Sixty Days to Live

by Dennis Wheatley

  On July 24th Gervaise called a conference. Over half their edible supplies had been consumed and he suggested that they should make a reduction in their daily rations. They agreed unanimously, but the fact that they had to do so sounded a warning note. Their nerves deteriorated and, under the constant strain of watching for the land which never appeared above the grey horizons, they began to be terse with each other and apt to have high words over trifles. Only Gervaise remained calm and secure in his spiritual fastness, the outcome of a lifetime’s study of the great philosophies, and ever ready to restore good feeling between the others with a well chosen word.

  Sam, Derek, and Hemmingway took it in turns to look after their mad prisoner. On the day following his capture they brought him up and gave him a very badly needed bath, after which they fitted him out in a suit from one of the bags that Roy had never reached the Ark to claim. He had occasional screaming fits when he would throw himself about, but otherwise gave no trouble, as Gervaise kept him on a low diet and mixed sedatives with his food. With the welding implements, which were among the large collection of such things that had been stored in the Ark, Derek succeeded in forging the ends of a length of chain into two anklets, so that they were able to hobble Fink-Drummond and release him from his other bonds; after which he was able to move freely about his narrow prison but unable to separate his feet more than twelve inches, which rendered him incapable of exerting his full strength in any attack. He made no attempt to escape, however, but became increasingly lethargic rather like a wild beast that has been doped, as he remained obdurately silent although on many occasions they tried to persuade him to talk.

  In the latter days of July they had several severe hail-storms during which bits of ice as big as pigeon’s eggs drummed on the outer sphere of the Ark like bullets, making a deafening but harmless din, and on the first of August they saw their first snow.

  For thirty hours the fast-falling flakes blotted out the monotonous seascape, but when the snow ceased on the second day they were overjoyed to see that at long last the clouds had broken, revealing the sun. For over five weeks it had remained hidden by the dense clouds which had accumulated as a result of the deluge.

  Gervaise quickly got out Oliver’s sextant and took an observation; a very simple matter as it consists only of bringing an image of the sun in a mirror to a point on the sextant’s arc where the rim of the image just touches the rim of the sun itself seen through a smoked glass. Hemmingway, meanwhile, stood by to take the time on the chronometers which, although probably inaccurate now from the buffeting the Ark had received, could not be far out as they had never stopped.

  The two of them then worked out the easy sum which gave the Ark’s latitude, and it proved to be 71° 17′ north.

  Finding their longitude was a different matter, as neither of them knew more than the rudiments of nautical astronomy, but they hoped that they would be able to do so if they could get observations of some of the stars.

  The discovery that they had drifted so far north was extremely perturbing as, following the 70th parallel of north latitude on the map, they saw that it ran from Baffin Land, across the middle of Greenland, past the North Cape, and through the Arctic Ocean to Siberia.

  Gervaise and Hemmingway both felt convinced that their calculation had been correct but hoped, as did the whole party, that it had been wrong. Even if they sighted land now it looked as if they would be faced with the grim prospect of fending for themselves in some desolate region of the Arctic.

  Yet the weather seemed to confirm the reckoning, as they had more snow and sleet in the days that followed, and when the sun broke through again for a brief period on the 5th of August further observations gave their latitude as 71° 20′ N., which established the fact that they were still drifting in a northerly direction.

  It was on the 7th of August that Sam, going into the kitchen first thing in the morning to help prepare breakfast, found Margery lying there motionless, face downwards on the floor.

  His first thought was that Fink-Drummond had escaped during the night and was responsible for this new outrage. His second, that she was dead and that he had lost her. Only then did he realise how much her companionship had meant to him through all these desperate weeks.

  It was not that he no longer loved Lavina; her grace and beauty still played havoc with his senses, but her youthful vitality, her insistence that they must always be doing something even though they were shut up in the narrow confines of the Ark, and her insatiable craving for amusement had proved a great strain on him lately, in spite of the fact that Derek and Hemmingway occupied a good part of her time.

  Sam was a strong man, but from his first youthful struggles in Bradford he had worked himself unmercifully and he was now getting on for fifty. He had been young for his age when he went on his honeymoon with Lavina but the strain of the last seven weeks had told upon him and he now looked, and felt, even older than his years. The holocaust which had swept all his worldly possessions away had revived something primitive in him. Gone was the veneer which had so long overlaid his simple inbred habits. Even his voice had changed, the vowels broadening as he reverted to his childhood tongue.

  He wanted a peace and repose that Lavina could never give him, but that Margery could. Lavina’s finer qualities, her courage, her independence, her sense of fair play and her real integrity were so masked by her apparent irresponsibility that Sam was only faintly conscious of them, whereas Margery’s straightforwardness, thoughtfulness for others and unselfishness had stood out all the more by comparison because she lacked the glamour of her younger sister.

  As the mistress of his great house in St. James’s Square Lavina could have been unsurpassable, but Margery would have made a real home for her man and her children anywhere; and now that money, position and power had all been swept away from him, Sam knew that he would never miss them in the least if the future held a simple home for him like that which he had known with his mother in Bradford.

  While these thoughts raced through his brain, Margery stirred. In an instant he was on his knees beside her and had taken her in his arms. Her eyes opened; his heart began to hammer in his chest. Before he knew what he was doing he was kissing her feverishly and pressing her to him.

  ‘Sam—oh, Sam,’ she murmured, leaning her cheek against his. Then, as realisation dawned upon her, she pushed him back, exclaiming, ‘Oh, what are we doing? We’re mad! You mustn’t, Sam!’

  ‘I—I couldn’t help it—in my relief at finding you weren’t dead,’ he stammered. ‘I love you, Margery. I love you.’

  ‘So that—is that,’ said a quiet voice from the doorway, and, swinging round, Sam saw Lavina standing there, a cigarette dangling from her lips.

  24

  DOMESTIC UPHEAVAL

  ‘Margery fainted and I—I—’ Sam stuttered, coming slowly to his feet.

  ‘No need to explain,’ said Lavina, with dangerous quietness. ‘I understand the situation perfectly,’ and, swinging on her heel, she slammed the door.

  ‘Oh, God!’ groaned Sam, ‘what a hellish mess! I’m sorry, Margery—most terribly sorry—to have let you in for this.’

  But Margery was smiling. It was her hour, her triumph, her vindication as a woman. She had loved Sam from the moment that he had kissed her in the cloakroom at Stapleton on his wedding-day. His strength, his kindness and his uprightness of purpose made him all that she had ever wanted in a man. She had not consciously gone out to get him because he was her sister’s husband, and her code forbade that; but all her scruples had gone overboard the moment she had come round to find herself in his arms. Morality was man-made; she was woman, aching to be loved. And, joy piled on joy, after Lavina had casually taken every man that had come into their ken, the final victory lay with her, for she, without even scheming to do so, had taken Lavina’s own husband.

  With an enormous effort of will she forced herself not to show the incredible happiness she was feeling. Sam must be played quietly now. He would become rem
orseful and she would lose him if she followed her burning impulse to fling her arms round his neck.

  ‘It’s all right, Sam,’ she said, as she scrambled to her feet. ‘If you feel that way you couldn’t have helped it; so you’re not to blame. I would have done just the same if I had found you lying on the floor and thought you were dead.’

  ‘You would?’ he exclaimed, seizing one of her hands.

  She quickly withdrew it. ‘Of course. You can never know what our friendship has meant to me. I haven’t had a very happy life and when you walked into it you were Lavina’s fiancé. I know I ought to have forced myself not to think of you but I simply couldn’t help doing that. But it wouldn’t have been right for me to show you that I loved you.’

  ‘Oh, Margery—Margery!’ He passed a hand over his eyes. ‘I’m not worthy. This is a terrible thing that I’ve done.’

  ‘No, Sam. A Providence that sees into all our hearts willed that we should at least have the joy of knowing of each other’s love.’ Margery was playing her part superbly and she knew it. All the old clichés rolled automatically off her tongue and she could see that for Sam they were the words of the perfect woman. She wondered if she dared risk saying, ‘We must forget this—never, never think of it again,’ but decided that she had better not chance it. Sam might take her at her word, and that was the last thing she wanted. Instead, she went on: ‘We have our duty; we must think of others, not of ourselves. I leave myself in your hands, Sam dear, knowing that whatever you decide will be right.’

  Sam hardly knew what to reply to this. Margery was perfectly right, of course. They must think of Lavina, not of themselves. They must not let their guilty passions blind them to their sense of duty. How like her it was to voice those high ideals. The fact that during his long bachelor-hood Sam had from time to time kept numerous young women in very comfortable flats did not stand him in any stead now. They had been invariably beautiful and usually empty-headed little gold-diggers without any moral principles, but they had served the purpose of providing him with light recreation during the few hours of leisure he was able to snatch from his preoccupation with big business. Now, for the first time in his life, he was up against something totally different; a woman with ideals, a good woman such as his mother had been; and he felt the enormous responsibility that the declaration of her love had laid upon him. But, for the life of him, he could not see what decision could be taken.

  There had been no misconduct. Such a thing was almost unthinkable in connection with Margery. So, in a normal world, Lavina would have had no grounds for divorce, but matters might have been arranged so that he could have persuaded her to give him his freedom; whereas here, in the Ark, how could he possibly even suggest casting off his young wife with a view to marrying her elder sister? In any case, there was no one to divorce or remarry him, unless the father of the two girls could be considered to have special powers as Captain of the Ark; and the fact of Gervaise being with them seemed to make the position even more impossible. Yet Margery obviously expected him to do something about it.

  After a moment, the habit of years reasserted itself and, using the same technique as that which he had applied on innumerable occasions when difficult problems had arisen at board meetings, he said firmly:

  ‘Leave this to me. We mustn’t hurry things. But after a little thought I’m sure I shall find a way.’

  Margery was equally puzzled as to what step could next be taken, but that, she thought, was Sam’s affair and, in the meantime, he had definitely committed himself, which was all that really mattered.

  ‘Of course we mustn’t rush things,’ she agreed. ‘I’m perfectly content to wait. Your love will give me the strength and courage to do that.’

  Sam knew that he would have to do some pretty hectic thinking and had just decided that he would take refuge at once in one of the storerooms so as to be by himself when he suddenly recalled the state in which he had found Margery ten minutes earlier. Turning at the door, he said:

  ‘By Jove! I’d entirely forgotten to ask what happened to you. I thought Finkie must have escaped and attacked you; but it seems you’d only fainted. Whatever caused you to do that?’

  Margery’s mouth dropped open and her eyes almost popped with excitement. ‘Of course, I haven’t told you,’ she cried, grabbing him by the arm. ‘When I came in here to make breakfast I looked out of the port-hole and I saw land, Sam. Land!’

  ‘Good God!’ In two strides Sam was across the kitchen staring eagerly out of the port; and there, no more than five miles distant, was that for which they had watched in vain through so many dreary weeks.

  ‘The sight of land after all this time came as such a shock to me that I fainted,’ Margery murmured.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Sam breathed, gazing enraptured at the low, green shore. ‘But come on! We must tell the others.’

  Running from the kitchen with excited shouts they broke the news to the rest of the party. The land was not visible from the port-holes of the living-room so they crowded about those in the cabins on the other side of the Ark; all of them wildly thrilled by this new hope of release from their prison and a real chance, at last, that they might live out their lives to their allotted span instead of slowly starving to death on the empty ocean.

  They had naturally anticipated that when they did sight land it would be the top of a mountain chain; some snowy peaks and a jagged, rocky shore; but this was totally different. Before them in the distance spread a low, greenish landscape of trees and meadows splashed here and there with white patches which they knew must be half-melted snow.

  Gervaise and Hemmingway had dashed into the men’s cabin and, after a moment, Gervaise remarked:

  ‘It’s surprising that we didn’t see it when we were dressing.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Hemmingway replied. ‘It’s quite a long time now since we used to look out hopefully each morning. Anyhow, we’d better not waste any time in getting the engines going, otherwise a storm might get up and blow us away from it again.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Gervaise agreed, and leaving the cabin he called to Derek, who, as their Engineer, hurried below at once.

  They were by now so used to the silence of the Ark and its gentle rolling, that it was a queer sensation to hear the pulse of its engines and feel it chugging slowly forward in a given direction. Fortunately the weather was calm, so, in spite of its unwieldy shape, its big drop-keel and rudder kept it from revolving, and although its pace was less than that of a rowing-boat it made steady progress towards the shore. While it was slowly forging ahead Sam and Hemmingway got up from the stores the parts of a collapsible canvas boat, which they unpacked and assembled. An hour and a half after the engines had been got going the Ark jolted slightly as its keel cut into earth, and came to rest in shallow water about fifty yards from land.

  Opening the door, they went out on to the platform to survey this domain that the gods had decreed for them. On closer inspection it was by no means so attractive. A great number of its trees had been uprooted and broken branches dangled from the others giving them a pathetic, woebegone appearance. In some places the grass was mired by great patches of mud or snow, a dead horse lay on the foreshore, and for as far as they could see, the land was sprinkled with the debris of the flood.

  It was bitterly cold upon the platform after the warmth of the Ark, so, having seen Sam and Hemmingway launch their canvas boat and set off in it to row ashore for a brief exploration, the others hurried inside again.

  By lunch time the explorers were back to report that they had been unable to penetrate inland more than a few hundred yards in any direction. The whole earth was so sodden that they had got bogged wherever they went. They had seen a small, square, grey stone house in the distance and come across some drowned cattle but had discovered no indication as to what country they might be in.

  ‘We may be in northern Norway, Iceland or Greenland,’ said Gervaise sadly, ‘but it’s impossible to say which.’

  ‘I’m
quite sure it’s not Norway,’ Hemmingway volunteered. ‘This is low meadow-country, not unlike England, and if we were in Norway we should certainly be able to see mountains in the distance.’

  ‘True,’ Gervaise agreed. ‘For the same reason I doubt if we are in Greenland, unless we’ve landed somewhere on the high table-land of its interior. I should think Iceland is the most probable; but, of course, we may have drifted very much farther than we thought, either west to Canada or east into Northern Russia.’

  ‘But the country doesn’t look like that,’ Lavina objected. ‘It’s too green and friendly.’

  Gervaise smiled. ‘It’s a big mistake to imagine that countries bordering on the Arctic are always lands of snow, dearest. The most beautiful wild flowers in the world grow in the meadows of Siberia and it’s greener there during the short Arctic summers than it is in England. Now that it’s August their winter is approaching and soon they will be buried deep in snow; but we’re seeing one of them just before the long Arctic night sets in.’

  ‘It is neither Canada nor Russia,’ Hemmingway said decisively, ‘otherwise the trees would be mostly larch and pine. Besides, the country is too much cut up into small fields. I should say the betting is a hundred to one on our having fetched up in Iceland.’

  ‘Anyhow, there’s one comfort,’ Sam added. ‘The flood is definitely subsiding. This is typical low, wooded country so we can’t be very far above sea-level and everything is so drenched that it’s quite obvious that the whole of this area was still under water not more than two or three days ago. There are no snow patches within five hundred yards of the shore either, which indicates that the water must have gone down that much since the early hours of the morning.’

  That Sam was right about the flood subsiding was evidenced an hour later. Unnoticed by them the waters had seeped away from under the landing-platform, but they realised it only when the Ark gave a sudden lurch, flinging everything off the table and most of them to the floor. Its keel, stuck deep in the mud, had kept them upright since the sphere had grounded, but with the lessening support of the waters it had given way. They were floating again now, with the deck at a sharp angle.