Silhouette in Scarlet - Elizabeth Peters [77]
John slammed the boathouse doors and barred them. It was almost as dark as midnight inside; but John has eyes like a cat’s; as Gus moved toward the switch, he snapped, ‘No lights. Let them look for us.’
‘I have a flashlight,’ I said.
‘I knew you would. Keep it down, away from the window.’
Gus swore extensively in Swedish when he saw the havoc wrought among his boats. When John grunted, ‘Give me a hand, you two,’ we helped tug at the rowboat’s painter. I had forgotten how heavy a waterlogged boat can be; it seemed to take forever to haul it up onto the deck. John groped under one of the seats and fished out a roll of some material that shone greasily in the narrow beam of the flashlight.
‘Mr Jonsson, get ready to open the outer doors,’ he said.
I watched in mounting disbelief as he spread the piece of leather over the hole in the bottom of the boat. It looked like – it surely was – the side of a calfskin suitcase.
‘Oars,’ John said to me.
‘I’d rather swim.’
‘You may have to.’
‘John, that won’t – ’
‘It’s waterlogged and somewhat adhesive. One of us will have to sit on it, that’s all. And bail like hell.’
He grabbed a can from the shelves and gave it to me. I gave it back. ‘You sit, you bail like hell. Where are the damned oars? Oh – I’ve got them.’
‘Ready,’ Gus called.
‘Okay, open up lights out, Vicky.’ Before I pressed the switch, I saw John lower himself into the boat. His face was screwed up like that of a man expecting to get hit with a pie.
‘Well,’ he said, out of the darkness, ‘it hasn’t sunk yet. Hop in.’
I had a brief argument with Gus, who wanted to do the rowing. I took one oar, he took the other. After a nerve-wracking false start we got into the rhythm, and the boat shot out into open water. Gus laughed with pure pleasure. ‘What is the phrase – a chip off the old block?’
I would have acknowledged the compliment, but the full force of the waves hit just then, and we had to do some fancy rowing to keep from being swamped. I let Gus do most of the work, for he was the expert, following his orders mechanically. After a few frenzied moments he had us heading into the wind. John bailed like a madman, but there was a lot of water sloshing around in the bottom, and the boat’s response to the oars was unpleasantly sluggish.
Still, it was better than swimming, if hardly less wet, and a great deal better than playing games with Leif and Max. The storm was directly overhead now; thunder boomed like a bass drum arpeggio, the rain was an icy shower, lightning ripped the dark apart. In between thunderclaps I heard John swearing as he bailed. The water seemed to be coming in faster than he threw it out. I didn’t care. I was filled with a crazy exhilaration that brushed aside the weather, the leaky boat, and the ache across my shoulder blades as I bent and straightened in time with Gus. He was as fey as I; he started to sing in a reverberant baritone. I assumed from the rhythm that it was a classic Swedish boating song, so I joined in with ‘Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing. . .’
The rain began to slacken. A finger of paler grey parted the clouds. The boat moved like a dying animal, but my wild spirits refused to be squelched. We were all right now. Even if the boat sank, we could make it. In a few minutes we’d be in Gus’s warm, dry car, speeding along the road to town.
‘Loud the winds blow,’ I sang, ‘loud the waves – ’
He came up out of the water in a great soaring leap, like a demonic creature half-fish and half-man. Water streaming from his hair and body surrounded him with a ghastly green glow of phosphorescence.
My voice rose to a high note that is not part of ‘The Skye Boat Song.’ The others hadn’t seen him; Gus was staring soulfully at the storm, and John was bent over bailing. My shriek alerted them in time to observe Leif’s next appearance. He was on the same side of the boat – my side. He moved in the choppy water as if it were his natural element, perfectly at ease, smiling . . . One bronzed arm lifted and came down, delicately, gently. A beaded line