Hammond Innes: The Strange Land

‘Dr Kavan,’ I shouted.

‘Kavan? But there is only Wade on the boat.’

‘No. A Dr Kavan is with him.’

‘I don’t believe it.’ He stared at me. ‘Why should he bring Kavan? He would not be such a fool.’ And then he caught hold of my arm. ‘What do you know about this, Lat’am?’

But my attention switched to the boat then as she lifted high on the curling crest of a breaker. I thought for a moment that she was going to broach-to; she swung almost broadside and then twisted back on to her pell-mell course of destruction, steadying in the surf and driving forward through the broken water, her bows half buried by the press of canvas for’ard. She was surging straight in towards us and I realised that the man at the helm had seen the channel cut by the oued and was driving her towards it. But the oued was only a trickle. The channel did not extend into the sands.

The tall mainmast quivered as she struck. She held there for a moment, her waterline showing like a red wound in the backwash, and then the next wave had piled in on top of her, jerking her forward, covering her with a seething cataract of foam like a half-submerged rock. And as the wave receded, a lone man fought his way for’ard to the bows. He wore a life jacket and for a moment he stood there, his head turned, watching the next wave climb and curl above the stern of the boat. I heard the girl give a cry that was as wild and forlorn as a sea bird’s, and then the wave was breaking and the figure of the man plunged into the surf of it and was lost.

I ran down to the sands then. The little group by the water’s edge had a rope, but they were arguing and gesticulating. They weren’t going to risk their necks in that sea. I stripped off my clothes and seized the end of the rope and tied it round my waist. I could see the swimmer’s head now. He was halfway between the yacht and the beach and he was being swept out again in the backwash of a wave. ‘Hold that,’ I shouted to one of the gendarmes, thrusting the end of the rope into his hand. And then I was wading out through the warmth of the water, letting the backwash carry me towards the dark head of the swimmer where he was being sucked into the break of the next wave.

I called to him as my legs were swept from under me, and then I was swimming. I met the on-coming breaker with my body flat, spearing through it, coming up with my ears singing with the rush of it, and then swimming hard with the rope tugging at my belly.

The yacht wasn’t far now. It shifted in the break of a wave. The waves seemed huge in the moonlight. They piled in, one after the other, growing, white-capped mountains that rose up as though from some subterranean commotion, rose up to impossible heights and then toppled and fell with the crushing weight of tons of water. Their surf piled over me, flinging me shorewards, filling mouth, ears, eyes and nose full of the burning, sand-laden salt of the water.

I prayed to God that they would keep a firm hold on the rope, knowing no swimmer could get ashore through this unaided, and then I came up gasping for breath, searching desperately for the man I’d come in after. The tug of a backwash got me, tossed me into the maw of a breaker, which toyed with me and spewed me up out of its creaming back, and there he was, lying like a log not twenty yards to my left.

I put my head down and began to swim. Another wave piled over me and then I was seaward of him, treading water, waiting to hold him in the backwash. I caught him just as the next wave engulfed us. I got my fingers into his life jacket and kicked with all my strength. And as we broke surface, I felt the rope tighten round my body, biting into my flesh as they held the two of us against the back-surge. And then they were dragging us in, my lungs fighting for breath against the constriction of the rope and the tug of the man’s waterlogged body.

After what seemed an age there came a wave that rolled us forward like logs before a wall of broken water, engulfed us and then subsided to leave my feet scrabbling desperately in a moving tide of sand.

After that there wasn’t any danger any more, only the leaden weakness of my legs as I forced them to drag myself and my burden clear of the pull of the surf. Where the sea ended and the sands showed hard and white in the moonlight I staggered and fell forward on to my hands. I was completely drained of energy, utterly exhausted. They dragged us higher up the sands to safety and then fingers unknotted the rope from around my waist and began to rub my body to restore the circulation.

Slowly the blood pumped energy back into my limbs and I pulled myself into a sitting position. I saw the bay and the white surf in the moonlight and the lank hair lying across the man’s bloodless face. He was short and thick-set and he had a round head set close into broad, powerful shoulders. One arm was bent across his chest. He looked like a little bearded Napoleon.

And then everything was blurred and I retched, emptying myself of the sea water that was in my lungs and stomach. I was sweating suddenly and very cold.

One of the Spanish Customs officers helped me to my feet. And then Youssef was there. He had slipped out of his djellaba and he thrust it down over my head, whether to cover my nakedness or to keep me warm I don’t know. The cloth was soft and it kept out the wind. I pulled it close round me, trying to control the shivering of my body. The girl was still standing up there on the bluff, her hands clasped together, her body leant forward as though she were on the point of rushing down on to the beach; but yet she did not move. She stayed up there as though her feet were somehow rooted to the spot.

The officials were all bending over the man I had pulled out of the sea, One of them had turned him over on his face and had begun to work on him, kneeling astride him and pressing rhythmically with the palms of his hands against the man’s shoulders, thrusting down with all his weight. Kostos hovered uncertainly in the background. One of the police, a sergeant, caught hold of my hand and pumped it up and down and slapped me on the back as though by shaking my hand and congratulating me and telling me I was a brave man he could absolve himself from his failure to enter the water.

And all the time I stood there, feeling dazed, staring down at the face of the stranger that was pressed against the sand. It was a round, white face under the dark stubble of the beard, the lips slightly parted, blowing frothy bubbles. Then the eyes opened and they were bloodshot and wild in the moonlight. He began to retch with a ghastly concentration, and a pool of water appeared where his mouth touched the sand and trickled away under his body. He groaned, shook himself, and crawled slowly to his feet, swaying slightly and blinking his eyes. He stared at us for a moment, rubbed at the salt in his eyes with his knuckles, and then looked back at the yacht where it lay, canted over, the waves thundering across its decks.

‘What about the other man?’ I asked him.

He didn’t seem to hear, so I caught him by the arm and repeated my question.

He looked at me then. There was blood trickling down from a cut on his head, a bright scarlet runnel of blood in the sand that covered his temple. His eyes were half closed and his mouth was a thin line as though compressed by pain. Then he looked past me at the police and the Customs officers and his eyes were wide open and I saw that he was fully conscious, his brain alive again.

The sergeant saw it, too. He stepped forward. ‘Your name please, senor?’ he asked in Spanish. The man didn’t reply and the sergeant said, ‘Are you Senor Kavan? Senor Jan Kavan, a resident of Great Britain?’

The man made some sort of sound, inarticulate as a grunt, as though somebody had punched him in the solar plexus. He was staring at the police, swaying slightly, his eyes immensely blue and wide open, dazed with shock. And then Kostos pushed his way through the little circle of officials. ‘You are Mr Wade, yes?’ He gripped the man’s arm, shaking him. ‘You do not bring anybody else with you, eh?’