Geoffrey Jenkins - A Cleft Of Stars

I knew no more until I found myself lying, stripped, on a blanket on the cabin floor with Nadine bending over me, massaging my chest and throat with warm oil.

'I came back,' I said.

She didn't stop rubbing but switched her fingers lightly to my mouth and face.

'My darling — my poor, poor, stupid darling!

Her eyes were misty and I knew the drops on my chest were tears: they were warmer than the oil.

I reached up to kiss her but everything span round and the effort brought on an uncontrollable convulsive tremor in my frozen muscles.

Tie quiet,' she murmured. 'Quiet, with me. Not alone. Not like all last night. That long, long night.'

She took off her clothes and put her warm breasts against my chest and her body over me and her lips against mine as if she were reviving a drowning person until the rigors died down. I thawed and her warmth drew the sweet smell of oil from our skins. Then all at once I wanted to cry and stay like that forever And I tried to tell her so but it was she who did the comforting, with those warm breasts of hers bringing the life back into me.

A bump on the hull brought us back to the reality of the flood danger.

'We must get out of here fast,' I said. 'Your island's being submerged, as mine was. All the stuff is starting to break away from the reef and soon this little cove will disappear. Then we'll be at the mercy of the current. I don't like the look of the waves either — they seem to be getting steeper. My guess is too that they'll get worse when we approach The Hill.. The Hill?'

'You'll understand when I tell you how I got here. She sat up and her slim body looked very lovely in the pinky sunrise showing through the porthole.

'Not a word before you have something hot inside you.'

'I'll disobey orders, however attractive they may be,' I grinned back. 'We're not out of the wood yet and when the current switches back to normal we'll never stand a chance of getting near The Hill.'

Briefly I explained the phenomenon of the back-flowing current while we dressed and I ate a hasty breakfast, which included good hot coffee made by Nadine.

'Bless the crazy current,' she said when I had finished. 'Bless it because it brought you back to me.'

'That current is also our golden opportunity. We can ride with it right to The Hill. Then if we are lucky we can finish exploring the isifuba board where we left off. The whole situation's playing clean into our hands.'

Her eyes were full of lovely things. 'I've still got the "King's Messenger" safe.'

'Splendid. And don't forget about Praeger. If he's marooned in Rankin's cave we can investigate safely and get away before he can do anything about it. On the other hand, if we don't take a chance we could wait days or weeks until the water goes down and then Praeger will be back in the game. Have you seen the lake that has formed?'

We went on deck. The rain had almost stopped and it was quite still. The redness had gone out of the east and visibility was a mile or more. We were alone in a sea of muddy water. I started the engine because the island was becoming more and more submerged; soon, too, the barrier of debris which had built up on the reef would disappear entirely on the rising water.

'There'll soon be enough depth over the reef to break out,' I said. 'What happened last night when she jumped over it?'

'There were several heavy bumps, then she rode free. I didn't pay much attention: I'd lost you and the rest didn't matter.'

In the stronger light the evidence of her ordeal showed plainly on her face and eyes. After waiting a while we decided to risk the attempt to get clear. There wasn't much room for manoeuvre and I was afraid of damage to the screw if it caught in the reef, but I took it gently and she pulled nicely into the current. I brought her head round and we headed in the direction of The Hill.

Our hearts lifted with the morning and the thrust of screw and current combined to send the boat along at a spanking clip. She was light and rode easily though I had to watch carefully the water racing up from astern, to prevent her being pooped. There was no damage to the hull that I could discover. The sky lightened for a while behind the fine drizzle and we could make out the broken country on the approaches to The Hill. It was impossible to gauge the extent of the great shallow lake but it was grand and impressive and dotted with little islands; and in the shallower parts the tops of large trees still stuck out above the waves.

When we neared our objective we spotted a long headland jutting out with the current sweeping round its base. I recognized it immediately.

'K2!' I exclaimed. 'I'm damned if I thought I'd ever see it looking like that!'

'The water can't be very deep, Guy.'

'Twenty feet, maybe — what does it matter? It's enough to keep von Praeger bottled up.'

'If he's at the cave.'

'If he's not, I could almost feel sorry for him. Something came floating belly-up past me in the night. It could have been him, or Koen, or a dead croc.'

'Or Dika.

I pulled her close. 'I couldn't bear it. I kept telling myself it wasn't you. But I couldn't be sure. Each hour after that was its own private hell.'

'I tried to draw your face with the "King's Messenger" but I couldn't remember how you looked. I couldn't remember! I went round touching all your things to try and bring you back. Are you warm now, darling?'

'Splendid. A little stiff.'

I pointed. 'There it is. The Hill.'

'The Hill — and our future.'

We were coming in fast from the east, a quarter from which we couldn't spot the crevasse. The Hill looked gaunt and muddy but apparently the same, standing up out of the surrounding water which wasn't much higher than the foot of the secret stairway.

'This will be tricky,' I said. The current's wrong for us on this side of The Hill. It must be pretty rough too where the terrace used to be.'

The Hill was perhaps a mile and a half away by this time and the drizzle seemed to be more concentrated in its vicinity.

'There's certain to be a lee with slack water near the crevasse where we came down, Nadine.'

'We can probably walk up comfortably.

'Then we'll try there for a start.'

The surroundings looked odd, being partially submerged; and where the wadi began the current split, one half sweeping through between K2 and The Hill and the other round the extremity of The Hill itself. The waves there looked dangerous against the rocks and I couldn't prevent the boat from being carried close in but we skidded past successfully and managed a sharp turn around this point which took us into calmer water. I kept the boat close in against the cliffs and the engine's noise echoed off them. We came in sight of the fatal wedge-shaped crevasse only when we rounded another small point and were almost upon it. The underlying rock had been swept virtually free of soil by the storm and an easy gradient ran from the water's edge to the tabletop.

We were heading towards a landing spit here when an aircraft engine started up.

Our eyes naturally went to the sky and so I lost valuable moments holding my course — and by the time I'd jammed the rudder hard over to make a break for open water it was too late.

A prop rider — a twin-hulled, shallow draught boat driven by an airscrew rigged on deck-shot into sight from behind The Hill and came creaming across the water straight at us.

'Oh God! It's Praeger!'

Nadine was right. He was wearing bright yellow oilskins and a sou'wester. He stood steering the craft from a forward cockpit and the propeller spun in a kind of enclosed wire cage astern. Too late I realized that this is what I'd seen on the river; not an aircraft propeller turning in the wind.

I yanked the throttle wide open and tried to reach broken water where the light-hulled skimmer would have to reduce speed in the waves but von Praeger anticipated my move and swept in a wide circle, effectively cutting off the escape.