Free The Cormorant by Stephen Gregory Page A

reluctantly withdrew my hands from my pockets and bent to pick it up. As I did so, the line began to show above the surface of the water, well downstream, towards the jetty at the mouth of the river. The current had taken the cormorant nearer to the castle. I wound in the line, turning it around my wrist. It grew taut. The rope went away to my right and entered the water quite close to the slimy pillars of the jetty. I pulled tighter. It would not budge.
    Quickly striding along the shore towards the bridge over the estuary, I coiled in the line, winding it around my forearm. I broke into a run when I saw the rope disappear into the coffee-coloured sea where it swirled in the legs of the pier. I leaned on the rope, my whole weight on the slender line, until it sang in the cutting wind and the droplets of sea flew from it. The bird was caught somewhere in the currents, with the rope around its ankle, the rope snagged among the weed and slime and barnacles of the wooden columns.
    ‘Archie, Archie, you bugger . . . where the hell are you?’
    Uncoiling the line again, I ran up to the sea wall, vaulting onto the promenade, and sprinted to the jetty. There was an iron gate whose sign forbade entrance to the pier, except to authorised persons. I sprang over and went to the end, trailing the slack line behind me. Then I was directly over the spot where the rope slid into the water. I wound it in and leaned out, fifteen feet above the sea, with the line taut in both my hands. I strained to see. The tide came forcing up the river mouth, throwing back the feeble currents of the river itself. Around the wooden pillars, where they sank beneath the surface, the eddies coiled and hissed like serpents. Bubbles of brown foam were sucked into the whirlpools. Again I leaned on the rope and pulled it upwards with all my strength, until I thought it gave an inch. The water writhed. If the cormorant was there, it was fighting for breath, seeing its own spark extinguished in every silver bubble which burst from its beak.
    I threw off my waterproof jacket, snatching the clasp knife from its pocket. Having tied the rope to the railings of the pier, I began to clamber over the barrier, to negotiate a descent through the slimy pillars. Outwards I leaned, looking down between my legs for every footing. There were big iron bolts to grip and to stand on, icy cold to the touch, laden with grease. The wind raced through the stanchions, by my face the rope quivered. Step by step, I made the precarious descent to the surface of the water, stood there with my arms wrapped around the wet wood, breathing heavily. There was no time to spare. Bracing myself against the cold, I stepped down further, the green boots feeling for the next foothold in the racing water. Down and down, with the water now at my knees, at my thighs, while I groped for another step, tugging at my waist and sinking bitter teeth into my stomach . . . the currents around my chest . . . the breath squeezed out of me . . . I gasped and clung to the jetty, there was nowhere further for me to go . . .
    Gripping fast, I felt down the rope, first with my hand and then touching the tautness of it with one boot. I plunged my face into the water, one finger pressing my glasses hard against my nose. Again I ducked my head, the aching cold throbbed in my temples and at the base of my neck, my pullover was weighted down with green ice. I leaned down as far as I could with the knife in my left hand and began to saw at the rope. But I knew it was no good, that the currents and the struggles of the bird must have wound the line around the pillar, in and out of the seaweed-slimy bolts of the stanchions, that in straining on the line, in my panic, I must have tightened the tangle of knots, that even the inches it had given from my vantage point above the water were only a clenching of the knots. I worked with the knife. The rope gave. It flew from the surface with the release of tension and dangled from the