Dennis Wheatley - Contraband

'Help,' he bellowed. 'For God's sake give me a hand to pull me out.'

Gregory turned a little and splashed towards him but his knees were now touching bottom at every movement that he made.

The light was brighter now; almost full day. In the distance the Limper's boat appeared; a cockle shell heading to landward up the channel.

Gregory could swim no farther. He began to crawl forward on his stomach knowing that to distribute his weight was the best way of preventing himself from sinking.

Wells had gone down to above his thighs and was still shouting wildly.

At last Gregory reached him and, although he knew that he could never pull him out, extended a hand towards him. The Inspector grabbed it, drawing Gregory towards him, but the suction of the sand was so powerful that he could not free his legs.

Gregory's knees and elbows were embedded. Every second he shifted his position so that the sands should not get a grip on him. 'Lean forward, distribute your weight,' he bellowed, but Wells had been sucked down to the waist and could only scrabble at the low water in front of him with outstretched hands.

Both of them could see the mark of the receding tide as it approached now by leaps and bounds… At one moment they were struggling in six inches of water, the next it was down to three and, almost before they had time to realise it, the sea was gone, leaving them stranded in the glittering sand.

Gregory felt it well up about his thighs and, wriggle as he would, there was no way to free himself of it. The tiny particles formed a glutinous mud which would not even bear his weight, more or less distributed as it was. His knees were buried and it trickled over the hollows behind them. Wells had sunk up to his armpits.

Both of them visualised the awful moment when the sand would be above their chins, when they could no longer lift their arms and were dragged down by the constant sucking motion, so that the sand reached their lips and entered their mouths in spite of all their efforts, choking them as they sank.

They began to scream at the top of their voices, yelling for help with all the force of their lungs, but not a sound came back to them from the desolate wastes that spread upon either hand, and no human figure appeared upon the distant cliff tops.

17

The Raid on Barter Street

Both men had sunk up to their chests. Waving their arms frantically above their heads they bellowed for help, but the Limper's boat had rounded a bend in the creek, where it met the land, so that it could no longer be seen from the shore and there was now no soul within sight or hearing.

Their field of view had narrowed as they sank and their eyes were now no more than twelve inches above the sand. Facing inshore they could only just see the lower coastline to the south of the bay, where it runs along to Sandwich flats and golf course; while to the north the steep white chalk cliffs reared up, naked and distant. Squirming and twisting they caught glimpses of the sea behind them. It was no longer running out at a great pace for it had almost reached low water level. About two hundred yards away the little wavelets broke with a gentle hissing noise but, from the line of vision of the desperate men, they appeared to have increased to the size of Atlantic rollers, cutting off the view to seaward.

To their left the channel cut through the fiat expanse of sand by the river Stour was still filled with deep, fast flowing water, but their eye level was too low for them to see it, although it lay only some thirty yards away.

They ceased to shout, conscious that their cries for help were unavailing, and that every ounce of breath was precious in their fight for life. The constant strain upon their muscles was appalling; bent forward from their waists they clawed at the treacherous sand, churning it into liquid silt in their fierce endeavours to hoist themselves out of the horrid ooze that gripped them.

The quicksand seemed to have become alive; as though imbued with some evil spirit of its own. It sucked and chuckled as they fought it; creeping up about them with gentle uncheckable persistence.

Their legs and torsos were fast embedded in its stranglehold so that they could no longer move a muscle of their lower limbs. It pressed upon them from every side seeming to weigh a ton. Their arms and shoulders were now sodden with it from their struggle; weighed down so that they could only move them with great effort.

Wells had almost given up; buried to the armpits, his head thrown back, he moved his arms only sufficiently to prevent their submergence as long as possible, while the sweat of the terror of death streamed off his face.

Gregory was still fighting, against his better judgment, as the sands seemed to suck at him more fiercely with each new effort that he made; but he would not surrender life until the last breath was choked out of him by the gritty slime covering his mouth and nose.

It was then, when both men felt all hope was gone, that then; heard the muffled drumming of a petrol engine rapidly approaching. Suddenly it ceased and a loud report, like the crack of a small cannon, shattered the silence.

They stopped struggling instantly and wrenched their shoulders round towards the left. Thirty yards away a group of men appeared to be standing knee deep and rocking gently in the sand. From them a long black snakelike rope was whizzing through the air: a lifeline fired from a rocket gun. It twisted a moment overhead and then came hurtling down with a plop on to the sands between the two almost buried men; the lead disc at its end piercing the morass a good twenty yards beyond them.

With almost unendurable relief they grabbed the rope and held it. The gun was fired again and another lifeline hissed through the air above them. Gregory could just reach it as it fell so he left the first for Wells. With their last remnants of strength, fortified by the frantic will to live, they hauled the slack end of the ropes in and coiled them round their bodies, beneath their armpits, by thrusting them through the unresisting sand which had welled up to their shoulders.

'Ready?' came a hail from the group by the rocket gun.

'Heave away,' shouted Gregory and the strain was taken up upon the ropes.

There followed the most ghastly struggle between the rescuers and those evil sands which were so loth to give up their prey. The imprisoned men thought that their bodies would be torn in half. They moaned in agony as the lifelines gripped them like wire springs about their chests; cutting into their bodies and forcing the breath out of their lungs. They were lying at an angle now, with their heads towards their rescuers, their shoulders only supported by the pulling ropes, their torsos and feet still buried deep in the shifting sands.

For what seemed an eternity they were stretched as though upon a rack, striving with the tired muscles of their legs for even a fraction of movement which would free them, but it seemed that they were too firmly embedded ever to be drawn out.

It was Gregory who, through a mist of pain, realised that now their heads and shoulders were supported there was no longer any danger of their arms becoming permanently imprisoned if they chose to use them, so he plunged his hands down and began to heave out handfuls of the soft semi liquid silt from in front of his chest.

Almost as fast as he relieved the pressure the sand seeped back, but the movement at least eased the weight from his chest a little and, when he lifted his head again, he found that he could see more of the men who were heaving on the rope. Their lower extremities were hidden by the gunwale of a boat which was just visible now above the flat expanse of sand. Then he remembered the creek and realised that the motor boat must have come up into it from the sea.