Savages

by Shirley Conran

  Leaving the women huddled on the canvas, the skipper walked to the water’s edge and turned to look at the beach, trying to imagine it as he would have seen it before—from the sea. Might Waterfall Bay be the next blasted beach on their route? He looked around. No, it wouldn’t, because Waterfall Bay had mangroves to the north of it, and there weren’t any on the next headland. He’d have to take his little party inland when they reached those mangroves; no one carrying this sort of load could get around those grabby roots, twisting like arthritic fingers above and below the water.

  He walked back to the women. “Just a bit further. Go as fast as possible, because after sunrise we’ll have to move into the trees, so that we’re under cover if a boat comes round the headland. And that means walking on soft sand, so hurry on this hard stuff while you can. Remember we’re nearly there. Soon you can all shower in the waterfall, have a bite to eat and a good sleep.”

  Carey said, “We haven’t got anything to eat.”

  “I’ve got a little treat tucked away. Now, on your feet. It’s nearly five o’clock.”

  As they rounded the next headland, the horizon was pale yellow with the orange curve of the sun just above it. The skipper was always surprised at the speed with which the sun reared up from the horizon; three minutes and she was clear of it.

  If they were going to send a search party, the buggers would be setting off about now, so he’d have to get these women off the beach in ten minutes. Then he’d let them sleep for an hour. The poor wretches deserved it. By that time, the search party would either have passed or it wouldn’t be coming. He had hoped that they’d have reached the waterfall by now, but you couldn’t time this sort of lark like a royal wedding.

  Under the palm trees, well back from the beach, the women wearily spread the still-damp canvas awning, which seemed to have grown six times heavier during the night. They huddled against each other, which felt odd, because none of them had cuddled up like this against another female since they were children. Damp and sweating, aching and uncomfortable, they curled up on the canvas and were all asleep within two minutes.

  Forty minutes after the women had left the beach, the skipper heard the drone of an outboard motor, coming from the north. He rolled over onto his stomach and cautiously lifted his head. A large, black, inflatable landing craft was zipping past the beach. It was over twenty feet long and could probably hold twenty men. He could see the glint of metal helmets and binoculars as the boat moved in close to check the shoreline. That craft certainly moved fast. Lucky the women were off the beach, they might not have had time to hide, and they’d certainly have had to drop all their gear on the sand; might as well have stuck up a signpost and a red flag.

  He watched the landing craft disappear around the southern headland.

  Well, they couldn’t stay here hoping the buggers wouldn’t show up again; they might zip up and down all day. Even if they weren’t looking for this lot, the terrorists might well be paying friendly calls on the villages along the coast in their steel helmets, with their AK-47’s at the ready.

  He shook Patty awake, made her stand up and gave her the rifle.

  “I’m off to check what’s round the next headland. Patty, don’t sit down before I get back. If a boat passes, lie low. If anything nasty happens, point that gun at the sky, slip back the safety catch, and pull the trigger. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

  Terrified into wakefulness, Patty stood rigid, nervously cradling the rifle in her arms.

  Thirty minutes later, the skipper returned. “On the far side of this bay there’s another big beach; the southern headland is a mass of mangroves. I reckon the beach beyond is Waterfall Bay. Pity we can’t walk along the shoreline a bit longer, but we’ve made pretty good time, considering everything.” He nodded toward the little group huddled like puppies on the canvas. “Wake ’em up.”

  There were groans and curses. It was impossible to wake Carey, until the skipper said in her ear, “We just had visitors, a boat patrol passed half an hour ago.”

  Then they all sat up, looked at him with frightened eyes from sleep-pale faces, and slowly scrambled to their feet.

  The skipper took out his compass, the women picked up their hated load and they headed inland, along the coastal track that led to the east. Shortly afterwards, the skipper realized that they’d struck it lucky for a change because they were clear of secondary jungle. Primary jungle—virgin, tropical rain forest—was easy to move in.

  Their path led beneath high trees, well over a hundred years old and ten feet wide at the base. They soared up sixty feet, forming a dense canopy under which the light was dim and gloomy green. The whole forest was festooned with creepers and vines, and there was little noise except for the gentle rustling of leaves. It was comparatively easy to walk through, not much more difficult than the redwood forests of her California girlhood, thought Patty, perking up.

  They left the path. Following his compass, the skipper led them on a bearing that would bypass the swampy mangrove area and, with any luck, lead them to the river that fed the waterfall. He counted his footsteps aloud, and Carey double-checked the tally. Every two thousand paces was roughly a mile.

  After nearly two miles, they reached an almost sheer ravine about forty feet wide. Shrubs clung to both rocky sides, and sixty feet below was a fast-flowing torrent, probably on its way to the waterfall. All they had to do was follow it to the sea.

  The going wasn’t difficult, and they made good progress. After covering about half a mile, Patty whispered to the skipper, “What’s that?” She nodded toward three ropes that crossed the ravine.

  “Might as well have followed the bloody path,” he said glumly. “It’s a Burma bridge.”

  The rope bridge was alarmingly basic: the lower rope was knotted at close intervals; the two ropes above it, at armpit level, were each attached to the foot rope by lengths of rattan.

  The skipper said, “You get across by moving one foot in front of the other and angling your feet outward like a ballet dancer. You feel along the notches of the bottom rope with the arch of your foot and you hitch your elbows over the top ropes and pull yourself along with your hands.”

  Silvana said faintly, “You’re not expecting us to go over that thing?”

  “It’s easier than it looks, but I don’t think we need to cross it. We’ll follow this side of the ravine, and maybe cross at the waterfall if the current ain’t too strong. Let’s push on, we’re nearly there.”

  By now their feet had been rubbed raw by the wet sneakers. Each of the women only kept going because the others were still moving. The skipper sensed this and hoped to God that Suzy wouldn’t crack, because if she stopped, they’d all fall down.

  Silvana was conscious of some maddening bird repeatedly singing C sharp, G, E flat. Suddenly, as she staggered under the weight of the stretcher, her legs crumpled under her. Carey, who was holding the other end, found it jerked from her bleeding hands as it crashed to the ground.

  Silvana’s shoulders sagged. “It’s no use, I can’t go any further.” She burst into tears and collapsed on the ground. “I give up.”

  “Get up, you spoiled bitch!” Suzy kicked Silvana’s plump rump. “We haven’t come all this way just to let you decide that we’re not going on.”

  The skipper said, “Suzy’s right. If you don’t get up, we’ll have to leave you.”

  “I don’t care, I don’t care,” Silvana sobbed. “I can’t go on.”

  Suzy yelled, “If you stay here and you’re found, they’ll know we’re somewhere ahead.” She nudged Silvana again.

  The skipper said, “No use shaking your head, no use thinking you won’t give us away. They’ll torture you and you’ll tell—you won’t be able to help it. And after that, they’ll kill you anyway.”

  Patty said, “You saw what happened to Isabel.”

  “I don’t care! I don’t care! I can’t move,” Silvana sobbed.

  “Stop that, Suzy,” Annie said wearily. “Silvana, we must
both go on. I’ve got my boys to think of, and you’ve got Lorenza.”

  Silvana was helped to her feet by the skipper. The little party staggered forward.

  Ten minutes later Patty lifted her head and said, “Listen!”

  Above the splashing of the river below, they could hear a noise in the distance.

  Patty cried, “The waterfall!”

  The sound gave extra strength to the thirsty, tired women and they moved a little faster. The sound grew steadily louder. The path had led down into the ravine, and now they were only about ten feet above the river. Excitement grew.

  Carey craned her neck. “I can see the sea! Through the trees ahead!”

  Within minutes they could all see the black boulders at the top of the cliff and the sparkling aquamarine sea beyond. Below them lay the sandy beach; to the left was the tumbling, sparkling torrent of the waterfall, curving over the cliff.

  The skipper warned, “Don’t get too excited … and don’t get careless! Don’t move out of the cover of these trees. We don’t know if there’s anyone up there. Everyone stay here while I move forward and look around. Silly to get captured now, after that walk.”

  His cautionary words effectively dampened their excitement and feeling of achievement. The women once again unpacked the hated canvas awning and once again slumped onto it. The skipper crawled forward to reconnoiter.

  He reappeared within minutes. “It looks clear ahead. Now listen to me. I’m going to dive for that cave, but I don’t swim anywhere near as good as Winston, so if anything happens to me, then Carey is in charge. No particular reason, but someone has to be. In the meantime, you stay here, because you might be seen in the open.” He looked at Patty. “Get the flashlight out of the picnic hamper, and let’s you and me have a swim.”

  Quickly, he took off his yellow life jacket, unbuttoned his shirt and took out the coastal charts, which were still soggy. He emptied his pockets onto the canvas: a few kina and other coins, a key ring, the red Swiss army knife, his miniature compass on a thong and another small, two-inch-diameter compass. He picked up the underwater flashlight, pulled a set of fins and a diving mask from the garbage pail and gently pulled Patty to her feet.

  Together, on legs that shook with exhaustion, Patty and the skipper scrambled down the black rocks to the rock pool below, in which—only yesterday—they had cheerfully splashed with Winston.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, the skipper surfaced for the seventh time. Spluttering and coughing, he was too exhausted to climb from the pool; he clung to a rock, his weightless body floating behind him. He gasped, “I can’t find it. I can’t stay under long enough.”

  Patty said, “I do yoga. Maybe I can hold my breath longer than you. Let me try.” She stood up, stripped to her underwear and kicked off the damned sneakers. She pulled on fins and mask and slipped into the water.

  The water soothed her sore muscles and sticky skin; she swam around for a few minutes, easing the stiffness from her body. Then she took fifteen seconds to exhale, tightening her solar plexus until she’d expelled all the air from her lungs. She took twenty-five seconds to inhale, carefully inflating her lower belly. She pulled her knees up to her chest, pulled her arms apart and duck-dived beneath the surface.

  Down, down she went, until she reached the bottom of the pool, a murky mass of silt and debris. It wasn’t difficult to see the rock face through her diving mask, although it was a little dim.

  Slowly, Patty allowed herself to float to the surface. There were as many rocks below the water as there were above it. She had seen no gap in them, no crack or hole. She’d have to search the pool systematically, working from right to left.

  By her fourteenth dive, Patty’s lungs felt about to explode; on the way up, she gasped for air too soon and took in water. She coughed and spluttered, just as the skipper had. She didn’t want—she couldn’t—dive again.

  But she knew that the cave was down there somewhere. Yesterday, with her own eyes, she’d seen Winston disappear for far longer than a human being could hold his breath. Patty felt furious and frustrated. She knew that the damn cave was down there! She’d even had a light to help her. Poor Winston had had no flashlight.

  Exasperated and exhausted, she resumed her search, this time exploring the pool from left to right.

  9

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1984

  From the depths of the waterfall pool, Patty surfaced again, gasping for breath and white with exhaustion. Although she couldn’t speak, the skipper could tell by the triumphant look on her face that she’d found the cave. Clumsy with fatigue, she swam a weak breaststroke to where the skipper sat on a flat rock.

  Patty gasped, “It’s down there, all right.”

  “Good on you, girl. What’s she like?”

  “You’d never find it unless you knew it was there.” She paused to catch her breath. “It’s about fifteen feet down. I couldn’t find it at first, because I was searching from right to left. You can only see the entrance if you’re looking from the left, then you notice the fissure behind a slab of rock.”

  “Sounds safe. The cliff path’s on the south side of the waterfall, so’re these rocks.” He patted the flat stone slab on which he sat. “So anyone exploring the pool would search as you did at first—from the south side of the waterfall, from the right.”

  Patty gasped, “I’m going to get my wind back, then go in.”

  “Only one of us can dive,” the skipper warned. “You got the light. But I’ll be worrying. Just see if there’s a dry space in there, then come straight back. Don’t hang around inside.”

  Patty swam back to the north side of the pool; she took a series of deep breaths, in order to expel the carbon dioxide and get the maximum oxygen into her lungs. Then she jackknifed below the surface, impeded slightly by her flashlight. The greenish, rocky sides of the pool receded past her face, until she reached the entrance to the cave, which was hidden by a vertical slab of limestone.

  She pulled herself behind the limestone and swam through the black hole behind it; she kicked her way into it, feeling the slimy sides of the tunnel with her right hand, holding the flashlight with her left. She was terrified. She didn’t want to swim on into that sinister blackness. She wanted to double up in a ball, roll around to reverse direction, glide out of that cave and shoot through the surface of the pool before her lungs burst. But by the time this urge gripped her, Patty knew she hadn’t enough time to go back. She hovered on the edge of terror, she wanted to scream, as her instinct told her to retreat but her reason told her to go forward.

  Patty’s absence seemed endless to the skipper, who was checking her time on his watch. So much depended on Patty’s diving ability. Only she could quickly get the exhausted women to safety. He hadn’t liked telling them why it wasn’t safe to go on, and anyway, those poor Sheilas had no strength left. Funny that everything now depended on Patty, when she was the only woman he’d thought might snap in a crisis. Now, she was his only hope.

  Nine minutes after Patty disappeared, her head again broke the surface of the water. She gasped, “There is a passage. It’s about twenty-five feet long and the entire length is underwater. It’s very narrow, not much wider than my shoulders, and the passage slopes up quite sharply. I kept bumping my head.” She shivered. “It’s scary. I only kept going because I knew that Winston must have surfaced in there somewhere, and the passage was too narrow to turn around. I was just about to panic, when I surfaced.” She grimaced. “It smelled foul. The tunnel continued ahead of me, above water. It looked to be quite a wide cave, and very high. I didn’t climb out because I wanted to get back fast and tell you.”

  “Let’s have a look at it.” The skipper slid off the rock and into the water. “You know the way, so I’ll hang on to your belt and follow you.”

  “Okay … what’s your name, by the way?”

  “Jonathan Blackwood.”

  “Okay, Jonathan, let’s go. Let’s time this trip.”

  The desc
ent was no less fearful this time. With a gasp, Patty resurfaced in the cave. She looked at the luminous dial of her black Swatchwatch. “Fifty seconds.”

  “Gawd, it seemed like half an hour,” said Jonathan, puffing beside her.

  Patty shone her light around the cave. “Jonathan, look about six feet ahead—the floor of the cave rises above the water. We can crawl out there.”

  The two dripping figures emerged from the black water; they picked their way carefully along the cave, which wound back, a dark tunnel. The light shone on stalactites hanging from the limestone roof; they were like candle drips dangling from upended crystal chandeliers and sparkling with rainbow colors.

  “It’s like a fairy grotto,” Patty whispered. She looked at the soaring ceiling, iridescent in the beam of light. The pale ray traced the delicate structures, too enormous, ambitious and fragile for any earthly sculptor to attempt to carve. They glittered silently in the light, like crumbling Gothic arches sprayed with confectioner’s sugar.

  From the dark floor of the cavern, sparkling stalagmites soared upward, rich and strange, a silent crystal fantasy.

  Jonathan said, “Water’s done that, continually dropping on the same spot, one drop at a time, for centuries.”

  Patty whispered, “What’s that noise?”

  Above the quiet drips of water from the roof of the cavern they could hear a faint sound—a piercing, high squeak.

  “Bats,” Jonathan said, looking upward and seeing nothing, but knowing that they must be there. “And the powdery stuff underfoot is bat shit.”

  “I wish you hadn’t told me,” Patty said. “Hey, it’s cool in here, it’s like air conditioning.”

  “Must be an air vent somewhere, because the air is breathable. And the bats must get out at night when they hunt. But we’ll explore later. We’d better go back and get the others in here as fast as possible. S’truth, I don’t fancy the journey back.”

  * * *

  In the muggy heat of the forest at the top of the waterfall cliff, the four waiting women were curled on the canvas awning, asleep. During the day the forest was silent. Around the sleeping women, creepers and vines trailed gracefully from the high trees to the ground; yellow butterflies trembled in the air and yellow orchids wound around the creepers. Although it was three hours since sunrise, the women lay in green gloom, for only an occasional ray of sunlight pierced the jungle canopy.