Wyatt's Hurricane / Bahama Crisis

by Desmond Bagley

  Not more than two hundred yards away was a storm-driven sea with short and ugly waves, the tops sheered off by the fierce wind to blow horizontally across the waste of water. An eddy of wind blew spray into his face and he licked his lips and tasted salt water.

  St Pierre had been totally engulfed.

  NINE

  As the first grey light of dawn touched the sky Julie eased her cramped legs. She had tucked them under her body in an attempt to keep them reasonably dry and she had failed, but at least they were not lying under a running torrent of water. The wind had dropped with the coming of day; no longer did it howl ferociously nor did it fling cascades of water at them, but still the water ran in a muddied flood down the ravine.

  It had been a bad night. In their little cave under the great rock they were well protected from the wind; it had roared about them but they were untouched by it. The water was something else. It came from above, slowly at first, and then in an increasing rush, pouring over the rock that protected them in a dirty brown waterfall which splashed with increasing violence at their feet, and carried with it the tree-fallen detritus which littered the ravine above.

  As the wind grew in strength the wall of water before their faces was torn and shredded, blowing away in a fine spray across the hillside, and when the wind backed and eddied they were deluged as though someone had thrown a bathful of water into the cave. This happened a dozen times an hour with monotonous regularity.

  Their shelter was cramped, small—and safe. The walls of the ravine rose sheer on each side and the wind, tearing over the open hillside, sometimes actually sucked the air out of this cleft at the height of the storm and left them gasping for breath for the space of a couple of heart-beats. But this did them no harm and indeed helped, because the water also went with the air, giving them momentary respite.

  They could either sit with their legs outstretched and have the waterfall pouring over their feet and the danger of bruises or worse as the flood swept down tree branches and stones, or they could sit on them and get cramp. They alternated between these methods, extending their legs when the cramp became too bad. The water was not too cold, for which Julie was thankful, and she thought hysterically that she was being washed so clean that she would never need to take another shower ever again. The very thought of the hissing spray of water in her bathroom at home made her feel physically sick.

  At first they could talk quite comfortably. Rawsthorne was feeling better for the rum. He said, ‘We might get a bit wet here, but I think we’ll be safe with this rock behind us.’

  ‘It won’t move?’ said Mrs Warmington nervously.

  ‘I doubt it. It seems to be firmly embedded—in fact, I think it’s an outcropping of the bedrock.’ He looked through the waterfall before him. ‘And there’s a good runoff for the water down there. It won’t back up and drown us. All we have to do is sit here until it’s all over.’

  Julie listened to the rising shriek of the wind overhead. ‘It seems as though the whole island will blow away.’

  Rawsthorne chuckled weakly. ‘It didn’t in 1910—I see no reason why it should now.’

  Julie pulled her legs in from under the waterfall and tucked them underneath herself. ‘We’ve got enough water now—more than enough.’ She paused. ‘I wonder how all those people got out of St Pierre in the middle of a battle.’

  ‘My guess is that Favel had something to do with it,’ said Rawsthorne thoughtfully. ‘He must have had because they are in the Negrito—his line of communication with the mountains.’

  ‘You think Dave Wyatt told him about the hurricane?’

  ‘I hope so. It will mean that that young man is alive. But perhaps Favel had other sources of information; perhaps there was a message from the Base, or something like that.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, and lapsed into silence.

  The rainfall increased and the torrent coursing down the ravine became a flood swirling over the top of the big rock. The wind strengthened and now it was that the eddies hurled back water into the cave, to leave them gasping for breath and clutching at the stone around them for fear of being washed away. Mrs Warmington was very frightened and wanted to leave to find a safer place, but Julie held her back.

  Rawsthorne was not feeling well. The events of the last two days had been too much for him, and his heart, not too good in normal circumstances, was beginning to act up. He doubted if he could have gone on any longer on their flight from the coast and was thankful for this respite, unpleasant though it was. He thought of Julie; this was a good girl, strong and tough when the necessity arose and not frightened of taking a chance. He could tell that young Wyatt was on her mind, and hoped that both of them would be preserved during this terrible night so that they could meet again and pick up their normal lives. But neither of them would be the same again, not in their approach to the world and, especially, to each other. He hoped they would find each other again.

  As for that damned Warmington woman with her eternal nagging moan, he did not care if she was washed out of the cave there and then. It would at least leave more room and they would be rid of a strength-sapping incubus. He gasped as he was soaked by a solid wall of water, and all thought left him save for the one desire for survival.

  So the night went on, a terror measured in hours, a lukewarm hell of raging wind and blowing water. But the wind died towards the morning and the cave became drier, no longer inundated every few minutes. Julie eased her cramped legs and thought that, incredibly enough, they were going to survive. She roused Rawsthorne, who said, ‘Yes, the wind is dropping. I think we’ll be all right.’

  ‘My God, I’ll be glad to get out of here,’ said Julie. ‘But I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand. The way I feel now I’ll have to learn to walk all over again.’

  ‘Can we go out?’ asked Mrs Warmington with the first animation she had shown for a long time.

  ‘Not yet. We’ll wait until it’s lighter, and the wind will have dropped even more by then.’ Rawsthorne hunched his shoulders and peered forward. ‘I have the idea it would be easy to get drowned out there, especially stumbling around in the dark.’

  So they stayed in their cramped shelter until the dim light revealed the sides of the ravine and then they went out into the glorious daylight, first Julie, ducking cautiously through the rapidly flowing curtain of water, then Mrs Warmington, and finally Rawsthorne, who moved slowly and painfully as though his joints were seized up. Julie’s hair streamed in the wind that swooped boisterously down the ravine—it was blowing hard by any standards but it was no hurricane.

  She waded knee deep through the rushing water and gained the bank, then turned to give a hand to Mrs Warmington, who squeaked and slipped. ‘My shoe,’ she cried. ‘I’ve lost my shoe.’

  But it was gone, washed swiftly down into the valley in the fast water. ‘Never mind,’ said Julie. ‘It doesn’t really matter. Maybe we won’t have to do much walking from now on.’

  Rawsthorne joined them, and said, ‘I wonder what’s happening down in the valley. I think it’s important we should find out.’

  Julie glanced at him. ‘If we climb out of here on to the hillside we should be able to see. I think we can get up that way.’

  The earth had turned to mud, thick and slimy, and it was not easy to climb out of the ravine. They floundered and slid on the slippery surface, but eventually reached the top by tugging on convenient branches and tough tufts of grass. Everything they grasped to pull themselves up by held firm—only the strong was left, the weak had been destroyed by the wind.

  Even the barren hillside had been wrecked. Most of the low, gnarled trees showed white wood where branches had been ripped off, and there were raw scars in the red earth to show where entire trees had been uprooted. Hardly a tree had a leaf left on it, and the whole slope had been scraped free of everything that could be moved.

  Rawsthorne looked down into the valley. ‘My God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Look at the Gran Negrito—the river!’

&nbs
p; The whole floor of the valley was covered with a leaden sheet of water. The Negrito Valley drained most of the southern slopes of the Massif des Saints and the vast runoff of water from the mountains had met the floods pressing in from the mouth of the river in Santego Bay. The river had burst its banks, flooding the rich plantations, destroying roads and bridges and drowning farms. Even from where they stood, so high above the valley, and despite the dying wind, they could hear the murmur of the flood waters.

  Mrs Warmington was white-faced. ‘Isn’t there anyone alive down there?’

  ‘The people we saw were climbing the slopes,’ said Rawsthorne. ‘There’s no reason to suppose they were caught in the floods.’

  ‘Let’s go down and find out,’ suggested Julie.

  ‘No!’ said Rawsthorne sharply, and Julie looked at him in surprise. ‘I don’t think we’ve finished with the hurricane yet.’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ said Mrs Warmington. ‘The wind’s dropping all the time. Of course it’s over.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Rawsthorne. ‘I think we’re in the eye of the hurricane. We’ve got the other half to go through yet.’

  ‘You mean we’ve got to go through all that again?’ asked Julie in alarm.

  Rawsthorne smiled ruefully. ‘I’m afraid we might have to.’

  ‘But you don’t really know,’ said Mrs Warmington. ‘You don’t really know, do you?’

  ‘Not really, but I don’t think we ought to take a chance on it just yet. It all depends on whether we encountered the hurricane dead centre or whether it just caught us a glancing blow. If it hit us dead centre, then we’re in the eye and we’ve still got to go through the other half. I’m not a good enough weather expert to tell, though; Wyatt could tell us if he were here.’

  ‘But he’s not,’ said Mrs Warmington. ‘He landed himself in gaol.’ She hobbled along the hillside and looked down. ‘There are people down there—I can see them moving.’

  Rawsthorne and Julie crossed over to where she was standing and saw the hillside crawling with people on the lower slopes. Rawsthorne scratched his chin. ‘It’s a good thing the valley is flooded, in a way,’ he said. ‘They can’t get down into the bottom again where they might be caught in the winds next time round.’

  ‘Well, I’m going down there,’ said Mrs Warmington with unexpected decision. ‘I’m sick and tired of being pushed around by you two. Besides, I’m hungry.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Julie. ‘Mr Rawsthorne knows more about it than you do. You’re safer up here.’

  ‘I’m going,’ said Mrs Warmington, stepping out of arm’s reach. ‘And you’re not going to stop me.’ Her chin quivered with foolish obduracy. ‘I think it’s nonsense to say that we’ll have another storm like the one we’ve just gone through—things don’t happen that way. And there’ll be food down there and I’m starving.’

  She edged away as Julie stepped forward. ‘And you blame me for everything, I know you do. You’re always bullying me and hitting me—you wouldn’t do it if I were stronger than you. I think it’s disgraceful the way you hit a woman older than yourself. So I’m going—I’m going down to those people down there.’

  She darted away as Julie made a grab for her and went stumbling down the hill in an awkward limping gait due to the loss of her shoe. Rawsthorne called Julie back. ‘Oh, let the damned woman go; she’s been a bloody nuisance all along and I’m glad to see her back.’

  Julie halted in mid-step and slowly walked up the hill again. ‘Do you think she’ll be all right?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘I don’t give a damn,’ said Rawsthorne tiredly. ‘She’s meant nothing but trouble all along and I don’t see why we should get ourselves killed trying to save her neck. We’ve done our best for her and we can’t do more.’ He sat down on a rock and put his head in his hands. ‘God, but I’m tired.’

  Julie bent over him. ‘Are you all right?’

  He lifted his head and gave her a wan smile. ‘I’m all right, my dear. There’s nothing wrong with me but too many years of living. Sitting about in wet clothing isn’t too good at my age.’ He looked down the hill. ‘She’s out of sight now. She went in the wrong direction, too.’

  ‘What?’

  Rawsthorne smiled and waved his hand in the direction of St Pierre. ‘The St Michel road is over there; it leaves St Pierre and sticks to the upper slopes of the Negrito Valley before it climbs over to join the coast road. If we were leaving I would suggest going that way—I don’t think that road would be flooded.’

  ‘But you don’t think we ought to leave,’ Julie said in a flat statement.

  ‘I don’t. I fear we’re going to have more wind. We’ve found a safe place here and we might as well stick to it as long as we’re not entirely sure. If the wind doesn’t blow up in another three or four hours then it will be safe to move.’

  ‘All right—we’ll stay,’ said Julie. She moved over and looked down into the ravine at the smooth sheet of water flowing over the big rock. The cave was completely hidden behind that watery curtain. She laughed and turned back to Rawsthorne. ‘There’s one good thing—we’ll have a lot more room now that fat bitch has left us.’

  II

  Wyatt stood on the top of the ridge overlooking St Pierre and looked down over the city. The waters had ebbed since his first startled vision in the flash of lightning, yet half the city was still flooded. The climacteric wave had left nasty evidence of destruction, the wrack of a broken city at the high-water mark half-way up the ridge. The houses at the bottom from which the battle assault had been made just a few hours before had disappeared completely, as had the wide stretches of shanties in the middle distance. Only the core of the city was left standing—the few modern towers of steel and concrete and the older stone buildings which had already withstood more than one hurricane.

  Away in the distance the radar tower that marked Cap Sarrat Base had vanished, cut down by the wind as a sickle cuts a stalk of grass. The Base itself was too low-lying and too far away to see if much more damage had been done, although Wyatt saw the glint of water where no water should be.

  And of the Government army there was no sign—no movement at all from the ruined city.

  Causton and Dawson walked up the slope behind Wyatt and joined him. ‘What a mess!’ said Causton, and blew out his cheeks expressively. ‘I’m glad we got the population out.’ He dug into his pocket and produced a cigarette-lighter and a soggy packet of disintegrating cigarettes. ‘I always pride myself on being prepared. Here I have a waterproof lighter guaranteed to work under any conditions.’ He flicked it and a steady flame sprang forth. ‘But look at my damned cigarettes.’

  Dawson looked at the flame which burned without a flicker in the still air. ‘Are we really in the middle of this hurricane?’

  Wyatt nodded. ‘Right in the eye. Another hour or so and we’ll be in the thick of it again. I don’t think Mabel will drop much more rain, though, not unless the bitch decides to stand still. They do that sometimes.’

  ‘Don’t pile on the agony,’ pleaded Causton. ‘It’s enough to know that we have another packet of trouble coming.’

  Dawson rubbed his ear awkwardly with a bandaged hand. ‘I’ve got a hell of an earache.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Causton. ‘So have I.’

  ‘It’s the low pressure,’ said Wyatt. ‘Hold your nose and blow to equalize the pressure in the sinuses.’ He nodded towards the flooded city. ‘It’s the low pressure that’s keeping all that water there.’

  As the others made disgusting snorting sounds he looked up at the sky. There was a layer of cloud but he had no means of knowing how thick it was. He had heard that sometimes one could see blue skies in the eye of a hurricane, but he had never seen it himself nor had he ever encountered any who had, and he was inclined to dismiss it as one of the tall tales so often found in weather lore. He felt the sleeve of his shirt and found it was nearly dry. ‘Low pressure,’ he said. ‘And low humidity. You’ll dry off quickly. Loo
k at that.’ He nodded to where the ground was beginning to steam gently.

  Causton was watching a group of men march down the slope towards St Pierre. ‘Are you sure Favel knows that more wind is due?’ he asked. ‘Those boys are in for trouble if they don’t get back here smartly.’

  ‘He knows it,’ said Wyatt. ‘We discussed it. Let’s go and see him—where did he say headquarters were?’

  ‘Just up the road—it’s not far.’ Causton chuckled suddenly. ‘Are we dressed to go visiting?’

  Wyatt looked at the others—they were caked with sticky mud from head to foot and he looked down at himself to find the same. ‘I doubt if Favel will be in better condition,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  They walked back, skirting their foxhole, and suddenly Causton stopped dead. ‘Good grief!’ he breathed. ‘Look at that.’

  In the next foxhole lay a body with an outflung arm. The back of the hand which would normally be a rich brown in colour was dirty grey as though all the blood had been drained from it. But what had made Causton pause was the fact that the body had no head, nor was there a head anywhere to be seen.

  ‘I think I know what did that,’ said Wyatt grimly. ‘Something came over when the wind was really bad and I think it was a sheet of corrugated iron. It hit the ground just about there, then took off again.’

  ‘But where’s the goddam head?’ said Dawson wildly.

  ‘That will have blown away, too. It was a strong wind.’

  Dawson looked sick and walked away. Causton said with a catch in his breath, ‘That…that could have happened to any of us.’

  ‘It could,’ agreed Wyatt. ‘But it didn’t. Come on.’

  His emotions were frozen. The sight of violent death did not affect him and he found himself unstirred by the sight. He had seen too much killing, too many men shot dead and blown to bits. He had killed a man himself. Admittedly Roseau deserved killing if ever a man did, but Wyatt was a product of his environment and killing did not come easily to him. The sight of an accidental death in a hurricane meant nothing to him and left him untouched because he compared it to the death of a whole army of men—also killed in a hurricane, but not accidentally.