Geoffrey Jenkins - A Cleft Of Stars

I thrust a bailer — a saucepan I found floating about — into her hands and seized my axe. I thought when I began to work on deck, however, that she would never rise again: the tree and boat swinging together in circles made my task doubly difficult. I went for the ropes first, then switched my attack to the entangling branches. Some of these were dead and hard and too much for the small chopper, so I concentrated on the smaller ones and cleared them sufficiently to enable the boat to float more upright. Nevertheless she was still trapped by some big limbs which banged down on the deck and punched some holes through it. I selected one which I thought was the main danger and after a tough struggle succeeded in hacking it off. This gave me room for manoeuvre: I got the engine going and awaited my moment for trying to break free. The dizzy slewing went on and on and the way the boat rode heavy and dead brought fear into the pit of my stomach. I could see no sign of the banks: nothing but dirty brown water everywhere. I watched my opportunity and it occurred during one of the merry-go-rounds. The stern pointed clear and I snapped the engine into reverse and gave it the gun. She barely pulled clear of the tree because of the weight of water inside her; then, despite full power on the screw, she too began the same sort of swirling movement. I moved the rudder in every direction but it didn't help. So I cut the engine and went below to help Nadine bail out.

'Are we sinking, Guy?'

'Not yet. She's not badly holed, as far as I know. If we can lighten her and get control before she crashes into something we'll be okay.'

She touched her pocket. 'I've got the "King's Messenger" safe.'

'We'll need all the luck it can bring us'

We bailed and bailed and brought down the water level inside the cabin but the worst part was the way the boat was listing first to one side then the other, as she went round and round with a slow spinning movement wherever the current chose to take her. As soon as the water in the cabin was below the immediate danger level I decided I must again try, using the engine, to bring things under control.

'I don't know if it's got enough guts to make any difference but I'll try,' I told Nadine. 'I must bring her head steady.'

'Where's the shore, Guy?' Her voice was very small and flat and her face looked peaked in the light of the swinging lantern.

'God knows. We may hit it at any moment. I daren't even think about floating obstacles.'

The roundabout movement seemed worse up on deck,

though I had no fixed point to assess it by. The light was too bad to see more than a few yards ahead and all that was visible was the bucking water with its white caps of dirty foam looking like cappuccino coffee. I couldn't spot the banks but from the force of the current judged we must be in midstream. I wanted something to steer for, something to end — that sickening motion. I tried to get the boat's head steady by using impetus of an outward wing plus full throttle but it didn't work. I tried a similar tactic when it seemed that the stern offered a hope, and revved the motor in reverse under full power until it felt it would jump clean out of the transom; but that didn't help either. I abandoned my efforts for a moment when I spotted a big tree trunk with broken-off branches whirling close in the same orbit as the boat and managed to pole it clear. There were suddenly more logs and trunks all round us now. I went into the bows with the pole to see whether there was perhaps a whirlpool or some obstruction which was causing the debris to bank up.

Through the murk and rain I saw what it — was- a moment before the boat struck — a low brush island with debris of all kinds heaping up against it. The boat was still running and yawing like a hunted animal and there was no time to make even a gesture with the engine to avoid it. We tripped over a seething white reef fronting the island and bumped across it with a sickening crash-grind, crash-grind.

I was caught on the open deck with only the pole in my hands and nothing to hang on to. The jar on the keel shot me headlong into the water and I was carried away downstream on the current and into the night.

The water was very cold and I thought I would never come up. My boots and the tarpaulin poncho were a deadweight pulling down as the flood turned my body over and over. When I did surface I grabbed a lungful of air and tried to see the island where the boat had grounded but didn't know which way to look. It was dark and the waves splashed into my eyes and the swirling water completely disorientated me. The weight of my clothes and boots took me down again and I knew that I would drown if I didn't get rid of them or find something to hang on to. I was being whirled about, fairly deep under the water again, in a kind of blind-man's buff; then rose to the surface a second time, almost bumping into a piece of floating timber spinning about as I had just been doing underwater. I was too keen and snatched at it too quickly; it span and slipped away out of my grip. I tried to follow it but my boots and clothing stopped me. I attempted to thrash with arms and feet but the waves kept slapping me down and filling my eyes and mouth with ice-cold water, full of sand and grit.

I tried not to panic and told myself that the river was full of things to hang on to and that I had seen big trees about just before the boat struck. I'm only a fair swimmer and couldn't float because of my boots. Then I saw a trunk near by and it swung round as if it were meant for me. I held on to it and seemed to be moving very fast but there was nothing static against which I could judge my speed. Now that I could move my head freely, I looked for the island and the boat, and thought I saw them sliding away out of sight behind me. I couldn't be sure, however, what with the dirty water slapping into my face, but I hoped to guide the log towards where I thought the boat might be by thrashing with my feet and paddling with my free arm. But I couldn't work against the current and after a few minutes my throat tasted sour from the effort and my stomach muscles were strained; I wanted to retch but couldn't.

The rain on my face had a different quality about it from the water blown into it off the river. The latter was thick and muddy, and a silly phrase kept, beating about in my brain about its being 'too thin to plough and too thick to drink'. I steadied the log and tried to face the wind, which I knew would be north-east, but every time I achieved this by paddling, a new eddy would swing us round and I would lose direction again.

It wasn't until I knew I wouldn't drown that I started to panic about Nadine. Until then I had taken it for granted she would be safe below in the cabin because the boat had grounded on an outlying spur of the island. But now the thought tore at me that she might have struck an isolated rock and not an island at all tearing the bottom out of the boat, with Nadine trapped in the cabin before she could escape. I lifted myself on the trunk as high as I could to see if I could spot the boat but it was dark and streaming and even the coffee-coloured wave-tops were invisible beyond a few yards.

It was colder out of the water than in and the wind seemed to cut into my chest through my soaking clothes. I fell back to my previous position, numbed by an inner chill and sick with despair.

I do not know how long I was in the river. There was nothing by which to judge distances or speed and my watch had been smashed. I was held in a tiny world of darkness, slapping water and cavorting tree trunk. I wondered if I would fall off if I got cramps or if I could do anything about a crocodile if it came my way. It was so dark, I told myself, that I wouldn't see it coming anyhow and the end would be quick. I also wondered whether any of the dead things in the river were hyenas and I cursed Dika and everything to do with von Praeger. I tried not to think of Nadine and clung to the hope that the boat had stuck fast on the reef, with the comparative safety of the island only a few steps away. After a time it seemed that the wind was beginning to ease: it felt less cold about my head; and from the way it played in turn on my cheeks, ears and then the back of my neck I judged that I was travelling in a long swinging curve. The white caps appeared easier, too, though the current was stronger. I hoped the moon would give some light later on when the storm had slacked off, so that I could see if I was moving in towards a bank. I could, have been near one a dozen times in the darkness without knowing it. At first I was hopeful but afterwards began to lose heart when the rain continued to sluice down. Now the wind was definitely less. I consoled myself that I mightn't be travelling miles away from Nadine but was perhaps circling about quite near her; and the thought brought me comfort for a while. I wished I had Koen's brandy. My toes felt dead when I wriggled them inside my boots. I wondered if the cramps would start there first or in my arms and whether I could do anything about lashing myself to the log when they did come.