Little enough in itself, the change was as dramatic as it was abrupt, but a change so slight that at first it failed to register or have its significance encompassed by exhausted minds. It was McKinnon who noticed it first, noticed it and knew what it meant, and he sat bolt upright in the sternsheets, blinking at first in the sea-mirrored glare of the sun, then searching the horizon from north to east. Seconds later he dug his fingers into Nicolson’s arm and shook him awake.
“What is it, Bo’sun?” Nicolson asked quickly. “What’s happened?” But McKinnon said nothing, just sat there looking at him, cracked, painful lips drawn back in a grin of sheer happiness. For a moment Nicolson stared at him, blankly in-comprehending, thinking only that at last McKinnon, too, had gone over the edge, then all at once he had it.
“Wind!” His voice was only a faint, cracked whisper, but his face, a face that could feel the first tentative stirrings of a breeze degrees cooler than the suffocating heat of only minutes previously, showed how he felt. Almost at once, exactly as McKinnon had done, he too stared away to the north and east and then, for the first and only time in his life, he thumped the grinning bo’sun on the back. “Wind, McKinnon! And cloud! Can you see it?” His pointing arm stretched away to the north-east: away in the far distance a bluish purple bar of cloud was just beginning to lift over the horizon.
“I can see it, sir. No doubt about it at all. Coming our way, all right.”
“And that wind’s strengthening all the time. Feel it?” He shook the sleeping nurse by the shoulder. “Gudrun! Wake up! Wake up!”
She stirred, opened her eyes and looked up at him. “What is it, Johnny?”
“Mr. Nicolson to you.” He spoke with mock severity, but he was grinning with delight. “Want to see the most wonderful sight anyone ever saw?” He saw the shadow of distress cross the clear blue of her eyes, knew what she must be thinking, and smiled again. “A raincloud, you chump! A wonderful, wonderful rain-cloud. Give the captain a shake, will you?”
The effect on the entire boat’s company was astonishing, the transformation almost beyond belief. Within two ‘minutes everybody was wide awake, twisted round and staring eagerly towards the north-east, chattering excitedly to one another. Or not quite everybody — Sinclair, the young soldier, paid no heed at all, just sat staring down at the bottom of the boat, lost in a vast indifference. But he was the solitary exception. For the rest, they might have been condemned men granted the right to live again, and that was almost literally true. Findhorn had ordered an extra ration of water all round. The long bar of clouds was perceptibly nearer. The wind was stronger and cool on their faces. Hope was with them again and life once more worth the living. Nicolson was dimly aware that this excitement, this physical activity, was purely nervous and psychological in origin, that, unknown to them, it must be draining their last reserves of strength, and that any disappointment, any reversal of this sudden fortune, would be the equivalent of a death penalty. But it didn’t seem likely.
“How long, do you think, my boy?” It was Farnholme talking.
“Hard to say.” Nicolson stared off to the north-east. “Hour and a half, perhaps, maybe less if the wind freshens.” He looked at the captain. “What do you think, sir?”
“Less,” Findhorn nodded. “Wind’s definitely strengthening, I think.”
“‘I bring fresh showers for thirsting flowers’,” the second engineer quoted solemnly. He rubbed his hands together. “For flowers substitute Willoughby. Rain, rain, glorious rain!”
“A bit early to start counting your chickens yet, Willy,” Nicolson said warningly.
“What do you mean?” It was Farnholme who replied, his voice sharp.
“Just that rain-clouds don’t necessarily mean rain, that’s all.” Nicolson spoke as soothingly as he could. “Not at first, that is.”
“Do you mean to tell me, young man, that we’ll be no better of than we were before?” There was only one person on the boat who addressed Nicolson as ‘young man.’
“Of course not, Miss Plenderleith. These clouds look thick and heavy, and it’ll mean shelter from the sun, for one thing. But what the captain and I are really interested in is the wind. If it picks up and holds we can reach the Sunda Straits sometime during the night.”
“Then why haven’t you let the sails rip?” Farnholme demanded.
“Because I think the chances are that we will have rain,” Nicolson said patiently. “We’ve got to have something to funnel the water into cups or baler or whatever we use. And there’s not enough wind yet to move us a couple of feet a minute.”
For the better part of an hour after that nobody spoke. With the realisation that salvation wasn’t as immediate as they had thought, some of the earlier listlessness had returned. But only some. The hope was there, and none of them had any intention of letting it go. No one closed his eyes or went to sleep again. The cloud was still there, off the starboard beam, getting bigger and darker all the time, and it had all their attention. Their gaze was on that and on nothing else and maybe that was why they didn’t see Sinclair until it was too late.
It was Gudrun Drachmann who saw him first, and what she saw made her rise as quickly as she could and stumble for’ard towards the boy. His eyes upturned in his head so that his pupils had vanished and only the whites were visible, he was jerking convulsively in his seat, his teeth chattering violently like a man in an ague and his face was the colour of stone. Even as the girl reached him, calling his name softly, beseechingly, he pushed himself to his feet, struck at her so that she stumbled and fell against the brigadier, and then, before anyone had time to recover and do anything, tore off his shirt, flung it at the advancing Nicolson and jumped overboard, landing flat-faced with a splash that sent water spattering all over the boat.
For a few seconds no one moved. It had been all so swift and unexpected that they could have imagined it. But there was no imagination about the empty thwart in the boat, the spreading ripples on the glassy surface of the sea. Nicolson stood motionless, arrested in mid-step, the ragged shirt caught in one hand. The girl was still leaning against Farnholme, saying ‘Alex’, ‘Alex’, over and over again, meaninglessly. And then there came another splash from right aft, not so loud this time. The bo’sun had gone after him.
The second splash brought Nicolson back to life and action with a perceptible jerk. Stooping quickly, he caught hold of the boat-hook and turned quickly to the side of the boat, kneeling on the bench. Almost without thinking he had dragged his pistol from his belt and was holding it in his free hand. The boat-hook was for McKinnon, the pistol for the young soldier. The panic-stricken grip of a drowning man was bad enough: God only knew what that of a drowning madman might be like.
Sinclair was thrashing about the water about twenty feet from the boat and McKinnon, just surfaced, was splashing determinedly towards him — like nearly all Islanders, swimming was not one of his better accomplishments — when Nicolson caught sight of something that struck at him like an ice-cold chill. He swung the boat-hook in a wide curving arc that brought it crashing into the water only inches from McKin-non’s shoulder. Instinctively the Bo’sun caught hold of it and twisted round, his dark face a mass of startled incomprehension.
“Back, man, back!” Nicolson shouted. Even in that moment of near-panic he could hear that his voice was hoarse and cracked. “For God’s sake, hurry up!”
McKinnon started to move slowly towards the boat, but not of his own volition; he still held on to the boat-hook, and Nicolson was drawing it quickly inboard. McKinnon’s face still had its almost comical expression of bewilderment. He looked over his shoulder to where Sinclair was still splashing aimlessly around, more than thirty feet away now, looked back again towards the boat, opened his mouth to speak and then shouted aloud with pain. A split second passed, he shouted again, and then, mysteriously galvanised into furious activity, splashed his way madly towards the boat. Five frantic strokes and he was alongside, half-a-dozen hands dragging him head-first into the boat. He landed face down on a cross-seat, and, just as his legs came inboard, a greyish, reptilian shape released its grip on his calf and slid back soundlessly into the water.
“What — what on earth was that?” Gudrun had caught a glimpse of the vicious teeth, the evil snake’s body. Her voice was shaking.