as a hen’s egg, but no blood. The boy would be all right in a few minutes’ time.