The Ebb Tide (8 page)
“I’ve been distressed by it for the past days,” I told him, “and I should have spoken up earlier. But I like the boy, and I don’t want to malign him, especially when there’s the chance that he’s innocent. Perhaps we’re as shrewd as we think ourselves to be, but it looks very much as if Frosticos has been leading us along like blind men.” I watched the unchanging view through the port, worried that they were taking an infernally long time, and slightly unhappy with myself for having laid out my suspicions about Finn Conrad like a trial lawyer while insisting that I didn’t want to malign him.
“For the moment,” St. Ives said, “let’s remember that all their machinations have been in vain. We’ll keep a weather eye on Finn, just for safety’s sake, but we’ll not condemn him until we’re certain.”
“Good enough,” I said, and abruptly we began to rise again, jerky and quick, and within moments we burst out into the dawn twilight, dripping watery sand, having been reeled in ignominiously, but alive. I saw straight off, however, that something was amiss.
The wagon was tilted disastrously, headfirst into the sand. Fred had untied the team, their forelegs covered with ooze, and was leading them away. Finn stood by him, but I saw that Hasbro lay over the back of one of the horses, unconscious or dead. Fred glanced back at us with concern evident on his face, and when St. Ives opened the hatch Fred shouted, “Remain
very
still, lads. Your friend’s been shot. He’ll live to tell the tale. There’s nothing for you to do for him.” He pointed up the bay before turning away.
We looked in that direction discerned movement atop a high dune not too far off the shore. It was impossible to say who it was for certain, but we had no doubt that it was our tall friend who had peppered away at us in the boatyard.
Then we saw that we hadn’t, in fact, been drawn clear of the sands at all, but our legs and underbelly were still submerged. The wagon itself was half sunk, too, and Fred had evidently unhitched the team in order to save them from being drawn down with the wagon. The box was grappled to its line, and it seemed likely that the combined weight of the box and the diving chamber and we two human beings had been enough to haul the wagon down into the mire.
“One at a time, now,” Fred shouted in a voice meant for the deck of a ship. “Out the door and across the wagon, lads. It’s the only way. And be quick about it! Don’t stand arguing.” He set out toward shore.
“Out you go, Jack,” St. Ives said, putting his hand on my elbow.
I shook it off. “You first. Think of Eddie and Cleo,” I said to him. “And take the box with you or this is all for nothing. I’ll follow.”
Of course he started to protest, but I cut him off sharp.
“It’s no good,” I told him. “My mind’s made up. So it’s either out the door or shut the hatch.”
Fred shouted something more from afar, shouted as if he meant it, and St. Ives shook his head darkly and swung carefully out of the hatch, reaching for the line along the side of the crane, stepping across to get a foot on the bed of the wagon. At once there was more shouting from without, and then the unmistakable sound of a rifle shot. I was thinking quite clearly and reasonably and was filled with a certain calm, and doubly determined to wait until St. Ives was clear of the wagon and the box with him.
He had his shoulder under it now, lifting it upward to take the weight off the grapple. When it was free, he carried it heavily to the rear of the wagon and set it down in order to drop to the ground. Beyond, nearly halfway to Humphrey Head now, the others swarmed along, Fred leading the horses with one hand, the other holding onto Finn’s arm. I saw the boy look back at us, and Fred letting go of him for a moment to gesture for us to hurry. And in that moment Finn bolted, back across the sands toward us. Fred slapped the horses and sent them careening forward, carrying Hasbro toward high ground, and he turned and ran back after the boy. There was another rifle shot, and I saw Fred drop to the ground, but then he was up again and running.
I saw something else, too: far in the distance, out toward the broad ocean, the tide was returning. It appeared as a wall of roiling whitewater, lit by the rising sun. How high and how distant I couldn’t make out, but it was moving toward us like galloping doom.
St. Ives saw it, too. He left the box on the bed of the wagon and ran toward Finn. What the boy thought he could accomplish returning to the wagon I can’t say. The only answer was that he was coming to our aid at the peril of his own life, and I was filled with happiness and shame both. Even so, he had chosen the worst moment for his heroics.
I leaned out of the hatch in a fair hurry now and clutched wildly at the crane arm, managing to grab the grappling hook, looking back to see St. Ives stopping Finn in his tracks, urging him back toward shore. Holding onto the grapple, I stepped out across the three empty feet to the tilted bed of the wagon, and suddenly I was falling, the line reeling out of the unsecured windlass. I clutched at the air futilely with my free hand, landing on the sands without a shudder, plunging in knee deep. I could hear Fred shouting, and St. Ives shouting, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Finn catapult past St. Ives and run out across the sands. Fred grabbed St. Ives by the coat now and dragged him back bodily, and St. Ives had no choice but to follow. Together they fled toward shore, not knowing that I was mired and supposing that I would gather Finn up and follow.
I heard the ratchet sound of the windlass crank, and the rope, which was coiled atop the sand like a floating snake, began to retract. I held onto the grapple with both hands, otherwise keeping very still, and after a moment the line went taut, and I began to rise from the sands with the heavy sound of sucking and of gasping as my boots pulled free. I let go with one hand and reached for the side of the wagon, getting a good grip on it, kicking myself up onto the seat and clambering to the bed, where I stumbled to my knees, breathing heavily, half with fear and half with exertion. Finn had jumped down now, and was waving me on and pointing toward the tide, frighteningly close, moving in a long even mass of dark green and white.
Spurred by this sight, I leapt down, heeding Finn’s admonition to run, but when I glanced again at the tide I saw that I could not. The quarter mile to shore was simply too far. Fred and St. Ives would be hard pressed to save themselves. To the north, the hillock of sand from which the doctor’s henchmen had been shooting was empty. They’d seen the advancing sea and gone away like sensible men.
“To the wagon!” I said to Finn, and the two of us climbed back up onto the bed, which was canted steeply downward, its stern to the tide. Finn’s face wore an avid sort of lunatic joy, as if this were an adventure rather than a death sentence. My own thoughts were equally lunatic—that the wagon might save us, and that I might save the abandoned device, which had taken a disastrous toll over the years. I was damned if we’d lose it now. I shouted at Finn to lash himself to the mast of the crane with the line from the grappling hook, and I picked up the box and staggered to the front of the wagon, where the diving chamber hung with its hatch open. I spun half around with the effort of throwing the box, nearly pitching off into the sands again, but I was dead on. It crashed through the open hatch, the ocean-corrupted case knocking itself to flinders, the device sliding beneath the seat.
When I turned around the Bay behind us was a shimmering, rapidly expanding sea, its leading edge billowing and surging forward at a height I wouldn’t have thought possible, and I could do no more than throw myself down on the bed of the wagon and latch onto the crane mast like a limpet before the tide was upon us. The waters slammed into the wagon, throwing a wave of cold ocean across our backs at the same moment that it pitched the rear of the wagon upward and forward, so that it bucked like a spooked horse. I was flung into the air, but I hung on tenaciously, hearing the splintering of wood as the wheels and axle and tongue of the wagon were torn from the bed like rotten sticks. We spun around crazily, abruptly free of the quicksand, and I slammed down sideways to the deck again, aware that we were flying forward on the crest of the tide at a prodigious speed.
After a few moments, I realized that doom hadn’t overtaken us after all, at least not yet, and I ventured a look around to see how things stood. What I saw was the oddest thing: ahead of us lay dry sand flats and dunes, cockle beds and half-buried debris, but beneath us the roiling tide was tossing and tearing along, now surging ahead as if to outrun us, now abating so that we moved ahead, careening along at the very forward edge of the rushing sea in a death-or-glory flight.
I heard Finn shout out loud, not a warning or a shout of fear, but one of primal joy as we sailed like maniacs up the Bay, bouncing and scudding on the current. I clung stubbornly to the crane mast, but Finn stood up and let go with one hand, holding on with the crook of his elbow, dipping and bobbing, loose-kneed and as sure of himself as if he stood bareback atop a horse, reeling around the center ring of Duffy’s circus.
We were quartering across the Bay now, swept west as well as north, so that we would make a landfall somewhere above Grange-over-Sands. I espied the crow’s nest atop Flotsam already behind us, and the thick trees along the marshy, lower reaches of Hampsfield Fell some distance ahead. I was cold, soaked with seawater, and blessedly thankful—even more thankful when the shoreline finally hove toward us in a rush. The wagon was thrown onto the beach by the tide, wheels forward, and we rolled across twenty feet of sandy shingle in a mad instant and straight on into the marsh, where we quickly lost momentum, slowing to a stop in a pool of dark water that sat amid the trees. The diving chamber with its prize inside was still miraculously secured to the crane, and it swung back and forth slowly like the pendulum of an enormous clock.
Chapter 8
Smothercated
The morning was peacefully silent but for the calling of gulls, the cool spring sun filtered through the leaves of the tree limbs overhead, and Morecambe Bay lay as placid as a lake behind us, the tidewaters a thing of memory. It was as if we had stepped out of the tumult of a noisy ball into the silent peace of a garden.
“Stay well clear of the pool,” I said, looking down at the swampy ground beneath us. The wagon settled more deeply into the mire even as we watched, as if the sands of the Bay and its marshy environs were determined to consume us. Finn leapt clear, landing on his feet, and I followed, coming down on solid ground with an ankle-numbing force.
“Look, sir! She’s in a hurry now!” Finn said, pointing at the forward part of the wagon, which slipped a couple of inches deeper again, the pool emitting a soft, deadly, well-fed sigh. The canted-down, forward deck of the wagon was buried, sandy mud oozing up over the bench, the diving chamber leaning away from the crane mast.
“If we make the grappling hook and line fast around a tree,” I said, “we might still haul the wagon out with the block and tackle and save the diving chamber and the box.”
“I’ll try for the hook,” Finn said gamely, and he paced backwards several yards and set out as if to make a rash leap onto the bed. I stopped him in mid-stride. Leaping down from a height was one thing, but leaping upward entirely another.
“Perhaps a tree limb,” I said, and we looked above us now. Our luck held fair, for some ten feet overhead a leafy limb reached out over the wagon.
“Give me a heft, sir,” Finn said, and in an instant he was up and standing on my shoulders. He leapt, caught a lower limb, and scampered into the tree like a forest creature. I stepped back to watch him. Getting a line on the wagon would be easy enough, if we were quick about it, although hauling it out again might want the team of horses, if in fact it could be hauled out.
There was abruptly the sound of voices from somewhere very near, and in my current state of mind I thought that it was St. Ives, come to fetch us. But then I knew that it wasn’t his voice, and I turned to see two men appearing from along a trail that followed the edge of the Bay—the two men I had first seen in Lambert Court, playing the part of workmen. The tall one carried his rifle; the short, simian-looking man who had struck Merton had only his ugly countenance to recommend him. They seemed as astonished to see me as I was to see them, but it was only in that regard that we were equal, for there were two of them and one of me, and there was the rifle to consider. A smile flickered across the face of the tall man, if indeed you could call it a smile, as he glanced from me to the wagon. He slowly raised the rifle and pointed it at me. I assumed that he meant to shoot me, and so I stood perfectly still, hoping that Finn was doing the same in the tree.
“What have we here, Spanker?” the tall man said.
“A hideous devil, I do believe,” Spanker said. “Pity its poor mother.”
“I say that if it moves it’s a corpse, but if it stays still it might be of some small value to men like us.”
“It’s brought us the undersea chamber,” the man Spanker said. “Isn’t it a good ’un, returning the doctor’s stolen property?”
“A peach. Sit down and have a rest, mate,” the tall one said to me, “there by that tree. Spanker, twist his head for him if he gets fancy. I’ll find a piece of rope to secure that wagon, and then we’ll see what his friends think he’s worth—a couple of quid and the odd pence, I should think.”
I sat down as requested, not anxious to have my head twisted, and watched the tall man head off through the close trees. A horse whinnied in that direction, and I saw that a canvas tent and bits and pieces of gear stood some distance beyond our clearing, lost in the woods unless you knew where to look. A sort of dogcart or shay was tethered nearby them. It was a neatly hidden bivouac, close enough to the road so that they must have seen and heard us early this morning when we were rattling along toward Grange-over-Sands in our wagon. Frosticos, of course, had posted them there. How they communicated with the doctor, I couldn’t say, but I recalled what St. Ives had speculated about underground waters and passages inland, and it would seem no great feat for Frosticos to surface now and then a mile or so north in the lower reaches of the River Kent, where it broadened out and entered the Bay.