Dangerous Waters

by Rosalind Brett

  Then, suddenly, Pete moved. He snatched up the wet towel, grabbed the hot fire ashes and cast them straight at those horrible eyes. The next moment he had leapt across Terry and was slashing with the parang at the crocodile’s gullet. The tussle lasted no more than thirty seconds. The dead crocodile slipped sideways in the water, a scarlet stain spread and became muddy as the body sank. Pete dipped his hands to clean them, turned back swiftly and knelt beside Terry.

  She had turned on her side, with her face pressed hard against her fists, and her limbs shook uncontrollably. He touched her shoulder.

  “It’s gone. Don’t let go, there’s a good girl.”

  But her nerve had snapped. She stayed there, trembling as if with a tropical chill. Pete got right down and lifted her, put both his arms round her and held her till she stopped shivering. She felt him, warm and vibrant and strong, smelled toilet soap and recalled, almost hysterically, that he had borrowed hers. And then, like a prolonged electric shock, came the realization that it was heaven to be held and protected in this frightening place ... even by Pete Sternham.

  She pushed half-heartedly away from him, said weakly, “I’m sorry. The last time I saw one of those it was in a zoo, and behind wire.”

  He said quietly, “You’ve nothing to apologize for. If I’d been able to warn you I’d have told you to do just what you did—sit tight and leave things to me. I daren’t try anything till it was near enough so that I could be fairly sure of hitting the eyes. The hide wouldn’t have felt the heat of those ashes, but the eyes are vulnerable...”

  “Please don’t talk about it,” she said tightly. “I’m afraid I feel ... sick.”

  “Oh, no—that’s just revulsion. Lean back against me and be quiet for a minute. You were great.”

  “I was simply too terrified to move.” She felt his hand on her shoulders, persuading her back against him and had just enough strength to resist it. “No,” she said, her voice still a bit scratchy with nerves. “I’ll be all right.”

  “Don’t be an idiot.” He sounded stern. “Just give in for a moment.”

  Because she couldn’t control them, her teeth snapped. “I don’t want your arm round me!”

  She felt his reflex action; an instantaneous withdrawal, both physical and mental. From the depths of her heart she wished she had submitted, if only for a minute. But it was too late. He got up and began to stow the tins they had used back into the canoe. She saw his profile as he bent to fold the groundsheet; it looked as it had been carved from teak. The single glimpse she had of his eyes showed them cold and jet-dark.

  As Terry got back into her seat in the canoe she knew they had passed through a small crisis which had left behind something as delicate and disturbing as quick motion sensed out of the corner of the eye. Because the subtle complication was the very last thing she had expected upon the journey with Pete, it was almost shattering.

  The sun disappeared into a haze above the swamps and for half an hour there was just a soft golden light. Then Pete looked up at a flight of birds, he took his binoculars from the rucksack and used them.

  Expressionlessly, he said, “Those birds mean padi fields, and growing rice means a village. We’ll push on till we reach it.”

  On the stroke of six, it seemed, darkness fell. Pete kept on paddling, and within an hour the trees thickened and the river closed in. There were a few empty canoes drawn up among the tree roots, a houseboat or two, dwellings on stilts and a narrow earth bank where a fire burned and women were preparing the inevitable rice and fish.

  The tuan’s canoe was hailed with good-humored shouts, and a boy swam out excitedly to grasp the rope. They tied up and stepped ashore, Pete talked to one of the older men, showed his permit, and apparently addressed him with the brand of humor the Malay liked, for there was laughter among the bystanders, hands were waved towards the huddle of high dwellings among the meranti trees.

  To Terry, Pete said impersonally, “This is the last village in Vinan. I’ve been offered a house for the night, and told them we’ll take it.”

  Without looking at him she asked, “Will it slow you down?”

  “Bound to, but it can’t be helped. You need a good night’s rest.”

  He was implying, of course, that her nerves needed the sedative of normal sleep. She ought to be grateful to him for trying to keep everything open and safe, but instead she merely felt miserable.

  She went with him, following the man who had offered the house. It was the usual grass habitation of one room placed about seven feet above the hot soggy earth. Terry had not entered one before, but now she was incurious. She saw a low wooden bed covered neatly by a sarong in bright batik, an orderly row of pots and gourds and a grass mat. Over the doorway, just inside the room, hung a bunch of dried leaves and mosses which were intended to repel evil spirits.

  Pete said, “I’ll get your case and some clean water. You’ll be all right here.”

  Actually, that was the last time he spoke to her that evening. The case and a pot of water arrived, and later on she was served with a surprisingly good omelette. These people knew nothing about omelettes and she guessed Pete had cooked it himself. She could have put questions about it in sign language to the shy young girl who brought the dish of food, but that might have started some sort of suspicion in the village. Here, they had to believe in the joint permit.

  She applied some calomine lotion, wished she could undress and get into pyjamas. It grew noisy outside and she came into the doorway and watched a feast which was in progress down in the clearing, about fifty yards away. There was a huge camp-fire with a pig roasting in the flames on a spit. There were pots of rice, yellow lumps of vegetable. The villagers were there in numbers, all wearing sarongs while the women also wore the baju, a tight Malay blouse. Their triangular faces gleamed in the firelight, they laughed and chattered, and one or two of them were encouraged to start the evening’s fun even before the feast. They danced and turned somersaults, wrestled and laughed at their own antics.

  Pete sat there. She could see him talking with a venerable village elder and applauding the performers. Someone cut the roast pig and gave him a plateful of meat and a bowl of rice. He ate it as they did, the meat with his fingers, the rice with some wooden implement. Except that when he stood he was half as tall again as most of them he might, in the firelight have been taken for some important member of the village just returned from civilization.

  Dully, Terry turned back into the room and lay on the hard bed. He didn’t want her down there with him, probably found it a tremendous relief to know she was tucked away up here, out of his way. Not that Terry blamed him. However you looked at it, he had saved her life this afternoon and she had rewarded him meanly, by suspecting an ordinary friendly gesture. Since then she hadn’t been able to meet his glance.

  The noise outside stopped early; Pete’s doing, she supposed. She waited, her heart somewhere up near her throat, for him to come into the hut and spread a blanket on the floor. But an hour passed, two hours, and the only sounds were the occasional yapping of the small Malayan dogs, the eternal singing of cicadas and the usual creaking in the walls and the roof of banana leaves. So he had decided not to come into the hut; no doubt it felt good to be free of her for a few hours. Was he sleeping, or perhaps lounging in the already familiar attitude and thinking of the fair woman named Astrid, to whom he was bringing gifts?

  Terry tossed uneasily. She didn’t want to think of Pete as a person, still less as a man. And she certainly didn’t want to think about his blonde friend. Neither of them really had anything to do with Terry Fremont.

  She had slept for about an hour when the rain roused her. Tumbling, cannonading rain which sounded as if it would never cease. It kept her awake till the thick grey dawn, when she looked out upon a deserted lake which stole up the stilts of the house and threatened to submerge everything that grew less than three feet from the ground.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE Malays in that last village in Vinan te
rritory could not have been more charming. When, at about noon, the rain stopped, they waded out and exchanged cheerful greetings with each other, hung their grass mats on the dripping branches and swept their rooms clear of mud and debris beaten down from the roofs. When Pete came to Terry’s hut he told her they had apologized to him for the rain and begged him to stay on till the waters lowered. After he had regretfully refused, they had insisted that he accept pieces of roast meat and a gourd of cooked rice, bunches of bananas and a grass bag full of mangosteens.

  “We’ve enough food to last us the rest of the trip, without cooking anything more,” he said. “That means we’ll be able to keep moving.” Then, offhandedly, “Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes, thank you. What about our goods in the canoe? Are they wet?”

  “I wrapped the plastic tent round them, but they won’t have escaped entirely. The wet gets into everything. Oh, by the way,” with cool emphasis, “they’ll make gifts as you go down to the canoe. They want to show they regard our staying with them as an honor.”

  “Do I have to do anything in return?”

  “Only smile,” he said laconically. “Just to demonstrate how lucky you consider yourself in being my wife.”

  For a moment, then, she badly wanted to apologize for her behavior of yesterday afternoon. But he was cool and distant, his smile was a blend of distaste and cynicism, and she couldn’t risk a further rebuff.

  “Then we’ll leave at once.”

  She said, “I’m ready when you are.”

  From plump, giggling girls, Terry received squares of batik, a necklace of orange-colored beans, a beautifully woven grass dish. At the water’s edge stood the old man with whom Pete had sat last night. In each hand he held a split bamboo which contained pink-looking rice grains swimming in coconut milk. His slit-like eyes disappeared in a wrinkled brown smile, and he bowed as he handed one bamboo to Pete and the other to Terry. Pete took down the mixture in one swallow. Terry hesitated, and managed it in three. The stuff was cloyingly sweet and tasted slightly alcoholic.

  The old man said, “Tuan, we hope to see you here again, with your mem. Remember what I have told you about swift waters in the narrow of the river.”

  “I’ll remember,” Pete said, shaking the leathery old hand. “And I’ll be back to see you again, old man. Tabek.”

  “Tabek, tuan. Tabek, mem.”

  The canoe must have been upturned for the night; it was wet, but held no water. Terry tucked her gifts under the plastic cover and sat down, the rope was dropped into the canoe and half a dozen eager boys pushed the heavy little craft out into midstream. There were shouts and more laughter, Pete raised a hand and began to use one of the paddles. Forest swallowed the village and its sounds. They moved along the thick muddy river and the smell of it overpowered every other odor. The sky was a heavy grey as they arrowed into a sudden blanket of mist. Why was mist always blue among these trees? Terry wondered.

  She felt clammy and unrefreshed. The dress she had put on was an oldish flowered one that she had packed when bright with hope that she would be able to help Annette in the preparations for the wedding. Now she would be too late to help very much, even if the rash at her waist didn’t develop into anything serious. In spite of the calomine, it burned and smarted, and this morning she had noticed pinpoints of blood in the red welts. She wished she had some antiseptic cream, but Pete hadn’t listed it among his first-aid kit.

  Now he was unapproachable. Not angry, she thought, not in the least. He was too indifferent towards her to be anything so positive. He had simply realized, very clearly, that she was young and easily scared and that his only obligation was to get her to Penghu as soon as possible. It seemed that he didn’t even need someone to speak to. So long as she sat looking fairly comfortable he was apparently uninterested in what she thought of the changing river banks.

  For after they had left the village and passed through a passage between mahogany trees, the swamps were there again, only this time they were shallow enough for use as padi fields. Men and women worked, ankle deep in water, lifting weeds which floated sluggishly away. They stood up and viewed the passing canoe, stared because the occupants were white. Pete called greetings and was answered with eager courtesy. Terry had read about the gentle Malays and their polite good humor, but she hadn’t imagined the qualities would be so rooted in a whole race. Those youths who had wrecked the train at Vinan must have been utterly terrified of cholera sweeping through the villages, as had happened thirty years ago; they hadn’t set about the destruction viciously, but merely made train and rails unserviceable for many months, till the danger which threatened from outside was past. To think that a matter of a few days’ difference in her time schedule would have got her through on the train from Vinan to Penghu! She would have travelled by an earlier steamer, there would have been no negligent stranger strolling the deck. She wouldn’t have met Pete Sternham.

  With mixed feelings, she glanced at him from under the wide brim of the straw hat. Through the sun-glasses he appeared to be burned even darker than yesterday, his bones were more angular, his dark eyes keener and more deep-set. Since leaving Vinan he had changed from a dependable but nonchalant type into a rather formidable individual who nevertheless performed his duty down to the last careful fold of the plastic cover over their luggage.

  Now the swamps and the rice fields were behind them, the river narrowed alarmingly, till there was scarcely room to use the paddles. They were shut in by trees, had to push through vines which hung from locked branches and drifted their green tips over the fast-running water. The canoe hit a rock and slewed, Pete caught at branches and steadied the craft, hung on.

  “Can I help?” she asked quickly.

  “I’ll have to turn the boat so that I can see where I’m going. If you can turn round in your seat and use one of those bamboos at the bottom of the boat, you’ll be able to push the vines aside. Don’t be hasty about it—I’ll paddle slowly. Keep a sharp look out for anything stony or woody. We mustn’t lose the canoe.”

  It was the first time she had been able to help him on the river. As soon as he had reversed the canoe, she turned her body, ignored the sudden drag at the tender skin of her waist, and shoved the bamboo stick forward. She took off the hat and glasses, shook back hair which felt like soggy string and concentrated on the task he had given her, thrusting a way through the thick river growth. At first it was easy, but she noticed they were gradually being drawn along at greater speed and boulders appeared here and there in a channel of water which was no more than five feet wide and obscured by weeds. They caught up with a floating log and a mass of torn branches, got through somehow and were swept on. Now Pete was using a paddle to slow them down. He had to plunge it into the mud and hang on, straining with all his muscle to keep the canoe from cannoning into the trunks and rocks which were close enough to touch on each side.

  If Terry had had time she would have looked about her and shivered with awe. They were in a ravine between steep, jungle-clad cliffs whose growth met overhead. It was like racing without volition through a dim green tracery of forest growth, far under the earth’s surface.

  She shouted suddenly. “Pete! There’s a tree across the river!”

  He shot to his feet and grabbed at a handful of the vines about his head. Terry clung to snake-like tendrils, and after a long, wrenching moment the canoe was nosed into the mud between tree roots. Pete leapt from the canoe and tied up, swung his body round a couple of trees and viewed the giant mahogany which had crashed diagonally and lay only eighteen inches above the water. Terry was close beside him. She stared, appalled, at the massive barrier.

  “What do we do?” she whispered.

  “There’s only one thing. The water is running too fast for us to push the canoe under the log; it would get out of hand. I’ll carry the stuff round and dump it, and then drag the canoe through the bush.”

  It sounded overwhelming. She looked at his profile. “You don’t get discouraged, do you?�
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  “Not much good, is it? We’ve got to get through. Your feet all right in those coolie sandals?”

  “Yes. I don’t use them very much.”

  “Well, you can follow me on each trip with the lighter things; it will take less time.” He paused, and added without much expression, I suppose you’re beginning to wish you’d stayed in Vinan?”

  “Only for your sake. I must be quite a burden.”

  “Even on my own I’d have had to get through this,” he said coolly. “Come on, it’s getting late. I want to get past the waterfall before dark.”

  “Waterfall?” she echoed. “How shall we manage that?”

  “Let’s get out of this before we think about the falls. I was told back at the village that the next three miles are the worst of the whole trip. A couple of hours should see us through.”

  “But in less than an hour it will be dark.”

  “I’ve been saving the flashlight for an emergency. We’ll use it. Take the odds and ends, will you?”

  Terry helped as much as she could. Even when he began to drag the canoe she got behind it and pushed till he told her to stop it. The whole operation took only half an hour, but the tunnel had lost its normal dusk and was almost black. However, Pete did not use his flashlight till the speed of the water began to bounce them from side to side of the narrow river.

  Thankfully, Terry noticed that the vines were thinner and the river had widened to about ten feet. The blade, menacing water swept along with ever greater momentum, and then, above its sucking clamor, she heard the roar of the falls.

  Afterwards, Terry was never able to remember the waterfalls very clearly, except the whiteness and the cold spray as she leapt and staggered down the thirty-foot rock face right alongside the tumbling foam. How Pete had dealt with the canoe remained a mystery, though she knew the whole operation of transferring the craft and its contents had demanded immense nerve and muscle. She had reached the smothering palms and ferns at the base of the falls, had waited an age while the flashlight seemed to toil of its own volition up and down the cliff. Then at last the canoe had arrived, at the end of the rope, with Pete slithering after it. His shirt was in ribbons, his hair rough and black and dripping, and his face was cast in a mould of maniacal determination.