The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur. Страница 61

Get those oars out! The voice again, harsh with authority. Fend her off there, you men. That's right! All right, give way starboard. Pull, damn you, pull! They dragged themselves away from the ship's side and got their bows into the seas before they were swamped.

Anna crouched in the bottom of the boat, clutching her bag to her chest, and looked up at the tall hull that rose above them like a cliff.

At that instant a great white shaft of light sprang out of the darkness behind them and struck the ship. It played slowly across the glistening white hull, like the spotlight of a theatre, picking out brief tragic vignettes before passing on, groups of men trapped at the rail, a twisting figure in an unattended stretcher sliding across the deck, a seaman caught in the tackle of a lifeboat and swinging go like a figure on the gallows tree, and finally the beam rested for a few moments on the huge red crosses painted on the white hull.

Yes, take a good look, you bloody swine! one of the men near Anna in the lifeboat yelled, and immediately the cry was taken up.

You murdering Hun- You filthy butchers- All around Anna they were howling their anger and outrage.

Implacably the beam of searchlight travelled on, swinging down to the waterline of the hull. The surface of the sea was dotted with the heads of hundreds of swimmers.

There were clusters of them, and individuals whose pale faces shone like mirrors in the intense white light, and still others were dropping and splashing into the water amongst them, while the sea surged and sucked them back and forth and threw them against the steel cliff of the hull.

The searchlight lifted up to the high decks again, and they were canted at an improbable angle while the ship's bows were already thrusting below the surface and the stern was rising swiftly against the star-riddled sky.

For an instant the searchlight settled on a tiny group of figures pinned against the ship's rail and Anna shrieked, Centaine! The girl was in the middle of the group, her face turned towards the sea, looking down at the dark drop beneath her, the wild bush of her dark hair whipping in the wind.

Centaine! Anna screamed again, and with a lithe movement the girl had leaped to the top of the brass rail. She had lifted the heavy woollen skirts to her waist and for an instant she balanced like an acrobat. Her bare legs were pale and slim and shapely, but she looked frail as a bird as she leaped away from the rail and with her skirts ballooning wildly about her, fell out of the beam of light into the blackness beneath.

Cantaine! Anna screamed one last time with despair in her voice and ice in her heart. She tried to rise, the better to watch the fall of that small body but somebody pulled her down again, and then the searchlight beam was extinguished and Anna crouched in the lifeboat and listened to the cries of the drowning men.

Pull, you men! We must get clear, or she will suck us down with her when she goes. They had oars out on both sides of the lifeboat and were striking out raggedly, inching away from the stricken liner.

There she goes! somebody yelled. Oh God, will you look at that! The steRN of the huge ship swung up, higher and still higher into the night sky, and the rowers rested on their oars and stared up at her.

When she reached the vertical she hung for long seconds. They could see the silhouette of her propeller against the stars, and her lights were still burning in the rows of portholes.

Slowly she began to slide downwards, bows first, her lights still shining beneath the water like drowning moons. Faster and still faster she slid downwards and her plates began to buckle and crackle with pressure, air burst out of her in a seething frothy turmoil, and then she was gone. Vast spoutings and eruptions of air and white foam still fountained up out of the black waters, but slowly these subsided and once again they could hear the lonely cries of the swimmers. Pull back! We must pick up as many as we can! All the rest of that night they worked under the direction of the ship's first officer who stood at the tiller in the stERN of the lifeboat. They dragged the sodden shivering wretches from the sea, packing them in until the lifeboat wallowed dangerously and took water over her gunwales at every swell, and they had to hate continuously.

No more! the officer shouted. You men will have to tie yourselves on to the LIFelines. The swimmers clustered around the overloaded vessel like drowning rats, and Anna was close enough to the stern to hear the first officer murmur, The poor devils won't last until morning, the cold will get them, even if the sharks don't. They could hear other lifeboats around them in the night, the splash of oars and voices on the wind.

The current is running up into the north-northeast at four knots, Anna overheard the first officer again, we will be scattered to the horizon by dawn. We must try to keep together. He rose in the stern and hailed, Ahoy there! This is lifeboat sixteen."Lifeboat five, a faint voice hailed back. We will come to you! They rowed through the darkness, guided by cries from the other boat, and when they found each other they lashed the two hulls together. During the night they called two other lifeboats to them.

in the watery grey dawn they found another lifeboat half a mile away; the sea between them was strewn with wreckage and dotted with the heads of swimmers, but all of them were insignificant specks in the immense reaches of ocean and sky.

In the boats they huddled together like cattle in the abattoir truck, already slumping into bovine lethargy and indifference, while those in the water bobbed and nodded as they hung in their lifejackets, a macabre dance of death, for already the icy green water that tumbled over their heads had sucked the body warmth from many of them and they lolled pale and lifeless.

Sit down, woman! Anna's neighbours roused themselves as she tried to stand on the thwart.

You'll have us all in the water, for God's sake! But Anna ignored their protests.

Centainel she called. Is Centaine anywhere? And when they stared at her uncomprehendingly, she searched for the nickname and remembered it at last.

Sunshine! she cried. Het remand Sunshine gesien?

Has anybody seen Sunshine? and there was a stir of interest and concern.

Sunshine? Is she with you," The query was passed swiftly about the cluster of tossing lifeboats.

I saw her on the deck, just before the ship went down. She had a lifeJacket. She isn't here? No, she isn't here. I saw her jump, but I lost her after that. She isn't here, not in any of the boats. Anna sagged down again. Her baby was gone. She felt despair overwhelm and begin to suffocate her. She looked over the side of the lifeboat at the dead men hanging in their lifejackets, and imagined Centaine killed by the green waters, dead of the cold and the infant in her womb dead also, and she groaned aloud.

No, she whispered, God cannot be that cruel. I don't believe it. I'll never believe it. The denial gave her strength and the will to endure. There were other lifeboats, Centaine is alive somewhere out there, she looked to the wind-smeared horizon, she's alive, and I will find her. If it takes my whole life, I will find her again. The small incident of the search for the missing girl had broken the torpor of cold and shock that had gripped them all during the night, and now the leaders emerged to rally them, to adjust the loading and the trim of the lifeboats, to count and take charge of the fresh-water containers and the emergency rations, to see to the injured, to cut loose the dead men and let them float away and to allocate duties to the rowers, and finally to set a course for the mainland a hundred miles and more out there in the east.

With teams of rowers alternating at the long oars, they began to inch across the wild sea, nearly every small gain wasted by the following wave that dashed into their bows and drove them back.