The rain had abated to a foggy drizzle. The wash of the surf swung the Comerford in a lazy, rolling motion, as she lay with her bow nosing into the sandbar at the entrance of the inlet.
From her bridge, Navigating Officer Nelson watched the gas-masked figures moving about the decks, descending companionways—like goblins from an ancient fairy tale or a modern horror story. Nelson looked like a goblin himself, with his face covered by a respirator. At his side, stood his fellow conspirator Bos'n's Mate Joe Bradford, also wearing a gas mask.
Nelson spoke in a low tone, his lips close to Bradford's ear. "It worked, Joe!"
"Yeah!" Bradford agreed. "It worked—fine!"
The limp bodies of the Comerford's crew were being carried to the lowered accommodation ladder and transferred into waiting lifeboats.
Nelson swore under his breath. "Reckon it'll take a couple of hours before the ship's rid of that damn gas!"
Bradford shook his head in disagreement. "The old geezer claims he's got a neutralizing chemical in one of them tanks of his that'll clear everything up inside half an hour."
"I'd rather get along without Androka, if we could!" Nelson muttered. "He's nothing but a crackpot!"
"It was a crackpot who invented the gas we used to break up the Maginot Line," Bradford reminded him. "It saved a lot of lives for the Fuehrer—lives that'd have been lost if the forts had to be taken by our storm troopers!"
Nelson grunted and turned away. A short, thick-set figure in the uniform of a German naval commander had ascended the accommodation ladder and was mounting to the bridge. He, too, was equipped with a respirator.