‘Yes?’
‘Things go in threes, they say, and if anything should happen to Adoni—’
He laughed. ‘Nothing shall, I promise you! I couldn’t take the responsibility for damaging a work of art like Adoni! We-ell …’ There was a whole world of relief in the long-drawn syllable. Then his voice changed; it was brisk, easy, normal. ‘I mustn’t keep you any more. Heaven knows what the time is, and you must get home with that treasure trove of yours. I’m sorry I missed it this morning, and gave your sister a bad half-hour … And I’m sorry I frightened you just now. To say that I’m grateful is the understatement of the year. You’ll let me see you home?’
‘There’s no need, really, thank you. In any case, hadn’t you better get up there to help Adoni?’
‘He’s all right. Didn’t you hear the signal?’
‘Signal? But there hasn’t been—’ I stopped as I saw him smile. ‘Not the owls? No, really, how corny can you get! Was that really Adoni?’
He laughed. ‘It was. The robber’s mate is home and dry, complete with “catch”. So come along now, I’ll take you home.’
‘No, really, I—’
‘Please. After all, these woods are pretty dark and you were nervous, weren’t you?’
‘Nervous? No, of course not!’
He looked down in surprise. ‘Then what in the world were you racing back like that for?’
‘Because I—’ I stopped dead. The dolphin. I had forgotten the dolphin. The breeze, riffling the treetops, breathed gooseflesh along my skin. I thought of the dolphin, drying in it, back there on the beach. I said quickly: ‘It was so late, and Phyl was worrying. Don’t bother, please, I’ll go alone. Good night.’
But as I reached the tunnel of trees, he caught me up. ‘I’d sooner see you safely home. Besides, you were quite right about shifting the boat; I’d rather have her nearer to hand in the morning. I’ll take her across into the lee of the pines.’
For the life of me, I couldn’t suppress a jerk of apprehension. He felt it, and stopped.
‘Just a minute.’
His hand was on my arm. I turned. It was very dark under the trees.
He said: ‘You’ve found out more about me than is quite comfortable. It’s time you were a little bit honest about yourself, I think. Did you meet anyone down in the bay?’
‘No.’
‘See anyone?’
‘N-no.’
‘Quite sure? This is important.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why don’t you want me to go down there?’
I said nothing. My throat was stiff and dry as cardboard. Tears of strain, fear, and exhaustion were not very far away.
‘Look,’ he said, urgently and not unkindly, ‘I have to know. Some day I’ll tell you why. Damn it, I’ve got to trust you; what about your trusting me for a change? Something did happen down there to scare you, didn’t it? It sent you running up here like a hare in front of a gun. Now, what was it? Either you tell me what it was, or I go down and look for myself. Well?’
I threw in my cards. I said shakily: ‘It was the dolphin.’
‘The dolphin?’ he echoed, blankly.
‘It’s in the bay.’
There was a pause, then he said, with a sharpness that was part exasperation, part relief: ‘And am I supposed to be going down there to shoot it in the middle of the night? I told you before that I’d never touched the beast!’ He added, more kindly: ‘Look, you’ve had a grim sort of day, and you’re frightened and upset. Nobody’s going to hurt your dolphin, so dry your eyes, and I’ll take you back home now. He can look after himself, you know.’
‘He can’t. He’s on the beach.’
‘He’s what?’
‘He’s stranded. He can’t get away.’
‘Well, my God, you don’t still think I’d do him any harm—?’ He stopped, and seemed for the first time to take in what I had been telling him. ‘Stranded? You mean the creature’s actually beached?’
‘Yes. High and dry. He’ll die. I’ve been trying and trying to move him, and I can’t. I was running just now to get a rope, that’s why I was hurrying. If he’s out of water too long the wind’ll dry him, and he’ll die. And all this time we’ve been wasting—’
‘Where is he?’
‘The other side, under the pines. What are you – oh!’ This was an involuntary cry as his hand tightened on my arm and swung me round. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Don’t worry, this isn’t another assault. Now listen, there’s a rope in my boat. I’ll go down and get it, and I’ll be with you as soon as I can. Get away back to your dolphin now, and wait for me. Can you keep him going another twenty minutes? Good. We’ll manage him between us, don’t worry. But’ – a slight pause – ‘be very quiet, do you mind?’
Before I could reply, he was gone, and I heard him making a swift but still stealthy way back the way he had come.
9
To the elements
Be free, and fare thou well.
V. 1.
THERE was no time for doubt or questioning. That could come later. I obeyed him, flying back down the path to the beach, back across the pale sand to where the big bulk still lay motionless.
The dark eye watched. He was alive. I whispered: ‘It’s all right now, he’s coming,’ and went straight back to my scooping and tipping of sea-water. If I noticed that I hadn’t bothered, even in my thoughts, to specify the ‘he’, that was another question that could wait till later.
He came, sooner than I had expected. A small motor-boat came nosing round the bay, without her engine, just with a dip and splash of oars as she was poled gently along. The breeze and the lapping of the sea on the rocks covered all sound until the boat was a rocking shadow within yards of me. I saw him stand up then, and lever it nearer the shore. Timber grated gently on rock, and he stepped out, making fast to a young pine, and then he was beside me on the sand, with a coil of rope over his arm.
‘Good God. How did he get out here?’
‘They do,’ I said, ‘I’ve read about it. Sometimes a storm blows them in, but sometimes they get their radar-beams fogged up, or something, and they come in at a fast lick and before they know where they are, they’re high and dry. We’re lucky there’s only a foot or so of tide, or the water might have been miles away from him by now. Can you move him, d’you think?’
‘I can try.’ He stooped over the animal. ‘Trouble is, you can’t really get a hold. Didn’t you have a torch?’
‘I dropped it when you savaged me up in the wood.’
‘So you did. There’s one in the boat – no, perhaps not, we’ll do without. Now, can you get to his other side?’
Together we fought to grasp and lift the dolphin, and with some success, for we did drag and shove him a foot or so downshore. But the dolphin himself defeated us; frightened, possibly, of the man’s presence, or hurt by our tugging and by the friction of sand and pebbles, he began to struggle, spasmodically but violently; and at the end of the first strenuous minutes we had gained only a foot. I was exhausted, and Max Gale was breathing very hard.
‘No good.’ He stood back. ‘He weighs a ton, and it’s like trying to get hold of an outsize greased bomb. It’ll have to be the rope. Won’t it hurt him?’
‘I don’t know, but we’ll have to try it. He’ll die if he stays here.’
‘True enough. All right, help me get it round the narrow bit above the tail.’
The dolphin lay like a log, his eye turning slowly back to watch us as we bent to tackle the tail-rope. Without the torch it was impossible to tell, but I had begun to imagine that the eye wasn’t so bright or watchful now. The tail felt heavy and cold, like something already dead. He never flickered a muscle as we fought to lift and put a loop round it.
‘He’s dying,’ I said, on a sort of gulp. ‘That fight must have finished him.’ I dashed the back of my hand over my eyes, and bent to the job. The rope was damp, and horrible to handle, and the dolphin’s tail was covered with co
arse sand.
‘You do tear yourself up rather, don’t you?’
I looked up at him as he worked over the loop. His tone was not ungentle, but I got the impression from it that half his mind was elsewhere: he cared nothing for the dolphin, but wanted merely to get this over, and get back himself to whatever his own queer and shady night’s work had been.
Well, fair enough. It was good of him to have come at all. But some old instinct of defensiveness made me say a little bitterly:
‘It seems to me you can be awfully happy in this life if you stand aside and watch and mind your own business, and let other people do as they like about damaging themselves and each other. You go on kidding yourself that you’re impartial and tolerant and all that, then all of a sudden you realise you’re dead, and you’ve never been alive at all. Being alive hurts.’
‘So you have to break your heart over an animal who wouldn’t even know you, and who doesn’t even recognise you?’
‘Someone has to bother,’ I said feebly. ‘Besides, he does recognise me, he knows me perfectly well.’
He let that one pass, straightening up from the rope. ‘Well, there it is, that’s the best we can do, and I’m hoping to heaven we can get it off again before he takes off at sixty knots or so … Well, here goes. Ready?’
I dropped my coat on the sand, kicked off my sandals, and splashed into the shallows beside him. We took the strain of the rope together. It didn’t even strike me as odd that we should be there, hands touching, working together as naturally as if we had done it every day of our lives. But I was very conscious of the touch of his hand against mine on the rope.
The dolphin moved an inch or two; another inch; slid smoothly for a foot; stuck fast. This way, he seemed even heavier to haul, a dead weight on a rope that bit our hands and must surely be hurting him abominably, perhaps even cutting the skin …
‘Easy, now,’ said Max Gale in my ear.
We relaxed. I let go the rope, and splashed shore-wards. ‘I’ll go and take a look at him. I’m so afraid he’s—’
‘Blast!’ This from Gale, as the dolphin heaved forward suddenly, beating with his tail, slapping up water and sand. I heard the rope creak through Gale’s hands, and another sharp curse from him as he plunged to keep his footing.
I ran back. ‘I’m sorry … Oh! What is it?’ He had twisted the rope round his right hand and wrist, and I saw how he held his left arm up, taut, the fingers half clenched as if it had hurt him. I remembered how he had examined it, up in the glade. This must be why he had made such heavy weather of fixing the rope, and had been unable to shift the dolphin.
‘Your hand?’ I said sharply. ‘Is it hurt?’
‘No. Sorry, but I nearly went in then. Well, at least the beast’s still alive. Come on, we’ll have another go before he really does take fright.’
He laid hold once more, and we tried again. This time the dolphin lay still, dead weight again, moving slowly, slowly, till the lost ground was regained; but then he stuck once more, apparently immovable.
‘There must be a ridge or something, he sticks every time.’ Gale paused to brush the sweat out of his eyes. I saw him drop his left hand from the rope and let it hang.
‘Look,’ I said tentatively, ‘this’ll take all night. Couldn’t we possibly – I mean, could the boat tow him out … with the engine?’
He was silent for so long that I lost my nerve, and said hurriedly: ‘It’s all right, I do understand. I–I just thought, if Adoni really had got safe in, it wouldn’t matter. Forget it. It was marvellous of you to bother at all, with your hand and everything. Perhaps … if I just stay here all night and keep him damp, and if you could … do you think you could ring Phyl for me and tell her? You could say you saw me from the terrace, and came down? And if you could come back in the morning, when it doesn’t matter, with the boat, or with Adoni …’ He had turned and was looking down at me. I couldn’t see him except as a shadow against the stars. ‘If you wouldn’t mind?’ I finished.
‘We’ll use the boat now,’ he said, abruptly. ‘What do we do – make the rope fast to the bows, and then back her out slowly?’
I nodded eagerly. ‘I’ll stay beside him till he’s floated. I’ll probably have to hold him upright in the water till he recovers. If he rolls, he’ll drown. The air-hole gets covered, and they have to breathe terribly often.’
‘You’ll be soaked.’
‘I’m soaked now.’
‘Well, you’d better have my knife. Here. If you have to cut the rope, cut it as near his tail as you can.’
I stuck the knife in my belt, pirate-wise, then splashed back to where the dolphin lay. It wasn’t my imagination, the lovely dark eye was duller, and the skin felt harsh and dry again. I put a hand on him, and bent down.
‘Only a minute now, sweetheart. Don’t be frightened. Only a minute.’
‘Okay?’ called Max softly, from the boat, which was bobbing a few yards from shore. He had fixed the rope; it trailed through the water from the dolphin’s tail to a ring on the bows.
‘Okay,’ I said.
The engine started with a splutter and then a throbbing that seemed to fill the night. My hand was on the dolphin’s body still … Not even a tremor; boats’ engines held no terrors for him. Then the motor steadied down to a mutter, and the boat began to back quietly out from shore.
The rope lifted, vibrated, with the water flying from it in shining spray; then it tightened. The engine’s note quickened; the rope stretched, the starlight running and dripping along it. The loop, fastened just where the great bow of the tail springs out horizontally from the spine, seemed to bite into the beast’s flesh. It was very tight; the skin was straining; it must be hurting vilely.
The dolphin made a convulsive movement, and my hand clenched on the knife, but I kept still. My lip bled where I was biting on it, and I was sweating as if I was being hurt myself. The boat’s engine beat gently, steadily; the starlight ran and dripped along the rope …
The dolphin moved. Softly, smoothly, the huge body began to slide backwards down the sand towards the water. With my hand still on the loop of the tail-rope, I went with it.
‘It’s working!’ I said breathlessly. ‘Can you keep it very slow?’
‘Right. That okay? Sing out as soon as he’s afloat, and I’ll cast off here.’
The dolphin slithered slowly backwards, like a vessel beginning its run down the launching-ramp. The grating of sand and broken shells under his body sounded as loud to me as the throbbing engine a few yards out to sea. Now, at last, he touched water … was drawn through the crisping ripples … was slowly, slowly, gaining the sea. I followed him as he slid deeper. The ripples washed over my feet, my ankles, my knees; the hand that I kept on the loop of rope was under water to the wrist.
And now we had reached the place where the bottom shelved more steeply. All in a moment I found myself standing nearly breast-deep, gasping as the water rose round me in the night chill. The dolphin, moving with me, rocked as the water began to take his weight. Another few seconds, and he would be afloat. He only moved once, a convulsive, flapping heave that twanged the rope like a bow-string and hurt my hand abominably, so that I cried out, and the engine shut to a murmur as Max said sharply:
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No. Go on. It held him.’
‘How far now?’
‘Nearly deep enough. He’s quiet now, I think he’s … Oh, God, I think he’s dead! Oh, Max …’
‘Steady, my dear, I’ll come. Hold him, we’ll float him first. Say when.’
‘Nearly … Right! Stop!’
The engine shut off, as suddenly as if a soundproof door had slammed. The dolphin’s body floated past me, bumping and wallowing. I braced myself to hold him. Max had paid out the rope, and was swiftly poling the boat back to her mooring under the pines. I heard the rattle of a chain as he made fast, and in another few moments he was beside me in the water, with the slack of the rope looped over his arm.
‘How g
oes it? Is he dead?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ll hold him up while you get the rope off.’
‘Turn his head to seaward first, just in case … Come along, old chap, round you come … There. Fine. Now hang on, my dear, I’ll be as quick as I can.’
The dolphin lay motionless in my arms, the air-hole flaccid and wide open, just out of water, his body rolling heavily, like a leaky boat about to founder. ‘You’re all right now,’ I told him, in an agonised whisper that he certainly couldn’t hear, ‘you’re in the sea … the sea. You can’t die now … you can’t …’
‘Stop worrying.’ Max’s voice came, cheerfully brisk, from the other end of the dolphin. ‘St Spiridion looks after his own. He is a bit sub., poor beast, isn’t he? However, heaven keep him so till I’ve got this damned rope off him. Are you cold?’
‘Not very,’ I said, teeth chattering.
As he bent over the rope again, I thought I felt the dolphin stir against me. Next moment I was sure. The muscles flexed under the skin, a slow ripple of strength ran along the powerful back, a flipper stirred, feeling the water, using it, taking his weight …
‘He’s moving!’ I said excitedly. ‘He’s all right! Oh, Max – quick – if he takes off now—’
‘If he takes off now, we’ll go with him. The rope’s wet, I can’t do a thing, I’ll have to cut it. Knife, please.’
As he slid the blade in under the rope and started to saw at it, the dolphin came to life. The huge muscles flexed smoothly once, twice, against me, then I saw the big shoulders ripple and bunch. The air-hole closed.
I said urgently: ‘Quick! He’s going!’
The dolphin pulled out of my arms. There was a sudden surge of cold water that soaked me to the breast, as the great body went by in a splendid diving roll, heading straight out to sea. I heard Max swear sharply, and there was a nearer, secondary splash and swell, as he disappeared in his turn, completely under the water. The double wash swept over me, so that I staggered, almost losing my footing, and for one ghastly moment I thought that Max, hanging grimly on to the rope, had been towed straight out to sea in the dolphin’s wake, like a minnow on a line. But as I regained my own balance, staggering back towards shallower water, he surfaced beside me, waist-deep and dripping, with the cut loop in his hand, and the rope trailing.