The Man who Missed the War (26 page)

With unutterable relief they waded out to the spit of sand on which the raft lay, and clambered aboard to relieve their thirst with the first bottle they could lay hands on in Gloria’s old ‘kitchen’. But that night they were in such pain from their sunburn that they could get no sleep and could lie flat only on their backs, which were the least affected.

The following day they had nasty yellow blisters on their arms, necks, foreheads, hands and insteps; and, at times, were almost delirious. They had set out out for Kedda on the 1st of January, and it was the 8th before they were really free of the pain of their burns and could bear to wear any clothes on their bodies without acute discomfort.

In the meantime, they had fully discussed their misadventures, and Gloria declared that nothing in the world would induce her to set out on any second attempt to reach Kedda.

Philip agreed but pointed out that, while they had not had the good fortune to strike a fishing village during a whole day’s march to the north, there might quite well be one only a few miles away round the next headland to the south; so it was decided that when they were fully recovered from their burns they should make a day’s expedition along the coast which they had so far not explored.

With vivid memories of the midday sun still fresh in their minds, they not only made another tent from some more of the sailcloth, but also two hats with huge floppy brims which would protect their shoulders as well as their heads. Then, well before dawn on January the 12th, they set out.

The coast that they traversed differed in no way from that they had seen to the north ten days earlier; but they made better going as they were travelling lighter, having only the tent, one bottle of water and their lunch to carry. Philip reckoned that they covered about fourteen miles before the heat became so intense that they had to set up their tent and take shelter; but during the whole trek they had not come across a single sign of any inhabitants of this barren land.

At four o’clock they started back and when sunset came they were still a good two miles from home. Soon after sundown they heard again that horrid all too familiar clicking. Before long a number of the land-crabs were following a few yards behind
them and furitively keeping pace with them on either side. They were both very tired after their many hours of walking, but, in spite of that, Gloria insisted in breaking into a run in order to get away from their horrible companions.

Alternately walking and running as the crabs came up with them they covered the last mile and, with renewed relief, waded out to the square squat bulk on the sandspit, which they had now come to regard as their only sanctuary from the creeping horror that lurked on the beach by night.

When they talked over the situation on the following day Gloria said that she never would have believed that any part of the world could be quite so deserted. So Philip produced his atlas and showed her that the population in Rio de Oro was given as less than one to the square mile, which meant that, allowing for the two towns there was probably only one village in every four or five hundred square miles of territory; perhaps even less as most of the inhabitants outside the towns would be roving tribes of Bedouin Arabs, maintaining a precarious existence by moving from oasis to oasis with their flocks.

Philip was anxious to think up some method by which oil or fire could be used to keep off the crabs and thus make possible a longer expedition to the north, but Gloria declared that nothing could ever persuade her to spend another night on shore; so it seemed that the only thing for them to do was to wait there until they were either sighted by some coasting vessel or a caravan trekking along the sand-dunes.

For three weeks they took turns at keeping a lookout in between spells of collecting shellfish from the rock-pools to vary their diet, but the only vessels they saw were steamers far out to sea, and the monotony of their vigil was broken only once by the sight of human beings on the land. These were two Arabs mounted on camels. Philip saw them through his binoculars as they rode up to a distant promontory, to remain there for a few minutes looking out to sea before turning inland and riding off again.

His knowledge of desert Arabs was derived almost entirely from exciting fiction which he had read in his schooldays, and he had not the least idea if Bedouin tribes were, as portrayed in those stories, still cruel, treacherous and hostile to Europeans, or
whether the civilising influence of motorcars and aeroplanes during recent years had changed them into mild-mannered, friendly characters. One thing which somewhat perturbed him was that the two men he had seen had been draped from head to foot in a blue-black material, instead of the usual white
burnous
. He remembered that, according to his fiction, this particular raiment was worn only by the Toureg Arabs, the fiercest of all the tribes, who were so dreaded throughout North Africa that they were known as ‘The Forgotten of God’.

It was this new uneasiness as to the kind of treatment they might receive if they were discovered by a troop of wild tribesmen that first made Philip consider the possibility of endeavouring to re-float the raft and manœuvre it down the coast until they reached Villa Cisneros.

Gloria agreed that, since it looked as if they might remain where they were for months, without a ship coming within hailing distance of them, it was a good idea; so at the next low tide they both went over the side to make a full examination of the sandspit and see what chance there was of getting the heavy raft off it.

The raft had been so well made in the New York shipyard that its triple float of huge criss-crossed logs showed little sign of wear. Only about a third of its bottom was actually above water at low tide, but this one corner of it was now firmly embedded in the sand, its weight having worked against the spit with every incoming tide for the past five weeks. However, Philip thought that, if they dug the surrounding sand away at every low tide, they would gradually create a depression in the spit where the raft’s corner rested on it; so they set to work with the gardening tools that had formed part of the cargo from the U.S.A.

It was slow and tiring work as every spadeful of sand dug out had to be carted far enough away in a bucket to ensure that it did not seep back; but, gradually, the depression took shape, and as it deepened the tilt of the raft slowly lessened, until on the afternoon of February the 20th, under the lift of an unusually high tide, it floated free.

Against this exciting eventuality, they had prepared two long implements made from several lengths of stout wood securely tied together, which could be used either as poles or sweeps, and an anchor consiting of all the heavy metal objects they could find,
collected into three sacks, one inside the other, and firmly attached to a length of cable. The idea was to pole their unwieldy craft through the shallows from day to day, and to anchor it in as sheltered a spot as could be found each night.

At the moment they were virtually anchored by the cables, which still attached them to Number Two raft and the other two of the original string, which had been washed up with them on the African coast. Philip had left the connection for fear that a tide should carry the Number One raft off in the night when he and Gloria were both asleep; but now he knocked out the shackles, and picking up one of the long sweeps began his first attempt to guide their floating home towards the southern promontory of the bay.

As long as they were able to remain in the calm waters close inshore it proved easier than he had expected, but a ridge of rocks ran out from the cape, and to get round it they were forced to find a gap in the reef and go out through it into the open sea. Here, the great Atlantic rollers were pounding with their dull thunder, and, although in the calm weather they broke quite harmlesly against the raft, it became extraordinarily difficult to control it. By a desperate prodding they managed to stave the raft off the reef and pole it in through the next opening round the corner; after which they felt that they had done quite enough for a first effort, and anchored for the night in the far bay.

Next day they successfully negotiated two more capes, and the whole of the day after was spent in poling down a long straight stretch of coast towards a group of sand-dunes that formed another headland. It was that which proved their undoing. When, in the cool of the early morning, they began to manœuvre the raft out through a channel in the reef they found it to be too deep for them to reach the bottom with their poles, and the backwash of a big wave suddenly drew them out of reach of the reef itself.

For some minutes they did nothing, expecting to be swept in again, but it seemed that the raft had become caught in a local current as it began to drift along quite quickly almost parallel with the reef but gradually edging a little further from it. The second they realised what was happening they began to thrash the water with their long sweeps, using every ounce of energy they had, but their efforts were unavailing. Out there among the
breaking surf it needed far more than the strength of any man and girl to influence the course of that huge, square floating bulk, and after half an hour of frantic paddling they gave up, realising its futility, and collapsed panting on the deck.

Apart from the time of the great storm, the three days that followed were as anxious as any they had spent since the Raft Convoy had started on its way across the Atlantic. Every hour carried a hope that a change of the wind, the next incoming tide or a sudden break in the weather would cause the raft to be driven ashore again; but, on the contrary, it gradually drifted further out until, on the evening of February the 26th, the low coast of Africa was only a smudge on the skyline, and on the morning of the 27th it had finally disappeared.

Philip moodily made a fresh study of his atlas and charts and reported his findings to an equally gloomy Gloria.

‘The prevailing winds here are the North-East Trades, and the currents appear to run more or less with them. So it looks as if we’ll be carried right back across the Atlantic again and make our next landfall in Brazil.’

‘Brazil is it?’ she tossed her red head. ‘To be sure, it was a great idea of yours, this raft; if it’s travel one would be wantin’, an’ to see the world. Still, seein’ we’ve been cooped up together for over six months now another six or eight weeks of each other’s company won’t prove the death of us.’

Philip hastened to agree and tactfully refrained from challenging her estimate for their second crossing of the Atlantic. The current towards Brazil was nothing like so powerful as the Gulf Stream, and if the winds proved contrary or erratic, it might have little influence on their direction. On leaving America he had had an absolute faith in his Raft Convoy being brought to within easy towing distance of a European port, and, as they had drifted south from Gibraltar, he had been pretty confident that they would sooner or later be washed up on the North-West coast of Africa, but now he had no firm conviction at all about what land they were most likely to see next, let alone when they would see it.

He knew from sailors’ tales of casting bottles over the sides of ships with messages in them addressed to their sweethearts that such flotsam often took five—ten—or even fifteen years before it
was washed up, and, after all, the raft was scarcely bigger by a calculable fraction when compared with the immensity of the seas. They might just bob about like an empty bottle, driven first one way then another by the caprice of the winds and tides for months or even years without getting anywhere at all.

With these gloomy thoughts he became almost obsessed during the next few days, so that Gloria began to worry about his depression and did her best to cheer him up; until the coming of another storm gave them something else to think about.

This time it was all that they had experienced before, only worse. They had never believed that the raft could tilt to such an angle without capsizing completely. For two nights they were at the mercy of a tropical hurricane, and at the end of the second day they doubted their ability to live it out. On the first signs of the storm they had made everything as shipshape as possible in preparation for it, then retired to their old sleeping quarters with sufficient iron rations to last them several meals, and closed the manhole firmly behind them. But by the second evening Philip could bear the confinement no longer. The lack of ventilation, the smell and the nausea were such that he felt that, if he did not get a few mouthfuls of fresh air, he would choke and die in one final bout of sickness. Pulling on his oilskins he opened the trap and wriggled through it.

A foot and a half of water was slopping about in the well, and he had hardly closed the manhole when a big wave came right over the raft, temporarily submerging him up to the chest. For a second he gasped, then, as the water receded, got a firm grip on the short central mast of the raft and began to take in the terrifying spectacle around him.

The great storm had brought an early dusk, and the light was already fading; yet it was enough for him to see the white crest that topped a huge wave across a hundred yard long slope of water which rapidly became a towering wall, before which he instinctively gave back. It was as that moment, just as the wave was about to break, that he caught sight of a vague dark blur only a few feet away from him and wondered what it could possibly be that cast such a deep, almost solid, shadow in that corner of the well.

The spate of water from the wave flooded all about him,
temporarily blinding him with its spray, but when he could see once more his breath caught in his throat with something between fear and intense excitement. His eyes almost starting from his head in amazement, he stared open-mouthed at the corner of the well. Where before there had been only a vague black shadow there was now a seemingly solid figure. Within a few feet of him was standing a man, or at least a presence in human form.

It was not until the presence turned its face towards him that Philip suddenly realised its likeness to the Canon. He had never seen a ghost before, yet somehow he had no doubt at all that he was face to face with the spirit of Beal-Brookman.