“Then everything that happens here, even if twenty or thirty years ago, isn’t really happening at all?” Betty asked, her eyes wide.
“It’s happening all right, Betty, but in relation to the Time of the normal world it occupies perhaps only a split second. The two states are utterly different from each other.”
Nick reflected. “I was never much good at science, but I do seem to remember reading somewhere that, granted another dimension, we could probably accomplish the work of a lifetime whilst a clock struck one note. I. thought it crazy, but maybe it wasn’t.”
“Time,” Dawlish said, “is only the movement of a body through space. You cannot move anywhere in space without Time. Therefore, if the nature of space is changed, as it is in the fourth dimension, the time-factor related to it is changed also.”
“You know your science, mister,” Bronson said, as though he were talking to his first mate. “I’m sorry I ridiculed you earlier on.”
“Is there any reason,” Nick asked, “why we can’t try and break through into London since we’re in its vicinity? Why go back to the other spot?”
“Because we know that Bernice managed to return home at that spot. It might never happen in this particular position.”
“We’ll get on our way as soon as it’s light,” Bronson decided. “Meantime we’ll finish our meal and then bunk down for what’s left of the night. Plenty of furniture in here with which you can manage.”
So once the meal was over everybody, including Bronson, found a comfortable spot, Betty and Lucy taking over Bronson’s own big double bed, and some sleep was obtained before the shadowless daylight appeared in the portholes. Then came the luxury of a razor for the men, and for the women the joy of a completely equipped bathroom.
Once breakfast was finished the party moved up to the listing deck. The air was still and warm and in the daylight it was surprising to discover how far the island of lost ships extended. But for Bronson it would have been next to impossible to find the way back to the Mary Newton.
He seemed to be in a much more rational mood as he led the way with agile leaps from vessel to vessel. Presumably, on the previous night, he had been so thrown off balance by meeting human beings he had not been able to stay coherent.
“Well, here it is,” he said finally, as the Mary Newton was regained. “Steam-driven, blast it! I could have managed with sails. Now I’m not so sure.”
“She’s not jammed very tightly,” Nick said, studying the position. “Just her nose held by this wreckage in front, but she’s made a clear passage for herself to the rear. Do you think if we had enough ropes we could act as tugs and pull her out? Like they do with barges?”
“Barges!” Bronson echoed, blankly. “You call this a barge, sir? Fifty or a hundred of us couldn’t pull it! Ridiculous!”
Dawlish smiled dryly and Nick looked discomfited. Then Betty said, “If nothing grows old in this region why shouldn’t the boilers still work? And incidentally, if nothing grows old, why are all these ships wrecks?”
“Because of the force with which they arrived, young woman,” Bronson retorted. “Sweet oil of Judah, that should be plain enough. It’s an idea about the boilers, though. Let’s take a look at ’em.”
He jumped across to the trapped vessel, the others scrambling behind him, and then they went down into the stokehold. There was an interval whilst Bronson lighted the hurricane lamp he had brought with him, then they peered around them in the ill-lit gloom.
“No use me looking,” Dawlish said. “I don’t know a thing about a stokehold, or ship’s navigation.”
“Landlubbers, the lot of you!” Bronson snorted. “I’ll soon tell you.” And he moved away to study the equipment. “Yes, not so bad,” he said finally.
“You mean we might get steam up?” Harley asked.
“No harm in trying. Give me a hand.”
There was no hesitation as far as Nick and Dawlish were concerned, They worked under Bronson’s orders and prepared the furnaces. In half an hour they were in action and Harley and the two girls, out on deck, stood watching the clouds of filthy smoke pouring out of the funnel and drifting away across the wilderness of wrecks.
“It would have been an even quicker job if you’d lent a hand,” Betty reminded him.
Harley shrugged. “I’m not turning into a stoker for anybody! No reason why I should with Nick and Dawlish willing to do it.”
“The fact that all of us have to do our share doesn’t occur to you, I suppose?”
“I’ve done mine—and the longer we’re in this plane the more I see the uselessness of trying to get out of it. If we ever do escape it will be by accident, not design. In the meantime I refuse to work like a laborer.”
“Hey, you!”
At the roaring voice of Bronson, Harley turned languidly to see the mane and massive beard projecting from a nearby companionway.
“Speaking to me?” Harley asked.
“Who in blazes else did you expect? There’s a rope trailing over the side. You and the women grab hold of it and as I put the screw into reverse pull on the rope. It’ll swing the ship slightly round and save us fouling that wreckage to port.”
Bronson vanished again and Harley tightened his lips. Betty gave a cynical smile.
“You have your orders, mister,” she said. “Let’s get busy, Lucy. Harley’s probably too important to soil his hands on a rope.”
For once Lucy followed Betty instead of her husband. She vaulted lightly over the side of the vessel after Betty had led the way. They found the rope easily enough, seized hold of it, and waited for something to happen. Then, looking rather shamefaced, Harley scrambled down and joined them.
“I was—” he started to say, but Bronson’s powerful voice from the half-wrecked wheelhouse atop the bridge drowned him out.
“Hold it, not play with it!” he yelled. “Quickly! We’re under way.”
Harley, surprisingly enough, did as he was told. Bronson sounded the siren for no particular reason, then there was a rattle and grinding as the propeller started to revolve. It gathered revolutions, churning up filthy water and striving to tear the tramp free of the imprisoning wreckage.
“Pull down there!” Bronson bawled. “Pull!”
Amidst a grinding of wreckage the ship began to move backwards. Straining until they were nearly bent double the trio braced their feet and had the satisfaction of seeing the vessel just miss the fouling wreckage which could have stopped its progress.
“Right!” Bronson yelled. “Come aboard, you three.”
Realizing they might be left behind, the trio moved faster than they had ever done in their lives before, scrambling to the deck as the vessel began to glide away towards more open water. Breathless, they stood looking about them.
In a matter of minutes the vessel had drawn clear of the wreckage entirely and, still traveling in reverse, was edging out to the open sea. Once he reached it Bronson turned the vessel about and she began to glide forward into the millpond.
“Well, we’re on our way,” Bronson shouted from the bridge. “Or we will be when we know where we’re going. Where is this land supposed to be?”
“That way,” Harley answered, pointing into the misty distance. “You can’t see it now, but that’s the direction.”
“How do you know?”
“I remember the curve we took when heading into this wreckage.”
“Right!” Bronson turned back to the wheel; then he bawled orders below—to Nick in the engine-room and Dawlish in the stokehold. The vessel began to increase speed, leaving a creaming wash in which unique fish bobbed and leapt, much to the fury of Bronson.
“Blasted fish!” he raved. “Always coming out and looking at me! Makes me feel like a curio.”
“Curio is right,” Lucy murmured, leaning against the deck side and watching the water surge by. “At least our eccentric friend seems to understand seamanship— And I hope you got the direction right, Harley.”
He
looked surprised. It was the first time his wife had ever questioned his judgment.
“Dead right!” he retorted. “You’ll see.”
He was evidently correct, for after perhaps half an hour of cruising a distant purple smudge showed up on the horizon. Bronson kept steering steadily towards it and, by degrees, the outlines of the bay came into view, and then the cliffs and the beach where the bungalow floor had been laid. But there was no sign of it now. The beach was completely empty.
CHAPTER FIVE
RAIDERS OF THE AIR
“I’ll have to beach her,” Bronson called down, after studying the situation. “Nothing else for it.”
He sent a warning down to Nick and Dawlish whilst the trio on deck waited intently for the moment when the tramp would strike the sand. It came at length, the vessel heeling over and flinging Harley, Lucy, and Betty across the deck. They began to pick themselves up as Bronson came down from the bridge. In a moment or two Nick and Dawlish also appeared.
“Good!” Dawlish exclaimed, his eyes gleaming. “Right back where we started. Many thanks, Captain.”
Bronson looked around him in some bewilderment. “Sweet oil of Judah, d’you mean to tell me you prefer this desolate bay and beach to my headquarters? Is this all we have after the trip?”
“Soon build a new bungalow,” Dawlish told him. “Tools are aboard this ship. The most important thing of all is to see if the signposts we put in different places have survived. Come along, everybody.”
He led the way down the rope ladder that Bronson tossed over the side. Very soon each member of the party was heading back to the approximate spot where the bungalow foundations had been laid. But as they had expected, and seen, not a trace remained—except for four sunken holes where the side posts had stood.
“So much for that,” Dawlish sighed. “We’d better see if the signposts are still in place.”
They were not. Evidently the force of the wind in the recent storm had completely removed them.
“No sign of the footprints Bernice left behind either,” Dawlish commented, studying the ground. “Rain and wind have obliterated them.”
“All we can do is approximate the spot,” Nick said, and began to study the situation, Captain Bronson standing close by and muttering under his breath.
Dawlish began to move back and forth, trying to locate that spot where he had heard the voices of Mythorn Towers, but either he was a long way out in his calculations, or else the overlap of planes had changed, for he could detect no trace of sound from the normal world.
“Begins to look as though we’ve lost contact,” he said, as the group collected together again. “The approximate spot where Bernice vanished is here”—he tossed down a stone to mark it—“and I only hope it’s correct. Unfortunately, approximate isn’t good enough in a case like this.”
Betty looked about her and sighed. “It’s mighty hard to think that around here is the open country, and a lane with a new signpost, with a church opposite it.” Then as she saw Captain Bronson looking at her fixedly she added in haste, “In the normal world, I mean. We’re just a fraction away from it, yet that fraction makes it as distant as the North Star.”
“And as unreachable,” Nick added. “Well, moping around here isn’t going to do us any good. We’d better get back to the woodland and start rebuilding that bungalow. Do you wish to stay with us, Captain, or sail back to your island home?”
“Dammit, I’ve got to stay!” he roared. “How do I get that tramp back without help, and if you come with me how can you stay here?”
Crazily though it was put, the observation had logic, so without further comment the party returned to the beach where the Mary Newton was standing and, for a while, they were busy transferring from it all the foodstuffs and other essentials. By the time the job was done it was dinnertime—canned meat, canned potatoes, and coffee.
“Since one doesn’t grow old here,” Betty said, as the meal progressed, “it would explain perhaps why my heart seems to be all right. I mean, since I was only given six months to live, I’ll never die because I’ll never become six months older!”
“But we must be getting older!” Harley insisted. “The very fact that we keep on using up energy and replacing it with food and sleep is surely proof of that?
“We’re getting older, yes,” Dawlish agreed, “but not in relation to the outer world. And as far as this plane is concerned we are getting older so very slowly it is hardly noticeable— It’s so utterly complex to explain, involved in the mathematics of time and space. Let’s just accept it.”
“No choice,” Nick said. “And I wonder how Berny’s faring?”
Lucy smiled somewhat wistfully. “By now she’ll be back in Mayfair, I suppose. Warm baths, perfume, soft bed to lie in, servant to wait on her, everybody listening to her amazing story and none of them believing it. I don’t know whether I envy her or not.”
“Not!” Betty decided. “I still stick to my view that I like this primitive life better than the other one. We’ve no worries, no money, no responsibilities. The only thing that might spoil it, far as I am concerned, would be absence of men—but I haven’t that to worry over. Have I, Daw?”
Dawlish only smiled and after studying him reflectively Lucy said, “I think we’re all improved. Even you, Harley.”
“Thanks!”
“I mean it. You’ve grumbled a lot, of course, but on the other hand you haven’t broken into violent tempers or threatened to break my neck.”
Harley looked uncomfortable under the eyes of the others.
“He often used to threaten that,” Lucy explained. “I’m glad we came here. He’s been so compelled to stay beside me he is beginning to recover something of the attentiveness he had to begin with. He lost it when he started making money.”
“Money’s no good to anybody!” Captain Bronson declared. “Threw mine away long ago— Causes no end of trouble. In fact it’s a—” He stopped, staring so fixedly at something to the rear that the others finally turned and looked too.
“Bernice!” Nick gasped, dumbfounded.
It was Bernice, only a few feet away—but she was not the neat girl in the sarong who had walked away in a temper. Her sarong was ripped in several places, her hair was tangled, and there were deep scratches on her bare arms and legs. That she was on the point of exhaustion was obvious for even as she came forward her knees buckled beneath her and she fell senseless in the sand.
Immediately Nick and the other men were at her side. They lifted her gently and bore her over to the region where the meal was laid. They lowered her to the tarpaulin they were using as a groundsheet and borrowed Betty’s dust coat as a pillow.
“What do you make of it, Dawlish?” Nick asked, puzzled, glancing up from bathing the girl’s forehead with seawater. “She’s all in, and from the look of things she’s been in the devil of a mess. Thinner, too. Hasn’t had a meal for lord knows how long, I imagine.”
Dawlish did not attempt to answer at that moment. Instead he concentrated on the task of restoring Bernice to consciousness.
“Here, give her this,” Bronson said brusquely, handing over a flask of ship’s rum from his pocket. “That’ll do it.”
Finally he did the job himself and as the fiery spirit trickled into her mouth Bernice began to revive, coughing and spluttering at the same time.
“Th-thanks,” she gulped at last, her senses fully returned. “I-I passed out, didn’t I?”
“Afraid you did,” Nick agreed. “So did we, pretty nearly, when we saw you back again. Where have you been?”
Bernice held her head in her hands for a moment. She gave a little shudder as though the recollection of the things that had happened to her was nearly too much to bear.
“Let me have something to eat,” she said at last. “And a drink of coffee. I’ve not had anything since I was last with you.”
The food and coffee were promptly forthcoming and the party gathered round the still shaken girl as she ate and dra
nk ravenously. When she had finished her strength seemed to have returned considerably and more color had come into her cheeks.
“Where did you think I’d gone?” she asked. “From your conversation when I came upon you I gathered you thought I’d found my way back home?”
“Everything pointed to it,” Dawlish responded, puzzled. “You had disappeared, and your footprints had vanished abruptly. There was no possible spot to which you could have jumped, so we naturally assumed—”
“I was carried away,” Bernice interrupted.
“Carried?” Harley repeated. “But the footprints just vanished—”
“A bird!” Bernice cut in, close to hysteria. “The biggest bird I ever saw! Raiding from the air! It came swooping down just as I was walking along. I couldn’t do a thing. Its jaws clamped on the single shoulder strap of this sarong and lifted me right into the air. Thank heaven it didn’t bite any lower or it would have cut my shoulder to the bone.”
“Birds? Here?” Dawlish looked mystified.
“Certainly,” Captain Bronson told him. “I’ve seen ’em—but I wouldn’t call ’em birds. Sort of round things with big bellies which move at a terrific speed.”
“That’s right,” Bernice agreed eagerly; then her expression changed. “Oh, I—er— Excuse me! I don’t seem to know you.”
“Captain Bronson—Miss Forbes.” Dawlish introduced, and to the girl he added a brief explanation; then he came back to the point at issue. “A bird, eh? Can you describe it?”
“From a height it looked round, nearly like a disc, but when it came lower it opened its wings and beak. I’d call it a sort of flying tortoise, of tremendous size. When it is in the air it draws its head and wings into its outer casing and just hurtles through space. Don’t ask me how. I was carried along at dizzying speed for what seemed dozens of miles, and I was at least three hundred feet from the ground. The thing’s head wasn’t fully retracted because of holding me, but its wings were.”
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