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CHAPTER TEN

The Hunt

Doctor No’s boat arrived opposite the empty sandy beach.

It was a large grey boat, with a powerful engine. Bond, Quarrel and Honey watched it from their hiding-place in the thick bushes. As they watched, they heard the boat’s engine stop. The boat stayed about fifty yards from the shore. For a few minutes, everything was completely quiet.

There were three men in the boat. They were all Afro- Chinese. One man was standing at the boat’s controls. One man was standing behind a powerful machine-gun which was fixed onto the deck of the boat.

The third man was standing at the back of the boat. A loudhailer was hanging from a strap around this man’s neck. He was looking along the beach through a pair of binoculars.

Suddenly, the man with the machine-gun looked straight towards the place where Honey’s canoe was hidden. He said something to the other men, and a moment later all three guards were looking towards the same place.

‘They’ve seen the canoe,’ Bond whispered to Quarrel and Honey. ‘There’ll be trouble now.’

The guard with the loudhailer lifted it to his mouth and began to speak. His voice was loud and clear.

‘We know that you’re there,’ he said. ‘We’ve seen your canoe. Come out onto the beach now. If you’ve got weapons, throw them down on the sand. Then stand with your hands above your heads. Surrender now, and we won’t hurt you!’

Bond, Quarrel and the girl didn’t move. They kept very still and they tried to make no sounds.

After a minute, the man with the loudhailer repeated his message. When there was still no answer, the man became angry.

‘You’ve had a chance to surrender peacefully,’ he shouted. ‘So now we’ll have to make you come out. And this won’t be so peaceful!’

A moment later, the terrible sound of the machine-gun rattled and crashed around the quiet beach. The guard was firing hundreds of bullets above the bushes where Bond, Quarrel and Honey were hiding.

‘Are you coming out now,’ said the man with the loudhailer.

Bond put his arm round Honey and pulled her close towards him. Her body was shaking with fear.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll go soon.’

The man fired the gun again.

This time, the machine-gun bullets flew lower. They cut off the tops of the bushes where Bond, Quarrel and Honey were hiding. Some bullets passed only a few inches above their heads. The noise was terrible.

‘We’ll be back here soon,’ said the voice from the loudhailer. ‘If you’re still alive, we’ll find you. You won’t get far. We’ll bring dogs to hunt you!’

As soon as the guard had finished speaking, the boat’s powerful engine started. Then the boat turned, and it moved away. It went back in the direction from which it had come. When they could no longer see the boat, Bond spoke.

‘Quarrel, we must go to the river immediately,’ he said. ‘Then we must move along it towards the lake, as fast as we can. There’ll be lots of places in the swamp where we can hide if those men start looking for us. We’re fugitives now, but they’ll never find us in there!

‘We’ll leave our canoe hidden here,’ he went on. ‘Then we can use it to escape from the island when we return to the beach. I hope that we’ll be back here tomorrow night.’

Then he turned to the girl.

‘Honey, those men shot at your canoe. It has lots of holes in it. It’s useless now,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to come with us.’

‘Why can’t we leave the island tonight,’ the girl asked.

‘I still have to find out what happened to the roseate spoonbills,’ Bond replied.

An hour later, Bond, Quarrel and the girl were walking in the river. The brown muddy water smelled bad. And it was deep - it came up as high as their waists. They had to walk in the water because there were mangrove trees growing on the banks of the river. The trees grew so close together that there was no ground to walk on. For about a mile, the river was narrow, and the branches of trees on the two banks met above the fugitives’ heads. The trees made a kind of tunnel, which protected the three people from the sun. The midday sun was very hot, so this was a good thing. But they could walk only slowly on the soft, muddy bottom of the river. Soon, the two men and the girl were tired and very dirty.

‘We must keep going forwards,’ Bond said to the others. ‘Those men will come back soon. They’ll be hunting for us. We need to get as far from the coast as possible.’

At last, the tunnel of trees ended and the river became much wider. Bamboo plants grew here. To the west, Bond, Quarrel and Honey could now see the mountain at the end of the island. The mountain was covered with white guano and it was shining in the sun. There was a narrow track of metal built on the side of the mountain. Small carts on wheels ran on this track. The carts took the guano from the top of the mountain to Doctor No’s factory. Around the bottom of the mountain there were some large, grey huts. These were where the guano workers lived and worked. As the three fugitives watched, a big truck came out of one of the huts. It started to move quickly towards the mangroves and the river.

‘They’re coming to look for us, captain,’ Quarrel said.

‘That road doesn’t come straight to the lake,’ said Honey. ‘It leads past the camp where those men who watched the spoonbills lived. I know because I’ve been there once.’

‘I think that when Doctor No’s men get to the lake, they’ll leave their truck and come down the river towards us,’ Bond said. ‘They’ll come in small boats. But there’ll be guards at the beach now, so we can’t go back to our canoe. We’re in trouble, and there’s not much that we can do!’

‘There is something that you can do,’ Honey said. ‘You can cut some pieces of bamboo. A bamboo plant has a strong round stem like a tube. It has a hole down the centre of it. Then you can lie on the bottom of the river, with your head under the water. If you put one end of the bamboo tube in your mouth and keep the other end just above the surface of the water, you can breathe air through the tube. It’s easy - I’ve done it myself. If you hide where the mangroves grow down into the river, no one can see the tops of the bamboo tubes.’

‘That’s a good idea, Honey,’ Bond said. ‘Quarrel, please will you cut some pieces of bamboo? While you do that, we’ll find a good hiding-place in the mangroves.’

Soon Quarrel had the bamboo tubes, and Bond and the girl had found a good place to hide.

After ten minutes, they heard the sounds of dogs barking and men shouting. The hunters were getting close! Bond, Quarrel and Honey put the bamboo tubes in their mouths. Then they closed their fingers tightly over their noses, and disappeared beneath the surface of the muddy river.

Half an hour later, Bond, Quarrel and the girl were moving up the river again.

Doctor No’s hunters had come and gone. There had been men in rubber boats. There had been men walking in the river with huge dogs. The hunters had carried powerful guns and they had searched the area where Quarrel, Bond and Honey had been hiding. But because the fugitives were under the water, the dogs had been unable to smell them. And none of the guards had seen the three small bamboo tubes amongst the mangroves at the edge of the river. Soon, the sounds of the hunters and their dogs had disappeared. The hunters had gone, but Bond had waited for five minutes before he stood up.

And when Bond had stood up, he’d realized that he hadn’t been careful enough. The hunters had left one guard behind. The man saw Bond and lifted his rifle - he was going to shout for his friends. With great speed, Bond had pulled his Smith and Wesson from his pack and shot the man. Quarrel had pulled the guard’s rifle from his hands. Then they had pushed the big Afro-Chinese man’s body under the water and it had disappeared.

A few minutes later, Bond, Quarrel and Honey moved on slowly and carefully.