Strange Conflict

by Dennis Wheatley

  They, too, were fully conscious of their dire extremity and wondered if ever again they would hear Simon’s chuckle or see his kind, good-natured smile. Sadly they watched the bobbing rubber boat until it was hidden from them by the gently heaving swell.

  De Richleau roused himself and glanced at his watch. It had been just after one o’clock when they had crashed and it was now only a quarter past, but already they were beginning to feel the grilling effects of the tropical sun. It was a brazen ball of fire, almost directly above their heads, in a cloudless blue sky. Crouched as they were on the roof of the wrecked plane, not an inch of shade was available from its scorching rays, which had already dried their sodden outer garments. All of them had lost their hats during the mix-up in the plane and had instinctively knotted handkerchiefs, pirate-fashion, about their heads; but these were scant protection and de Richleau feared that they might get sunstroke unless they could rig up some form of cover by using the things inside the plane. He was also extremely anxious to get up their luggage.

  He spoke to Rex, who pulled the ripcord of the emergency exit, which they had closed behind them to keep as much air in as possible. A wave of air gushed out as they scrambled back into the plane to see what they could salvage. They found that the cabin was now awash waist-high, but they pressed forward towards the cubby-hole in the tail where their luggage was stowed. To de Richleau’s fury he found that the pressure of the water was so great that in spite of their united efforts they could not drag open the door of the cubby-hole, and there was no other way to get their luggage out.

  Every moment that they spent inside the plane was a risk, because there was always the possibility that the engine and the load of water might become too heavy for the fuselage so that it suddenly plunged, carrying them down with it. All the same, they set about a methodical search of the cabin. Kicking round with their feet and stooping to reach under-water with their hands, they passed up to Richard such things as they could find, through the escape exit.

  They secured a small satchel of Richard’s which contained his gun, his passport and money, together with a flask of brandy, some chocolates and a tin of cigarettes; then they fished up a couple of sodden rugs, Rex’s mackintosh and—the best prize of all—Marie Lou’s dressing-case. Now that the air could flow out the water in the plane was again rising rapidly so abandoning further attempts at salvage they climbed out and reclosed the escape exit.

  The cigarettes and many of the things in the dressing case were soaked through, but feeling that some of them might come in useful later on, they laid them out on the baking-hot roof of the plane to dry. In the meantime Marie Lou’s pots of face creams proved a gift from Heaven, as their foreheads, noses, ears, necks and the backs of their hands were already going red with sunburn, and all of them had sun-bathed in the pleasant places of the earth so often that they knew that lovely warm sensation meant agony later on. Without a moment’s delay they set about covering all the exposed portions of their skin with the pleasantly-scented greases which she recommended as the most suitable.

  The wireless of the plane was now submerged and useless but its aerial ran from the plane’s tail, a few feet above the fuselage, to a short staff near the cockpit, so they were able to drape the wet rugs over this, forming a rough tent under which they could get a little shelter from the blazing sun.

  Almost at once the rugs began to steam as the heat rays drew off their moisture, but they crawled under them and lay down, with Rex at one end and de Richleau at the other to keep a lookout for any sail that might bring hopes of rescue.

  By the time they had completed these arrangements it was getting on for two o’clock. For the next quarter of an hour they crouched in miserable silence under the scant cover of the tent, which was barely enough to shield them and soon became intolerably stuffy.

  It was about twenty-past two when Rex gave a shout and stood up to wave frantically. In the distance he had spotted a large motor-boat which was coming towards them. The others all stumbled out of their shelter and joined him in shouting and waving. It seemed that the people in the boat could not possibly help seeing them and that they were already as good as saved.

  Their disappointment was all the more bitter when the people in the boat made no response to their signals and, after having approached within quarter of a mile, it suddenly turned right round and headed away from them.

  In angry disgust they sat down again, but after this sudden lifting of their hopes they positively could not keep still. Every few moments one or other of them stood up to peer in the direction in which the boat had gone. This constant emerging from their shelter exposed them to the sun and they knew that Marie Lou’s face-creams were only a scant protection against it. They were getting badly sunburnt now, but took little notice of that lesser evil seeing that they were all in peril of their lives. Although none of them mentioned it, they were all conscious that the plane was gradually sinking; inch by inch the water was creeping up its sides.

  It was de Richleau who suddenly said: The only chance of our being able to continue to use the plane as a raft until Simon gets back is for us to take our weight off it.’

  Richard gave a half-hearted laugh. ‘Go in for a swim, eh? Well, that’s not a bad idea; at least it’ll cool us off a bit.’

  In consequence the men turned their backs on Marie Lou and they all undressed, then one by one they slid over the side. The cool of the water by comparison with the roasting roof of the plane was a blessed relief, as it eased their taut, parched skin and gave them new vitality. By hanging on to the side of the wreck they were, too, able to take advantage of a small patch of shadow, and each of them rested by turns in this way while the others swam about to take their weight off the waterlogged machine.

  After they had been in the water for some twenty minutes Richard suggested that one of them ought to climb up on to the plane to see if there was any further sign of the motor-boat or other craft about, and Rex gave him a push up on to it. Shading his eyes with his hand he stared round, then suddenly cried that he could see the boat again; it was running sideways-on to them, about half a mile away.

  He waved and shouted till he was hoarse, but apparently no one in the boat saw him so he gave up, having come to the conclusion, as the boat continued to patrol up and down, that its occupants were engrossed, to the exclusion of all else, in trolling for fish.

  ‘Come down, darling!’ called Marie Lou, ‘or you’ll get baked to a cinder,’ and Richard suddenly realised that his silk pants had dried stiff on him while he had been standing there; so he dived in again and Rex clambered up to take his place. In doing so he cut his hand on a jagged strut of the plane where the wing had snapped off during the astral storm which had wrecked it. He thought nothing of it at the time, and stood for about ten minutes exasperatedly hailing the seemingly sightless people in the launch until de Richleau came up to relieve him.

  The Duke in turn signalled without result but he knew that it was much easier for them to see the motor-boat than for the people in it to see them, because while the boat with its big cabin stood at least ten feet out of the water the plane was right down on the water level, so that if they saw him at all it would only be as a small figure standing apparently on the water and entirely hidden every other moment by the intervening swell-crests.

  As he stood there he knew that if they were rescued they were all in for a ghastly time from the exposure which they had sustained. Sun-bathing is a thing which should be indulged in at not too infrequent intervals and little by little at each fresh start, and none of them had sun-bathed since the beginning of the war. In consequence their bodies were a tender pink-and-white without the least trace of pigmentation left behind from old sun-bathing holidays. All of them in the last hour or so had gradually turned a dull, pinkish red and the stinging of the burns was already perceptible.

  It was just then that his thoughts were switched to a far graver menace. Rex was swimming some way away from the plane, and cutting through the wavelet
s no more than twenty feet from him was a sinister triangular fin.

  ‘Shark!’ yelled the Duke. ‘Shark!’

  For a moment Rex did not seem to hear, the menacing, sail-like fin cut the water in a streak towards him, but suddenly he turned and came racing for the submerged plane, his head under water, his arms flailing and his feet threshing in a powerful crawl stroke.

  Richard had scrambled on board and was dragging Marie Lou up after him. As Rex shot forward, churning up the water, the Duke saw the fin, which was now only a few yards from Rex’s feet, suddenly disappear and he knew that the shark had dived to turn upon its back and attack its victim. Desperately he looked round for some weapon with which he might fend off the brute while Rex climbed out of the water, but there was no pole, or anything at all, that he could use; only the rugs, their clothes and the oddments which they had salvaged from inside the plane.

  Rex spluttered up within a foot of the fuselage and it now looked as though the fact that the plane was almost submerged would serve him in good stead. It was so low in the water that he had only to fling himself on to it and draw his legs up after him. But at the very second that he grabbed the tail-end of the plane de Richleau saw the shark immediately beneath him. The brute, which was at least twelve feet in length, had turned upon its back and its white belly was so plain in the translucent water that the Duke could see the sea-lice upon it. Its great mouth, with its seven rows of saw-like, gleaming teeth, was gaping open and Rex’s left foot dangled almost inside it.

  Richard was just behind de Richleau and with frantic fingers he had been wrenching open his satchel. Next second he fired with his automatic, under the Duke’s arm, sending three bullets into the belly of the shark.

  The brute’s tail whacked with a thud against the side of the wreck, rocking it so that de Richleau was thrown off his balance and fell to his knees. The great jaws snapped as the shark thrashed in its death agony; its teeth grazed Rex’s heel but he had jerked up his leg just in time and lay, panting, at full-length along the tail of the plane.

  For thirty seconds they all crouched there gasping, then Richard suddenly cried, ‘Look’ and pointed. Three more of the sail-like fins had appeared, moving swiftly towards them, and in another moment the three new-comers were fighting a desperate battle over the body of their dying comrade.

  The water was no longer clear, but opaque and muddy with the shark’s blood as it was torn in pieces by its cannibal shoal-mates. Marie Lou shivered and turned away, sick with nausea, so she did not see the end of the orgy, or that within a few minutes another dozen sharks had arrived upon the scene to join in the fray for any bits of fish-meat that might be left in the crimson, whirling water.

  ‘It’s the blood that attracts them,’ said the Duke with a shudder; ‘they’ve some sort of instinct by which they can scent it a mile away.’

  Rex looked at the small wound in his hand which was still bleeding slightly. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I ought to have realised. I cut myself climbing out of the water a little time back. It must have been my blood that the first brute scented.’ He laughed, but it was a mirthless laugh, as he added: ‘My swimming powers won’t win me a medal now when the old bus goes under. Those devils wouldn’t let the strongest swimmer get ten yards before they pulled him down.’

  The others did not reply. They were staring at the water. It was quite clear again now and not a trace of the first shark remained. But having finished their banquet the others had not gone away; they were basking there, quite patiently, the fins of fifteen of them all protruding above the water.

  The four friends had done many thousand miles of ocean travel and they had seen sharks follow a ship for weeks, waiting for any garbage that might be thrown overboard. Night or day was all one to those ravenous brutes. They had no sense of time once they had scented their prey. They would not give up until they had secured the victims that they could see sitting there, half-naked, on the wrecked plane.

  It was only three o’clock and Simon could not possibly yet have reached the coast, but the plane was now awash in all its length and might suddenly sink under them at any moment, leaving them to be torn limb from limb by the merciless brutes who lay in wait for them.

  15

  Strange Gods

  For what seemed a long time they all sat staring at their patient enemies, who swam slowly backwards and forwards or lay basking and apparently comatose. But, roused again by the blistering heat of the sun, Rex grunted:

  ‘We’d best get our clothes on, otherwise we’ll be fried here.’

  They were all terribly thirsty but had nothing with them to drink except Richard’s flask of brandy, and the Duke said that to drink that would only make their thirst worse.

  Painfully they drew their stiff garments on to their scorched limbs, then they spread themselves out on the surface of the wreck in the hope that by distributing their weight more evenly it would bear them a little longer. Rex crawled up on to the tail, which was cocked up a little but dipped almost to sea-level under him, de Richleau remained in the middle of the fuselage, while Richard and Marie Lou sat each side of the cockpit where the wings joined the body.

  While they were moving they kept a wary eye upon their nearest enemies as a slip might have proved fatal, and having settled themselves again they clung on to their precarious holds, knowing that if they lost them nothing could prevent their being torn to pieces. The sea lapped gently at the sides of the plane with a little chuckling noise, but it was an evil chuckling, and the beauty of the summer seascape was entirely lost to them. They could think only of their roasting necks, their parching thirst and the red death that awaited them in the blue waters.

  For over half an hour they had been so engrossed with the sharks that they had not looked in any other direction. The Duke then roused himself to concentrate sufficiently to slip out of his body in order to find out how Simon was faring. To his relief he saw that the rubber boat was beached upon a pebbly shore and that Simon and Philippa were hurrying along the beach about half a mile from it; but there was no human habitation in sight so it might be hours yet before they could get a boat and a rescue party. He was brought back to his body by a sudden commotion.

  Unobserved by the castaways, a native fishing-smack had appeared on the scene and was now tacking towards them only two hundred yards away. When they heard a faint, distant hail behind them it came as a shock mingled with positively stunning relief.

  Switching round they saw the boat and their excitement, which had brought the Duke back to his body, was so great that they nearly lost their balance as they stood up to shout and signal in reply. The smack was quite a small one, manned by three Negroes, one of whom was standing up in the bows waving to them.

  They had hardly grasped their good fortune at this prospect of an eleventh-hour rescue when they noticed that the motor-boat was some way behind the fishing-smack; it had now turned and was also coming towards them. Evidently the people in it had only just seen the castaways, their attention having been attracted to them by the cries of the Negro fishermen.

  There followed an acutely anxious five minutes as de Richleau’s party wondered if the now totally submerged plane would bear them just that little extra time necessary for their rescue before plunging to the sea-bed; but during it he was able to cheer his friends with the news that Simon and Philippa had reached the coast in safety. As the motor-boat came nearer they saw that it was a powerful launch. Racing past the smack, it circled round, driving the sharks away; then, easing down its engine so as not to capsize the plane with its wash, it came right alongside.

  Its occupants were a very tall, bespectacled man, with Negro features but a pale skin, and his crew of four. The tall man wore a panama hat and was dressed in a suit of spotless white duck, so it looked as though he was a person of some standing.

  As they were helped aboard the poor old plane bobbed up again a foot above the waterline, and seemed as if, now that it was relieved of their weight, it was good for another half-ho
ur or so, although it had been in imminent danger of sinking when they were on it.

  Gasping out their thanks to their rescuer they staggered into the blessed shade of the launch’s cabin. They had spoken in English and the leader replied in a garbled mix of the same language.

  ‘Me very happy make you safe,’ he said courteously. ‘You very bad ways. Them shark no good feller. Eat ’em up quick. Me Doctor Saturday, please. Very happy make you acquainted.’

  ‘Thanks a thousand times,’ muttered de Richleau hoarsely. ‘Parlez-vous français, Monsieur le docteur?’

  ‘Ah, oui; certainement,’ the tall man gave a quick smile which displayed two tombstone-like rows of very white teeth, and from that point the conversation was carried on in fluent French.

  Realising that they would now soon be in Haiti, the Duke took the precaution of introducing himself and his friends under assumed names; then they told the Doctor that for the best part of two hours they had seen his launch and had been signalling to him. His distress at hearing this was evident and he was most profuse in his apologies, explaining that he and his crew had been engrossed in fishing for amber-jack. The first indication they had had of the wrecked plane was when they had heard the shouting of the Negro in the fishing-smack.

  It had now come up with them, and Doctor Saturday threw this crew a handful of small change, which Richard supplemented with three twenty-dollar bills from his wallet as he felt that he and his friends really owed their lives to the fishermen—though that was obviously no fault of the Doctor’s.

  As the launch headed away on the Doctor’s orders the fishermen, overwhelmed with the gift, which represented more than they could earn in a couple of months, babbled their thanks in their Creole dialect for as long as they could keep within shouting distance.