Island of Death

by Barry Letts

  ‘Very good. Bring her round and steer 020.’ He turned back to his First Lieutenant. ‘Is’t my fault if they’re fool enough to fall in?’ he said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Much later, Sarah would look back and wonder why she didn’t actually say, ‘Where am I?’ when she came round.

  Perhaps it was the journalist in her - the years of trying to avoid clichés - that stopped her voicing what would have been an absolutely accurate expression of her feelings.

  To wake up, lying back luxuriating in a moving bath, with a hand behind her head supporting her (with one finger pressing hard on the top of her spine), became doubly mysterious when she realised that the hand belonged to the Doctor.

  Then to be held firmly as the dreamy contentment gave way to a spluttering, choking, vomiting that sent salt water up her nose and, it seemed, into her very brain was no way to discover that she’d fallen into something like two hundred fathoms of Indian Ocean.

  For a moment, she panicked, and clung to her rescuer with a grip the Doctor could hardly free himself from.

  ‘Gently, gently,’ said the Doctor, as he loosened her fingers.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped, ‘but I can’t swim. I mean, only a bit.’

  ‘You’re quite safe. I have positive buoyancy, you see. Think of me as one of those big blow-up spotted horses you see at the seaside.’

  The image was so ludicrous that, even though she couldn’t summon up a giggle, she was able to relax a little, and hang onto his shirt. It was then, as the sea carried them up towards the sky, that she saw the ship way off in the distance, and nearly freaked out again.

  ‘They’re miles away!’ she said. ‘How will they ever find us?

  What are we going to do?’

  There’s nothing we can do, but wait,’ said the Doctor, with a little smile; and this time she did giggle.

  ‘What happened? Did you slip? I heard you scream and saw you falling.’

  Yes, what had happened? She remembered waving to the Doctor... and then... ‘I don’t know. It’s just a blank.’

  ‘I thought as much. Concussion. You must have hit your head as you fell.’

  What did she remember? Oh yes. She remembered clinging onto the falls of the lifeboat, and - yes, leaning right out over the sea! She must have been bonkers!

  ‘Oh, Doctor, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s my fault we’re in this mess. I was all hyped up with... with the look of the waves, and...’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘I know. I’d spent several hours just watching them myself.

  Immersed in them, you might say. But I didn’t expect to be immersed quite so literally.’

  He could always find a joke, even at the worst of times.

  Down they went into the trough, and up again, twenty feet or more - and this time, the ship was nearer, much nearer!

  ‘I told you. Don’t worry, they’ll find us. All we have to do is...’

  ‘I know, wait!’

  The water was fairly warm, in spite of the storm. It was lucky they were in the tropics, the Doctor said. If they’d been off Murmansk, they’d have been dead long ago.

  He kept talking, taking her mind off the terrible situation they were in. He told her of his days at the Academy on Gallifrey, and the pet flubble he’d kept hidden under the bed in his first year, just so he’d have something to talk to – ‘A flubble? It’s a bit like a koala, I suppose, only with a smaller nose - and six legs’ - and how he was nearly caught when his pet came on heat and started singing her mating song.

  He told her about his friends, and the time they put their teacher (who deserved it) into a time loop, so that he relived the same lesson over and over for a whole day, while they whooped it up in the city.

  He explained how it was that he was able to stand in for an inflatable beach toy. ‘Two hearts wouldn’t be much use without the respiratory system to go with them, now would they?

  And there wouldn’t be room for a second set of lungs. So we have an ancillary pulmonary system which can open up as necessary - channels parallel to the lymphatic circulation.

  And that’s what makes us buoyant. You might say that we’re full of wind and... Well, perhaps not.’

  Her burst of laughter suddenly stopped at the top of a wave as she caught a glimpse of the ship. ‘Doctor! It’s going away!

  They’re leaving us!’

  ‘Never!’

  But they were. On the next rise they saw it clearly. The Hallaton was half the size she had been when they’d last looked.

  That was when it started to get dark.

  The Brigadier’s mind was seething with anger - and with indecision. It had always seemed to him that as a defence

  ‘But I was only obeying orders’ was pretty dicey - not only when used by somebody guilty of horrendous war-crimes, but even when it was an excuse for not facing up to a difficult choice, like the one that faced Pete Andrews now. Equally well, it had to be admitted that he was in an impossible position.

  On the one hand, the Skipper was as drunk as a skunk.

  There was no question of that. He really wasn’t fit to take such a decision, a decision that would mean two lives being lost.

  On the other hand, he had the law on his side - not only Admiralty regulations but the immemorial law of the sea, which made the Captain of a ship an absolute monarch.

  There was now no question, to turn back would endanger the ship.

  Hogben had earlier been threatened with court martial; and he’d crumbled. If Pete Andrews were to take command, he would inevitably face one himself, and that could mean the end of his career.

  The Brigadier looked again at the CO, perched on the high stool that took the weight off the legs, but enabled the Officer of the Watch to see out. He was swaying with the ship, and his eyes were closing as his head nodded forward. If he passed out completely, then presumably the choice would be out of Andrews’ hands. He’d have to take command.

  The First Lieutenant was standing alone at the far end of the bridge, lost in his own thoughts. What about the other officers? Bob and Chris were huddled over the chart, whispering together. It wouldn’t be fair to involve them in this.

  Right. There was only one thing to do. And the sooner the better. No way was he going to let his friends be drowned on the whim of an arrogant fool sodden with gin. He crossed behind the Cox’n, near enough to the Captain to be heard without the rest of the bridge hearing.

  ‘Excuse me...’ he said.

  Hogben half woke up, and looked at him as if he’d never been introduced. ‘Wha’?’

  A glance round. Nobody could hear him. He went really close. ‘Now, listen to me. I wouldn’t want you to misunder-stand me. If you don’t turn back... if you don’t do your damnedest to rescue those two, you’ll regret it until the day they bury you. Never mind a court martial, I’ll make sure that the story is headlined in every newspaper in the land.

  You’ll be finished. For good. Do you understand?’

  Hogben blinked at him blearily.

  ‘Do you understand?!’

  Hogben smiled and licked his lips. ‘Get knotted,’ he said.

  The Brigadier nodded. He’d expected some such reaction.

  Right! In for a penny... Though of course he’d lay odds that the man wouldn’t remember a thing in the morning.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ he said, with a glance round. Good.

  Nobody was looking his way.

  Taking hold of the CO’s collar, he hoisted him to his feet, and delivered the short jab uppercut that had won him the Public Schools Middleweight Cup in his last year at Fettes.

  ‘Dear me,’ he said loudly as Hogben’s legs gave way, and the Cox’n hastily averted his gaze. ‘He seems to have passed out.’

  ‘Are we going to die?’

  The Doctor didn’t answer straight away. ‘It’s possible,’ he said.

  Sarah thought she’d long since come to terms with the knowledge that one day her life would inevitably come to an end. Like
others who have had a near-death experience, she knew that there was nothing to fear. But she had taken it for granted that she’d have something like another fifty or sixty years before she had to take the idea seriously.

  Was she really going to end her life here, in the middle of the ocean?

  As night fell, the waves had taken the hint and settled down. It was over an hour now since sunset. There was still a considerable swell, but at least they were cradled in a relatively gentle rhythm that was very different from being hurtled up and down twenty feet at a time.

  At first, the darkness made their predicament seem all the more frightening. But then the moon, enormous on the horizon, showed her familiar face. It was impossible not to feel comforted.

  ‘I didn’t know there were so many stars!’

  The sky was now quite clear, the velvet depths of its black-ness studded with a myriad of jewels.

  The Doctor looked up. ‘Yes, it’s quite a sight, isn’t it. But you know, you can only see a few thousand. You see the Milky Way?’

  Yes, there it was, the splash of light across the sky behind the stars. You could never see it properly in London, because of all the street lights.

  ‘We’re looking into the heart of our galaxy. Billions of stars, too far away to make out. And there are billions of galaxies in the universe. And for all we know billions of universes.’

  He paused for a moment.

  ‘I wonder why we all think we’re so important,’ he said.

  ‘Do you hear there? Do you hear there? Able Seaman Blackmore to the bridge. Able Seaman Blackmore. At the double.’

  Bob Simkins’ voice echoed throughout the decks, the flats and the cabins.

  By the time the Captain’s steward had arrived and - with the signalman, Bert Rogers, to help - had carted the Commanding Officer back to his cabin, the First Lieutenant had given the order, and HMS Hallaton was back doing her uncertain dance towards the south-south-west.

  By now it was almost completely dark.

  ‘We have three searchlights,’ said Pete to the Brigadier.

  ‘We’ll rig all three on the upper bridge, and have every spare man on lookout up there. You may care to join them. I shall have to stay with the ship. But I must be honest, sir. The likelihood of our finding them now is just about nil. The current and the waves have been carrying them away from us, so that we have to catch them up. There’s no hope of accurately retracing our steps. And even if we did, we could pass them within twenty yards and not see them.’

  This was the last thing the Brigadier wanted to hear. Had he risked court martial for himself and Andrews for nothing?

  No! If they weren’t to try, the thought that Sarah and the Doctor were somewhere out there, and that this was their only hope, would be unbearable.

  * * *

  It was starting to get colder. Sarah’s feet seemed to have disappeared, and the lack of feeling in her fingers made her grip on the Doctor’s shirt more and more difficult to keep up. ‘Doctor,’ she said quietly, ‘I’m scared. Really scared. I don’t think I can hold on much longer, and I think I nearly fell asleep just now.’

  It was quite a while since he’d stopped trying to jolly her along. He put his arm around her. To comfort her or to hold her up? Was she shivering or was she shaking with fear?

  ‘I know. We’re in grave danger. It would be foolish to pretend that we’re not. But you know the old saying, “Never say die until you’re dead”? That’s saved my life many times.

  You never can tell what the future might bring. I promise I...’

  He stopped in mid-sentence. ‘Fool!’ he cried. ‘Fool, fool, fool!

  Double-dyed unadulterated fool!’

  He opened his mouth wide, and howled; a long, long howl.

  ‘Doctor! Are you all right?’

  That was all she needed - for the Doctor to go doolally. He didn’t answer, but howled again in the same way.

  Sarah’s Aunt Norah used to have a poodle, Fudge, who would join in whenever anybody started singing, with a plaintive ‘Woooo-oooo...’ It was the polite Wirral equivalent of an Alaskan wolf baying at the moon. The Doctor’s howl sounded very like Fudge’s, only more musical, and more on one note, and it went on and on. When he stopped at last, he was panting, just as Fudge used to.

  He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Here was I desperately trying to think of an answer, and it’s staring me in the face!’

  Again he howled, but with a slightly different tune. And again, but with even more variation.

  She couldn’t bear it any more. ‘Doctor! What are you doing?’

  He laughed a manic laugh. ‘I’m calling for a taxi!’

  Once more... But this time, it sounded almost like a strange wordless song, which subtly changed in pitch, with variations almost too fine to make out.

  Of course! When the Doctor had been peering over the bow of the Hallaton... Like that picture on a Greek vase in the British Museum - a boy riding on the back of a dolphin.

  ‘You’re singing the dolphin song!’

  The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘There don’t seem to be any around,’ he said. ‘So I’m trying to find out if any of their cousins are nearby. Inter-species communication. I knew it would come in useful.’

  Even as he spoke, there came a distant reply, eerily echoing the Doctor’s last call.

  ‘Aha!’ he said, ‘Orcas. Just what we need.’

  Answering them, with slight variations that even Sarah could recognise, he went on for quite a long time, and then listened for a response.

  When it came, it was nearly as long as the Doctor’s song, and more to the point, it was much closer.

  This time when the Doctor laughed, it was a laugh of pure joy. ‘They’re on their way. I told them what a pickle we’re in.

  And they’re going to help us!’

  It felt as if the sun had come out. As the relief swept through Sarah’s body, she felt the strength flooding back into her muscles.

  ‘Orcas? I’ve never heard of them.’

  ‘Orcas? Killer whales.’

  ‘Killer whales!’

  ‘Yes. A pod - that’s a family - on a trip up from the Southern Ocean. Having a bit of a holiday. Transients, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  As if it mattered! ‘Transients?’

  ‘Mm. An adventurous lot. Their stay-at-home cousins like to be near to where the fish congregate. The transients don’t particularly like fish. They’d rather eat mammals.’

  There was quite a long pause before Sarah spoke again, in a very small voice.

  ‘I’m a mammal,’ she said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The difficulty, of course, was controlling the sweep of the three hastily rigged searchlights, one facing for’d and the others on each side, so that in theory the whole arc was covered from the port beam, via straight ahead, right through to the starboard beam. But since the ship was now travelling with the waves once more, the Cox’n was again forced to weave a looping course, and the lights swung erratically to and fro, and up and down, despite the struggles of the seamen in charge of them.

  Hour after hour the Hallaton risked taking one roll too far; hour after hour, Petty Officer Hardy caught her just in time.

  The Brigadier felt sure that he could have managed the lights better himself. But when he asked Bob Simkins, who was in charge of the whole operation, if he could have a go with one he found that his land-learned reflexes were even less effective than those of the sailors.

  They’d been searching now for nearly five and a half hours.

  They hadn’t a chance of finding them, he thought grimly, as he gladly relinquished the thing.

  But then, a shout. ‘There they are! Green four five!’

  It was the signalman, Rogers, who was at the starboard light. Immediately, the other two lights swung around to focus as best they could on the same area. The Brigadier and the two officers crowded round Rogers, straining to see as the ship yawed and rolled, and the waves appeared and disappeared in the uncerta
in beams.

  ‘It’s not them,’ the Brigadier said heavily, as they caught a glimpse.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said the signalman. ‘You’re right. It’s them dolphins back again.’

  ‘Not dolphins, Rogers,’ said Bob, who was doing his best to check on the sighting through his binoculars. ‘It’s a school of whales... and... good God!’

  ‘What is it, man?’

  ‘Have a look for yourself!’ He was laughing in sheer pleasure and relief.

  ‘We were waving like mad and shouting as loud as we could, and it looked as if you were going to sail straight past us!’

  said Sarah, who was wrapped in a woolly blanket, and clutching a glass of hot rum toddy. Her voice was still somewhat shaky.

  The three of them were sitting in the wardroom. It was well past midnight, but nobody felt like going to bed yet. The rolling of the ship was by now comparatively gentle, and it was good just to sit and luxuriate in a cocoon of comfort and relief.

  The Doctor, looking far from his usual dapper self in Chris’s heavy schoolboy-checked dressing gown, lifted his glass to the Brigadier, as if in a toast. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  The Brigadier harrumphed and took a sip of his dram. He wouldn’t have told them about his decisive intervention, but, thanks to the Cox’n, the story of his knockout blow was now known throughout the Hallaton (to the glee of the entire ship’s company), and Bob had, off the record, passed it onto the Doctor and Sarah.

  He took another sip of whisky. No wonder she was still shaking, he thought. Bad enough to have nearly been drowned. But those great things - twenty feet long if they were an inch - were killers. The Doctor had said so. And the way they tossed their passengers onto the scrambling nets with their noses must have been the last straw.

  He said as much.

  ‘Natural to them,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s the way they play with the small seals, tossing them in the air and catching them.’

  ‘Before they eat them?’ said Sarah, wide-eyed with horror.