'A hundred and thirty quid!' I gasped. 'But that's — " I broke off.
He was laughing. I could see it in his eyes. 'That leaves ye wi' exactly twenty pounds.'
'How did you know how much I'd got on me?'
'Ye told me yersel' the other nicht. Ye were drunk and boasting of what a man could do wi' that much money, despite all the restrictions and identity cards and ration books. Well, it seems a shame that the police shouldna be given a chance.' Then his voice was suddenly hard and flat. 'A hundred and thirty quid — that's my price for a boat to pull ye to the shore. Ye can take it or leave it.'
The blood roared in my head. I felt my muscles swell. He had the chart table between us. I kicked it over with my boot. But as I went for him he backed away with a snarl and his right hand came out of his pocket with a gun. It stopped me for a second. And then suddenly I didn't care. He could plug me if he liked. I threw back my head and roared with laughter. It was the drink that had got in me. I knew that. But I didn't care. I just stood and laughed at him, crouched so puny and twisted in the corner of his own wheelhouse with that ridiculous little gun in his hand. I saw fear leap in his eyes and then I went for him. If he'd fired I don't think I'd have felt it, so elated was I with the sense of the power of my body. But he didn't fire. He hesitated. And in that second I had swept the pistol out of his hand and had seized him by the neck. The fingers and thumbs of my two hands overlapped as I closed my grip, lifting him from the ground and shaking him like a rat. 'Now what about my boat to the shore, eh?' I cried, and I heard myself let out another bellow of laughter.
I raised him so that his eyes were level with mine. I looked into them. They were so close it was like looking in through windows. And I saw he was afraid. I was glad of that and shook him so that his bones rattled. I shifted the grip of my right hand to the belt of his trousers and raised him to throw him through the window of the wheelhouse.
And then something hit me. A great explosion of pain burst at the foot of my skull. For an instant I saw the wheelhouse clear through the splitting agony of my eyeballs. My arms sagged beneath Mulligan's weight and his face came close to mine. Then my legs seemed to melt under me and everything was as black as hell as I crumpled up.
Next thing I knew was there was water on my face. It was cold and salt. I was going under again. There was a swimming blackness all about me. I struggled, thrusting upwards with my arms and legs. Again the sting of water on my face and the cold of the night air. I breathed in a great gulp that hurt my lungs. The darkness was shot with flame and then I was sinking again. This time I didn't struggle. I let the suffocating blackness steal over me. It was such a restful way to go. The water was cool and still as I sank. But the urge to live rose in me and I began to struggle upward again. My hands reached out, clutched and broke their nails against something solid. I grasped hold of it and fought my way back to consciousness. It was wood — a wooden board. It lifted slightly and then clamped down, pinching my fingers.
"E's comin' r'and, skipper.' The voice was right above me. It was Shorty.
'He's a skull on him like a rhinoceros,' Mulligan's voice replied. 'Ye hit him hard enough to split it open, yet he's no bin oot more'n fifteen minutes.'