Free After the Rain by John Bowen Page B

rail with one hand, Wesley’s jacket with the other. There was a violent wrench. Then I had both hands round the rail again, and then the calm came again, and Arthur reappeared with a cut on his forehead and the rope tied round his waist.
    “Where is Mr. Otterdale?” he said.
    “I was holding him,” I said.
    Hunter said, “You aren’t now.”
    “I know. He was praying.”
    Arthur said, “Help me with this rope”.
    “I must have let him go,” I said.
    “We should just have time to fix it.”
    Arthur threaded the other end of the rope over the rail, and then tied it around Hunter’s waist. There wasa great deal of slack in between. “You must let us out gradually, Mr. Clarke,” he said. Then, as we survived the third wave, conversation ceased.
    The rowing boat was tied up to one end of the raft, but the second wave had lifted it and flung it, with some damage to the timbers, on to the deck of the raft itself. Somehow, heavy and cumbersome as it was, it would have to be unlashed and pulled inside the cabin while we were momentarily becalmed between one giant wave and the next. Arthur and Hunter scampered out to the edge of the deck, and I took in the slack of the rope around my own body. They had succeeded in unlashing the boat, when the raft tilted as we were again drawn up the slope of a wave. The boat began to slide along the deck towards the cabin wall. I saw it coming, and moved quickly to one side; this sudden movement of mine, combined with the tilting of the deck, jerked Arthur and Hunter off their feet, so that they rolled over each other, and finished in a heap against the wall.
    We reached the top of the wave. Once again the curling tip flicked the raft into the air. The rowing boat was jerked up, fell—mercifully away from us—against the cabin wall, and was lost overboard. Arthur and Hunter were tossed along the deck the length of the rope, like bait on an angler’s line, and fell back again. Arthur, who was underneath, took the full force of this, and as one knee crashed against the cabin wall, he gave a shrill cry. As we dropped again into the trough, I took in the slack, and Hunter managed to get to hisfeet, and cling fast to the rail. Arthur, who was obviously badly hurt, lay where he had fallen, his eyes wild and his lips tightly closed with the effort not to cry out again.
    I said, “We’ve got to get indoors”.
    Hunter said, “Are you all right, Arthur?”
    Arthur said, “Imperative. Inside.”
    Before Hunter could untie the rope, the next wave took us. I held on to Arthur as tightly as I could, but even so he was cruelly buffeted, and by the time we had stumbled through the door with him, he was unconscious.
    Inside the cabin, Gertrude, Sonya, Muriel, Tony and Mr. Banner had wrapped themselves round the legs of the table, which was screwed to the floor. Since Hunter’s shutter things were not in position, all five of them had been soaked by the water which was slopping about inside. That there was comparatively so little of it was because those giant waves were too large to be bothered with the raft as an antagonist; it was no more to them than a speck on the water’s surface.
    I had time to carry Arthur to the bunk in the bedroom , and to throw myself across his body, gripping the sides of the bunk as tightly as I could with my arms and legs. The door to the bedroom had been latched back. Those to the galley and the bathroom were closed; behind the one could be heard the clash of saucepans, and I could guess that there would be broken glass behind the other. Most of the movable objects in the main cabin were books, and these damaged nothing but themselves as they were tossed about. Mr. Banner,struck on the ear by
Jamaica Inn
, went bravely on with his attempt to comfort and encourage the women under his charge. “Oh God,” he said, “if it be indeed Thy design to punish us in this way for our misdeeds, be not too outrageous in Thy wrath. Spare, Oh Lord, the helpless. Bring