The water, rising rapidly, had reached the seats.
“Oh, God!” said Angie, and stood up. Denis, at the same instant, suddenly climbed to the gunwale, evidently with the idea of sitting there, and hanging his legs over the side.
“Get back, you fool,” panted Buckland, straining at his oar.
Just then the Hirondelle quietly rolled her side under. Buckland heard the water rushing in, and the hissing of the engines as they submerged.
He struck out strongly, shook the water out of his eyes, and then looked round.
The Hirondelle was slowly sinking out of sight.
Within a yard of Buckland was Hilary Moon, wearing an oddly astonished expression.
“What do we do now?” he enquired.
“Make for the rocks. They’re farther off than I thought, too. All right for us, but I don’t know about the girls. Anyhow, they’ve got to make it somehow.”
Hilary swore wearily.
Dulcie, looking terrified, and panting already, swam up to them with short, choppy strokes, her body half out of the water. Buckland could see Angie’s yellow handkerchief bobbing steadily along, with Denis beside her. He thought: We’re all right, if the girls don’t panic. But that damned rock is farther than I thought.
“Well,” said Courteney in a conversational tone, “quite an adventure we’re having. Sorry about your boat, Moon.”
“It’s a mercy the water’s warm. Fancy if this was the north coast of Cornwall! What are we all going to do next?” demanded Angie.
“There are some rocks quite close to where we are now. I vote we all keep together and get there, and then we can hold a council of war,” said Buckland. “No distance at all,” he added, for the benefit of Dulcie.
“I can’t do it,” she moaned.
“You don’t have to do it. Put one hand on your father’s shoulder, and the other on mine. We’ll take you.”
“And for God’s sake don’t start struggling,” added Courteney severely.
“You’re all right, aren’t you?” Buckland asked Angie.
“I suppose so. Come on, let’s start.”
For a little while they kept together, then Hilary drew ahead of the others, closely followed by Buckland and Courteney, both strong swimmers, in spite of the hampering burden of Dulcie between them.
She was terrified and gave them no help whatever, but Buckland saw that they could get her to safety easily enough.
But it was the deuce of a long way.
“Only a few yards more,” he panted encouragingly.
The rock was a jagged and uncomfortable-looking perch, the only one standing above water of a small group against which the swimmers cut themselves one after another. Courteney, the first to land, pulled Dulcie up beside him, whilst the other two men pushed her from below.
She landed beside her father, sobbing and breathless, the blood streaming from her scraped knees and ankles.
Hilary and Buckland, both out of breath, hauled themselves up in turn.
“Well done,” said Courteney politely, to nobody in particular. Dulcie clutched at him, and he tried to find something for her to lean against.
“I suppose the others are coming,” said Hilary. “It’s a great deal farther than it looked. Quarter of a mile, I should say.”
They could see Angie’s yellow handkerchief, moving along very slowly, and the head of Denis beside her.
“Why the devil is she crawling like that? She can swim fast enough if she wants to,” said Hilary crossly. “I suppose she’s standing by in case Waller throws a fit.”
“Far better let him drown if he wants to — what’s the matter?” Buckland replied.
“I’m thinking about that boat. I tell you, Buckland, this is no laughing matter for me. One hadn’t even had time to insure her.”
“Bad luck. I say, I believe one of us ought to go back and see if they’re all right.”
“Rot! Angie can swim perfectly well. I bet you anything you like there was something wrong with the engine. Otherwise she’d never have stopped like that.”
Buckland, cursing, slipped into the water again, driven partly by the forlorn hope of shaming Hilary, and partly by the conviction that Denis Waller was, or very soon would be, in difficulties in the water.
Angie hailed him with relief.
“Denis says he can’t make it,” she explained. She herself was swimming slowly, but easily.
“Bosh, of course he can. It’s not more than a few yards. Look here, you go on ahead — I’ll bring him in on my back if necessary. You can make it, can’t you?”
“Yes, easy,” said Angie. She turned over, and swam on her back.
“Well, you go on,” repeated Buckland. He saw that Denis was on the verge of panic. His face was colourless, and he was beginning to thresh feebly at the water with flapping hands.
“He’s just a bit tired, that’s all. I can manage him perfectly, and I’d rather do it alone.”
Buckland purposely spoke in an off-hand manner, and to his relief Angie did as she was told.
“Turn on your back and float, Waller. You’re all right.”
“I can’t float,” Denis panted. He flapped again, uttered a strangled shriek, and his head, for the fraction of a second, disappeared under water.
When he emerged, almost instantly, gulping and choking, his eyes were wild with fright and he made a frantic clutch at Buckland.
“Stop that!” shouted Buckland. “Pull yourself together, you little fool, or I swear I’ll drown you.”
He was perfectly certain that Denis was in no danger whatever, except from his own cowardice, and made not the slightest allowance for the helpless terrors of a vivid imagination combined with a feeble physique.
For sole response, Denis, sobbing and shuddering, caught at him again.
Without the slightest hesitation, Buckland swung back his right arm and dealt him a knockout blow on the point of the jaw.
Denis collapsed instantly.
“Pretty good, that, for a first attempt at lifesaving,” thought Buckland. “I suppose I must tow him in now.”
Half-way to the rock, Courteney swam out to meet them.
“He panicked, didn’t he?”
“Yes. He’ll be all right. I haven’t killed him — worse luck.”
“Bit of a boxer, aren’t you?”
“I’ve done a bit in my time.”
They shoved the unconscious Denis along between them without wasting breath on further conversation.
Arrived at the rock, and in the presence of Angie and Dulcie, they were obliged to adopt a tone of greater solicitude.
“Waller’s thrown a bit of a faint, I think,” explained Buckland. “He may have a weak heart or something.”
He sat down, panting.
Denis lay on the rock. Presently he stirred, groaned, and opened his eyes.
Buckland, his back to the others, exchanged a grin with Courteney.
(3)
Staring straight up into the blazing blue of the sky, Denis remembered, at once and quite clearly, exactly what had happened to him.
Instinctively he shut his eyes again, prepared to feign unconsciousness, so that he might gain time to adjust himself to the unescapable facts.
He, alone of them all, had lost his head. He remembered those awful moments in the water, when he had felt that he could not swim another labouring stroke ... his head had gone right under.... Denis shuddered violently.
He assured himself that he must have come very near to drowning. It had been a long swim, and his heart had given out — it must have been that — the others must realise that that was what had happened. That beast, Buckland! Denis felt tears of helpless wrath stinging beneath his eyelids, as he remembered the upward swing of Buckland’s fist. He wondered exactly where he had been hit, and put his hand to his head.
“Oh, Mr. Waller, are you better?” said Dulcie’s voice, close beside him.
Denis opened his eyes and saw her, sitting hunched up on the rock beside him,
her face looking oddly mottled, as if with cold. Almost without realising that he was doing so, Denis, following methods that had become habitual to him, began to dramatise himself and his situation.
“What happened?” he began feebly. “I stuck it out as long as I could, swimming, and then — I went right under — I think I must have had a very slight heart-attack.”
“Pops and Mr. Buckland brought you in between them,” said Dulcie. “You were absolutely unconscious, weren’t you, Mr. Waller?”
“I must have been. I don’t remember anything at all, except that I saw Buckland in the water, and called to him. I didn’t want Mrs. Moon to be frightened — I know she’s not a very strong swimmer — and yet I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer.”
He looked piteously up at her, half believing his own story already, and prepared to believe in it altogether if he saw that Dulcie did. She was gazing at him with an expression of deep compassion mingled with retrospective horror at the thought of his peril.
“Oh, how awful for you! You might easily have drowned, I should think — easily, if Mr. Buckland hadn’t been there. He’s simply splendid, isn’t he? Do you feel better now?”
“I think I’m all right,” said Denis. He raised himself into a sitting position and looked round.
The rock was an irregular, spiky mass, rising some ten or twelve feet above the water, and sloping away sharply on every side excepting the one by which the swimmers had reached it. The whole of the surface measured not more than ten foot in diameter, but one large, and two small, jagged promontories rose into the air. On the tallest of these Hilary Moon now stood precariously balanced, gazing at the surrounding expanse of water. Buckland, from whom Denis quickly averted his eyes, sat on the flat surface below, leaning against a ledge, and panting like a dog. Angie was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Mrs. Moon?” asked Denis.
“Behind the rock, somewhere. She’s rather upset, I think. You know — about the boat and everything.”
“We might all have lost our lives,” Denis pointed out solemnly.
“I know. That’s just what I feel. I was simply terrified. You see, I can’t swim very well, and I couldn’t possibly have managed, if they hadn’t helped me along. In fact, even as it was, I didn’t know how I was ever going to get here. The rock never seemed to be a scrap nearer, even after we’d been swimming for ages and ages.”
“Yes, I know,” said Denis with feeling.
Courteney came up to them.
“All right again, Waller?”
“Quite, thanks. I hear you helped to tow me in. I’m so grateful. I’m afraid I made a complete ass of myself.”
“Dear me, no. It was a bit too much for you, that’s all. As a matter of fact, it was a pretty long swim.”
“About a mile, I should say,” Denis suggested, hoping to hear that it was more.
“Lord, no. Quarter, at the outside.”
Denis thought that Courteney’s tone sounded contemptuous.
“I’m not a judge of distance in the water,” he said quietly. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been forbidden to attempt any long swims at all. My heart isn’t up to it — as we’ve just proved.”
“Bad luck.”
Courteney’s tone was, as usual, very polite. Evidently he would not dispute the assertion.
“Pops, what are we going to do? We can’t stay here all night.”
“My dear child, ask me another. I suppose one of us could swim to the mainland, and send out a boat, but personally I’ve had enough violent exercise for one afternoon. We’ll see what Buckland thinks about it.”
Denis gritted his teeth.
His subconscious hatred of Buckland, born of a violent jealousy, had of course been augmented a hundredfold. He found it unendurable that Buckland should be the hero of the whole adventure, the natural leader to whom they all turned. He was also terrified lest Buckland should throw doubt upon his own version of his collapse in the water.
When Buckland came up and joined them, Denis rose to his feet, folded his arms in his favourite Napoleonic pose, and drew his brows together, unconsciously trying to assume the appearance of those characteristics in which he was most deficient.
He said nothing — anxious, as usual, not to commit himself.
Buckland, ignoring Denis altogether, shouted to Hilary:
“Come on down! We’ve got to settle the next move.”
Hilary descended.
At the same moment Angie appeared. She had pulled the wet handkerchief from her head, and her thick, soft curls, already dry, hung loosely round her face and neck. With most of the make-up gone from her beautiful young face, she actually looked prettier than any of them had ever seen her look before.
For a moment they all stared at her.
“Well,” she said crossly. “This is the lousiest party I’ve ever struck. You’ve got us into the mess, Hilary; may I ask how you propose to get us out of it?”
Hilary shot her a vicious look.
“We can stay here all night.”
Dulcie alone gratified him by uttering an exclamation of dismay.
Buckland said:
“Don’t rot. We’re not on a desert island. One of those fishing affairs might show up, any minute.”
Instinctively they all looked to sea, but there was no sail to be seen.
“They won’t come when they’re wanted, you bet,” observed Angie. “I say, I suppose there’s no chance of the tide coming up and washing over these rocks?”
“Not the slightest. There’s no tide here. But all the same, we can’t let you stay here without food or clothes or anything, much longer. It’s not a tremendous way to the mainland,” said Courteney. “One of us must just swim back to the nearest point — that’s the jetty — and tell ’em to send out a launch.”
Hilary swore, just audibly.
“Oh, hell!”
Denis, to whom what he called “swearing in the presence of ladies” seemed an almost unpardonable social offence, was unable to resist displaying his own superior degree of chivalry.
“I’d volunteer without a moment’s hesitation,” he remarked emphatically, “if it wasn’t for my wretched heart. How far is it, exactly?”
Buckland swung round, looked him full in the face, and burst into loud, brutal laughter.
Denis flinched as though he had been hit. Humiliated vanity scorched him through and through.
He saw that Angie Moon was laughing too.
“I don’t want to have to knock you out again, Waller,” said Buckland, with a not unfriendly derision. “You mightn’t come round another time, you know. How’s your jaw feeling, by the way? Sorry if I punched too hard, but you’d have had me under, as well as yourself, if I hadn’t done it.”
“Did you knock him out?” cried Angie. “I thought he’d fainted.”
“Had to. He was properly scared, weren’t you, Waller?”
“My heart was giving out — I was afraid of sinking — —”
“Bosh. You can’t sink in the Mediterranean. If you hadn’t lost your head, I’d have floated you in, easy. Never mind — it’s all over now.”
Denis turned aside. He was nearly choking.
“Mr. Waller,” said a breathless, emotional voice in his ear, “I think it’s a shame. They don’t understand. I think it was simply splendid of you to hold out as long as you did.”
Denis, almost in tears and scarcely knowing what he did, put out his hand and convulsively squeezed Dulcie’s fingers.
(4)
“Darling, what did happen? Really and truly?”
Chrissie Challoner and Denis sat by themselves, at the far end of the terrace, that evening after dinner. Chrissie and Mrs. Wolverton-Gush had dined at the Hôtel d’Azur.
“What was Buckland’s version?” said Denis.
“Don’t hedge,” she said impatiently. “Can’t you just simply tell me the truth, without waiting to find out if it’s going to tally with what Buckland said?”
“I’d much rather hear what you’ve been told,” he persisted obstinately.
She saw that she would get nothing out of him at all whilst his mind remained obsessed with fear as to what she knew already.
“Dear, it’s all right. Nothing that anybody says is going to make any difference.”
Denis responded instantly, as he always did, to the change in her tone. He was sensitive, she thought, to an almost unbearable degree.
“I know, Chrissie. I do trust you. It’s only that — it was all so horrible. I do loathe Buckland.”
“So do I. But he’s the Hotel hero at the moment. He, and the Moons, and the Courteneys, are having a champagne dinner with Coral Romayne. They’re all over him.”
“Because he swam from the rock?”
“Because he swam from the rock,” assented Chrissie. “It was really rather dramatic. That Frenchwoman — Madame Duval — had promised the Dulcie child to take her in to St. Raphael with them, when you got back. Supposed to be about four o’clock. When no one turned up, she drove the car down to the jetty, to wait there. I was bathing in the little cove, just beyond, with the Morgans and the Romayne boy and his mother. We saw the Duvals go down to the jetty, and look out to sea, and then they began talking to some fishermen, and Madame Duval got agitated, and Gushie — who always hears everything — heard her scream out that she had a presentiment there’d been an accident. So quite soon afterwards — you know how catching that sort of thing is — we all started having presentiments too, and went round to the jetty, and joined the Duvals. My dear, you should have heard the shriek she gave when we suddenly saw there was someone in the water, making for the jetty!”
“Did you think all the rest of us had been drowned?”
“I don’t know what I thought, Denis. But I was terrified that something had happened to you. Buck was coming along at a pretty good speed, and of course we couldn’t tell what might have gone wrong — but it was fairly obvious something had. The Duvals were full of the most blood-curdling suggestions — Madame kept on saying that there must have been an explosion. Then Buck landed, and told us what had happened, and how he’d left you all stranded in mid-ocean on a rock. The fishermen said he must have swum half a mile, or more, besides getting from the Hirondelle to the rock.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 396