He considered at this point that his chances of survival were better than even. He had been pushed to the limits before, and he knew how far beneath the surface his strength ran. But he would be at the very end of his resources when he landed at the bay. Therefore, when, as he rounded the tip of the peninsula, a cold current grabbed him and forced him away from the rock and out into the deep waters of the open sea, he felt the beginnings of despair. He was unable to fight this current. For a while he hoped to go through and come out the other side, but after every few metres he was carried further away, his chances of life so much less. Finally he turned onto his belly and used his arms to swim. This did not hurt him so much as he thought. The cold water dulled his wounds. But when he reached the other side of the current, and saw how far out of his way he had been carried, his will almost failed. The effort had drained him and it seemed to him now that his limit had already been reached and passed, that the shock of the attack among the bushes was gaining on him and cold death was creeping up on him in the disguise of a friend. Better to drift and let the cold take him gently than fight and suffer pain, and worse, perhaps failure. He was still under halfway there.
On his back again he pushed death away, kicking his legs, fighting the cold, fighting his failing spirit, forcing himself back to the shore. It was another twenty minutes before he passed the peninsula’s head. Now it was no longer him swimming, it was some other thing. His legs moved softly in the water, like dying fish. He could no longer feel his hands or even his arms.
Time slowed down. It ceased to matter how long it took him to reach the shore, so long as he kept on swimming, living, moving. The cold disappeared, or he could no longer feel it, and he knew this was a bad sign. He wondered if the dawn was near, but he’d lost all sense of time and he did not know that barely two hours had passed since he jumped into the sea. He could feel himself dying, but still he moved towards the bay, and life.
At last the shoreline was coming close. Every now and then he flopped onto his belly and soon he would see the little house stuck naked on the rocks just above the beach. He asked himself if it were a question of him surviving but losing his hands, did he want to live on those terms? The answer lay in his spirit; to his surprise he felt exultant. He had after all succeeded again. Always before he had been the Hunter. Now he had been the prey and he had survived. He would live. He would kill again.
The next time he turned onto his belly, he could see the roof of the little house. A cry came out of his mouth, like a cawing – it sounded like an animal, he noted in surprise. But the animal was alive. He floated on his back and shouted again, trying to rouse the man from his bed.
Again he flopped over onto his belly. There was no light on and he was about to turn back over and yell again when he saw a dark shape move on the porch. For a second he hoped, but then he knew it was not a man. He froze in the water and started to sink. Then he began to shout and scream for that man, any man to come and help him, until he lost control and sank again, choking on the water. There was still no light. This neighbour too was away from home. He hoped desperately it was a dog he saw, but when the moon emerged from the clouds and he saw the pale flanks of the wolf, he knew he was a man with a choice of two deaths.
Undecided he drifted. Greycub walked down to the water to meet him, but the Hunter’s will was paralysed with cold and defeat and shortly, when he fell into another current, he did not fight it but let it carry him out, back to the deep waters.
The Cry of the Wolf Page 10