![]() ![]() He got a hold and reached up his other hand and slowly, agonizingly, pulled himself up so that he was sitting in the fence. So he must be alive Dazedly Bond let go the spear from his trailing hand and reached up and felt for the nearest strand of wire. But he could feel the wire cutting into the tendons behind his knees. His eyes were stinging and there was a horrible fish taste in his mouth. What had happened? Had he gone blind? He could see nothing. He stood up and took several slow deep breaths, ran his hands through his salt-and sweat-matted hair, rubbed them harshly up and down his face and then down the tattered sides of his black jeans. He reached back ana felt the handle of the knife. From out of the mouth of the sock, in a solid downward jet, the scrambled-egg-coloured guano dust was pouring into the hold of the tanker at a rate of tons a minute.īond examined the soles of his feet and his hands. The purpose of the crane was to lift the wireframed mouth of the sock so that it hung directly over the hold of the tanker and to move it to right or left to give even distribution. Its mouth ended in a huge canvas sock, perhaps six feet in diameter. It was carried on high stanchions above the jetty and stopped just short of the hold of the tanker. ![]() From just to the right of the crane, an overhead conveyor-belt in a corrugated-iron housing ran out from the cliff-face. The rest of the crew would be below, battened away from the guano dust. There was no sign of life On board except one figure lolling at the wheel in the enclosed bridge. The tanker was called Blanche, and the Ant of Antwerp showed at her stern. It stood well out of the water, its deck perhaps twelve feet above the quay. An aged tanker of around ten thousand tons deadweight was secured alongside the top of the T. In front of him the jetty ran twenty yards out into the sea and ended in a T. It was the Chinese Negro boss, the driver of the marsh buggy. Round the corner, not more than ten yards away, was the crane. But softly, gently, slowly The prize was almost intolerably sweet. Slowly, a thin, hard smile broke across the haggard, sunburned face. He tore it out, got it between his two hands and wrenched the doubled wire almost straight.īond sat and thought, measuring distances, guessing at angles, remembering exactly where the crane driver's hands and feet were on the levers and the pedals. All he needed was an ounce of hope, an ounce of reassurance that it was still worth while trying to stay alive.īond thrust his knife between his teeth and his hand dived for the crook of the wire spear. Only, with Bond, the two halves were not yet dead. Bond was like a cut worm, the two halves of which continue to jerk forward although life has gone and been replaced by the mock life of nervous impulses. It moved alongside his body, or floated above it, keeping enough contact to pull the strings that made the puppet work. The thinking, feeling apparatus of Bond was no longer part of his body. The stinking, bleeding, black scarecrow moved its arms and legs quite automatically. ![]()
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