Free Death in the Andamans by M. M. Kaye Page B

sky was still clear and serene, but behind them it had turned to a leaden pall of darkness against which the tangled mass of the jungle and the tall tops of coconut palms stood black and motionless, and not a leaf stirred. Even the ferns and orchids and the long, delicate festoons of creeper that swung down from every overhanging branch hung so still that they appeared to be rigid, and the rattling swiftness of the ancient car seemed the only sound in all the breathless, waiting islands.
    Charles tilted the driving-mirror so as to give himself a view of the lowering sky behind him, and said: ‘ Crippen! We’re going to be lucky if we beat this! Hold on to your hats, and we’ll see if we can knock sixty out of this galloping bedstead.’
    He switched on the headlights as they bucketed out of a side-turning and swung left with a screech of tortured tyres into a long, straight stretch of road lined with shadowy coconut palms. But the storm was overhauling them with relentless swiftness, and by now more than half the sky was darkened by it and the far hills had been blotted out. ‘ Hurry, Charles!’ implored Valerie.
    â€˜It’s no good telling me to hurry,’ retorted Charles with something of a snap: ‘Address your admonitions to this blasted mousetrap! — she’s bursting her stays as it is, and even if we could by some miracle kick another five miles an hour out of her, she’d fall to pieces in the process!’
    â€˜This would happen on Christmas Eve!’ mourned Valerie. ‘Charles, do you think the others will hold the ferry for us? We were the last to leave and we’ve got the worst car, so the Dobbies and George and Amabel and Co. are bound to have arrived by now.’
    Charles said: ‘You forget they’ve got to decant Hurridge and Ted Norton first. We’ll probably be at the jetty as soon as they are. Listen!… What’s that?’
    For some minutes past they had been vaguely aware of a curious humming sound that was barely audible above the noise of the car. But now, suddenly, it deepened until it sounded like the croon of wind through telegraph wires, and grew steadily in volume until the whole island seemed to vibrate to it as the fabric of a church will tremble to the low tones of an organ.
    Charles shouted: ‘Hold everything — here she comes!’ And even as he spoke, the storm was upon them.
    It hit the breathless immobility of the evening with the impact of a sixteen-inch shell. Shattering the brooding stillness into a thousand tortured fragments as the wind leapt upon the island; shaking it, savaging it, tearing it as though it were a terrier with a rat: bending the tall trunks of the coconut palms as though they had been saplings, and lashing them to and fro in a wild confusion.
    Trails of jungle creeper, ripped from their airy moorings, leaves, twigs and orchids, fragments of branches and startled insects whirled across the windscreen of the car and tangled themselves about the radiator as the car rocked and bucketed onwards, keeping to the crown of the road with difficulty. Valerie could see Charles’s lips forming wicked words on discovering that the windscreen-wiper was out of order, and she groped for some cotton waste and leant out, the wind whipping her hair across her eyes: The car lurched to a standstill as Charles applied the brake and dragged her back into her seat with a relentless hand. ‘—! —!’ yelled Charles; his words completely unintelligible against the roar of the wind. He snatched the cotton waste from her and performed the operation himself.
    Valerie was aware of Copper shouting something in her ear as the car bounded forward again: ‘Nick!’ shouted Copper, white-faced with terror: ‘The boats! They’ll be out in this!’
    Dan Harcourt, who had caught a word or two above the fiendish flapping and rattling of the aged car and the whining howl of the wind, yelled