Sad Wind From the Sea - Jack Higgins [45]
It was quite a struggle. The body got stuck in the jagged opening, and he had to turn back and wrestle with it to get it through. It was funny how he kept thinking of it as a person and not as an inanimate thing. He gripped it round the waist and pulled it clear of the wreck. The spongy feel of the flesh sickened him and he released his grip. The gas-filled body shot up to the surface, glowing with a sort of phosphorescence, and he followed it up slowly.
He bumped against the side of Hurrier and eager hands reached over and pulled him aboard. He lay on the deck and allowed them to divest him of his equipment and wrap him in a blanket. It was almost dark but he was able to see that Rose was extremely pale as she leaned over him. 'Did it come up?' he asked.
She nodded, lips compressed, and Mason said: 'Did it come up? It almost shot out of the water. It scared the living daylights out of me.'
O'Hara said, 'Well, there he goes,' and Hagen struggled to his feet and saw Chang paddling towards the reeds, his brother's body floating behind the canoe, secured by a cord.
The fisherman turned and waved from the gloom. 'I shall return tomorrow, lord,' he said and then disappeared into the reeds.
Hagen started to limp towards the cabin door and then he remembered something. He turned and said, with a grimace: 'I almost forgot. It's there - the gold I mean. Just waiting to be lifted. Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours.'
As he turned and stumbled down into the cabin an excited babble of sound broke out behind him. He flopped on to the bed, completely and utterly exhausted, so that he had not even the strength to cover himself with the blankets. He lay with a cigarette, thinking, and as things began to blur, the cigarette was taken from between his fingers and blankets were carefully tucked in around his body. For a moment cool lips touched his and he inhaled her fragrance and then there was nothing.
9
Hagen came awake quickly from a deep and dreamless sleep. It was as though he had come into existence at the moment his eyes opened, and he lay in the semi-darkness of the cabin and wondered who he was. It was no new sensation, this. He had experienced it often during the war and always it had followed a period of great stress and mental strain. For the two or three minutes that the feeling lasted he felt very bad and then he relaxed completely as he remembered.
He slipped from the bunk and stood shivering, his feet cold on the cabin floor. Mason and O'Hara slept soundly, the old man gently snoring, and he quietly opened the door and went out on deck.
He stood at the rail and gazed at the lagoon, now shrouded in early morning mist. He made a swift decision and gently lowered himself over the rail. The water was cold on first contact and he swallowed a howl in his throat and swam quietly across to the reeds. After a few minutes he returned to the boat and hauled himself back over the rail. There was a towel lying on the deck and as he looked at it in puzzlement Rose came out of the cabin with a coffee-pot and two mugs. 'Morning,' she said softly. 'How did you sleep?'
'Not so bad,' he said. He towelled down briskly as she poured the coffee. His body was still bruised and marked from his fight with Mason and he had not shaved since Macao. 'You look quite rugged and dangerous,' she told him, handing him his coffee.
He slipped the towel over his shoulders and sat down on the engine-room hatch. 'Like a man out of Hemingway?' he said.
She chuckled and a smile wrinkled her nose. She sat beside him and gazed at the morning with a happy expression on her face. 'Oh, it's good to be alive.'
For the first time he was really and truly moved by