Uncharted Seas by Dennis Wheatley Read Free Book Online Page B

are you afraid they’ll try anyway?’
    ‘Why, Mister Sutherland, I can’t rightly say. But some of us may get a knife in our ribs should Harlem get it into his nob that he’ll stand a better chance himself if he can seize control of the boat.’
    ‘Does Mr Luvia know any of these bedtime stories with which you’ve been trying to cheer me up?’ Basil asked quietly.
    ‘No, he wouldn’t know anything, ‘cept that Harlem’s beenmaking trouble in the engine-room, and there’s nothing much unusual in that.’
    ‘Well, I’ll tip him off to be on the look-out. Don’t worry, Hansie; with the odds so much in our favour we’ll be able to take care of ourselves all right.’
    The sun had now risen well over the horizon. Its rays were not yet strong but carried a welcome warmth. Several members of the party took off their sea-soaked jackets and spread them out to dry. The sharp work at the oars was getting the men’s circulation going, and they were already more cheerful than they had been a quarter of an hour before.
    In the stern, Juhani Luvia had been making an inspection of the emergency stores, which proved considerably better than Hansie had led Basil to suppose. They consisted of a six-gallon cask of water, a half-gallon jar of rum, a canister of tea, three pounds of sugar, three tins of condensed milk, eight of corned beef, and a large supply of ship’s biscuits. In addition there was a primus stove, methylated spirit, paraffin, a kettle, and a small medicine chest.
    Basil was horribly out of condition, and a quarter of an hour’s pulling proved as much as he could manage without suffering acute discomfort. He left Hansie and scrambled back into the stern. Vicente had taken his old place next to Synolda and, puffing like a grampus, he subsided on her other side.
    Unity was busy with the primus and her father was helping to measure out the water for the kettle. Synolda was cutting thin slices of corned beef from a square block out of one of the tins.
    ‘Feeling better now?’ she asked Basil as he sat down.
    ‘Yes,’ he held his breath; ‘warmer, anyway. You’re looking fine—just as though you enjoyed this sort of thing.’
    Actually, she was looking awful. Having made up her face for the day without any of her usual facilities, the cosmetics with which she had daubed it, lacking ground-work, stood out harsh and crude in the strong light of the morning sunshine; but he had lied deliberately, knowing that a compliment on her appearance was the best possible way to cheer her.
    Her chin went up a trifle and she smiled. ‘It’s nice to know I look all right, because I’m feeling just like hell.’
    Luvia gave the order to cease rowing and ship the oars. He was perfectly well aware that any progress they could make that way was so infinitesimal as to be virtually useless, and had only set them to pulling in the first place to put a little life into his men.
    Now he called old Jansen, the carpenter, aft to take the tiller while he went forward himself to superintend the stepping of the short mast through a hole in the central thwart, and the setting of the single sail.
    By the time the job was completed, and the boat rippling through the water at a steady pace, Unity had made the tea and all hands were called aft to receive rations.
    Synolda had cut the block of bully beef into seventeen slices with scrupulous fairness, and each of them received one of these with a large ship’s biscuit. De Brissac’s was put aside, as he was still sleeping, in the hope that he might be able to manage it later.
    Most of the sailors had brought mess tins in their hastily packed bundles, and there were half a dozen tin pannikins in the locker which served for the passengers. Luvia had them all set out in a row, and Unity, measuring the hot tea with one, distributed it equally among the rest.
    The last to come up for his tin was Harlem Joe. Basil studied him with special interest now he could see him at close quarters. He was