Ricky was one of those beings who respond uncomfortably to electric storms. They produced a nervous tingling in his arms and legs and a sense of impending disaster. As a small boy they had aroused a febrile excitement so that at one moment he wanted to hide and at the next to stand at the window or even go out of doors for the sheer terror of doing so. Although he had learned to control these reactions and to give little outward sign of them, the restlessness they induced even now was almost unbearable.
The room flashed up and out. Ricky counted the seconds automatically, scarcely knowing that he did so. “One-a-b, two-a-b,” up to seven, when the thunder broke. That meant, or so he had always believed, that the core of the storm was seven miles away and might or might not come nearer.
The sky behaved in the manner of a Gustave Doré engraving. A crack opened and a shaft of vivid sunlight darted down like God’s vengeance upon the offending sea.
Ricky tingled from head to foot. The room had stealthily become much too small. He was invaded by an urge to prove himself to himself. “1 may have made a muck of my espionage,” he thought, “but, by gum, I’m not going to stay in my bedroom with pins-and-needles because a couple of clouds are having it off up there. To hell with them.”
He fished a light raincoat out of his rucksack and ran downstairs, pulling it on as he went. The elderly clerk was asleep behind his desk.
Outside there was a stifled feeling in the air, as if the town held its breath. Sounds — isolated footsteps, desultory voices, and the hiss of tires on the road — were all exaggerated. The sky was now so black that twilight seemed to have fallen on Saint Pierre-des-Roches.
Forked lightning wrote itself with a flourish across the heavens and almost simultaneously a gigantic tin tray banged overhead. A woman in the street crossed herself and broke into a shuffle. Ricky thought: “If I combed my hair it would crackle.”
A few big drops fell like bullets in the dust and then, tremendously, the rain came down.
It really was a ferocious storm. The streets were running streams; lightning whiplashed almost continuously, thunder mingled with the din made by rain on roofs, sea, and stone. Ricky’s espadrilles felt as if they had dissolved on his feet.
But he went on downhill to the sea, taking a kind of satisfaction in pandemonium. Here was the bistro where he had breakfasted, here the first group of shops. And here the deserted front, not a soul on it, pounded by the deluge and beyond it the high tide pocked all over with rain. Le Beau Rivage overlooked this scene. Ricky could see a number of people staring out from its glassed-in portico and wondered if Ferrant were among them.
The Island Belle rocked at her moorings. Her gangway grated on the wharf.
Ricky saw that the administrative offices were shut, but a goods shed in which three cars were parked was open. He sheltered there. It was very dark. The rain drummed remorselessly on the roof. He got an impression of somebody else being in the shed — an impression so strong that he called out “Hallo! Anyone at home?” but there was no answer. He shook the rain from his mackintosh and hood and fished out his handkerchief to wipe his face. “This has been a rum sort of a day,” he thought, and wondered how best to wind it up.
Evidently the Island Belle would not sail for some time. The cars and a number of crates were yet, he supposed, to be put aboard her. He thought he remembered that a notice of some sort was exhibited at the foot of the gangway: probably the time of sailing. The Cove and his own familiar island began to seem very attractive. He would find out when the Island Belle sailed, return to the hotel for his rucksack, pay his bill, and rejoin her.
He pulled his hood well over his face and squelched out of the shed into the storm.
It was only a short distance to the ship’s moorings. Her bows rose and fell and above the storm he could hear her rubbing-strake grind against the jetty. He walked forward into the rain and was half blinded. When he came alongside the ship he stopped at the edge of the jetty and peered up, wondering if there was a watchman aboard.
The blow came as if it was part of the storm, a violence that struck him below the shoulders. The jetty was gone from under his feet. The side of the ship flew upwards. He thought, “This is abominable,” and was hit in the face. Green cold enclosed him and his mouth was full of water. Then he knew what had happened.
He had fallen between the turn of the bilge and the jetty, had struck against something on his way down and had sunk and risen. Saltwater stung the back of his nose and lodged in his throat. He floundered in a narrow channel between the legs of the jetty and the sloping side of the bilge.
“Did he fall or was he pushed?” thought Ricky, struggling in his prison, and knew quite definitely that he had been pushed.
iii
He had no idea how much leeway the ship’s moorings allowed her or whether she might roll to such a degree that he could be crushed against the legs of the jetty, the only motionless things in a heaving universe.
His head cleared. Instinctive physical reactions had kept him afloat for the first moments. He now got himself under control. “I ought to yell,” he thought and a distant thunderclap answered him. He turned on his back; the ship rolled and disclosed a faint daylight moon careering across a gap in the clouds. With great difficulty he began to swim, sometimes touching the piles and grazing his hands and feet on barnacles. The turn of the bilge passed slowly above him and at last was gone. He had cleared the bows of the Island Belle. There was Saint Pierre-des-Roches with the Hotel Beau Rivage and the hill and the church spire above it.
Now, should he yell for help? But there was still Somebody up there perhaps who wanted him drowned, crushed, whatever way — dead. He trod water, bobbing and ducking, and looked about him.
Not three feet away was a steel ladder.
When he reached and clung to it he still thought of the assailant who might be up there, waiting. He was now so cold that it would be better to risk anything rather than stay where he was. So he climbed, slowly. He had lost his espadrilles and the rungs bit into his feet. There was a sound like a voice, very far away: In his head, he thought, not real. Halfway up he paused. Everything had become quiet. It no longer rained.
“Hey! Hey there! Are you all right?”
For a moment he didn’t know where to look. The voice seemed to have come out of the sky. Then he saw, in the bows of the ship, leaning over the taffrail, a man in oilskins and sou’wester. He waved at Ricky.
“Are you OK, mate?” shouted the man.
Ricky tried to answer but could only produce a croak.
“Hang on, I’ll be with you. Hang on.”
Ricky hauled himself up another three rungs. His reeling head was just below the level of the jetty. He pushed his left arm through the rungs of the ladder and hung there, clinging with his right hand. He heard boots clump down the gangway and along the jetty towards him.
“You’ll be all right,” said the voice, close above him. He let his head flop back. The face under the sou’wester was red and concerned and looked very big against the sky. An arm and a purplish hand reached down. “Come on, then,” said the voice, “only a couple more.”
“I’m sort of — gone—” Ricky whispered.
“Not you. You’re fine. Make the effort, Jack.”
He made the effort and was caught by the arms and saved.
He lay on the jetty saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and being sick.
The man was very kind. He took off his oilskin and spread it over Ricky, whose teeth now chattered like castanets. He lay on his back and saw the clouds part and disperse. He felt the sun on his face.