Now for the second and really more important point of this letter. You’ve all been terribly close about the reason for your trip to Haiti, but I’m not altogether a fool, and within a few hours of having got to know you all I became convinced that five people who feel as you do would never be running away from our dear England while there’s a war on, unless they had some definite object in doing so; and even if they were, why in God’s name choose a benighted spot like Haiti?
Quite definitely you’re going there on some secret mission or other—even a child could guess that. And the fact that none of you understand Creole is going to prove a most frightful hindrance to your plans.
I lived in Jamaica for five years before the war, and during that time I travelled a lot in the West Indies with my uncle, visiting nearly all the islands. His hobby was the study of the natives and I used to help him with his notes, so before the bomb I could speak Creole fluently, and I learnt quite a lot about these unusual, unhappy “high yallers” who are a mixture of the aboriginal Caribs, Negro and European.
As the Duke suggested, you can hire an interpreter, of course, but it’s quite certain that he’ll cheat you and let you down in a score of different ways. So why not take me?
Although I can’t speak, I can listen to what the natives say, write it down for you and write the reply that you are to make. Honestly, I shall be able to look after you and get you what you want better than a dozen paid interpreters. Besides, I should be utterly miserable living on my aunt’s plantation in Jamaica. I can easily cable her that I am staying with friends and shall not be joining her, at all events for the present. Do be a dear and talk this suggestion over with the others.
Yours very gratefully,
Philippa Ricardi.
Having finished the letter Simon hurried along with it to the Duke’s room.
‘What d’you think about her offer?’ he asked when de Richleau had finished reading it.
‘It’s certainly not one to turn down lightly. She’s right, of course, about the fact that she could be much more useful to us than some hireling who speaks French. All the same, I don’t like the idea of involving her in the risks we shall have to run.’
Simon nodded. He was torn between a strong desire to press for acceptance, purely on the selfish grounds of keeping Philippa in their party so that he should see more of her, and reluctance to bring her into danger.
‘We could put it up to her,’ he hedged, ‘but perhaps we ought to decide ourselves. It would be difficult to make her understand the risks in one short talk, and we must settle this thing tonight.’
‘Let’s consult the others,’ said the Duke, and, collecting Rex on the way, they walked along to Marie Lou’s room.
When the situation had been explained, Marie Lou said at once: ‘Of course we’ll take her. Why not? The poor girl is only too anxious to have a chance of doing something for her country, and it would be a shame to refuse her.’
‘Yes,’ added the practical Richard; ‘and if these Haitians are as untrustworthy as she says, before we’re through we may be thundering glad to have someone with us who understands their lingo.’
‘Sure,’ Rex agreed. ‘On a job like this we’d be plumb crazy to turn down such an offer.’
‘All three of you are for it, then,’ said the Duke slowly, ‘and I admit that you’re all talking sound common sense. I don’t know why I’m reluctant to take the girl myself, but somehow I have a feeling that if we do she’ll run into some grave trouble from which we shall be unable to protect her.’
‘If you have a premonition of that kind we’d better leave her behind,’ said Marie Lou with a sigh. ‘But it does seem rather silly unless you feel very strongly about it.’
‘No,’ said the Duke; ‘it’s not really a premonition. I think perhaps I’m influenced by the fact that she lacks the power to call for help in an emergency; but between us we ought to be able to look after her.’
Simon grinned. ‘If she does come I’ll never let her out of my sight.’
‘I thought that was the way the wind was blowing,’ smiled the Duke. ‘All right, then. Marie Lou had better go along and talk to her. The really awful things that can happen to an unprotected spirit on the astral should be stressed as heavily as possible. If she shows the least sign of levity I won’t take her, but if she evinces serious understanding and is still willing to take the risk she can come.’
Marie Lou was away for a good hour while the others sat smoking and talking together. When she returned, she said: ‘It’s all fixed up. I gave Philippa as clear an outline as I could of what we’re up against, and she’s read so many books on folklore and theosophy that she has already managed to piece together some sort of muddled version of the Old Wisdom on her own account. She’s obviously ready to receive knowledge, and I think she’s been sent to us for that reason. In any case, all I told her has made her more anxious to come than ever, and she has promised faithfully to obey, without argument, all orders, however fantastic they may seem to her.’
Next morning they drove inland to the airport, where Rex did a quick run over the hired plane, and by half past nine they were off.
He had not flown since he had been wounded and forced to bale out, but he soon found that although his injured leg was not capable of the instant reactions on the rudder-bar essential to a fighter-pilot it was perfectly good for ordinary flying.
Passing out over the Florida cays they flew for an hour above the more western of the thousand islands sprinkled in the blue tropic sea which make up the Bahamas; leaving behind them by twenty minutes to eleven the southernmost tip of Andros, the largest of the widely-scattered group. For a further hour and a half they sighted no land until the easternmost point of Cuba loomed up on the horizon. Crossing it, they flew on and by one o’clock they were approaching Haiti from midway between the two capes that enclose the great bay of Gonave, at the innermost indentation of which lies Port-au-Prince.
As they peered down de Richleau and Marie Lou recognised the unique lobster-claw formation of the coast which they had seen in their astral bodies on the night that they had harried the Black Magician to his home.
Not once on their long journey from England had any of them sensed the presence of Evil, and they felt confident that their enemy could have no knowledge of the fact that they were about to carry the war into his camp. Yet now, when they were flying high over the middle of the vast bay, with both headlands remote points in the far distance, de Richleau felt a sudden presentiment of coming trouble.
He had hardly turned to speak of it to Rex, beside whom he was sitting, when the plane entered an air-pocket and dropped like a stone, several hundred feet.
Rex gave a gasp of surprise. No pilot expects to meet air-pockets over calm, open sea, as they are caused by inequalities of the earth’s surface. The instant they shot out of the air-pocket the plane was pitched sideways by a violent wind, and the amazed Rex had great difficulty in preventing it from turning over. Below them the blue sea sparkled tranquilly in the sunlight. There was no trace of any storm, yet it seemed as though they had been caught up in a hurricane.
De Richleau knew, and the others guessed, that this was no natural phenomenon. Somehow their enemy had learnt of their approach and was exerting all his strange powers to wreck the plane. It was flung from side to side, turned up on end and dashed seaward as though a giant invisible hand was striking at it. Shouting, gasping, they were thrown about until they were bruised, breathless and shaken.
In vain Rex strove and battled at the controls. No brain or nerve could counter that ghastly, unnatural attack. The plane rapidly lost height, rushed into a falling-leaf spin and streaked headlong towards the waters. By a superhuman effort Rex wrenched it out of the spin, but the strain proved too great. One of the wings tore, flapped and crumpled. The plane fell again, sideways this time. There was a frightful moment as they hurtled downward, and it seemed that the water was rushing up to meet them.
Next instant the wrecked plane s
truck the waves with a great smack and plunged right under. One of the front windows burst from the impact and with a hissing roar the waters came surging into the cabin. De Richleau’s only emotion was one of bitter fury. The enemy outwitted him at the very start by lulling them into a false sense of security and now they were to be drowned like rats in a trap.
14
In Deadly Peril
The plane was up-ended, nose down, with its occupants a writhing heap of arms and legs struggling in the cockpit. Rex and the Duke were underneath; Richard and Marie Lou had pitched forward on to them. Simon and Philippa, who had been seated in the tail of the plane, were on top of the pile.
Down—down—down plunged the plane, so that it seemed to them in their terror that it would never stop until its engine became embedded in the ocean bottom. From the burst window in the front of the cockpit water was foaming and bubbling up between the tangled limbs of the six trapped passengers; yet while the plane continued its hideous dive they were powerless to move against the impulse that had flung them together in its nose.
The sea was crystal clear, and Marie Lou, who had been thrown forward so that her face was pressed against one of the side-windows, could see the under-water scene past which they were rushing as clearly as though she was staring into a plate-glass tank at an aquarium.
During her yachting holidays in peace-time she had often gone out in the glass-bottomed boats which are specially designed so that passengers can peer down at the beautiful submarine gardens which lie off the coasts of many islands in the Tropics. She had, too, spent hours swimming in warm seas, pushing along in front of her a glass-bottomed bucket through which she could study the lovely waving coral fans, the countless varieties of anemones, shrimps, prawns, seaweed, lobsters and the multitudes of rainbow-hued fish which darted in and out of the gently undulating underwater vegetation.
Now with very different emotions she saw some of those gaily-coloured denizens of the shallows. A shoal of tiny orange fish flitted by, a long barracuda, slowly opening its evil jaws, stared at her for a moment, a pair of blue-and-yellow-striped angel-fish passed so close that had it not been for the window she could have stretched out her hand and touched them; but she was no longer conscious of their beauty. One awful thought stifled all else in her mind. In a few moments those fish would be nosing their way into the submerged plane as it lay on the bottom, and very soon they would be eating her; nibbling her flesh from the bones of her drowned body.
After what seemed an interminable time, but actually was only a matter of seconds, the speed of the plane’s downward plunge decreased. Simon grabbed the back of one of the middle seats and with a great effort heaved himself off the others. Seizing Philippa’s arm he pulled her towards him. Richard and Marie Lou struggled up after them towards the tail of the still descending plane. Now that the weight of the others had been taken off Rex and the Duke they too were able to regain a semi-upright position. Both were half-submerged in the water which continued to bubble in through the broken window. With extraordinary presence of mind, instead of trying to fight his way upward with the rest, Rex sat down in the gaping hole, thereby partially blocking it; but, sitting there, the water was up to his chest and was still spurting up in a fountain from between his legs.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the plane stopped moving; then reversed as the buoyancy of the air inside it began to carry it upwards. Its speed increased and a moment later its tail shot out of the water.
‘Get up into the tail, all of you—get up into the tail!’ yelled Rex. ‘Your weight will right her.’
Bashing their knees and shins on the seat-backs they climbed across them up into the tail of the plane. Suddenly, their weight having balanced that of the engine, it tilted and fell over on its belly. The water, which had risen to the level of Rex’s neck, rushed forward the whole length of the cabin, momentarily submerging the others as it hit the walls of the tail with a resounding whack.
De Richleau stumbled to the middle of the cabin, now awash knee-deep. Reaching up, he pulled the ripcord of the emergency exit in the plane’s roof and, getting one foot on a seat-back, heaved himself up through it. Richard staggered forward, clutching Marie Lou, and lifting her small body in his arms he thrust her up towards the Duke, who was kneeling there ready to draw them up after them. They then helped Philippa up and Richard, Simon and Rex followed. Five minutes—minutes that had seemed hours— after the plane had struck the water all six of them were crouching precariously upon its roof.
‘That was a near thing!’ gasped Richard.
‘You’re telling me!’ panted Rex. ‘What in Hades hit us?’
‘An astral tornado,’ said the Duke. ‘It couldn’t possibly have been an earthly one; the sea remained calm the whole time. Somehow the enemy must have got wind of the fact that we were approaching Haiti and exerted all his powers to wreck us. But the effort must have proved most exhausting so it’s unlikely that we’ll be subjected to any further attacks for the time being.’
Rex shrugged. ‘Well, that’s some comfort; but he’s put us in one helluva spot. God knows how we’re going to get ashore!’
When the astral storm had first struck them they had been right in the centre of the great blunt-ended, lobster-claw-shaped bay of Haiti, but the huge pincers were eighty miles apart, so they were as far from either as if they had been wrecked out in the North Sea half-way between Margate and Lowestoft. They had, however, penetrated a considerable way into the jaws of the pincers and Rex had been about to pass north of the Ile de la Gonave, which guards the approach to Port-au-Prince; and they knew that they were somewhere in the twenty-mile-wide channel of St. Marc, between the island and the northern portion of the claw.
At first they could see no land at all, but, on standing up, Rex, who was by far the tallest of them, said that each time the swell lifted the plane he could make out a smudge to southwards, which must be the Island of Gonave; though he reckoned that they were at least seven or eight miles distant from it. Turning, he scanned the horizon on every side. There was little steamer traffic between Port-au-Prince and the outer world, and they knew that their best hope of rescue lay in some native fishing-boat; but the sea was absolutely empty.
The Duke began to unlash the small collapsible rubber dinghy from the roof of the plane. ‘At all events, the sea is smooth,’ he said with a cheerfulness which he was far from feeling, ‘and this will take two of you. With about three hours’ hard paddling you ought to be able to make the shore and bring us help.’
None of them liked to voice the thoughts that were in their minds. Whom should they send? And how long would the plane remain afloat? Almost certainly it would become totally waterlogged and would sink long before the rubber dinghy could be paddled ashore and whoever was in it come out to their rescue in one of the island’s boats.
At length de Richleau said: ‘It’s no good sending the two girls; they wouldn’t be strong enough to paddle the distance alone, and the dinghy won’t hold more than two.’
‘Philippa must go,’ said Madie Lou at once. ‘She’s the youngest of us, and it’s entirely our fault that she’s here.’
The dumb girl could not argue but she shook her head and pointed to Marie Lou and Richard.
‘Yes,’ said the Duke. ‘Marie Lou is right. We’ve let you in for this, so we must get you out of it. Besides, you understand the language of the islanders so, through whoever goes with you, you’ll be able to secure help for us with the least possible delay. The question is—who is to go with you? It had better be Rex, as he is the strongest of us.’
‘Not on your life!’ exclaimed Rex. ‘I don’t need any boat to get ashore. In this warm climate I could swim that distance with one hand tied behind my back.’
They knew his prowess as a swimmer and his giant strength and realised that whoever else might drown there, in that lovely tropic sea, Rex would almost certainly be able to save himself.
So Marie Lou said: ‘Greyeyes had better go. We mustn’t forget the re
ason that we’re here at all, and it’s infinitely more important that he should be saved than any of us.’
He smiled at her. ‘Theoretically you may be right, Princess, but as leader of the party I regard myself as captain of this ship. Nothing you can say or do would induce me to leave it before the rest of you.’
‘It’s simple, then,’ said Simon. ‘Richard is stronger than I am, and speed’s important. He must go.’
But Richard shook his head. ‘Can you see me leaving Marie Lou? Don’t be silly, Simon. It’s your job, and you’re quite strong enough to paddle that distance in a smooth sea.’
‘Ner,’ Simon began to protest, but de Richleau cut him short.
‘I agree with Richard. Don’t waste time in arguing, please. It’s going to be pretty hellish here, exposed as we are to this torrid sun, and every moment counts if you’re going to get help before the plane sinks under us. Come on, now; off you go.’
Rex had been blowing up the rubber dinghy while they had been talking. Realising the urgency of the matter Simon argued no further but helped Philippa into the frail craft and got in behind her. After a good push-off they began to propel the little boat canoe-fashion towards the land which they could not yet see.
A chorus of farewell and shouts of good luck followed them and every ten yards or so Simon turned to look back. His weak eyes were full of unshed tears and he felt a physical pain right down in the pit of his stomach. He wondered desperately if he would ever see those dear friends of his again.
They had got out of so many tight corners, but somehow this was different, because there was nothing at all that they could do to help themselves. Rex’s great strength, Richard’s common sense, Marie Lou’s feminine wisdom and even the Duke’s subtle, cunning brain were all utterly useless to them in this extremity. Their only hope lay in clinging to the wreckage of the sinking plane as long as possible and then swimming for it, while praying that he might be able to bring them help in time.
Strange Conflict Page 19
