Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [76]
Under the thick mop of seaweed that covered the rocks against which the foremast truck rested there were countless barnacles. When we put out our hands to break our falls, which were constant, the barnacles slashed our fingers, wrists and knees.
Eventually slipping and feeling our way up that treacherous shore, hopeful of removing ourselves from the unending roaring of the breakers, we came to naked ice-covered rocks on which no seaweed grew. To me that meant we were above high-water mark. Now we were truly safeor so I idiotically thought again.
I caught at Swede's wet coat. "Swede," I said, "we'll have to find shelter from this snow and wind." Not only
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was the snow plastering itself against our faces with a force that numbed us, but the snow was mixed with spindrift, so that it seemed twice as cold as anything could be.
"Go to the left," I told Swede. "I'll go to the right. Chips can walk straight ahead. Let's leave Neal here to shout to us in case we're lost. Leave Chips's hammer with Neal, too, so Chips won't lose it when he falls. Hunt for trees or bushesany kind of shelter. Anythinganything at all. Even an old shed, or a pigpen, or an overhanging ledge. Or a fence or a clump of thick grass. Or a hill. If you can find a hill, we can get in its lee. That would be better than nothing."
We blundered off into the thick, roaring dark. The tumultuous sea seemed to thunder from every direction. The footing, in that darkness, was nothing but rockround boulders; sharp boulders; low irregular ledges, all slippery with a half-inch coat of ice.
Rocks turned beneath my feet; spilled me into pockets between them. The pockets had razor-like crushed seashells at their bottoms. The naked rocks were worse than the seaweed-covered ones on which we had landed, for when I fell I had the feeling that a leg or an arm must break.
These rocks, I thought, must lead to some sort of beach, or a marsh, or a field. Instead of that, my groping hands again felt seaweed. Either the coast had turned, or I had become confused and turned myself. I bore more sharply to the left, to escape that damnable seaweed that was even more slippery than ice, though more cushiony.
After all this exertion, this fever of activity, this terror of the pelting snow and flying foamyes, and of the un-
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ending menacing crashing of the seamy mouth and throat were like leather. In desperation I chipped ice from one of the boulders and sucked at it. It was almost fresh, with only the faintest trace of saltiness.
While I stood there, chipping more ice and crunching it to bits, I heard a thin piping aheada faint wailing or squeaking, dim amid all the uproar of the breakers. It might have been a sea bird: it might have been the screaking of one rock driven by a breaker against another.
I held my breath and listenedand heard it again: a faint call.
I crawled even more to my left, feeling for boulders, cutting my hands on barnacles, skirting ledges; easing myself head first to the tops of rocks: then lowering myself feet first on the far side.
On thus mounting a ledge I found myself looking down into a black cavity in which there was noise and movement and from which, as I balanced there, burst a desperate bellow, a prolonged "Hullooo!" from many voices.
"I'm Whitworth," I shouted into that black void.
I heard Langman's voice. "Whitworth makes nine. Where's Captain Dean? Where's Neal Butler? Where's Swede? Where's Chips? Where's Cooky Sipper?"
"I know where Neal is," I said. "I'll get him. I sent Swede to the left to hunt shelter when we got above high-water mark. I sent Chips straight out."
"Shout," Langman said. "One, two, three; Hulloooo!
I joined in their shout with all my heart and strength, realizing horribly, as I did so, that the faint sound I had heard a few short minutes before had been the concerted bellowing of eight men, yet that outcry