Authors: Pamela Kent
Rolands
—
with his pipe fully alight by this time, and his back against a tree
—
pretended not to observe the purely spontaneous little movement, and it was only when they were both of them fast asleep that he regarded them both thoughtfully. And he muttered something to himself which sounded like:
‘Well, if we ever get taken off this island,
perhaps
...
But I wouldn’t like to bet on it!’
Karin slept deeply and tranquilly, and for hours. And she would almost certainly have gone on sleeping for several more hours if the sound of an altercation hadn’t penetrated to her consciousness, with the result that she climbed up through the waves of sleep and dragged herself to a sitting position while the altercation continued very close to her, and she was terrified because she was surrounded by absolute blackness and for a short time she couldn’t even think where she was.
‘What the devil do you mean by it?’ Kent was demanding of his servant. ‘I told you to let me sleep for half an hour, and now it’s the middle of the night.’ He peered at the luminous dial of his watch. ‘A quarter past twelve! That means we’ve pretty nearly slept the clock round. Where’s Karin?’ and he started to grope for her frantically.
‘I’m here,’ Karin said, in a small voice, and to her immeasurable relief she immediately found him close beside her. His hand alighted on her shoulder, and then slipped round her and drew her close to him.
‘For one minute I thought—’ he began in a slightly muffled voice.
Rolands addressed them both in patient tones.
‘Well, if it’s the middle of the night we’re not doing anything very extraordinary, are we?’ he said reasonably. ‘I mean, I admit I didn’t ought to have fallen asleep, and I fully intended to wake you, boss, after half an hour, but
—
well, it must have been those baked beans and chopped pork,’ he defended himself. ‘It was the first solid food we’d had since dinner a couple of nights ago.’
‘All the same, you had absolutely no right to fall asleep.’ Karin was amazed at the utter cold fury in his voice. ‘We’ve been cast up on this island and we haven’t the least idea whether it’s inhabited or not. In fact, we know nothing whatsoever about it. The arrangement was that one of us should keep watch ... and however tired we are we must face it there must always be a watch.’
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Rolands murmured humbly.
Kent’s arm actually hurt Karin as he kept her clamped close to his side.
‘If anything had happened to Miss Hammond
—’
‘I know, sir,’ Rolands agreed throatily. They could hear him edging his way towards them over the uneven ground. ‘But you’re all right, aren’t you, miss?’ he inquired anxiously. ‘You’ve had a
good sleep like the rest of us?’
‘I’ve slept like a log,’ Karin admitted, straining her eyes to make out the far-away stars away up in the shadowy night sky. And tonight they were not as brilliant as usual, possibly because the night was not as cold, and the sky was overlaid by a faint haze that rendered the blackness extremely alarming in the depths of the trees. She was so thankful for Kent’s determined hold on her that she wanted to tell him so, but with Rolands listening in her thanks, she thought, might sound a little odd.
‘It wasn’t as dark as this last night,’ she breathed, with her face only a few inches from Kent’s unshaved cheek.
‘I know. I hope it doesn’t mean that we’re in for a change of weather
...’
He appeared to be sniffing the air. ‘There’s certainly been a change of wind, and that isn’t always a good thing in this part of the world. It could mean a storm ... a wind storm.’
‘A
—
a hurricane?’ Karin interpreted.
‘Something of the sort.’
‘Don’t they call them typhoons in these seas
...?’
Rolands was beginning, when they all three heard the faint pitter-patter of rain drops on the spreading canopy of leaves above them, and Rolands’ voice died away as if sheer apprehension strangled it. In a matter of seconds the faint pitter-patter was a steady drumming sound, and a few seconds after that it was like the roar of an avalanche forcing its way down a mountain side. The sting of the rain as it lashed its way through the branches caused Karin to cower down close to the earth as if she was being beaten by flails, and Kent tried to protect her from the worst of it by crouching above her like a protecting screen. But it didn’t seem to make the smallest amount of difference, and in sudden primitive terror Karin turned and clung to him, burying her face in the hollow of his neck.
For the world about them had quite suddenly gone mad, and in addition to the roar of the rain the very trees beneath which they sheltered were being shaken and uprooted as if an angry giant had suddenly waded in amongst them and was breathing destruction from his nostrils. The wind had arisen so suddenly that it was unbelievable, and having arisen it was fully prepared to do its worst.
They could hear the noise of angry seas crashing against the barrier reef, a whine like hundreds of telegraph wires all hopelessly involved with one another and alive with a fiendish current. And, above all, the endless crashing noises as tree after tree was to
rn
up by the roots and carelessly tossed aside were enough to fill any ordinary mortal with panic.
Karin didn’t suppose that Kent was capable of panic, and Rolands was a tough, wiry little man who had probably survived worse than this on more than one occasion in his life, and thought little of it once it was over; but she was palsied by fright while the storm lasted, and, worse than anything else, she found it almost impossible to breathe as Kent forced her face closer and closer into his shirt. The air was fully of flying sand, stones, and branches of trees, and he was endeavouring to prevent the sand from filling her lungs, but all she knew was that his hand was like iron on the back of her neck, her lungs were bursting with the effort to suck some air down into them, and even her throat was causing her agony because she couldn’t even swallow.
At last she struggled frantically to free herself, and but for that iron hand would almost certainly have succeeded in doing so. But no sooner was her face free than Kent remorselessly thrust it into hiding again, and in addition he rolled over on top of her so that none of the crashing tree arms could fall on her or mark her.
Above the frenzied shrieking of the wind, and the general madness, she heard him shouting at her, and it sounded as if his voice was reaching her from miles away.
‘Lie still, you little fool! Lie still!’
And even in the midst of all that clamour she realized that his temporary gentleness had left him, and that he was once more a dominating and ruthless individual. Far too ruthless to leave her with power to fight him.
But, when the wind died, the rainstorm passed on, and the island became uncannily still and quiet again, he was quick to relieve her of the bruising weight of his body, and as he drew back from her he spoke with concern.
‘Are you all right? Karin!’ She was too dazed to answer him at once, and he bent over her with sharp concern. ‘I know I almost crushed the life out of you, but I couldn’t help it. It was for your own good! Karin, I haven’t broken any bones, have I?’
‘Of
—
of course not.’ She even managed a hollow little sound that was an apology for a laugh. ‘And it would have been better to have a few broken bones than to be carried away by that little lot. At one time I actually thought it was going to lift us both up bodily!’
‘I know.’ His voice sounded grim. ‘So did I.’
‘And the trouble
was ...
I couldn’t breathe...’
‘I’m not surprised.’ He helped her to sit upright, and propped her for support against a tree-trunk ... one of the few, most fortunately, considering its nearness to them, that had survived intact. ‘But I’ve survived this kind of thing before, and I know the only thing to do is to get as close to the ground as possible and allow it to pass over one’s head. On this occasion, as you simply wouldn’t have had the strength to hang on on your own, I decided to provide you with what protection I could. But I’m afraid you must be a mass of bruises as a result.’
He sounded almost formally apologetic.
‘If I am I don’t mind,’ she assured him. ‘I’m only too delighted that everything’s quiet again.’ And then, instinctively, she shrank nearer to him. ‘It won’t come back, will it?’
‘Extremely unlikely,’ he replied reassuringly. ‘These things travel onwards, and the rate at which they travel is unbelievable ... which at least means that the nightmare is seldom prolonged, although what the devastation is like we shan’t discover until the sun is up.’
He remembered his manservant, and looked round for him.
‘You all right, Rolands?’ he inquired sharply.
At first there was no response, and then Rolands, having risen to his feet, came walking uncertainly towards them. That magical transformation that meant that dawn was near at hand was taking place, and in its sudden pearly light they saw that he was wildly dishevelled, and apparently he had been less fortunate than they had, for one side of his face was badly cut and bleeding as a result of a passing piece of attention from a flying branch of a tree, and his hair and eyelashes were white with sand.
‘I don’t know whether I could honestly say I’m all right, boss,’ he replied a little dubiously, ‘but at least I’m alive ... and apparently you’re both alive, too! Good thing you were near enough to Miss Hammond to hang on to her, or she wouldn’t be with us now.’ He mopped at his lacerated face with his soiled pocket-handkerchief, and when Karin wanted to attend to it advised her to remain perfectly still where she was for a while and get her breath back.
‘If we’re still on this island by tonight I mean to find myself a cave to take refuge in,’ he told them. ‘Another night like the one we’ve just lived through would be more than I could stand.’
‘I’m afraid there isn’t any doubt that you’ll be on the island by tonight,
’
Willoughby returned with a strong touch of his grimness. ‘I don’t think there’s very much doubt that we’ll be on the island for quite a few nights ... unless we’re lucky!’
Rolands, still mopping at his face and looking very rueful, but plainly slowly recovering his cheerfulness, regarded him with a faint, upward quirk of one of his wiry eyebrows.
‘And I don’t think you think we’re going to be lucky, boss,’ he said. ‘Although,’ a little whimsically, ‘I suppose there are various ways of interpreting luck. That young chap Paget who was always following Miss Hammond about on the ship might have considered himself very lucky if he’d been here with her now!’
And with another whimsical look
—
and a shrewd glance at his master
—
he walked away, just as the pearly greyness dissolved into a lake of shimmering blue, and for the first time for hours they felt the comforting warmth of the sun.
‘I’m going to have a swim,’ Rolands said. ‘And then, if our stores haven’t been scattered, I’ll set about preparing breakfast.’
By great good luck their stores were intact. The boat had been dragged fairly high up the beach, and had received a certain amount of protection from the full force of the storm by an overhanging bluff of land that had acted as an awning. Beneath it the frail craft in which they had journeyed so far had been mildly buffeted, but was not in any way seriously damaged.
What little damage it had received could be easily put right ... or so Rolands se
e
med to think, having inspected it. Minus the bag of tools and the pot of paint that were essential requirements, however, his master was not so sure.
After breakfast
—
and Rolands certainly got the Primus going quickly and the water boiling for the coffee
—
it was decided that an inspection of the island was important. Already its appearance had altered since the day before, and Kent was anxious to know to what extent they could depend on it for food during the possible weeks
—
it could even be months
—
that stretched ahead before they were rescued. And he was particularly anxious to find out whether their diminishing water supply could be reinforced without delay.
Despite the wild quality of the night through which they had lived they all three felt considerably more refreshed than they had felt after their night in an open boat. This was perhaps not surprising when they had slept solidly for a good many hours before the storm had awakened them. Kent, who longed for a razor, kept feeling the short, reddish stubble that adorned his chin as if it was an offence against all his principles, but as there was nothing he could do to remove it he grew gradually resigned to the thought of acquiring a full-scale beard in the not-so-distant future. At least they were all three able to enjoy a dip in the sea, and the fact that they didn’t possess a single towel amongst them with which to dry themselves didn’t matter when the sun beat down so brazenly, and moisture evaporated in a matter of seconds.
Karin borrowed Roland’s pocket-comb to do something about her hair, but she wished she had had the common sense to snatch up a handbag before leaving the burning
Ariadne
.
Even if it had been an evening bag it would have contained a mirror and a powder compact, to say nothing of lipstick. She felt peculiarly naked without the camouflaging effect of a lipstick; but when Kent caught her peering at her own reflection in a particularly pellucid stretch of the lagoon he brought a self-conscious, but defensive, blush to her cheeks as he inquired whimsically: