SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. by Francis Selwyn Page A

heads with both hands, which was the signal of an escape.
MacBride had risen to his knees but only the officer who had fired the first
shot was still taking aim at the fugitive. The carbine cracked like a whip as
Joe seized a sharp ledge of rock above and his feet trod the crumbling
limestone into a shower of fragments. A bullet chipped the white surface a
dozen feet to one side. At first he thought the officer with the carbine must
be Mr Kite's man too, firing deliberately wide of the mark. But as Joe pulled
himself to the rim of the quarry, where the turf began, he saw that his escape
had been well timed. In mid-afternoon, the July sun was directly over the
quarry face, shining into the eyes of those below. Shooting into the colourless
glare, the marksman would be lucky to get a bullet anywhere near his target.
    In any
case, Stunning Joe now had the turf under his hands, as he wriggled upward over
the final ledge and lay for a few seconds on the high downland to fill his
aching lungs. The softness of the turf was like a carpet under his feet after
months of stone floors and the decking of the hulk. As he ran onward the sounds
of voices and pursuit died away. It would take them a good while to follow him
by the quarry path.
    He
looked to right and left. On the one hand was the glimmering sweep of Chesil
Bank. When darkness came he would follow its shore, wading waist-deep, his
movements concealed by the roar of the tide. The other way led along the
cliffs, towards Portland Bill and the end of the peninsula. A man who was
running for freedom would hardly be expected to choose that direction. With
the glittering channel stretching away into the horizon glare, Joe followed a
path which skirted the cliff edge. His pursuers would search the more likely
escape routes first. It would be dusk by the time that the armed warders and
the dogs began to drag the cliffs on this side.
    Stunning
Joe knew that there were two lighthouses at the tip of Portland Bill,
constructed on the high ground. They were known as the Upper Light and the
Lower Light from the difference in their locations. From conversations among
other prisoners, Joe understood that they were not manned, merely visited by a
Trinity House engineer once a week. The Lower Light was on sloping ground,
where the land dipped towards the sea. It was almost the last place that the
hunters would reach. By then it would be dark. Stunning Joe would have slipped
out, retraced his route to the start of Chesil Bank and begun his eight-mile
walk to the mainland at Abbotsbury. By the next day he would have stolen
clothes and money, reaching the safety of Dorchester or one of the market
towns. On the following night he would be back with Mr Kite and Old Mole.
    He
devised the plan as he ran, with the quicksilver of the afternoon tide below
him. Not more than ten minutes later he saw the two lighthouses before him. At
the end of the peninsula the expanse of turf sloped gently towards the last
cliff, and the tall finger of the lighthouse tower was clearly visible. The
Lower Light was sixty or seventy feet high, the glass lantern rising above
deserted fields and distant whitewashed farms. Stunning Joe was alone under
the summer sky, knowing that he was free at last. The lock of the lighthouse
door was so simple that he could have picked it with his finger-nail. He was
studying it, thinking that he would lock himself in and make them believe he
had never been there, when he heard a movement behind him.
    Joe
turned slowly, dreading to see a dark uniform with crowns on the lapels. But it
was an unshaven man in an oatmeal-coloured smock and leggings, his grey hair
dishevelled. There was a shotgun in his hands as he bared his gums and grinned
at the fugitive.
    'You'm a runner!' he said humorously.
     
    Stunning
Joe looked blankly at the ragged man in the smock. There was no hint of
intention behind the yellowed teeth in their shrewd smile. Joe, bracing his
narrow back against the lighthouse door, met