The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur. Страница 76

Every minute we waste now could make all the difference, she told him fiercely.

Well, I'm frightfully sorry, Mevrou. Humbly Garry took full responsibility for the rhythm of the universe upon himself, and Anna's expression softened. She glanced around her to make certain they were unobserved and then slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow.

Well, at least we know she is still alive. We will go forward again the very minute we are able. In the meantime, Mijnheer, we have three hours. She looked at him speculatively, and Garry's knees began to shake so that she could barely support him.

Neither of them spoke again while she led him back off the beach into a secluded gulley between two tall dunes.

As the tide turned and began its ebb, they drove the Ford down on to the sand. The rear wheels threw fish-tails of glistening seawater and wet sand high into the air behind them as they sped northwards.

Twice within five miles they found flotsam cast up on the beach, a canvas life-jacket and a broken oar. They had obviously been exposed to the elements for a considerable time, and although neither of these were marked with identifying numbers or lettering, they confirmed Anna's faith. She sat in the back seat of the Ford with a scarf knotted under her chin, holding her solar topee on her head, and every few minutes Garry darted a loving glance at her like an amorous fox terrier paying court to a bulldog.

It was the slack of low tide, and the Ford was travelling thirty miles per hour when it went into the quicksand. There was little warning. The beach appeared as hard and smooth as it had been for the last mile. There was only a slight change in its contour. It was dished and the surface trembled like a jelly as seawater welled up beneath the sand, but they had been moving too fast to notice the warning signs, and they went in at speed.

The front wheels dropped into the soft porridge, and stopped dead. It was like running into the side of a mountain. The driver was hurled against the steering column.

With a harsh crackle the spokes of the steering wheel collapsed, but the steel shaft tore through his sternum, pinning him like a mullet on a fish spear, and the jagged point ripped out of his back below his shoulder-blade.

Anna was thrown high out of the back seat, and landed in the soft mire of quicksand. Garry's forehead thudded into the dashboard, a flap of skin was torn from the bone and dangled over his eyebrow, while blood poured down his face. The corporal was caught in a tangle of loose equipment, and his arm broke with a crack like a dry stick.

Anna Was first to recover and she waded knee-deep through the soft sand, and with an arm around Garry's shoulder, helped him out of the front seat and dragged him to where the beach sand hardened.

Garry fell on his knees. I'm blind, he whispered.

Just a little blood! Anna wiped his face with her skirt.

She ripped a strip of calico from the hem of her skirt and hastily bound the flap of skin back in place, then left him and waded back to the Ford.

It was sinking slowly, tipping forward as it went down.

Already the engine bonnet was covered by soft yellow mush, and it was pouring gluttonously over the doors and filling the interior. She seized the driver by the shoulders and tried to drag him clear, but he was firmly impaled on the steering shaft, and bone grated on steel as she tugged at him. His head rolled lifelessly from side to side, and

she left him and turned to the corporal.

He was mumbling and twitching spasmodically as he regained consciousness. Anna pulled hiim free and dragged him back to the hard sand, grunting red-faced with the effort. He screamed weakly with pain and his left arm dangled and twisted as she lowered him to the sand.

Minheer, Anna shook Garry roughly, we must save the water before it sinks also. Garry staggered to his feet. His face was painted with his own blood, and his shirt was streaked and splattered, but the flow had quenched. He followed her back to the doomed Ford and between them they dragged the watercans to the beach.

There is nothing we can do for the driver, Anna grunted, as they watched the Ford and the dead man gradually settle below the treacherous surface. Within minutes there was no trace of them. She turned her attention to the corporal.

The bone is broken. His forearm was swelling alarmingly, and he was pale and haggard with agony. Help me! While Gary held him, Anna straightened the damaged limb and using a piece of driftwood as a splint, strapped it. Then she fashioned a sling from another strip of her skirt, and while she settled the arm into it, Garry said hoarsely, I calculate it's forty miles back, but he could not finish, for Anna glared at him. You are talking of turning back!

Mevrou' he made a little fluttery, conciliatory gesture, ,we have to turn back. Two gallons of water and an injured man, we will be extremely fortunate to save ourselves. She continued to glare at him for a few seconds longer, then gradually her shoulders slumped.

We are close to finding her, so near to Centaine. I can sense it -she may be around the next headland. How can we give her up? Anna whispered. It was the first time that he had ever seen her defeated, and he thought his heart might burst with love and pity.

We will never give her up! he declared. We will never give up the search, this is only a setback. We will go on until we find her. Promise me that, Mijnbeer. Anna looked up at him with pathetic eagerness. Swear to me that you will never give up, that you will never doubt that Centaine and her baby are alive. Swear to me here and now in the sight of God that you will never give up the search for your grandson. Give me your hand and swear to it! Kneeling together on the beach, with the incoming tide swirling around their knees, facing each other and holding hands, he made the oath.

Now we can go back, Anna climbed heavily to her feet. But we will return, and go on until we find her."Yes, Garry agreed. We will return.

Centaine must indeed have died a small death, because when she regained consciousness, she was aware of the morning light through her closed lids. The prospect of another day of torment and suffering made her clench her eyelids tightly and try to retreat again into black oblivion.

Then she became aware of a small sound like the morning breeze in a pile of dry twigs, or the noise of an insect moving with clicking armoured limbs over a rocky surface . The sound troubled her, until she made the enormous effort required to roll her head towards it and open her eyes.

A small humanoid gnome squatted ten feet from where she lay, and she knew that she must be hallucinating.

She blinked her eyes rapidly and the congealed mucus that gummed her lids smeared across her eyeballs and blurred her vision, but she could just make out a second small figure squatting behind the first. She rubbed her eyes and tried to sit up, and her movements provoked a fresh outburst of the strange soft crepitating and clicking sounds, but still it took her a few seconds to realize that the two little gnomes were talking to each other in suppressed excitement, and that they were real, not merely the figments of her weakness and illness.

The one nearest to Centaine was a woman, for a pair of floppy dugs hung from her chest to well below her belly-button. They looked like empty pig-skin tobacco pouches. She was an old woman, no, Centaine realized that old was not the word to describe her antiquity. She was as wrinkled as a sun-dried raisin. There was not an inch of her skin that did not hang in loose folds and tucks, that was not crinkled and riven. The wrinkles were not aligned in one direction only, but crossed each other in deep patterns like stars or puckered rosettes. Her dangling breasts were wrinkled, as was her fat little belly, and baggy wrinkled skin hung from her knees and elbows. In a dreamlike way, Centaine was utterly enchanted. She had never seen another human being that vaguely 0 resembled this one, not even in the travelling circus that had visited Mort Hormne every summer before the war, She struggled up on one elbow and stared at her.