Nick of Time Page 9

  “What happened?” Nick asked, rubbing his head and sitting up on the deck. “Christmas!” he exclaimed, getting a drenching faceful of salty spray over the Petrel’s bow. “What’s going on, Gunner? A sudden squall?”

  His boat seemed to be moving incredibly fast, pounding through the swells, more like a tiny hand-built sailboat, and he wondered if he were still dreaming at the bottom of a tunnel. The flying wind and water were like you’d expect in a gale, yet it was still a fine sunny afternoon.

  “Herr Kapitän decided to lean on his throttle a bit, now that we’ve safely cleared the Devils!” Gunner shouted above the spray and the roaring water.

  “A bit! I’ll say a bit,” Nick cried, climbing to his feet. “There’s not a sub on earth can go this fast, much less one as big as this! And I never even saw him surface! Let’s take a look at him!”

  He lunged forward to the pulpit, where he was immediately engulfed in a wall of water as the boat was pulled through a breaking wave by the racing submarine. Nick clung to the forestay and peered through the driven spray, the Petrel’s bow bucking beneath his bare feet like one of those broncos the cowboys in his books were always riding.

  “Where’s the sub, Gunner, I can’t even see it!” The waves and the spray were such that he could barely see ten feet in front of his own boat.

  “You can’t see him, but he be right out there at the end o’ that bowline, Nick, just where you left him,” Gunner said, pulling himself carefully forward along the lifeline. “Runnin’ along at periscope depth, givin’ us a Nantucket sleigh ride, just like those whaling sods you’re always talkin’ about. Ain’t it grand? Now, hand me that sharp knife of yours and I’ll slice that line. Few more minutes of this, and that U-boat will tear this boat to timbers!”

  “Periscope depth! You don’t mean he’s still submerged!” Nick shouted. “But that’s impossible! No sub can travel at this speed on top of the water, much less underneath it!”

  Unless she really was an Alpha Class, he thought. She had to be an Alpha!

  “Which yer soon going to be under water yourself if I don’t cut that line! Here, I’ll just use me own blade and just—”

  “Wait! Please! Don’t cut it just yet!” Nick screamed above the roaring water. The Petrel lurched violently and Nick lost his footing on the spray-slick deck. He was sliding quickly aft on his back and only at the last moment could he grab a stanchion and save himself from going over the stern.

  “What are you doing?” Gunner screamed, cupping one hand around his mouth. “I’m afraid he’ll dive! And even if he don’t, he’s going to pull the bow right off of this little brig! I’m cuttin’ her loose!”

  “Hold on, Gunner, please!” Nick yelled, struggling forward, slipping and sliding along the careening deck, his arms pinwheeling, wildly grabbing at anything he could find to hold on to. “I’ve got to clock his boat speed first!”

  “Boat speed! Who cares about boat—”

  Then the deck went out from under both their feet. Nick was airborne for a moment and then the sloop’s cockpit came up and caught him and he slammed his shoulder on the teak deck, safe for the moment, down in the cockpit. He raised his head, spitting saltwater from his mouth, his shoulder on fire. Seeing Gunner still on the bow, safely clinging to the forestay, he feverishly clawed through the sundry items stowed in the lazerette. No log there.

  Petrel didn’t have any modern instruments, just the oldfashioned log to tell the speed. You had to heave it out over the stern and gauge the boat’s velocity by how much and how rapidly the line played out. He finally located the instrument in the sail-locker and staggered aft, leaping to avoid the tiller which was now whipping wildly from side to side. He thought of tying it off amidships to keep from losing his rudder but there wasn’t time. Gunner was afraid the Petrel could be ripped apart or dragged under at any moment, but Nick wasn’t afraid. Heroes didn’t have to be braver than normal boys, Nick thought. Sometimes they just had to be brave for a few minutes longer.

  “Nick, I’m cuttin’ the line now!” Gunner shouted aft angrily. “Screws on the bow cleat is startin’ to work, and yer pulpit’s ready to give way any second and—”

  “No!” Nick cried. “I beg you!” The boat heaved violently again and Nick grabbed for a stanchion to keep from being pitched into the boiling sea. He could hear and feel Petrel’s seams strained to the breaking point and he willed her to stay together long enough for him to do what he had to do. He owed it to his father. He owed it to himself. And maybe even his country.

  Nelson the Strong, Nelson the Brave, Nelson the Lord of the Sea.

  It was then that he saw his little sister out of the corner of his eye. Kate had curled herself up into a tiny ball, huddled against the cabin house bulkhead, with her doll and the cat Horatio both held tightly in her arms. Her eyes were squeezed shut tight, tight as could be, and she was shivering with the cold spray or something worse.

  “What’s wrong, Katie?” Nick called, but he knew.

  “I’m afraid, Nicky,” she cried in a tiny voice. “I’ve never been so afraid.”

  Nick looked in desperation from the racing submarine up ahead down to his little sister for a long moment and then at the log in his hand. He was deeply disappointed but angry with himself for forgetting how frightening the violent ride must be for his little sister. Hadn’t he learned anything? What had his mother said? I hope you’re always clever enough to be afraid sometimes. You didn’t have to be too clever to know this was real danger, did you? He threw the unused speed log to the cockpit floor and bent to kiss his sister’s tear-streaked cheek.

  “Nothing wrong with being afraid, Kate. I’m afraid, too! I’m going to cut the line!” he said, and then he was leaping up to the cabin top and racing forward.

  “Cut us loose, please, Mr. Gunner! Cut her loose, now!”

  But Gunner’s blade had already sawed through the taut line and it suddenly parted with a loud pop and the Petrel almost instantly lost her way, meaning her forward motion, quickly settling down into the sudden serenity of the deep blue sea. She seemed intact and still seaworthy for the moment. Nick joined Gunner on the bow and began pulling their severed line back aboard. He smiled weakly up at his friend.

  “Sorry about that,” Nick said, breathing heavily and unable to look Gunner in the eye. “Quite a ride, eh?”

  “Not that it’s any of my business, understand,” Gunner said, coiling what was left of the bowline, “but would you mind tellin’ me why you suddenly came to your bleedin’ senses back there? Another minute and the whole boat was coming apart!”

  Nick looked at Gunner. He’d never seen his friend truly angry before and it was not a sight to be recommended to the faint of heart. Nick found he still couldn’t even look him in the eye.

  “I—I really needed to clock that fish, Gunner. Still, I was stupid not to let you cut the line, when you wanted, wasn’t I? I’m sorry.”

  “I cut that rope regardless of you, boy. Your boat or no, I wasn’t waiting for you to sink her.” Gunner looked at him, hard, and Nick turned away.

  “Sorry,” Nick said, and he really was. He’d been terribly stupid, but he was learning, he guessed. Sometimes you really did have to run away in order to fight another day.

  “Useless word, sorry,” Gunner added. “Ain’t it, Nick?”

  “It is,” the boy agreed. “But still, I am.”

  “And what’s so bleedin’ important about Sergeant Sauerkraut’s speed, anyway?”

  “War, I guess.”

  “War, Nick?”

  “Any day now. My father says it’s going to be just like your war, Gunner. U-boats’ll cut us off, starve us! That U-boat down there is just what Mr. Churchill is trying to warn everyone about! They’re building them again, don’t you see? We’ve got to tell everybody, warn them, Gunner. About these new German war machines! That’s why I needed so to log her speed, Gunner! I’d never put anyone in danger and you know it! But the Nazis, they’re putting us all in danger and—”

/>   “Oh, look!” Kate said, as a huge black shadow fell across the drifting sloop. She was standing on the cabin top, the lifeline still securing her to the mast. Arm outstretched, her finger was pointing up at an ancient stone edifice towering on the rocky cliff high above them. “A giant’s house!” Kate said.

  Gunner and Nick looked up, dumbfounded. But Kate was right. The U-boat had unknowingly deposited the little vessel in the very shadow of her destination.

  Hawke Castle.

  CHAPTER XI

  The Electrified Lagoon

  · 6 June 1939 ·

  IN HAWKE LAGOON

  Stormy Petrel ghosted smoothly between the high rocky walls on either side of the inlet and into the shadowy confines of Hawke Lagoon. The afternoon breeze had filled in and Nick had judged his approach to the inlet perfectly. He realized that, if you didn’t know exactly what to look for, as he himself did, you could sail by the hidden entrance of this lagoon a hundred times and never see it. He had never taken Petrel through the inlet, simply out of respect for Lord Hawke’s well-known desire for privacy. And his reputation for accuracy with a pistol, although that, too, was probably only one of Gunner’s fireside tales.

  Hawke Lagoon was another world. Here inside the rocky cathedral, the air was still and peaceful. The water was a dark quiet pool of glassy green and all around them sheer walls of granite rose to a small patch of darkening sky, high above the little flag hanging limply at his masthead. Nick felt as if he were at the bottom of a huge natural well, and if it weren’t for the opening in the cliff that had led from the open sea, it

  Ghosting into Hawke Lagoon

  would have been a frightening place to be. As it was, he knew they could get out in a hurry, if they had to, and that a quick escape might be a distinct possiblity.

  “There’s a dock just there, Master Nick!” Gunner said from the bow, and his words echoed around and up the walls of the lagoon.

  They had doused both sails slipping into the lagoon and Nick let the Petrel glide slowly up alongside the dock. Gunner leapt off the bow at the nearest ladder with a mooring line and cleated it off, while Nick did the same with the stern line. The dock itself was steel, recently painted to a shiny dark green and very well maintained. Nick saw that there was a fuel pump farther along and coils of good manila line hung on the pylons for mooring. Mooring what? Nick wondered. Surely they didn’t get many visitors in here. And yet, this was a dock that obviously saw a good deal of traffic. It was odd. But then, so was everything else lately.

  While Gunner secured the boat, Nick and Kate walked the length of the dock, searching for a switch box to illuminate the lamps that hung out over the water from each dockpole. The lagoon was a shadowy little world and, now, with the black clouds rolling over up above, it was getting hard to see anything at all.

  “There’s no doorways and no steps leading up from this dock, Nick, so what’s the point of having a dock?” asked Gunner, confirming Nick’s puzzling and completely unsuccessful search for a stairway. “Unless yer a ghost, of course.”

  “Has to be a way up,” said Nick. “Otherwise, right, the dock makes no sense.”

  “Which wouldn’t be the first thing has made no sense today,” said Gunner. “But then—”

  Suddenly, the lagoon was flooded with light. Huge blinding floodlights, mounted in the rock above, and atop all the lampposts along the dock, and even a ring of underwater floodlamps circling the entire perimeter of the lagoon, were illuminated. The enormous underwater lights turned all of the water in the lagoon to a luminous shade of emerald green, like a mammoth fishbowl, and Nick could even see Petrel’s keel, hanging below her hull in the bright water. He saw a school of silver fish swim under the keel and dart away with incredible speed.

  The world inside the lagoon, now lit from above and below, had become a place of eerie, shimmering beauty.

  “You must leave at once!” boomed a voice from an unseen loudspeaker, mounted somewhere among the floodlights above in the rock.

  “This is a restricted area. This is a military facility, restricted to government and military personnel. If you have not reboarded your vessel and left the lagoon within five minutes, severe measures will be taken. Extreme measures.”

  “I told you so, Nick,” said Gunner, already uncleating the bowline from the dock so they could beat a hasty retreat. “Lord Hawke is one who likes his privacy. And now he means to blow us to kingdom come! Let’s get out of here! Out! Out!”

  “You now have four minutes,” the voice boomed again, echoing around and around the stone walls. “The dock you are standing on is electrified to ten thousand volts. Now the power is off. In four minutes it will be switched on. Anyone standing on or ouching the dock at that time risks serious injury or death. Re-board your vessel immediately. This is your last warning!”

  “What does ‘lectrified’ mean?” asked Katie.

  “It means I’m getting your little footsies off this dock just in case,” Nick said, lifting Kate up to a foot-wide ledge that ran some distance along the cliff face about shoulder high. Lifting her up, he thought he spied a way inside the sheer wall of rock.

  “Gunner, come here! Look at this!” Nick cried, excited. He’d seen some kind of hidden door in the rock face. “There’s a small door here! Right here in the rock! Some-one’s left it cracked open by mistake! I can’t pull it open, but you could!”

  A large depression just beside Kate’s ledge revealed a thick steel door disguised to look like rock. It was open perhaps an inch. A strange red light was escaping around the edges of the stone-clad door. It didn’t look very inviting, but it was worth a try.

  Nick had somehow convinced himself that Lord Hawke could help them, though he had no real reason to believe this. He reassured himself that his instincts had served him well enough this day and it was no time to just give up and go home. Besides, he had three whole minutes before he’d be electrocuted.

  “Three minutes. Repeat, three minutes. Electrification of the dock area will commence in three minutes. Leave the area at once!” the voice resounded.

  “Hurry, Gunner!” cried Nick. “The chest!”

  “I’m coming as fast as I bloody can, ain’t I?” grumbled Gunner under his breath, and banging his head on the cabin top as he lurched below. “Damn that boy,” he exclaimed, seeing that there were two leather straps securing the chest to the cabin floor and they wouldn’t give an inch. Nick had buckled them too tightly. Gunner tried to work his fingers under the buckles but it was impossible. Did Nick think someone was going to materialize out of thin air and steal the bloody thing? Maybe, Gunner thought, remembering the strange ways of Captain William Blood, maybe he did think just that!

  He grabbed the two metal buckles in both hands and pulled.

  “Two minutes. Two minutes. Warning. Warning. Leave at once.”

  A loud klaxon horn started wailing, deafening in the confines of the rocky lagoon. Flashing red lights, mounted atop each of the dockposts, threw a whirling glare across the rocks, the water, his boat. Nick could see Gunner below through the portlight windows, straining against the straps that held the chest. Well, that was it then. He’d just grab Kate and jump to safety back aboard his boat. It was obvious they weren’t very welcome here at Hawke Castle.

  And then Gunner had exploded out of the companionway and was running down the dock toward him, the chest under his arm and a look of crazed determination on his face. “We’re-going-to-get-cooked!” he cried as he pounded toward Nick and Katie.

  “I got the door open another inch, Gunner!” Gunner put the chest down at his feet. “Can you do it?” Nick cried, the wailing horn ratcheting their adrenaline levels up a notch.

  The crack in the door was open just wide enough for Gunner to insert his beefy fingers. He pulled mightily.

  “One minute. One minute. Final warning. This is your final warning. Remaining on the deck surface or touching any structure will be fatal to any living thing, human or animal. Repeat. One minute.”

 
The door wouldn’t budge.

  Gunner looked at Nick.

  “Give me a hand here, would you, mate? Maybe two,” he said through clenched teeth. “Only if you’re not busy, of course.”

  Nick slid both hands into the crack and braced his feet against the rock wall. “On two!” he said. He smiled up at Kate. He’d learned his lesson. His sister was safe up there and, if they had to, he and Gunner could jump up there as well.

  There was a grilled bulb in the alcove above their heads that now began flashing red. Another siren joined the klaxon horn. It was bedlam in the little lagoon.

  “Thirty seconds. Repeat thirty seconds. Leave at once!”

  “One…TWO!” Nick cried and he put every ounce of strength he had against the door. Gunner grunted with superhuman effort, pulling as hard as ever he’d pulled in this life.

  The door started to give, slowly at first, and then they had it; it had swung open a good three feet. They were in!

  “Fifteen seconds!”

  Gunner lifted Katie down from the ledge and placed her just inside the door on the rubber-lined floor. Nick slipped through the narrow opening, picked up Katie and moved a few feet further inside the strange red glow of the tunnel. Gunner lifted the chest, silently praying that it would fit through the three-foot opening. It was tight, but he got it through and placed it inside the tunnel door.

  Nick gave a brief look over his shoulder and saw that the tunnel, which was lined with shiny white ceramic tiles, appeared to be about fifty yards long. He saw that it soon began sloping sharply downward, and the strange red light made them all look pink. There was another steel door at the far end.

  Gunner turned sideways to squeeze through, and was instantly stuck. “Can’t make it, guv’nor,” he said, but then he seized up his great belly, drew up his full white beard and massive shoulders, and, looking just like Father Christmas trying to insert himself into a wee chimney, tried again.

  Nick and Katie held their breaths.