CHAPTER EIGHT
The rain eased and finally stopped altogether, but the night stayed dark. And the sharks stayed away. We made slow time, because I couldn't use my left arm to help me along, but we made time and after almost an hour, when I calculated that we must be at least half a mile beyond the barbed wire fences, we started angling in slowly for shore.
Less than two hundred yards from land I discovered that our change in direction was premature, the high wall of cliff extended further round the south of the island than I had imagined it would. There was nothing for it but to trudge slowly on-by this time 'swimming' would have been a complete and flattering misnomer for our laboured and clumsy movements through the water-and hope that we wouldn't lose our sense of direction in the slight obscuring drizzle that had again begun to fall.
Luck stayed with us and so did our sense of direction, for when the drizzle finally lifted I could see that we were no more than a hundred and fifty yards from a thin ribbon of sand that marked the shore-line. It felt more like a hundred and fifty miles, at least it did to me. I had the vague impression that an undertow was pulling us out into the lagoon all the time, but I knew this couldn't be so, otherwise we would have been swept far out long ago. It was just sheer weakness. But my awareness was not of effort or exhaustion but almost wholly of frustration: the urgency so desperate, the progress so infuriatingly slow.
My feet touched bottom and I staggered upright in less than three feet of water: I swayed and would have fallen had not Marie caught my arm, she was in far better shape than I " was. Side by side we waded slowly ashore and the way I felt no one ever looked less like Venus emerging from the deeps than I did right then. Together we stumbled on to the shore, then, two minds with but one thought, we sat down heavily on the damp sand.
"God, at last!" I gasped. The breath was wheezing in and out of my lungs like air through the sides of a moth-eaten bellows. "I thought we'd never make it."
"Neither did we," a clipped drawling voice agreed. We swung round only to be blinded by the bright white glare from a pair of torches. "You certainly took your time. Please don't try-Good Lord! A female!"
Although biologically accurate enough it struck me as a singularly inept term to describe Marie Hopeman, but I let it pass. Instead I scrambled painfully to my feet and said: "You saw us coming?"
"For the past twenty minutes," he drawled. "We have radar and infra-red that would pick up the head of a shrimp if it stuck itself above water. My word, a woman! What's your name? Are you armed?" The grasshopper mind, a clear cut case for Pelmanism.
"I have a knife," I said tiredly. "Right now I couldn't cut asparagus with it. You can have it if you want." The light was no longer directly in our eyes and I could make out the shape of three figures clad in white, two of them with the vague blurs of guns cradled in their arms. "My name is Bentall. You are a naval officer?"
"Anderson. Sub-Lieutenant Anderson. Where in all the world have you two come from. What is your reason-"
"Look," I interrupted. "Those things can wait. Please take me to your commanding officer, now. It's very important. At once."
"Now just a minute, my friend." The drawl was more pronounced than ever. "You don't seem to realise-"
"At once," I said. "Look, Anderson, you sound like a naval officer who might have a very promising career in front of him but I can promise you that a career stops today, violently, if you don't cooperate fast. Don't be a fool, man. Do you think I'd turn up like this unless there was something most desperately wrong? I'm a British Intelligence agent and so is Miss Hopeman here. How far to your C.O.'s place?"
Maybe he was no fool, or maybe it was the urgency in my voice because, after a moment's hesitation, he said: "The better part of a couple of miles. But there's a telephone at a radar post quarter a mile along that way." He pointed in the direction of the twin barbed wire fences. "If it's really urgent-"
"Send one of your men there, please. Tell your C.O.- what's his name by the way?"
"Captain Griffiths."
'Tell Captain Griffiths that an attempt will almost certainly be made to overpower you and seize your installation very shortly, perhaps in only an hour or two," I said quickly. "Professor Witherspoon and his assistants who worked on the archaeological excavations on the other side of the island have been murdered by criminals who have driven-"
"Murdered!" He came close to me. "Did you say murdered?"
"Let me finish. They've driven this tunnel clear through the island and need breach only a few more feet of limestone to emerge on this side of the island. Where, I don't know, probably about a hundred feet above sea-level. You'll need patrols, patrols to listen for their picks and shovels. They're unlikely to blast their way out."
"Good God."
"I know. How many men have you here?"
"Eighteen civilian, the rest Navy. About fifty all told."
"Armed?"
"Rifles, tommy-guns, about a dozen altogether. Look here, Mr.-ah-Bentall, are you absolutely sure about-I mean, how am I to know?"
"I'm sure. For heaven's sake, man, hurry up."
Another momentary hesitation, then he turned to one of the half-seen men by his side. "Did you get that, Johnston?"
"Yes, sir. Witherspoon and the others dead. Attack expected through tunnel, very soon. Patrols, listening. Yes, sir."
"Right. Off you go." Johnston disappeared at a dead run, and Anderson turned to me. "I suggest we go straight to the Captain. You will forgive me if Leading Seaman Allison walks behind us. You have made an illegal entry into an officially protected area and I can't take chances. Not till I have clear proof of your bona fides."
"Just so long as he keeps his safety catch on I don't care what he does," I said wearily. '1 haven't come all this length just to be shot in the back if your man trips over his own ankles."
We went off in single file, not talking, Anderson with a torch leading the way and Allison with another bringing up the rear. I was feeling dizzy and unwell. The first greyish streaks of dawn were beginning to finger their way upwards from the eastern horizon. After we had gone perhaps three hundred yards, following an ill-defined track that ran first through a scrubby belt of palms and then low bush, I heard an exclamation from the sailor behind me.
He came up close to my back, then called out "Sir!" Anderson stopped, turned. "What is it Allison."
"This man's hurt, sir. Badly hurt, I should say. Look at his left arm."
We all looked at my left arm, no one with more interest than myself. Despite my attempts to favour it as we had been swimming, the exertion seemed to have opened up the major wounds again and my left hand was completely covered with blood that had dripped down my arm. The spreading effect of the intermingled salt water made it seem worse than it actually was, but even so it was more than enough to account for the way I felt.
Sub-Lieutenant Anderson went far up in my estimation. He spent no time on exclamations or sympathies, but said: "Mind if I rip this sleeve off?"
"Go ahead," I said. "But mind you don't rip off the arm at the same time. I don't think there's a great deal holding it in place."
They cut off the sleeve with the aid of Allison's knife and I could see the tightening of Anderson's thin brown intelligent face as he studied the wounds.
"Your friends across at the phosphate camp?"
"That's it. They had a dog."
"This is either infected or gangrenous or both. Either way it's pretty nasty. Lucky for you we have a naval surgeon here. Hold this, miss, will you?" He handed his torch to Marie, pulled off his shirt and tore it into several wide strips, using them to bandage my arm tightly. "Won't do the infection any good, but it should cut down the bleeding. The civilian quonset huts aren't any more than half a mile from here. Think you can make it?" The reserved tone in the voice had vanished. The sight of that left arm had been as good as a character reference from the First Sea Lord.