by Wilbur Smith
Centaine, still with her grip on Ernie’s arm, fell backwards, dragging him up on to the raft after her. He was still kicking, but both his legs were grotesquely foreshortened, taken off a few inches below the knee, the stumps protruding from the torn cuffs of his duck trousers. The cuts were not clean, dangling ribbons of torn meat and skin flapped from the stumps as Ernie kicked, and the blood was a bright fountain in the sunlight.
He rolled over and sat up on the pitching raft, and stared at his stumps. ‘Oh merciful mother, help me!’ he moaned. ‘I’m a dead man.’
Blood spurted from the open arteries, dribbled and ran in rivulets across the white deck, cascaded to the surface of the sea and stained it cloudy brown. The blood looked like smoke in the water.
‘My legs!’ Ernie clutched at his wounds, and the blood fountained up between his fingers. ‘My legs are gone. The devil has taken my legs.’
There was a huge swirl almost under the raft, and the dark triangular fin came up and knifed the surface, cutting through the discoloured water.
‘He smells the blood,’ Ernie cried. ‘He won’t give up, the devil. We are all dead men.’
The shark turned, rolling on his side, so they saw his snowy belly and the wide grinning jaws, and he came back, sliding through the bright clear water with majestic sweeps of his tail. He thrust his head into the blood clouds, and the wide jaws opened as he gulped at the taste. The scent and the taste infuriated him and he turned again; the waters roiled and churned at the massive movement below the surface, and this time he drove straight under the raft.
There was a crash as the shark struck the underside of the raft with his back, and Centaine was thrown flat with the force of the impact. She clung to the raft with clawed fingers.
‘He is trying to capsize us,’ shouted Ernie. Centaine had never seen so much blood. She could not believe that the thin ancient body held so much, and still it spurted from Ernie’s severed stumps.
The shark turned and came back. Again the heavy crash of rubbery flesh into the timbers of the raft and they were lifted up high. The raft hovered on the edge of capsizing and then fell back on to an even keel and bobbed like a cork.
‘He won’t give up,’ Ernie was sobbing weakly. ‘Here he comes again.’
The shark’s great blue head rose out of the water, the jaws opened and then closed on the side of the raft. Long white fangs locked into the timber, and it crunched and splintered as the shark hung on.
It seemed to be staring directly at Centaine as she lay on her belly clinging to the struts of the raft with both hands. It looked like a monstrous blue hog, snuffling and rooting at the frail timbers of the little raft. Once again it blinked its eyes – the pale translucent membrane slipping over inscrutable black pupils was the most obscene and terrifying thing Centaine had ever seen – and then it began to shake its head, still gripping the side of the raft in its jaws. They were thrown about roughly, as the raft was lifted out of the water and swung from side to side.
‘Good Christ, he’ll have us yet!’ Ernie dragged himself away from the grinning head. ‘He’ll never stop till he gets us!’
Centaine leapt to her feet, balancing like an acrobat, and she seized the thick wooden tiller and swung it high overhead. With all her strength she brought it down on the tip of the shark’s hoglike snout. The blow jarred her arms to the shoulders, and she swung again and then again. The tiller landed with a rubbery thump, then bounced off the great head without even marking the sandpapery blue hide, and the shark seemed not to feel it.
He went on worrying the side of the raft; rocking it wildly, and Centaine lost her balance and fell half overboard, but instantly she dragged herself back and on her knees kept beating the huge invulnerable head, sobbing with the effort of each stroke. A section of the woodwork tore away in the shark’s jaws, and the blue head slipped below the surface again, giving Centaine a moment’s respite.
‘He’s coming back!’ Ernie cried weakly. ‘He will keep coming back – he won’t give up!’ And as he said it, Centaine knew what she had to do. She couldn’t allow herself to think about it. She had to do it for the baby’s sake. That was all that counted, Michel’s son.
Ernie was sitting flat on the edge of the raft, those fearfully mutilated limbs thrust out in front of him, turned half away from Centaine, leaning forward to peer down into the green waters below the raft.
‘Here he comes again!’ he shrieked. His sparse grey hairs were slicked down over his pate by seawater and diluted blood. His scalp gleamed palely through this thin covering. Beneath them the waters roiled, as the shark turned to attack once more, and Centaine saw the dark bulk of him coming up from the depths, driving back at the raft.
Centaine came to her feet again. Her expression was stricken, her eyes filled with horror, and she tightened her grip on the heavy wooden tiller. The shark crashed into the bottom of the raft, and Centaine reeled, almost fell, then caught her balance.
‘He said himself he was a dead man.’ She steeled herself.
She lifted the tiller high and fixed her gaze on the naked pink patch at the back of Ernie’s head and then with all her strength she swung the tiller down in an axe-stroke.
She saw Ernie’s skull collapse under the blow.
‘Forgive me, Ernie,’ she sobbed, as the old man fell forward and rolled to the edge of the raft. ‘You were dead already, and there was no other way to save my baby.’
The back of his skull was crushed in, but he rolled his head and looked at her. His eyes were afire with some turbulent emotion and he tried to speak. His mouth opened, then the fire in his eyes died and his limbs stretched and relaxed.
Centaine was weeping as she knelt beside him.
‘God forgive me,’ she whispered, ‘but my baby must live.’
The shark turned and came back, its dorsal fin standing higher than the deck of the raft, and gently, almost tenderly, Centaine rolled Ernie’s body over the side.
The shark whirled. It picked up the body in its jaws and began to worry it like a mastiff with a bone, and as it did so the raft drifted away. The shark and its victim sank gradually out of sight into the green waters and Centaine found she still had the tiller in her hands.
She began to paddle with it, pushing the raft towards the beach. She sobbed with each stroke, and her vision was blurred. Through her tears she saw the kelp beds swaying and dancing at the edge of the ocean, and beyond them the surf humping and then hissing over a beach of brassy yellow sands. She paddled in a dedicated frenzy, and an eddy of the current caught the raft, assisting her efforts, and bore it in towards the beach. Now she could see the bottom, the corrugated patterns of sea-washed sands, through the limpid green water.
‘Thank you, God – oh thank you, thank you!’ she sobbed in time to her strokes, and then again there came that shattering impact of a huge body into the underside of the raft.
Centaine clung desperately to the strut again, her spirits plunging with despair. ‘It’s come back again.’
She saw the massive dappled shape pass beneath the raft, starkly outlined against the gleaming sandy bottom.
‘It never gives up.’ She had won only temporary respite. The shark had devoured the sacrifice she had offered it within minutes, then drawn by the odour of the blood that was still splattered over the raft, it had followed her into water barely as deep as a man’s shoulder.
It came around in a wide circle and then raced in from the sea side to attack the raft again, and this time the impact was so shattering that the raft began to break up. The planks had been worked loose by the heavy flogging of the storm, and they opened now under Centaine, so her legs dropped through and she touched the horrid beast beneath the raft. She felt the rasping of its coarse hide across the soft skin of her calf, and screamed as she jack-knifed her lower body up away from it.
Inexorably the shark circled and came back, but the slope of the beach forced it to come from the sea side and its next attack, murderous as it was, drove the raft in closer to th
e beach, and for a moment or two the colossal beast was stranded on the shelving sand. Then, with a swirl and a high splash, it pulled free and circled out into deeper water, but with its fin and broad blue back exposed.
A wave hit the raft, completing the demolition that the shark had begun, and the raft shattered into a welter of planks and canvas and dangling ropes. Centaine was tumbled into the surging waters, and spluttering and coughing came to her feet.
She was breast-deep in the cold green surf, and through eyes streaming with salt water, she saw the shark come boring full at her. She screamed and tried to back up the shelving beach, brandishing the tiller she still had in her hands.
‘Get away!’ she screamed. ‘Get away! Leave me!’
The shark hit her with his snout and threw her high in the air. She fell back on top of the huge black back, and it reared under her like a wild horse. The feel of it was cold and rough and unspeakably loathsome. She was thrown clear of it and then was struck a heavy blow by the flailing tail. She knew it had been a glancing blow – a full sweep of that tail would have crushed in her ribcage.
The shark’s own wild thrashing had churned up the sandy bottom, blinding it so that it could not see its prey, but it sought her with its mouth in the turbid water. The jaws champed like an iron gate slamming in a hurricane, and Centaine was beaten and hammered by the swinging tail and the massive contortions of the blue body.
Slowly she fought her way up the sloping beach. Every time she was knocked down, she struggled up, gasping and blinded and striking out with the tiller. The gnashing fangs closed on the thick folds of her skirt and ripped them away, and immediately her legs were freed. As she stumbled back a last few paces, the level of the water fell below her waist.
At the same moment, the surf drew back, sucking away from the beach, and the shark was stranded, suddenly powerless as it was deprived of its natural element. It wriggled and writhed on the sand, helpless as a bull elephant in a pitfall, and Centaine backed away from it, knee-deep in the dragging surf, too exhausted to turn and run – until miraculously she realized that she was standing on hard-packed sand above the waterline.
She threw the tiller aside and staggered up the beach towards the high dunes. She did not have the strength to go that far. She collapsed just above the high-water line and lay face down in the sand. The sand coated her face and body like sugar, and she lay in the sunlight and wept with the fierce gales of fear and sorrow and remorse and relief that racked her entire body.
She had no idea how long she lay in the sand, but after a while she became aware of the sting of the harsh sunlight on the backs of her bare legs, and she sat up slowly. Fearfully she looked back to the edge of the surf, expecting still to see the great blue beast stranded there, but the flooding tide must have lifted it and it had escaped out into deep water. There was no sign of it at all. She let out her breath in an involuntary gasp of relief and stood up uncertainly.
Her body felt battered and crushed and very weak, and looking down at it she saw how contact with the rough abrasive hide of the shark had grazed her skin raw, and that already there were dark blue bruises spreading across her thighs. Her skirts had been torn off her by the shark, and she had discarded her shoes before she jumped from the deck of the hospital ship, so except for her sodden uniform blouse and a pair of silk cami-knickers, she was naked. She felt a rush of shame, and looked around her quickly. She had never been further from other human presence in her life.
‘No one to peek at me here.’ She had instinctively covered her pudenda with her hands, and she let them fall to her sides again, and touched something hanging from her waist. It was Ernie’s clasp knife, dangling on its lanyard.
She took it in her hand and stared out over the ocean. All her guilt and remorse returned to her with a rush.
‘I owe you my life,’ she whispered, ‘and the life of my son. Oh, Ernie, how I wish you were still with us.’
The loneliness came upon her with such an overpowering rush that she sagged down on to the sand again and covered her face with her hands. The sun roused her once again. She felt her skin beginning to prickle and burn again under its baleful rays, and immediately her thirst returned to nag at her.
‘Must protect myself from the sun.’ She dragged herself upright and looked around her with more attention.
She was on a wide yellow beach backed by mountainous dunes. The beach was totally deserted. It stretched away in sweeping curves on each side of her to the very limit of her vision, twenty or thirty kilometres, she estimated, before it shaded into the sea fret. It seemed to Centaine to be the picture of desolation; there was no rock or leaf of vegetation, no bird or animal, and no cover from the sun.
Then she looked at the edge of the beach where she had struggled ashore, and she saw the remnants of her raft swirling and tumbling in the surf. Fighting down her terror of the shark, she waded in knee-deep and dragged the tangled sail and sheets of the raft high above the tideline.
For a skirt, she cut a strip of canvas and belted it around her waist with a length of hemp rope. Then she cut another piece of canvas to cover her head and shoulders from the sun.
‘Oh! I’m so thirsty!’ She stood at the edge of the beach and longingly peered out to where the kelp beds danced in the current. Her thirst was more powerful than her distaste for the kelp juice, but her terror of the shark was greater than both, and she turned away.
Though her body ached and the bruises were purple and black across her arms and legs, she knew her best chance was to start walking, and there was only one direction to take. Cape Town lay to the south. However, nearer than that were the German towns with strange names – she recalled them with an effort, Swakopmund and Lüderitz-bucht. The nearest of these was probably five hundred kilometres away.
Five hundred kilometres – the enormity of that distance came over her, and her legs turned to water under her and she sat down heavily on the sand.
‘I won’t think about how far it is,’ she roused herself at last. ‘I will think only one step ahead at a time.’
She pushed herself to her feet and her whole body ached with bruises. She began to limp along the edge of the sea, where the sand was wet and firm, and after a while her muscles warmed and the stiffness eased so she could extend her stride.
‘Just one step at a time!’ she told herself. The loneliness was a burden that would weigh her down if she let it. She lifted her chin and looked ahead.
The beach was endless, and there was a frightening sameness to the vista that stretched before her. The hours that she trudged on seemed to have no effect upon it and she began to believe that she was on a treadmill with always the unbroken sands ahead of her, the changeless sea on her right hand, the tall wall of the dunes on her left, and over it all the vast milky blue bowl of the sky.
‘I am walking from nothingness on to nothing,’ she whispered, and she longed with all her soul for the glimpse of another human form.
The soles of her bare feet began to hurt and when she sat down to examine them, she found that seawater had softened her skin and the coarse yellow sand had abraded it almost down to the flesh. She bound up her feet with strips of canvas and went on. The sun and the exertion dampened her blouse with sweat, and thirst became her constant spectral companion.
The sun was halfway down the western sky when in the distance ahead of her a rocky headland appeared, and merely because it altered the dreary vista, she quickened her pace. But her step soon faltered again and she realized how the single day’s trek had already weakened her.
‘I haven’t eaten for three days, and I haven’t drunk since yesterday—’
The rocky headland seemed to come no nearer, and at last she had to sit down to rest, and almost immediately her thirst began to rage.
‘If I don’t drink very soon, I won’t be able to go on,’ she whispered, and she peered ahead at the low rampart of black rock and straightened up incredulously; her eyes were tricking her. She blinked them rapidly and stared again.<
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‘People!’ she whispered and pulled herself to her feet. ‘People!’ She began to stagger forward.
They were sitting on the rocks, she could see the movement of their heads silhouetted against the pale sky, and she laughed aloud and waved to them.
‘There are so many – am I going mad?’ She tried to shout, but it came out as a reedy little whine.
Disappointment, when it struck, was so intense that she reeled as though from a physical blow.
‘Seals,’ she whispered, and their mournful honking cries carried to her on the soft sea breeze.
For a while she did not think that she had the strength to go on. And then she forced one foot in front of the other, and plodded on towards the headland.
Several hundred seals were draped over the rocks, and there were many more bobbing about in the waves that broke over the rocky point, and the stench of them came to Centaine on the wind. As she approached, they began to retreat towards the sea, flopping over the rocks in their ludicrously clownish way, and she saw that there were dozens of calves amongst them.
‘If I could only catch one of those.’ She gripped the clasp knife in her right hand and opened the blade. ‘I have to eat soon—’ But already alarmed by her approach, the leaders were sliding from the rocks into the surging green water, their ungainly lumberings transformed instantly into miraculous grace.
She started to run, and the movement precipitated a rush of dark bodies over the rocks; she was still a hundred yards from the nearest of them. She gave up and stood panting weakly, watching the colony escape into the sea.
Then suddenly there was a wild commotion amongst them, a chorus of squeals and terrified cries, and she saw two dark agile wolf-like shapes dart from amongst the rocks and drive into the densely packed troop of seals. She realized that her approach had distracted the colony, and given these other predators a chance to launch their own attack. She did not recognize them as brown hyena for she had only seen illustrations of the bigger and more ferocious spotted hyena which almost every book on African exploration contained.
