Doctor Who_ Island of Death - Barry Letts [76]
Brother Alex had really understood how he felt about the death of Will; and he trusted him. Dafydd took a deep breath to still the sudden flutter of fear inside him as he thought of the other commission that had been assigned to him.
One thing at a time.
Who was that? Oh, yes... He glanced down at his list. Good.
Another. He was doing well.
„Ah, Brother Gyogy, may I have a word?‟
She‟d have to swim.
But as she‟d told the Doctor, she could hardly keep afloat.
When Sammy had taught her to sail, she‟d never stepped into the dinghy without a life jacket. How could she hope that her feeble breaststroke (that always degenerated into a frantic doggy-paddle) would take her all the way to the ship? She‟d never managed more than a spluttering length, and the Hallaton must be at least a couple of hundred yards away.
It was no good trying to attract their attention. Even if she managed it, she had no way of signalling a message. Why hadn‟t they taught semaphore at St Margaret‟s Grammar?
There was no way to warn them.
Oh yes there was! It was only a slim chance, but it was worth ago.
But first she had to get away from the two guards. She snaked her way down the coast until she was round the next headland, safely out of sight.
Yes, it really looked as if it might be possible. If she kept her nerve, she might be able to swim out to the reef that rimmed the lagoon - which at that point was much nearer than the ship - climb out onto it, and then make her way along its length until she was near enough to the Hallaton to have a chance of making it in the water.
But there was another thing... One of the snags of swimming - apart from the possibility that she mightn‟t be strong enough to make it, or might end up as a shark‟s lunch
- would be how to keep the shots of the island dry. She had no idea what prolonged immersion in salt water might do to the Polaroid prints. And without them there wasn‟t a hope that they‟d believe her.
She was still trying to think of a better idea than swimming when she pulled the strap of the camera case over her head, to hide it under a bush.
Aha! One problem solved, anyway. She unclipped the strap and experimented with changing its length. Yup! She could slip it under her chin, and fix the snaps onto the top of her head.
Shoes off. Keep the rest on, in the hope that it might afford a mite of protection from the coral. She waded into the sea, wincing as the salt bit into her scratched legs.
At least the water was warm.
He stood on the clifftop, taking deep breaths and letting his arms and legs recover from that last extra effort needed to get himself past the grassy overhang onto the clifftop. There seemed to be a slight ache and a trembling in his biceps -
yes, and in his deltoids too.
Good grief! Was he feeling his age? Maybe the time for his next regeneration was just around the corner.
He dragged his thoughts back to the immediate problem.
Now he was at the top, he had to get into the temple and find Dame Hilda. He could hardly walk in through the front door... but of course, there was no front door. Those spectacular gates of polished timber would have been a hallucination along with the rest. But the entrance would still be guarded.
If his perception of the temple had been still conditioned by the effects of the mist, there would have been no way that he could have climbed over the top of the sheer perimeter wall at the top of the cliff. But now it was a heap of boulders...
As he forced his limbs into action again, his mind wandered off under its own devices. Even to have built this makeshift barrier would have taken considerable effort. Did the Skang have super strength? The body of the dead one showed little sign of it.
Or had they employed contractors from Mauritius or somewhere? It seemed somehow banal even to consider it. If so, what had happened to them? The Skang could never have let them go home.
He had a mental image of a scruffy tramp steamer leaving the island, with