by Isobel Chace
“And you?” Helen asked him, aware that he was limping badly now and that his leg must be paining him badly.
“I’ll come as soon as we’ve got the sails up. We’ll have to take a reef in the mainsail, but Na-Tinn can go up aloft. I’ve had it!”
There was no need to tell the Polynesian sailors that Gregory was tired. They eased him into the cockpit, cracking jokes to each other to cover up their concern for him. “Soon be plenty wind to carry us home,” Taine-Mal said gaily. He began to hum the tune that Helen had been singing earlier, a broad grin on his face.
Gregory held on to the wheel until they were well clear of the reef and scuttling through the uncertain wind for home. Then he went below, to join Helen.
“Have you got the safe open yet?” he asked her.
“I haven’t tried,” she answered. “Now, I’ve heated up some soup. Do you want some?”
“I’d rather have some coffee or tea, but I suppose, soup is all we’ve got?”
Helen chuckled. “I didn’t think we had that!” she said.
She set the two mugs on the table and filled them with the boiling liquid in the saucepan. The mugs slid across the table and back again, reminding them of the weather outside.
“Will we get back in time?” Helen asked, trying to keep her voice as steady as her hand.
Gregory’s eyes met hers. “I don’t know,” he admitted frankly. “Even if we do, we’ll really feel the swell before we get into harbour. Are you a good sailor, Helen?”
She smiled. “I pride myself on it,” she answered. They laughed together and Helen felt better. The Sweet Promise was a strongly made vessel, even if she could do with a fresh coat of paint, and she had confidence that if anyone could sail her through a typhoon, that person would be Gregory de Vaux! “Shall we get the safe open?” she suggested. “I’d love to see if the gold really is inside!”
“It looks a pretty solid job,” Gregory said doubtfully. “We may have to get a safe-cracker on the job. I don’t know if bashing it will do much good.”
“We can try,” she pleaded. “Here, have a go with these knives!”
There were traces of rust on the back of the safe. The tell-tale red stains spread out from a spot in the centre, under the encrusted surface of the metal. In places, a layer or two of the metal had disappeared entirely, but what was left was as solid as ever and would probably have stood up to a pick-axe, let alone their futile attempts with a couple of kitchen knives.
“I’m going to see what’s happening,” Gregory said. “I think I’ll drop the sails and carry on with the engine. The wind’s getting up properly now.”
If the slant of the decks was anything to go by, Helen thought they must have been bouncing around like a cork. When she tried to stand up, she felt decidedly queasy, so she sat down again quickly, and busied herself with the opening mechanism of the safe. It had rusted hard, and she couldn’t even move the numbers round, but with a little oil and a lot of prodding and scraping with her knife, she managed to wrench it free. She couldn’t read the numbers any longer, but she could hear the clicks as she turned the knob and reckoned that it was more or less intact.
The Sweet Promise groaned beneath the weight of the wind. Helen could hear Gregory yelling at Na-Tinn and a second later the engine back-fired into life. It was a strange sensation listening to the propellors fighting the swollen seas, sometimes a couple of fathoms below the surface of the waves, sometimes running free in nothing but air. The wind wrenched, buffeted and tossed them hither and thither with increasing agitation. A trickle of water came down the companionway, staining the floor and giving Helen a fright. She rushed round the cabins, making sure that all the portholes were secure, fighting her way across floors that would not lie down.
Wedged between the table and the bunk she was sitting on, Helen could just about keep her balance.
She found herself waiting for the dip and rise again of the bows, scarcely daring to breathe herself except in the same agonising rhythm. After a while she couldn’t stand it any longer and thought she would go up on deck with the others, to reassure herself that she was no longer alone in this perilous world.
She was thrown backwards down the steps, but at her second attempt she gained the hatch and pulled herself up into the full terror of the storm above. Gregory was at the wheel. She could see the muscles of his arms and back bulging as they took the strain of keeping Sweet Promise more or less on her course. Somehow, afterwards she couldn’t remember how she had done it, he crawled into the cockpit beside him and wedged herself into the small space between the wheel and the side of the boat.
“Get back below!” he roared at her.
She shook her head. “It’s better up here!” she shouted into the wind.
“That’s a good one!”
“No, truly! It’s horrid being alone!”
He laughed and the wind caught the sound and roared its own approval. “We haven’t far to go now,” he comforted her.
She hung on to the edge of the rail and glanced about her, hoping to see some landmark that would be familiar. She was astonished to find that they were indeed nearly home. The harbour welcomed them with open arms, a haven of comparative peace in the middle of the howling wind. The palm trees were bent almost double and there was no sign of anyone on the Island. The flattened grass was torn out at the roots and whole clods were taken up by the wind and battered against the whining trees. It was a frightening sight.
And then it began to rain. Great drops of water fell on them from the sky, stinging their eyes and drenching them to the skin. The downpour closed in round them and they could hardly see the harbour for whirling rain and sea. Helen saw Gregory grit his teeth as he set the Sweet Promise to tear her way through the entrance to the harbour, holding on to the wheel with everything he had. For a moment, she thought they were crashing into the containing reef, but they rose higher and higher on the crest of some enormous wave and shot through the opening, crashing down into the furrow of the wave about fifty feet inside the lagoon. They were home.
When they came in beside the jetty, Helen saw why the Polynesians were renowned the world over for their sailing abilities. Na-Tinn tied a rope around his waist, waited for his chance and then hurled himself into space, landing in a helpless jangle of limbs on the fragile jetty. He was on his feet in a trice, putting his whole weight behind the rope to try and hold the dancing boat. When he had more or less recovered his balance, Taine-Mal followed him on to the jetty, leaping high above the breaking waves. He lost his footing on the wet bamboo, slipped between the edge of the jetty and the oncoming boat and disappeared into the boiling water. Helen’s first instinct was to go to his aid, but there was nothing that she could do to help him. She stared down into the froth and grey-green water, but there was no sign of Taine-Mal’s dark head. Then she saw him on the other side of the Sweet Promise, his head bobbing up and down. He took an enormous breath of air and dived down again into the water, reappearing alongside the jetty. He glanced round behind him, waited, tense and anxious, for the next wave to carry him right up on to the jetty. He came out of the water like a penguin rising from the sea on to a handy rock, and made fast the rope.
It was obvious that the jetty was about to break up. The wind tore at the bamboo struts and the heavy rain beat down on it with a weight it had never been designed to withstand.
“We’ll have to drag the Sweet Promise further in,” Gregory said bitterly. “Take her up the creek!”
“There isn’t enough water,” Helen protested.
“There is now,” he retorted grimly. “Get busy battening everything down, and I’ll get the lads to haul us up between those trees.”
It took a long time. They secured as many lines as they could to the surrounding trees, trying not to think how easily the wind could uproot these giant palms. Gregory did what he could to protect the sides and top of the boat by covering her with a cradle of branches and leaves.
“She’ll have to do,” he said at las
t. His leg was bleeding slightly and the material of his trousers had stuck to the long line of his wound. It had been a long, long day. “Have you got the safe?” he asked Helen.
She held it up in a triumphant gesture. It was heavier than she had remembered and she could hardly stand up with the wind blowing her this way and that. She dropped to her knees and the safe landed with a thud in the mud beside her.
“I oiled the works,” she gasped, trying to get her breath back, “but it still wouldn’t open. You’ll have to help carry it! I can’t manage it alone!” She gave a despairing kick and was shocked into silence to see the door fall open and pieces of gold rushing everywhere in the mud all about her.
Gregory laughed helplessly. “You should see your face!” he shouted at her.
She smiled and picked up a handful of gold, throwing it into the wind and watching it fall several feet from her, wet and glittering. “The crock at the end of the rainbow,” she exulted.
Gregory stood, ankle deep in mud, watching her. “I hope you’ll always think so,” he said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was hard to tell whether the rain was coming from below or above as it ricocheted off the muddy ground and was blown across their path by the ever-increasing wind. Gregory took off his shirt, that was torn anyway and soaking wet, and gathered the gold pieces together, tying the sleeves round the top to hold them in. He slung it over his naked shoulder and held out a hand to Helen, helping her to her feet. “I’ll take you to the hotel,” he said.
There was something in his voice that told her that he would not be staying at the hotel himself.
“Where are you going?” she asked him sharply.
“The Islanders will need help,” he explained simply.
Helen turned and faced him, her feet slightly apart. “I’m going with you!” She announced with a distinct quiver in her voice.
He grinned at her. “Are you any good at keeping children quiet?” he asked her.
She would have said anything not to have been left behind. She was prepared to put up with anything at all rather than be left waiting and worrying about him at the hotel.
“I won’t go to the hotel on my own,” she said mutinously.
“I must be mad!” was all Gregory said. “We’d better drop off the gold there anyway. Afterwards, we’ll need to gather all the villagers together at some central point.”
Helen shivered. “Those houses can’t be much protection against this kind of storm. Why don’t they build something more solid?”
“They bend. Anything more solid might break. Look, will you wait here while I go to the hotel?”
But she was too scared to wait anywhere on her own. She clung to his hand, following in his footsteps, until she saw the lights of the hotel only a few feet in front of her. She was mildly surprised that the electricity should still have been working, but there it was, a great wall of light in the grey, gloomy surroundings.
The wind had shattered the glass in the French windows round the back. Gregory released one of the catches and the door flew open, dragging them into the room beyond and slamming against the wall. A dozen people flew to the gaping entrance and forced the door shut again.
“My, you poor things!” a sympathetic woman said to them. “I’ll tell them in the office that you’re back.”
Helen felt self-conscious as she stood, dripping on to the clean floor, uncomfortably aware of the muddy spectacle she must present. She was relieved when Anita came running over to her, slipping warm, dry arms about her, and whispering: “Darling, I thought the wind would sink you! It was awful! Can you hear it against the building? It shakes so! Peter says it’s silly to be afraid, but I can’t help it!”
“You’re all right here,” Helen soothed her. “Miss Corrigan will soon tell you if there’s any danger.”
Anita laughed hysterically. “That old woman! She’s busy reading a thriller and doesn’t want to be disturbed!”
Gregory’s laughter burst out across the room. “I’ll soon disturb her!” he threatened. “She’s needed in the village! Who does she think is going to bandage all the broken limbs and sing to the children?”
Helen found herself laughing too. “I thought I was,” she smiled.
He grinned at her. “The more the merrier. Ethel can speak to them in their own language. I’ll go and winkle her out! Get Peter to put this in the hotel safe, will you?”
There was a gasp from the American guests that could be heard above the wind when they saw the gold-pieces glinting through the frayed cloth of Gregory’s shirt. They all wanted to look at them, to see what they were like.
“Did you really get them back from the sea?” they asked Helen breathlessly.
She was embarrassed. “Gregory did,” she said.
Their intrigued glances followed Gregory into the foyer. With his bare feet and naked torso, he looked like one of the Islanders himself. His dark hair glistened black from the rain, and water ran in rivulets down his chest and on to the deep, luxurious carpets with which he formed such a contrast.
“He looks the part!” Anita giggled.
“What do you mean?” Helen shot at her.
“I don’t know,” the other girl shrugged. “You know! He looks like a pirate without any shirt—or anything!”
“Nonsense!” Helen said sharply.
“But he does!” Anita giggled again. “I hadn’t noticed before, but he does!”
But Helen refused to look at him again. When she did, her heart shook within her, and she felt more uncomfortable than ever. If he looked like that, what on earth must she be looking like? She put up a hand to her dripping hair and tried to wring out some of the excess water.
“You’d better go and change,” Anita said frankly. “I’ll mix you a drink while you’re gone.”
“But they might go without me!” Helen objected.
“So what?” her sister-in-law retorted.
“I have to go,” Helen said. “It’s important—”
Anita sighed. “Well, if you must, you must,” she said. “But you look absolutely ghastly now, if you want to know! I shouldn’t have thought a change of clothes would have hurt!”
“Will you keep the drinks till I get back?” Helen pleaded with her.
Anita smiled an odd, lop-sided smile. “I will,” she promised. “And I’ll give your gold to Peter to look after, if you can bear to part with it. It’ll be quite safe with him!”
Helen thanked her and hurried into the lift. Now that she had been goaded into it, she had to admit that she would be pleased to change into dry clothes and wash the worst of the mud off her hands and feet. Even so, she was unprepared for the sight of herself in the looking glass. Muddy splotches covered her face and her hair hung down like string all round her neck. Her clothes were badly torn, and she had lost a button from the front of her shirt that gave her a decidedly rakish air.
“Good heavens!” she said to herself, and then again, “Good heavens!”
She stripped off her clothes as fast as she could and dried herself on one of the hotel towels, hoping that Peter wouldn’t be too shocked at the sad spectacle it presented when she had finished with it. She felt decidedly better when she was both clean and dry. She could even laugh at herself, for when she had first seen herself in the glass, she had wondered what Gregory must have thought of her. What should he have thought? She was nothing to him, just as he was nothing to her!
She pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a polo-necked sweater and brushed her hair until it stood up in a halo all round her head. Then with a comb, she restored it ruthlessly to order, and looked at herself with satisfaction. Without any make-up on, she looked younger than she really was, but otherwise she was as neat and as unremarkable as the most self-effacing widow could wish to be. Perhaps it was that that made her choose her brightest lipstick and, with a defiant gesture, apply it freely to her pale lips.
The electricity went off just as she was leaving her room. The whole building shook and was plunge
d into darkness. Helen could hear a female scream reverberating through the hotel and hoped that it wasn’t Anita. Then there was complete silence and, a few seconds later, Peter’s voice, demanding that someone should light the candles to give the guests some kind of light
Helen crept along the corridor, playing blind man’s bluff with the wall as she searched for the head of the stairs. It was a long way down, but at least she knew where she was going. When she reached the bottom, she could see the flickering candles in the foyer, and looked about hastily for Gregory.
At first she thought he wasn’t there, but he came over to her immediately and pressed a drink into her hand.
“It’ll keep your spirits up,” he told her cheerfully.
She took a sip, gasped, and took another. She had no idea what was in it, but it tasted good. “Did you find Miss Corrigan?” she asked.
“I did!” he said.
“Spoiling a perfectly good afternoon,” the old lady complained. “I always have a rest after my lunch. You should know that by now!”
“We don’t always have a typhoon to contend with,” he reminded her patiently.
Miss Corrigan listened to the wind. “It’s got some way to go yet,” she snorted. “Experience has taught me not to anticipate trouble, young man! But as you quite obviously won’t give me any peace, I’m ready when you are!”
Gregory grinned. “Helen is coming too,” he told her. “She wants to help—”
“If I can,” Helen put in humbly.
“Glad to have you,” Miss Corrigan said emphatically. “The Islanders like you! Just as they like this young man of yours!”
Helen could feel herself blushing. The colour rolled up her cheeks and she felt weak at the knees. “It’s this drink,” she exclaimed. “It’s going to my head!”
Miss Corrigan looked at her in astonishment. “Nonsense, my dear!” she said briskly. “You won’t be any use to any of us if you’re drunk!”
“How very true!” Gregory agreed in an amused voice. He took the drink from her and handed it to Anita. “There’s no knowing what she might do!” he added conspiratorially.