I stumbled as the weight came on my left leg, fell to my knees, touched someone’s head and hair. Long hair. Susan. I moved away and had just reached my feet again when he came at me. He came at me. He didn’t back away, try to keep out of my reach in that darkness. He came at me. That meant he’d lost his gun.

We fell to the floor together, clawing, clubbing, kicking. Once, twice, half a dozen times he caught me on the chest, the side of the body, with sledgehammer, short-arm jabs that threatened to break my ribs. But I didn’t really feel them. He was a strong man, tremendously strong, but even with all his great strength, even had his left arm not been paralysed and useless, he would have found no escape that night.

I grunted with the numbing shock of it and Carreras shrieked out in agony as the hilt of Macdonald’s knife jarred solidly home against his breastbone. I wrenched the knife free and struck again. And again. And again. After the fourth blow he didn’t cry out any more.

Carreras died hard. He’d stopped hitting me now; his right arm was locked round my neck, and with every blow he struck the throttling pressure of the arm increased. All the convulsive strength of a man dying in agony was brought zero bear on exactly that spot where I had been so heavily and bagged. Pain, crippling pain, red-hot barbed lances of shot through my back and head; I thought my neck was going to break. I struck again. And then the knife fell from my hand.

When I came to, the blood was pounding dizzily in my arms, my head felt as if it were going to burst, my lungs were heaving and gasping for air that wouldn’t come. I felt as if were choking, being slowly and surely suffocated. And then I suddenly realised the truth. I was being suffocated; the arm of the dead man, by some freak of muscular contraction, was still locked around my neck. I couldn’t have been out for long, not for more than a minute. With both hands I grasped his arm by the wrist and managed to tear it free from my neck. For thirty seconds, perhaps longer, I lay there, stretched out on the floor of the hold, my heart pounding, gasping for breath as waves of weakness and dizziness washed over me, while some faraway insistent voice, as desperately urgent as it was distant, kept saying in this remote corner of my mind, you must get up, you must get up. And then I had it. I was lying on the floor of the hold and those huge crates were still sliding and crashing around with every heave and stagger of the Campari. And Susan. She was lying there too.

I pushed myself to my knees, fumbled around in my pocket. I found Marston’s pencil flash, and switched it on. It still worked. The beam fell on Carreras and I’d only time to notice that the whole shirt front was soaked with blood I involuntarily turned the torch away, sick and nauseed.

Susan was lying close in to the baffle, half on her side, half on her back. Her eyes were open, dull and glazed with shock and pain, but they were open.

“It’s finished.” I could hardly recognise the voice as mine. “It’s all over now.” She nodded and tried to smile. “You can’t stay here,” I went on. “The other side of the baffle- quick.” I rose to my feet, caught her under the arms, and lifted. She came easily, lightly, then cried out in agony and went limp on me. But I had her before she could fall, braced myself against the ladder, lifted her over the baffle, and laid her down gently on the other side. In the beam of my torch she lay there on her side, her arms outflung. The left arm, between wrist and elbow, was twisted at an impossible angle. Broken, no doubt of it. Broken. When she and Carreras had toppled over the baffle she must have been underneath: her left arm had taken the combined strain of their falling bodies and the strain had been too much. But there was nothing I could do about it. Not now. I turned my attention to Tony Carreras.

I couldn’t leave him there. I knew I couldn’t leave him there. When Miguel Carreras found out that his son was missing he’d have the Campari searched from end to end. I had to get rid of him, but I couldn’t get rid of him in that hold. There was only one place where I could finally, completely and without any fear of rediscovery, put the body of Tony Carreras. In the sea.

Tony Carreras must have weighed at least two hundred pounds; that narrow vertical steel ladder was at least thirty feet high; I was weak from loss of blood and sheer physical exhaustion and I’d only one sound leg, so I never stopped to think about it. If I had, the impossibility of what I had to do would have defeated me even before I had begun.

I hauled him to the ladder, dragged him up to a sitting position against it, hooked my hands under his shoulders and jerked up his dead weight, inch by inch, until his shoulders and hanging head were on a level with my own, stooped quickly, caught him in a fireman’s lift, and started climbing.

For the first time that night the pitching, corkscrewing Campari was my friend. When the ship plunged into a trough, rolling to starboard at the same time, the ladder would incline away from me as much as fifteen degrees and I’d take a couple of quick steps, hang on grimly as the Campari rolled back and the ladder swung out above me, wait for the return roll, and then repeat the process. Twice Carreras all but slipped from my shoulder; twice I had to take a quick step down to renew my purchase. I hardly used my left leg at all; my right leg and both arms took all the strain. Above all, my shoulders took the strain. I felt at times as if the muscles would tear, but it wasn’t any worse than the pain in my leg, so I kept on going. I kept going till I reached the top. Another half-dozen rungs and I would have had to let him drop for I don’t think I could ever have made it.

I heaved him over the hatch coaming, followed, sank down on deck, and waited till my pulse rate dropped down to the low hundreds. After the stench of oil and the close stuffiness of that hold the driving gale-borne rain felt and tasted wonderful. I cupped the torch in my hand — not that there was more than a very remote chance of anyone being round at that hour, in that weather — and went through his pockets till I found a key tagged “sick bay.” then I caught him by the collar and started for the side of the ship.

A minute later I was down in the bottom of the hold again. I found Tony Carreras’ gun, stuck it in my pocket, and looked at Susan. She was still unconscious, which was the best way to be if I had to carry her up that ladder, and I had. With a broken arm she couldn’t have made it alone, and if I waited till she regained consciousness she would be in agony all the way. And she wouldn’t have remained conscious long. After coping with Carreras’ dead weight, the task of getting Susan Beresford up on deck seemed almost easy. I laid her carefully on the rain-washed deck, replaced the battens, and tied the tarpaulin back in place. I was just finishing when I sensed rather than heard her stir.

“Don’t move,” I said quickly. On the upper deck again I had to raise my voice almost to a shout to make myself heard against the bedlam of the storm. “Your forearm’s broken.”

“Yes.” Matter-fact, far too matter-of-fact. “Tony Carreras? Did you leave…”

“That’s all over. I told you that was all.”

“where is he?”

“Overboard.”

“Overboard?” The tremor was back in her voice and I liked it much better than the abnormal calmness. “How did he…”

“I stabbed him God knows how many times,” I said wearily. “Do you think he got up all by himself, climbed the ladder, and jumped sorry, Susan. I shouldn’t well, I’m not quite my normal, I guess. Come on. Time old doc Marston saw that arm.”

I made her cradle the broken forearm in her right hand, helped her to her feet, and caught her by the good arm to help steady her on that heaving deck. The blind leading the blind.

When we reached the forward break of the well deck I made her sit in the comparative shelter there while I went into the bo’sun’s store.