There was a chorus of startled cries from the men and one of them rushed forward. “Why you? Why not us?”
Jacaud took a Liiger from his pocket and shot the man twice in the chest, the bullets knocking him into the water. There was a sudden silence and they all crowded back.
A few moments later the largest dinghy was moving away, the petty officer in the stern operating the outboard motor. Jacaud sat in the prow facing him and Guyon sprawled in the bottom.
The power of the current was already swinging the doomed submarine in towards the reef and there was a confused shouting on deck. One by one, the men crowded into the remaining dinghies and the current immediately swept them away.
Below in L’Alouette Fenelon lay in his cabin, forgotten by everyone. It was only when the water reached his bunk that he came to his senses. He sat up, stared down at it for a moment, then suddenly seemed to come to life.
He moved outside and started forward. At that moment the lights went out. He screamed as darkness enfolded him and started to feel his way along desperately.
As he reached the control room, light streaming in through the open conning tower, water started to cascade down the ladder and the whole world seemed to turn upside down.
He was aware of the crash, the rending of the metal plates and then a green cascade mercifully engulfed him. The sea swung L’Alouette in across the reef. For a brief moment she poised on the edge, then plunged down into the darkness of the Middle Passage.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
the oars dipped and rose and Mallory pulled with all his strength, but his arms were tired and already there was a blister in one palm from a splinter in the rough handles.
It was more than an hour since Fleur de Lys had gone down and he had rowed steadily for most of that time, making little progress. The fog still hung low over the water in long, wraithlike patches. On one occasion he seemed to hear a faint cry. When he looked back there was a brief flash of yellow on top of a wave as one of the submarine’s rubber dinghies was swept out to sea.
After a while he stopped and rested on the oais. lie de Roc was still half a mile away and it was quite obvious that the run of the tide was sweeping him on a parallel course with the island that would eventually take him out to sea.
Even if he fetched up in the steamer lane that ran up-Channel from Ushant it would be dark in another hour. He was under no illusions about his ability to survive a night in the Channel in such a frail craft.
There were two good doubles left in the bottle of Courvoisier. He took them down slowly and tossed the empty bottle into the sea. As a thin rain drifted down on the wind he reached for the oars and started to row again.
The freshening wind dispelled the last traces of fog and an ugly chop formed on the water. He pulled steadily, staring into the gathering twilight, his mind a blank, everything he had of brain and muscle concentrated on his impossible task.
When he paused twenty minutes later and looked over his shoulder he saw to his astonishment that he was now quite close to the island. There was a slapping sound against the keel of the dinghy and it swung round, swirling past a long finger of rock, moving in fast, caught by some inshore current.
He bent to the oars with renewed vigour, forgetting the pain in his right hand, the blood that dripped steadily down. The current helped, carrying him closer inshore every minute. The waves were higher now as they pounded in over the rocks and water started to slop across the dinghy’s stern.
He heaved on the oars, trying to keep her head round, but it was too much for him. He let them go, knelt in the bottom and waited, holding on with both hands.
The cliffs were very close now, the surf white as it crashed in across the narrow beach, breaking over ledges of rock. Behind Mallory a great, heaving swell rolled in, gathering momentum, sweeping him in before it. A sudden rending crash jarred his spine. Water foamed around, spray lifting high into the air. The dinghy ground forward across jagged rocks, her boards splintering, and came to a halt, the prow wedged into a crevasse.
Mallory hung on, and as the sea receded with a great sucking noise he scrambled out of the dinghy and stumbled across the final line of rocks. A moment later he was safe on the strip of beach at the base of the cliffs.
He sat down, holding his head in his hands, and the world spun away. The taste of the sea was in his throat and he retched, bringing up a quantity of salt-water.
After a while he got to his feet and turned to examine the cliffs behind. They were no more than seventy or eighty feet high and sloped gently backwards, cracked and fissured by great gullies.
It was an easy enough climb and he scrambled over the edge a few minutes later and turned to look out to sea. The fog had disappeared completely now, but darkness was falling fast and the moon was already rising above the horizon.
He hurried through the wet grass, following the slope in a gentle curve that brought him over the edge of the hill ten minutes later on the far side of the harbour from the Grants” house.
The cove looked strangely deserted, no smoke rising from the chimney of the hotel. He was aware of Guymon’s launch, of the shooting brake tilted against a rock, the long skid-marks trailing back up the grassy slope to the road. He went down the slope on the run.
He \walked round to the front of the hotel, calling loudly without receiving any reply. When he opened the door and stepped into the bar he was already prepared for something out of the ordinary, some evidence of a struggle at least.
Jagbir and Juliette Vincente still crouched together by the bar, a pool of dried blood spreading into the rush matting.
It was very quiet, too quiet, and for a moment Mallory seemed to hear the sea roaring in his ears and there was an element of unreality to it all. It was as if none of this were really happening, and he turned and stumbled outside.
He wasted five minutes in going down to the jetty in the forlorn hope that Guymon’s launch might be seaworthy. It was almost completely dark when he breasted the hill and trotted towards the Grants” house.
He went in through the kitchen and quiet enveloped him, that strange, secret stillness a house wraps about itself when no one is there, and an overwhelming loneliness surged through him.
He spoke aloud, his voice hoarse and broken: “Anne?”
But only the house listened to him and the quiet ones. He stumbled into the sitting-room, opened the cabinet and poured himself a brandy. He stood there, sipping it quietly, remembering her here by the fireside in the soft lamplight a thousand years ago.
The darkness seemed to move in on him with a strange whispering, and he closed his eyes tightly, fighting the panic, the despair which rose inside him. The moment passed. He put down the glass and went out through the French windows.
The moon was clear and very bright, stars strung away to the horizon. When he topped the hill on the western side of the island St. Pierre and the castle were etched out of black cardboard, breathtakingly beautiful like something from a child’s fairy-tale.
Beneath him the tide was already on the turn, white water breaking across the great reef, rocks thrusting their heads into the moonlight. Minute by minute the water would continue to drop until for one brief hour a jagged causeway linked the two islands. One hour only and then the tide would come roaring in. But there was no point in thinking about that. Such had been his haste since landing from the dinghy that he had not even had time to rid himself of his lifejacket. He touched it mechanically, moved along the cliffs till he came to a sloping ravine that slanted to the beach below, and started down.
Marcel unbolted the heavy door and de Beaumont moved inside. There was no window, but the room was brightly illuminated by a naked bulb which hung from the centre of the low ceiling. Guyon and Hamish Grant sat on a couple of old packing cases, talking in low tones.