“And your eighth man?”

“He falls in. Cannot swim!”

Which made the eighth man as good as dead, thought Trott. He glanced at Cosima’s crew. They stood watching, waiting for the order.

The lifeboat was gliding almost alongside now.

“A little closer,” Trott called down, “and we’ll throw you a line.”

One of the men in the lifeboat reached up to catch the rope.

Trott turned and gave his men the signal.

The first hail of bullets caught its victim in midreach, arms extended toward his would-be saviors. He had no chance to scream. As the bullets rained down from the Cosima, the men fell, helpless before the onslaught. Their cries, the splash of a falling body, were drowned out by the relentless spatter of automatic gunfire.

When it was finished, when the bullets finally ceased, the bodies lay in a coiled embrace in the lifeboat. A silence fell, broken only by the slap of water against the Cosima’s hull.

One last explosion spewed a finale of sparks into the air. The bow of the Max Havelaar-what remained of her-tilted crazily toward the sky. Then, gently, she slid backward into the deep.

The lifeboat, its hull riddled with bullet holes, was already half submerged. A Cosima crewman heaved a loose anchor over the side. It landed with a thud among the bodies. The lifeboat tipped, emptying its cargo of corpses into the sea.

“Our work is done here, Captain,” said Trott. Matter-of-factly he turned toward the helm. “I suggest we return to-”

He suddenly halted, his gaze focused on a patch of water a dozen yards away. What was that splash? He could still see the ripples of reflected firelight worrying the water’s surface. There it was again. Something silvery gliding out of the swells, then slipping back under the water.

“Over there!” shouted Trott. “Fire!”

His men looked at him, puzzled.

“What did you see?” asked the captain.