Alex Randall was coming down the passage towards her, and he caught her arm and steadied her: ‘What’s the matter? Feeling ill again?’
‘No,’ said Winter on a gasp. She had forgotten that she had meant to avoid all conversation with Captain Randall outside of social necessity, and she clung to his arm, her eyes wide with shock. ‘It was Kishan Prasad—’
She saw Alex’s face change and his mouth tighten, and said breathlessly: ‘He was looking at that ship. And he was glad! He hated them and he wanted them to drown … he was glad that they had been drowned … I could see that he was!’
Alex said: ‘It isn’t so surprising. They were soldiers - British troops. If he could have drowned them singly with his own hands he would probably have done so.’
‘Why? Do they - do they hate us?’
Alex said impatiently: ‘Did you suppose that they loved us? The benefits of Western civilization are not necessarily looked upon as an unmixed blessing when imposed upon the East by a foreign conqueror, you know.’
He looked down at Winter’s white face and glimpsed something of the shock that this sudden revelation of hatred had dealt her. The girl had obviously never thought of India as a conquered country. She had imagined herself to be coming home, and the realization that many of the inhabitants of that land could hate all those of British blood with a savage and implacable hatred was like a blow in the face to a trusting child. He wanted to say: ‘Don’t look like that! It isn’t safe to be so vulnerable - to expect too much of anything or anyone.’
He said instead, with a kind of exasperated anger: ‘I warned your cousin Ware that this was no time to send any young woman out to India, but he would not listen. None of them will!’ And turning from her abruptly he went on down the passage and up onto the wet deck.
But it was only two days later than Kishan Prasad fell overboard, and it was Alex who went after him.
12
Alex had not known that it was Kishan Prasad who had fallen. Perhaps if he had it might have altered the course of a great many lives.
The day had been hot and still and all that remained of the storm was a long, heaving, barely perceptible swell that swung the cabin doors idly to and fro and made the line of the horizon lift up and fall again in a slow, leisurely rhythm. The sea was blue with the intense midnight blue of the Indian Ocean, and so clear that floating squadrons of jelly-fish far below the surface appeared as though embedded like bubbles in blue glass, and the sun that had blazed down all day from a cloudless sky had made the deck planks uncomfortably hot to the touch, even under the shade of the awnings.
It was after four o’clock and the decks were comparatively deserted while the passengers changed for dinner. Lottie had come up early, intending to meet her Edward, and she had looked up and seen Kishan Prasad standing on the paddle-box gazing out to sea. Even as she looked the ship rolled suddenly in the trough of an unexpectedly deep swell, and she saw Kishan Prasad, taken off guard, slip and fall and slide under the rail. The next moment he had vanished, and Lottie shrieked and ran.
Two of the lascars, together with a ship’s officer and Colonel Moulson, had also seen someone fall, and they ran along the deck shouting. Colonel Moulson, with what he considered to be admirable presence of mind, picked up two deck-chairs and heaved them overboard into the creaming wake, and these were followed almost immediately by a hen-coop thrown after them by one of the lascars.
‘Man overboard!’ bellowed Colonel Moulson and the ship’s officer.
Alex, who had been lying asleep face downward in a patch of shade with his head buried in his arms, woke at Lottie’s shriek and came to his feet. She stumbled towards him, her face chalk-white, screaming and pointing, and he turned and raced aft along the deck and caught a brief glimpse of a despairing hand that reached up from the foaming wake.
‘It’s all right, Randall,’ snapped Colonel Moulson. ‘Only one of those blacks. He’ll be drowned by now - they can’t swim.’
A sudden flash of pure rage hit Alex with the force of a blow. He kicked off his shoes, and in the next second had vaulted over the rail and dropped feet first, and the rush of the sea closed over his head.
The water was unexpectedly cold and the churning wake sucked him down and down until the sea felt like a ton weight upon his shoulders. Just when it felt as though his lungs must burst, the weight lifted and he was being shot to the surface like a cork, and there was air again. He gulped deep draughts of it and struck out strongly, aided by the swirl of the wake. After the sweating heat of the Glamorgan Castle the cold rush of the foaming water was incredibly exhilarating, and he shook his wet hair out of his eyes and laughed.
It was, he presumed, one of Kishan Prasad’s servants who had fallen overboard, for had it been a member of the crew Moulson would have said ‘a lascar’. ‘Of all the goddamned, bloody, idiotic things to do!’ thought Alex, anathematizing his own conduct. ‘What the hell is the life of one heathen lackey worth that I have to make a quixotic exhibition of myself trying to fish the man out? Why does common sense betray one in a crisis?’
He saw a dark struggling shape ahead of him and the next moment it had disappeared. Alex filled his lungs with air and dived. The man struggled feebly, and for a minute that seemed like an endless hour they sank down together through the blue water. And then Alex got a grip on him and kicked strongly and they were rising once more into light and air.
Even then he did not realize who it was that he held. He caught the half-drowned man under his arms and swam towards the heavy wooden hen-coop that was lifting to the swell not twenty yards away. After several fruitless efforts he managed to heave his limp burden face downwards across the stoutly built coop and hold him there while he trod water.
The swell that had been barely perceptible from the decks of the Glamorgan Castle was a very different thing when viewed from the level of the sea itself, and in the trough of it the ocean appeared to be empty and the Glamorgan Castle had vanished. The next swell swung them slowly upwards, and far away - miles away it seemed - the ship showed small against the blue. It would take a long time for them to heave-to and circle back, thought Alex. They would lower a boat as soon as possible but it would be a long wait. The distant ship vanished as the laden hen-coop slid once more into the glassy trough of the swell, and the Indian coughed, retched, lifted his head and moved feebly.
‘Lie still, fool,’ said Alex in the vernacular. The man obeyed, but presently he turned his head, and Alex saw for the first time who it was that he had rescued—
The two men stared at each other for a long moment and Alex was conscious of a queer twisting wrench at the pit of his stomach: a helpless, futile, sick anger against fate and himself and the fatuous foolish instinct of his kind and his creed that had driven him to leap unthinkingly to the rescue of a drowning man, and by so doing had betrayed him.
Winter had asked him once if he had meant to kill this man, and he had replied bitterly that assassination was unfortunately alien to the British character. He knew that he could not bring himself to murder Kishan Prasad in cold blood, although if he could have proved his suspicions and thereby brought him legally to the gallows, he would have done so without a second’s hesitation. But he had been unable to do that, and owing to the smug blindness of those who did not wish to see, he knew that he might never obtain such proof as would satisfy them. And now Providence had stepped in and done its best to put an end to Kishan Prasad, and he, fool that he was, had risked his neck to save a man whom he regarded as among the most dangerous enemies to British supremacy in India.
If only he had waited! If only he had asked questions before he had jumped. It had been Moulson’s remark that had undone him. Moulson had said: ‘It’s only one of those blacks—’ and Alex had instantly lost his temper. With the result that he had fallen into a booby-trap, for it was Kishan Prasad whom he had saved. The salt sea-water was bitter in Alex’s mouth and he looked into Kishan Prasad’s grey face and laughed.
Kishan Prasad’s
lips drew back from his teeth in an exhausted grin that was a grimace of complete comprehension. He said in a hoarse voice between difficult breaths: ‘Whom did you think you had saved … Sahib?’ - the appellation was nearer an insult than a term of respect - ‘One of your own kind? The General Sahib, belike?’
‘No,’ said Alex, treading water. ‘I thought it was one of your nauker-log.’
He saw the flare of astonishment and disbelief in the dark eyes.
‘My servant?’
‘Yes,’ said Alex shortly. ‘Had I known it was you—’
‘You would have let me drown,’ finished Kishan Prasad, fighting for each breath.
‘Yes,’ said Alex bluntly. ‘Do not talk. You will tire yourself and the boat will not reach us for some time yet.’
Kishan Prasad was silent for a long while. The slow swell lifted them up lazily so that at intervals they could see the distant ship and the small speck that was a boat rowing towards them, then it would slide them down into a long blue-black hollow and the ship would vanish and there were only two men and a wooden hen-coop alone in all those endless leagues of ocean.
Kishan Prasad looked down into the glassy water and thought of the unimaginable depths that lay beneath him: the cold fathoms that stretched downward and ever downward to the slimy darkness of the sea floor; and his fingers tightened convulsively on the rough wood that supported him.
He spoke at long last, and softly, in a voice that despite himself he could not keep quite steady: ‘You say that had you known it were I who had fallen, you would have left me to my death. But it would seem that death is here now for one of us. Look there—’
Alex turned his head, and his diaphragm seemed to contract and turn to ice, for in the glassy swell beyond them lay a long silvery-brown body, the triangular dorsal fin just clear of the water. Shark! …
The sea was darkening below them and the low sun burned along the water, turning the surface of the swell to gold and outlining the creature with fire. It did not move, but hung motionless like a fly embedded in amber.
Alex seemed to have lost all power of movement. He held onto the edge of the hen-coop with one hand and stared back at that small cold eye. It had seen them and was watching them, idly curious.
Kishan Prasad said in a hoarse whisper: ‘This wooden thing will not bear two upon its surface, and my life is forfeit to thee.’ He had forgotten to speak in English. He began to slide softly from the coop and Alex said furiously: ‘Don’t be a fool! Get back onto that. You can’t swim.’
At the first movement the shark had flicked away and now they saw its fin cut the water on the far side of them. The swell swung them up once more and they could see the boat, the low sun flashing along the oar-blades. But it was still a long way off.
Alex remembered having heard that sharks disliked noise and he beat the water with his cupped hand. The fin sheered away, circled and came back. Kishan Prasad was in the water holding on with only one hand, and Alex said again: ‘Get back, you fool!’ He grasped the Indian about the waist and heaved, and releasing him, caught his legs and thrust him onto the top of the hen-coop where he remained on all fours gripping the edge. It was a perilous and inadequate raft, and now that it bore Kishan Prasad’s full weight it lay barely an inch or two out of the water. But at least it held his body clear of the surface.
The fin cut slowly through the water, cruising gently along the flank of a long glassy slope parallel to them, and Alex suffered a spasm of cold, crippling panic. ‘Oh God, if only I had a knife,’ he said in a whisper, unaware that he had spoken aloud.
‘Here,’ gasped Kishan Prasad: he fumbled among his wet clothes, the flimsy raft rocking dangerously, and drawing out a knife with a slim wicked eight-inch blade, thrust it into Alex’s hand. It was an inadequate enough weapon to pit against the twelve-foot monster who circled warily about them, but the feel of it in his hand gave Alex a sudden surge of hope. It was something. He had read of pearl divers off the coast of Ceylon who fought off sharks with a knife.
He beat the water again and shouted and the creature shot away, hovered and returned. It seemed to hang in the water above him and he realized suddenly that if it came at him while he held to the hen-coop, the rush of its great body would overturn that makeshift raft and dislodge Kishan Prasad. He had forgotten that Kishan Prasad was an enemy whose death he would have welcomed and whom a few short minutes ago he had been passionately regretting that he had not left to die. The man on the raft was a fellow-human and as such they were leagued together against this finny cold-blooded killer from the deeps beneath them.
He released his hold and swam away at a tangent, his eyes on that cruising dorsal fin. The swell lifted it up and once again the creature seemed to hang in the water above him. It came at him quite slowly, and as it came it turned. Alex avoided it with a superhuman effort, kicking backward with all his strength and twisting again to face it. He heard a hoarse shout of warning from Kishan Prasad and the thought flashed through his mind that the boat had come.
‘Just in time,’ thought Alex grimly. And then he saw a flicker of movement to his left … another fin. There was a second shark - a third. They circled him as though merely curious, and he felt the heave of the water under him as the first shark returned to the attack, and somehow he avoided it. Now they would all rush in. He would not wait for them to come at him, and be torn to pieces without a fight. His fingers tightened hard on the haft of the knife and he swam towards the nearest shark.
It was apparently an unexpected movement, for the creature sheered off at lightning speed, and he turned quickly and saw in the slow swell that bore down upon him the swift shape of another coming in. For the flash of a second he saw too, with uncanny vividness, the tiny striped bodies of the pilot fish who raced before and beside it; and then he had dived to meet it and as it rolled to bring the wicked jaws into play he struck with all his strength.
The knife sliced through a foot of the creature’s side and was wrenched from his grasp, and there was a cloud of blood in the water. For a moment the other sharks lay motionless and then suddenly the water boiled into foam as they rushed in upon their wounded companion, fighting, snapping and tearing like hounds upon a fox. The dark water was red with blood, and Alex turned and swam desperately away. He was still swimming when someone grabbed his shoulders and shouted above his head, and then hands were pulling at him and he was dragged over a gunwale to tumble gasping and helpless among the feet of the boat’s crew.
‘That was a near thing,’ said the first mate, beating him on the back. ‘Touch and go. Here! get down, Mr Prasad. Holy Moses! Look at the brutes, they’ll have us over. Hit with oars - sumjao.’ The boat rocked dangerously as a ten-foot blue shark, attracted by the taint of blood, rubbed along the keel, and the sea seemed alive with triangular fins and lithe rolling bodies. And then they were rowing back to the ship into the eye of the setting sun over a sea that was no longer blue, but black below them and bright gold beyond.
Alex sat up dizzily and grinned at Kishan Prasad, and Kishan Prasad laughed and lifted his head in a brief gesture of salute. For a moment they were no longer enemies, but men who had seen no escape from death and yet by some miracle had escaped it, and were whole and alive. They drank the fiery grog proffered by the first mate and grinned weakly at each other and looked with dazed thankfulness at the clear sky above them while the lascars chattered and tugged at their oars, and the Glamorgan Castle, its deck-rails lined with excited cheering passengers, grew larger and nearer and at last loomed solid and safe above them.
Alex was aware, as though through a thick fog, of noise and shouting voices and people who shook his hand and thumped his shoulders. He felt absurdly sleepy and rather as if he were very drunk. It was an effort to keep his head erect and his eyes from closing, and he yawned largely in the faces of the congratulatory passengers, and pushing his way through them, stumbled down to his cabin and collapsed onto his berth, where the ship’s doctor, following him, found him so deeply asleep
that he did not even wake when his wet clothes were removed and a blanket thrown over him.
He woke early the following morning, feeling refreshed and fitter than he had for many days. The long swim and the violent exertion of the previous evening, followed by almost twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep, had apparently proved more beneficial than the hot idle days and sweltering sleepless nights that had followed on their departure from Malta. His cabin companions had evidently slept on deck, and Alex lay looking about the small cramped space and the low ceiling above his head with a strange new appreciation of mundane things and the miraculous fact of being alive. He rolled out of his bunk, and pulling on a pair of trousers went up on deck to breathe the dawn air.
The sun had not yet risen, but the sky was already bright and the decks glittered with the night dew and the salt water with which a busy group of lascars were washing down the planks. The sea lay colourless in the dawn light except near the ship where it appeared coldly black and clear as glass. The whorls of foam and bubbles sank down into the blackness, still visible a fathom and more below the surface and turning from white to silver to grey until they vanished into nothingness. The deck hatches were strewn with the bodies of those who preferred a cool night under the stars to the close heat of the cabins, and only the lascars were as yet awake.
Alex went aft and leant against the rail, idly watching the long white track of the wake. He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Kishan Prasad. The two men looked at each other for a moment or two in silence and with the cool, narrowed, calculating look of adversaries who measure swords, and then Kishan Prasad said slowly: ‘I wish to thank you—’