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By Root 2900 0

You could see why it had taken the other boat so long to make such small headway, hampered with passengers as they were. Even with all the force of practised oarsmen, sparing themselves nothing, progress was killingly slow; the consequences of it unbearable. Blacklock, watching Lymond, saw him miss a stroke once, his hand hard on the bench, and then resume, without speaking, in rhythm. The temptation was just that; to plunge overboard and cut through the waves to the rescue. Forfeiting the power of fifteen men for the leverage strength of just one. So they waited, all of them, until they saw the boat heaving and lurching beside them, and then, catching Buckland’s eye, Lymond shipped his oars in one shining sweep and was overboard. The three St Mary’s men followed.

It was a slow and desolate harvest, garnered in darkness and danger, and in a cold which turned warm flesh to glass. What you touched might be fur-lined shuba or sheets of strong, red-brown seaweed, chequering the long, streaming shore waves like mosaic. It might be a head, fronded with waving black hair and beard, or the soft, weeded face of a rock, overcome by white needle-clusters of spray which rose, and veined it, and vanished. And always the sea strode and surged and split over their heads; rocks threatened them in low, metal-grey ranges jutting into the ocean like gun batteries; on every side danger exploded, in the sudden ghost-like burst of a spray-palace, rising, changing, vanishing in the dark.

The first two men Adam Blacklock touched were quite dead, and he ceased the effort of dragging them back to the boat; feeling was leaving his body, and he had to save his strength for the living. Then he heard Ludovic d’Harcourt call and saw he had a man in his arms and another was swimming feebly beside him. He struck through the wall of black waves, blind and deaf and desperate, and got to him in time to support one of them. The pinnace was near, and arms were stretching over the side, to pull the half drowned men in. Then Lymond’s voice came, sharply, from the overturned boat, and both Adam and d’Harcourt turned and fought their way to him.

He had Nepeja. Inert as a stranded walrus, the Ambassador lay on the sliding belly of the overturned boat and beside him, groaning through clenched teeth with the effort, was Robert Best the Englishman, half in and half out of the icy water, holding him firm and secure. As d’Harcourt gripped Best, Hislop appeared out of the darkness and helped Lymond steady the Russian. Lymond spoke to him.

Nepeja groaned. Best said, gasping, ‘He’s been unconscious mostly. The Russian lads have all gone. We tried to get them up on the boat.…’

‘Chancellor,’ Lymond said. ‘Chancellor and the boy. Where is Chancellor?’

Best said, ‘Christopher slid off the boat.’

‘And——?’

‘His father went after him.’

‘Where? When?’

‘Ten minutes ago. God knows. God knows,’ said Robert Best, and started retchingly to sob. ‘On that side.’

The pinnace was feeling its way towards them. Without speaking, Lymond took Blacklock’s shoulder and thrust him, in his place, to share with Hislop the shuddering weight of the Ambassador. Then he turned, with a flash of wrist and pale skin and sliding, shimmering water, and went, with the wind and the tide and the current, into the darkness.

Under guidance, Best swam to the pinnace. But it took Blacklock and Danny Hislop five long minutes and all their remaining strength to lever the Russian up and into the long, rocking boat, even after she manoeuvred alongside, standing off again and again to avoid collision with the other, derelict hull. Then Buckland said, ‘Get in. We’re going for shore.’

Hislop said, ‘Chancellor.’

Buckland’s voice, worn with shouting, embodied a tired authority, over-riding all weaker inclinations. He said, ‘If he has been in the water this long, he is dead. If I don’t get these men to dry land within the next few minutes, they will be dead, too. And you. Get in.’

His eyes shone in the darkness. Adam, gasping and shuddering at Hislop’s side, realized why. A faint, ruddy light far off on the