Wild Jack

  Kelly said, “Yes, I’ve seen it.” He sounded grimmer. “The tide must run really fierce between the island and the French coast.”

  “What happens now?”

  “It will take us north into the main part of the English Channel. It should ease after that. We might find enough wind to take us back to France.”

  “And if we don’t get the wind?”

  “Well, there’s land to the north as well, isn’t there? The south coast of England.”

  “Not nine miles away, though. More like seventy.”

  “Sure. We won’t be in for breakfast.”

  “And the tide may not take us north. It could take us west, into the ocean.”

  “You’re a great little ray of sunshine.” The grimness had turned angry. “You got any other comforting speculations to offer?”

  “When I told you how mad the scheme was,” I said, “you wouldn’t listen. And apart from that, you just forgot to bring any drinking water along. You’ve been doing very well so far.”

  “Shut up,” Kelly said. “We didn’t ask you to come, Mr. Councillor’s son. Swim back, and welcome. If you don’t feel like doing that, shut up.”

  He was angry and afraid, as I was too. I thought of several cutting things but did not say them. My mouth felt dry. Suddenly, despite the coolness of the night, I was very thirsty.

  • • •

  The weather deteriorated. It was first apparent in a freshening of the wind and increased choppiness of the waves. It freshened from the wrong quarter, from the southeast. Our chances of getting to France were diminishing rapidly.

  Sunyo woke up in order to be sick, or rather to retch from an empty stomach. It was not long before Kelly followed suit, as the sea grew rougher and the dinghy tossed on it like a cork. I held out longer but succumbed at last. Clouds crossed the moon—in wisps at first, then thicker till it was completely obscured. I could scarcely see the sea but could hear it well enough, in wind and wave, and feel it when a wave slapped over the gunnels and drenched me through.

  After a very long time there was light in the east. It slowly brightened, but the sky stayed gray and cloud-covered, and the sea was gray all round us. I strained my eyes for a sight of land, but there was nothing, not even a sea bird to break the heaving monotony of the waste of water.

  The others were also awake and looking about them. Kelly asked Sunyo how he felt, and he said he was all right. Surprisingly, he did look a little better.

  Kelly said, “Not much for breakfast, I’m afraid.”

  His grin included me, and I willingly took the olive branch. I said, “I was thinking of eggs and bacon. Three eggs, no—four. And half a dozen rashers. With a very big cup of coffee. Creamy coffee.”

  “Ham and eggs for me,” Kelly said. “Buckwheat cakes and honey. And fresh orange juice. A lot of fresh orange juice.”

  The thought made me realize how thirsty I was. I did not feel like going on with that particular game, and neither, it seemed, did Kelly. We stared glumly at the surrounding sea. Sunyo was staring at it, too. He spoke, more to himself than anyone else, and I thought I’d misheard him. I asked, “What was that?”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Beautiful?” I had heard him right. “What is?”

  “The two colors of gray: the sky and the sea. They’re almost the same, and yet there is a contrast. My father had a picture in which there was an effect something like that. It was a scroll which you held in one hand and unrolled with the other, showing a panorama of landscape starting high in the mountains and going down to the sea. That was where the two grays were.”

  Incredible, I thought, that he could talk about pictures in a situation like this. Though it could be an advantage. Anything was which took our minds off the spot we were in. As though thinking along the same lines, Kelly started talking about his home, but in connection with dogs, not pictures—his father bred King Charles spaniels as a hobby. I contributed our tropical fish tank, which took up one wall of the sitting room.

  Sunyo remained silent, meditating maybe, but Kelly and I went on trying to reminisce ourselves out of this watery wilderness. He spoke of the race course they had in Jacksonville, something London could not boast. I countered it by describing the stretch of river just inside the wall which had been designed as a swimming center, with individual pools on the north bank and the temperature of the whole river raised more than ten degrees by heating elements on the riverbed. Londoners were proud of the amount of energy they could afford to spend in that way.

  “Kind of a waste, isn’t it?” Kelly said. “I mean, heating up a whole river.”

  “You waste land on a race course. All our public land is parks.”

  I spoke a bit sharply, and he replied in the same tone. “Our parks are as good as any you have in London, with poinsettias and jacaranda and oranges growing out in the open. You can walk through a Jacksonville park and pick oranges off the trees and eat them.”

  The image was powerful and made my throat seem more parched than ever. I said dispiritedly, “Jacksonville or London—what’s the difference? We’re a long way from either.”

  • • •

  Time dragged by. The cloud cover remained unbroken, a heavy pall stretching from skyline to dim skyline. A sight of the sun, even a patch of brightness, would have given us some idea of the direction in which we were drifting, but in this featureless seascape we could equally be heading north toward England or south back to France. Also, and I began to fear it more and more, we could be on course for nothing but the immense emptiness of the western ocean. Kelly’s Florida lay that way, but I doubted if he would have any enthusiasm for trying to get home by such a route.

  Sunyo said little. Kelly and I had spells of talking, more often wrangling, intermingled with periods of gloomy silence. Apart from hunger and thirst, there was tiredness; despite the discomfort, I found myself dozing off, waking with a start to the wretchedness of my surroundings. As the day wore on, the gray of sky deepened. Night fell and it turned black, pitch black, with no trace of moonlight.

  I slept and woke and slept again. I had disjointed dreams that were more like nightmares, but there was one that was different. I was in my speedboat on the river, and Miranda was there, too. I started telling her what had happened since I saw her—about being sent to the island and escaping by boat—and it was all in the past and exciting to talk about. She listened, with her blond hair tossed over one shoulder. I was pleased to have her to myself, then realized, as one does in a dream, that this wasn’t true because Gary was there as well. I told him what I thought of him, and since that did not seem to be enough, I also hit him. We flailed at each other on the deck of the speedboat, and the next moment I was in the water.

  I woke up feeling wetness and thought the dream had become reality. But the wetness was of stinging drops on my face and hands. I realized it was raining.

  I called to the others and they answered. After that, I was too concerned with trying to catch the rain. I cupped my hands against my cheeks, collecting rain drops and licking them up. No orange juice could have tasted so good.

  The rain lasted about half an hour, long enough to take the edge off our thirst but not to quench it. The wind had risen with the rain, and more and more waves were slopping over the gunnels. Water pooled round my feet; not much yet, but it would increase. The threat of swamping began to loom again.

  It would not have been so bad if we had had something to bail with. But there were too many ifs. If we had brought a supply of drinking water, if we had raided the cook house for food, if Kelly had taken my advice to hide Sunyo in a cave rather than embark on this crack-brained voyage. . . . Indignation rose once more, but I reminded myself of another if. I had clambered on board of my own volition; I could not blame anyone else for that.

  We tried to bail out water with our hands, though with no apparent effect. I felt sick an
d cold—the blankets lay soaked in the well of the boat—and tired to the point of being dazed. The night seemed interminable, the battering of wind and waves unending. At least things could scarcely get worse, I thought, when with a sharp cracking sound the mast broke off near its foot and fell to one side, taking the furled sail with it.

  The mast dipped into the water and dragged the boat over. We were shipping seas fast and had no option but to get rid of it, so we struggled to untie and loose the ropes. At last we had the mast free and could cast it adrift. We were safe from immediate capsizing, but the water was round our ankles. We set to work bailing again furiously.

  Gradually the sky lightened into the dawn of our second day at sea, still with no sight of land anywhere. I looked at Sunyo, huddled in the stern, and Kelly, lying in several inches of water in the well. They didn’t make a pretty sight, but I knew I must look no better. I saw, too, the broken stump of the mast. Even if land had been in sight, how could we get to it with neither sail nor oars? We were at the mercy of wind and tide.

  There could be only one end: if not death by drowning, then by exhaustion or thirst. The former would be kinder; our strenuous bailing had only preserved us for a longer-lasting misery. This morning the wind had dropped and the sea was less rough, churning in a long swell.

  None of us felt much like talking. My own mind was a morass of hopelessness lit by flashes of resentment—against Sunyo for hitting the guard, against Kelly for insisting on this lunatic scheme, against the commandant, the London police, Gary—even against my father for being away on holiday. None of this did me any good; it only made me more miserable. But I couldn’t help it.

  At least I no longer wrangled with Kelly; I think we were both too deadbeat. Minutes, hours drifted by, meaningless in the blankness of sea and sky. I suppose it was roughly in the middle of the day that Sunyo spoke.

  “Listen.”

  I did so apathetically and heard the slap of waves against the side of the boat, all too familiar.

  Kelly said, “Listen to what?”

  “That noise,” Sunyo said. “It sounds like an airship engine.”

  I listened then. At first I could still hear only the waves. It was Kelly who said, with a lift in his voice, “I think you’re right!”

  I heard it myself almost immediately: a tiny distant drone in the sky. We roused ourselves, our eyes desperately searching. Sunyo was also the first to spot it and point it out: a black speck against the cloud.

  It was so small, and the sky was so big, as was, I realized, the sea in which this little dinghy rocked. Although we could see the airship, that did not mean it was coming anywhere near us. I watched in an agony of anxiety. The speck did not seem to be moving, and I said so.

  “That’s a good sign,” Kelly said. “If it were moving, it would be crossing our field of vision. It must be coming toward us. It looks bigger.”

  Was it? With a leap of joy I realized he was right; it was getting bigger. And I could hear the hum of the motor more clearly.

  I stood up, frantically waving. Kelly shouted, “Careful, you fool, you’ll capsize us,” but I was too happy to mind it.

  Sunyo said, more reasonably, “It is too far off still. No one could see us. But I think it is on course for us, in a direct line almost.”

  We watched the airship approaching, and I had time to think about what would happen after we were picked up. Back to the island, of course, and perhaps back to the stockade for Sunyo. No, that was certain, and very likely Kelly with him. But first there would be food and drink, baths, sleep in soft beds. And maybe what we had been through had taught Sunyo to be less pigheaded.

  As for me, I was sure that by now the order for my release must have come through. I even had a crazy notion that my father might be in the airship, directing a search for us. That was absurd, I knew, but at least we were going to be rescued. Nothing else mattered.

  The airship, a white civil aircraft, came steadily on, flying at no more than two hundred feet above the sea. Its flight path was taking it just a little to the left of us, and we could see the windows of the dining cabin, with small figures at the tables. We were all standing up and waving now, with the ­dinghy rocking perilously beneath us.

  We shouted as well as waved, even though we knew sound could not carry to the sealed cabins. But they must see us! We could see them so clearly. A waiter was bending over one table, pouring out wine. It was impossible that we could be missed. Even when the airship had passed overhead, I was sure of that. Someone must see us, and the airship would turn back again.

  Then Sunyo said in a cold, dry voice, “They’ve not seen us. And they won’t now.”

  He sat down heavily, and Kelly did the same. I stood and gazed at the airship, diminishing in size with the passing moments. The sound of the motor faded and was lost in the monotonous slap of waves. I sat down myself and huddled in the stern.

  • • •

  The rest of the day was very bad. Before we saw the airship, we had begun to be resigned to the prospect of dying. Hope had sharpened our will to live, and its loss tormented us. Our ears were continually pricked for the sound of an engine; our eyes futilely searched the gray above for a sight of movement. But it was pointless, and we knew it. If an airship passing so closely overhead had not seen us, what chance was there of any other doing so? Yet we went on watching compulsively, torturing ourselves with impossible hopes.

  In a way it was a relief when dusk put an end to it. I looked out as the horizon drew in and wondered what our chances were of surviving the night. The wind seemed to be increasing again. We had summoned up reserves of strength in shouting and waving to the airship, but I doubted if any remained. I could not see us bailing out with our hands in another squall. Drowning, anyway, would be better than lingering on.

  Kelly and Sunyo had changed places, and Sunyo was now lying in the water at the bottom of the boat. He was sleeping, and I thought that Kelly, slumped in the bow, was asleep also. But he said something in a low voice which I did not catch.

  After a moment he spoke again, more clearly. “Over there. . . .”

  I felt I ought to say something but was almost too tired to utter. I mumbled, “What?”

  “Could it be land?”

  He was talking in his sleep, I thought, or maybe delirious. There was nothing but sea.

  He said, “Dead ahead. Behind you, that is. Could it be?”

  I turned, awkwardly. More sea stretched interminably away until it merged into the deepening murk of sky. I felt a small flash of anger at him, but was too weak to feel anything strongly.

  I was turning back in silence when Kelly said in a louder voice, “I think it is land!”

  Was that a darker line between the two grays? I thought I saw it, lost it, saw it again. It was tantalizingly uncertain. Sunyo had better vision than either Kelly or I, and I leaned forward and put out a hand to wake him, but Kelly stopped me.

  “Don’t. No point in raising false hopes. Even if it is land, what can we do about it? It must be a ­couple of miles away, and I doubt if any of us has the strength to swim a couple of yards.”

  I saw the point, and we sat and watched in silence. It was certainly land, a coast that stretched away into darkness, and after a time there could be no doubt that the tide was taking us in. But slowly, slowly, and I was all too conscious that tides could change. In that case we would drift back into the night that was rapidly closing down, a night that must be final.

  Declining visibility and the narrowing distance contended with one another. The coast ahead was only a blur, but the blur grew nearer. We wakened Sunyo at last, and for a moment he, too, stared unbelievingly. He started trying to paddle with an arm over the side of the boat, and Kelly and I did the same. We were so feeble that our hands could do little more than brush the surface, but we had the illusion of doing something.

  Under an almost black sky we drift
ed in toward a black shore. I heard a grating sound, and felt the weird sensation of something solid underneath us. We had reached land.

  6

  I SCRAMBLED OVER THE SIDE into the water. Stones rolled under my feet. I was submerged to the waist and a wave surged up into my face, making me gasp and almost making me lose my hold on the boat. I saw Sunyo try to rise and fall back.

  I asked Kelly, “Do you think he can get out? Or can you heave him over to me?”

  Sunyo said weakly, “I’m all right.”

  He needed help all the same. Between us we got him into the water, and I supported him as we staggered up toward the beach. The sea grew shallower, and suddenly I was on dry land. That was when, without the buoyancy of the water, weakness really hit me. I staggered another step or two and collapsed. Sunyo managed to stay upright a moment longer; then he went down as well.

  Behind us, Kelly was trying to drag the boat up out of the water. He called for help, and somehow I summoned the strength to go back to him. We hauled on either side of the bow, pulling the boat up onto the shingle. It came a little way and stuck. Kelly urged me to pull again, and I made another effort with my aching arms.

  With a wrench and a screech of stones the boat moved perhaps a foot and stopped.

  I said, “That’s it.”

  “We’ve got to get it higher.”

  “It’s high enough.” I didn’t feel I had the strength to pull a kitten across a polished floor. “I’m going to see to Sunyo.”

  In the darkness I almost fell over him. I started lifting him, but he got up by himself. We tottered together over the scrunching pebbles, and I wasn’t sure who was helping whom. Somehow we made it to a point where our progress was barred by a low escarpment, no more than knee high. I felt sand, and tufted grass growing along the top. I heaved myself up, and Sunyo flopped beside me. Kelly, reeling along behind, came up with us a few seconds later.

  We lay in utter exhaustion. I felt wide awake in mind but physically deadbeat to the point of helplessness. I considered the possibility of lifting a hand from the sand on which it lay, but the effort would have been altogether too much. I was fully aware of my surroundings, though, and in particular of the wonderful absence of movement, the solidness of the earth beneath me. I could hear the murmur and growl of the sea as it rolled pebbles up and down the beach. Let it roll them—incredibly, we were free of its clutches.