Shadow of the Moon (23 page)

A considerable proportion of the Colonel's high colour faded and his ire diminished appreciably. He scowled at Alex, and his breathing became less stertorous.

‘What's this? What's this?' demanded a thin grey-haired gentleman clad simply in a towel, a tasselled smoking-cap and a pair of embroidered slippers. ‘Can't fight a junior officer; thing's absurd. Duelling illegal.'

‘He struck me!' spluttered the Colonel. ‘The young puppy struck me.'

‘Good gad!' said Major Rattray blankly. ‘Deuced serious offence strikin' a superior officer.'

‘But he ain't in uniform, dear boy,' murmured a languid gentleman attired in nothing but a pair of Turkish-style trousers and an eyeglass. ‘Can't call that uniform. Purely private matter when not in uniform. Personal disagreement between gen'l'men.'

‘I must apologize for being a little hasty,' said Alex smoothly. ‘One of the ladies, being of a nervous disposition and alarmed by the torchlight and the noise, fancied that - that the ship might be on fire and ran up on deck. I offered to escort her below, but as Colonel Moulson, imagining her to be a woman of a very different sort, disputed her passage, I was compelled to be a little rough. I trust that he will accept my apology for any hurt he may have suffered.'

The Colonel scowled blackly but there was a look in Alex's eyes that was considerably less conciliatory than his words had been, and as the fumes of brandy gradually lost their grip on Colonel Moulson's brain, it began to dawn on him that should Captain Randall's story be true, the lady in question could well have a husband awaiting her in Calcutta. In which case, his own part in the affair might be brought into question. He therefore growled a surly acknowledgement to the apology and lurched away.

Alex looked after him thoughtfully. It was a pity it had had to be Colonel Moulson … He had never liked the man and considered him, scornfully, a suitable companion for Conway Barton. But it had been necessary for the smooth running of affairs in Lunjore to keep on good terms with Moulson, and he regretted that necessity had compelled him to make an enemy of the
man, since it would make things just that much more difficult in Lunjore. The task of seeing that the Condesa de los Aguilares came to no harm was proving no sinecure, thought Alex irritably.

Winter had reached the safety of her cabin without further mishap, and as it was in darkness, it was not until the following morning that a shriek from Lottie and a hurried inspection of herself in the looking-glass revealed the fact that her hands were grimed and her face liberally streaked with coal-dust.

‘
Oh
!' said Winter on a gasp of fury. ‘What can he have thought?'

It seemed to be her fate to appear before Captain Randall at a disadvantage: losing her temper and lashing at him with her riding-whip like a harpy - struggling in the arms of Edmund Rathley - being degradingly sea-sick - climbing walls and falling off them like a hoyden. And now appearing on deck at a most improper hour of night and being found there with her face streaked with soot like a nigger-minstrel's! Somehow (she did not quite know why) it was all Captain Randall's fault. And as she scrubbed her face furiously with soap and cold water she summarized the Captain's behaviour in trenchant Spanish, to the alarm of Lottie, and resolved to treat him in future with the greatest possible coolness - which was surely no more than he deserved. But there was scant opportunity to do so, for she saw very little of him in the succeeding days.

In his role of escort to Mrs Abuthnot's party Alex had arranged for the dispatch of their baggage and their own conveyance to the station, but he had not travelled in the same compartment on the train, and Winter had not seen him again until they left Cairo for Suez two nights later in a ‘desert omnibus' drawn by mules and horses. Even then he had not spoken to her. He had sat opposite her, and Sophie had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder.

Winter studied him by the bright starlight and the glow of the oil-lamp that swung by the driver's seat; aware that her own face was in deep shadow and that he could not return her scrutiny. In a day when luxuriant beards, lush moustaches and flowing Dundreary whiskers adorned almost every masculine countenance, Alex Randall's clean-shaven face had at first sight an alien and almost effeminate look. Yet in spite of the fact that his thick eyelashes would have compared favourably with any girl's, there was nothing in the least weak or effeminate in the hard planes of his face or the line of the obstinate chin. His skin was burnt as brown as an Arab's, but even by that dim light Winter could still see a faint trace of the bruise that her heel had made on that night in Malta. It seemed a very long time ago, yet it was less than ten days since she had helped to drag him over a wall and had run headlong with him through deserted streets, and sat in the moonlight talking to him as if he were someone whom she had known all her life.

Her gaze moved from Alex's face to Sophie's. Sophie was only fifteen, but already a woman: a pretty enough creature, small-boned and fragile with timid brown eyes and a shy, charming smile. She reminded Winter
strongly of one of the white mice that Billy Wilkins, the bootboy, had kept in a box in the stableyard at Ware. The van lurched as the offside wheels went over a boulder or the bleached bones of a camel, and Sophie's small head slipped down from Alex's shoulder to his breast, but she did not wake.

Winter was conscious of an acute and entirely irrational feeling of annoyance. It was ridiculous that Sophie should fall asleep in this abandoned manner! though admittedly, most of the other occupants of the van were also slumbering soundly. But she, Winter, was not in the least sleepy, and how anyone of any sensibility could sleep in such a rattling, bumping, uncomfortable conveyance she did not know. Besides, if Sophie
must
sleep, surely it would have been more proper in her to have inclined the other way and allowed herself to be supported by Mrs Hillingworth, the comfortably upholstered wife of a Major of Bengal Artillery, instead of allowing herself to be embraced by Captain Randall? She saw Alex shift Sophie's weight and his face twitch in a faint grimace of discomfort, and realized that he was suffering from the twinges of cramp. ‘Serve him right,' thought Winter crossly.

She shut her eyes with determination and thought of Conway. But for some unaccountable reason she found that she could not picture him clearly. Always before she had been able to conjure him up by a mere effort of will: the Conway who had given an eleven-year-old girl a gold and pearl ring, standing in the Long Walk at Ware with the sun shining on his blond head and his shadow stretching across the velvet turf. Tall, broad-shouldered, yellow-haired and handsome; a shining knight. Now, for the first time, the vision failed her, and it was no longer a living man that she saw, but a picture out of a child's book - a flat, two-dimensional representation, crudely drawn, wooden and unreal. A blank face whose blue eyes were as glassy and as empty of meaning as a doll's, and whose mouth was hidden by a drooping corn-coloured moustache so that she could not tell if it were firm or full or weak.

Winter opened her eyes and found herself looking once more at Alex Randall's relaxed, unguarded face in the pale light of the newly risen moon. Alex's mouth was firm enough, and unexpectedly sensitive. He was Conway's assistant and she supposed that she would see a great deal of him once she was Conway's wife. The reflection disturbed her, and the thought passed through her mind that it would be better - she was not sure for whom - if he were to be transferred to some other district.

Two days later the travellers embarked upon the
Glamorgan Castle
and sailed down the Red Sea, leaving the dust and glare of Suez behind them. And once more the days settled into a pattern of pleasant shipboard monotony.

Three days out of Aden they ran into a storm, but it blew itself out after twenty-four hours of tossing discomfort, and on the last evening before they
sailed into fine weather again they passed the water-logged wreck of a dismasted ship, its decks swept by the heavy seas.

Captain Ross of the
Glamorgan Castle
had manoeuvred his ship as close to it as he dared, and launched a mail-boat, in charge of the first officer, with a boarding party. They returned wet and exhausted with the news that the vessel had apparently been a troopship bound for China, but that there was no one on board and few papers or particulars to be found on her. It was to be presumed that all on board had taken to the boats, for all the boats were gone. The bulkheads of her Captain's cabin had been carried away, the port anchor and the cathead had gone, and from the appearance of the tattered sails and broken spars it was obvious that a sudden squall of hurricane force had carried all away at once. It was unlikely that the men on board would have lived to reach any shore, but there was nothing that could be done about it now, and the
Glamorgan Castle
went on her way in the swiftly gathering twilight.

Winter, who had crept up onto the windy spray-swept deck, watched the abandoned wreck fade into the stormy dusk; a forlorn sight with jib and staysail hanging in shreds from bowsprit and jib-boom, her masts shattered and broken spars trailing over the side into the sullen seas that washed the deserted decks.

A cold shiver ran down Winter's spine as she looked. In spite of the wild weather the fact that she was actually in the Indian Ocean, and that India itself lay ahead of her at last, had filled her with a sense of glowing happiness. But the sight of that battered and broken ship, drifting and sinking in the lonely wastes of the sea, dimmed the glow and brought with it a chill breath of apprehension and foreboding.

She heard a sigh beside her that was not the wind, and turning quickly, saw Kishan Prasad standing near by, his eyes fixed on the fast-vanishing wreck. But for once his bland, inscrutable face had dropped its guard and it was as though a mask had been stripped from it, leaving it naked and exposed. He did not appear to be aware of Winter, and he did not move or speak. But quite suddenly, and as though he had shouted it aloud, she knew his thought with a complete and horrified certainty.

He was thinking, with a fierce, gloating pleasure, of the men who had been on that ship. Seeing them in his mind's eye swept away by the savage seas; sinking down into the hungry fathoms, dragged under by the weight of their sodden uniforms; choking and drowning, their struggling bodies torn and ripped by sharks and barracudas. He sighed again. The same long-drawn sigh of hatred and satisfaction, and Winter shrank away, and backing from him, turned and ran headlong, stumbling down the steep stairs and tripping on her full skirts.

Alex Randall was coming down the passage towards her, and he caught her arm and steadied her: ‘What's the matter? Feeling ill again?'

‘No,' said Winter on a gasp. She had forgotten that she had meant to
avoid all conversation with Captain Randall outside of social necessity, and she clung to his arm, her eyes wide with shock. ‘It was Kishan Prasad—'

She saw Alex's face change and his mouth tighten, and said breathlessly: ‘He was looking at that ship. And he was
glad!
He hated them and he wanted them to drown … he was glad that they had been drowned … I could see that he was!'

Alex said: ‘It isn't so surprising. They were soldiers - British troops. If he could have drowned them singly with his own hands he would probably have done so.'

‘Why? Do they - do they hate us?'

Alex said impatiently: ‘Did you suppose that they loved us? The benefits of Western civilization are not necessarily looked upon as an unmixed blessing when imposed upon the East by a foreign conqueror, you know.'

He looked down at Winter's white face and glimpsed something of the shock that this sudden revelation of hatred had dealt her. The girl had obviously never thought of India as a conquered country. She had imagined herself to be coming home, and the realization that many of the inhabitants of that land could hate all those of British blood with a savage and implacable hatred was like a blow in the face to a trusting child. He wanted to say: ‘Don't look like that! It isn't safe to be so vulnerable - to expect too much of anything or anyone.'

He said instead, with a kind of exasperated anger: ‘I warned your cousin Ware that this was no time to send any young woman out to India, but he would not listen. None of them will!' And turning from her abruptly he went on down the passage and up onto the wet deck.

But it was only two days later than Kishan Prasad fell overboard, and it was Alex who went after him.

12

Alex had not known that it was Kishan Prasad who had fallen. Perhaps if he had it might have altered the course of a great many lives.

The day had been hot and still and all that remained of the storm was a long, heaving, barely perceptible swell that swung the cabin doors idly to and fro and made the line of the horizon lift up and fall again in a slow, leisurely rhythm. The sea was blue with the intense midnight blue of the Indian Ocean, and so clear that floating squadrons of jelly-fish far below the surface appeared as though embedded like bubbles in blue glass, and the sun that had blazed down all day from a cloudless sky had made the deck planks uncomfortably hot to the touch, even under the shade of the awnings.

It was after four o'clock and the decks were comparatively deserted while the passengers changed for dinner. Lottie had come up early, intending to meet her Edward, and she had looked up and seen Kishan Prasad standing on the paddle-box gazing out to sea. Even as she looked the ship rolled suddenly in the trough of an unexpectedly deep swell, and she saw Kishan Prasad, taken off guard, slip and fall and slide under the rail. The next moment he had vanished, and Lottie shrieked and ran.

Two of the lascars, together with a ship's officer and Colonel Moulson, had also seen someone fall, and they ran along the deck shouting. Colonel Moulson, with what he considered to be admirable presence of mind, picked up two deck-chairs and heaved them overboard into the creaming wake, and these were followed almost immediately by a hen-coop thrown after them by one of the lascars.

‘
Man overboard
!' bellowed Colonel Moulson and the ship's officer.

Alex, who had been lying asleep face downward in a patch of shade with his head buried in his arms, woke at Lottie's shriek and came to his feet. She stumbled towards him, her face chalk-white, screaming and pointing, and he turned and raced aft along the deck and caught a brief glimpse of a despairing hand that reached up from the foaming wake.

‘It's all right, Randall,' snapped Colonel Moulson. ‘Only one of those blacks. He'll be drowned by now - they can't swim.'

A sudden flash of pure rage hit Alex with the force of a blow. He kicked off his shoes, and in the next second had vaulted over the rail and dropped feet first, and the rush of the sea closed over his head.

The water was unexpectedly cold and the churning wake sucked him down and down until the sea felt like a ton weight upon his shoulders. Just when it felt as though his lungs must burst, the weight lifted and he was being shot to the surface like a cork, and there was air again. He gulped deep
draughts of it and struck out strongly, aided by the swirl of the wake. After the sweating heat of the
Glamorgan Castle
the cold rush of the foaming water was incredibly exhilarating, and he shook his wet hair out of his eyes and laughed.

It was, he presumed, one of Kishan Prasad's servants who had fallen overboard, for had it been a member of the crew Moulson would have said ‘a lascar'. ‘Of all the goddamned, bloody, idiotic things to do!' thought Alex, anathematizing his own conduct. ‘What the hell is the life of one heathen lackey worth that I have to make a quixotic exhibition of myself trying to fish the man out? Why does common sense betray one in a crisis?'

He saw a dark struggling shape ahead of him and the next moment it had disappeared. Alex filled his lungs with air and dived. The man struggled feebly, and for a minute that seemed like an endless hour they sank down together through the blue water. And then Alex got a grip on him and kicked strongly and they were rising once more into light and air.

Even then he did not realize who it was that he held. He caught the half-drowned man under his arms and swam towards the heavy wooden hen-coop that was lifting to the swell not twenty yards away. After several fruitless efforts he managed to heave his limp burden face downwards across the stoutly built coop and hold him there while he trod water.

The swell that had been barely perceptible from the decks of the
Glamorgan Castle
was a very different thing when viewed from the level of the sea itself, and in the trough of it the ocean appeared to be empty and the
Glamorgan Castle
had vanished. The next swell swung them slowly upwards, and far away - miles away it seemed - the ship showed small against the blue. It would take a long time for them to heave-to and circle back, thought Alex. They would lower a boat as soon as possible but it would be a long wait. The distant ship vanished as the laden hen-coop slid once more into the glassy trough of the swell, and the Indian coughed, retched, lifted his head and moved feebly.

‘Lie still, fool,' said Alex in the vernacular. The man obeyed, but presently he turned his head, and Alex saw for the first time who it was that he had rescued—

The two men stared at each other for a long moment and Alex was conscious of a queer twisting wrench at the pit of his stomach: a helpless, futile, sick anger against fate and himself and the fatuous foolish instinct of his kind and his creed that had driven him to leap unthinkingly to the rescue of a drowning man, and by so doing had betrayed him.

Winter had asked him once if he had meant to kill this man, and he had replied bitterly that assassination was unfortunately alien to the British character. He knew that he could not bring himself to murder Kishan Prasad in cold blood, although if he could have proved his suspicions and thereby brought him legally to the gallows, he would have done so without a second's hesitation. But he had been unable to do that, and owing to the
smug blindness of those who did not wish to see, he knew that he might never obtain such proof as would satisfy them. And now Providence had stepped in and done its best to put an end to Kishan Prasad, and he, fool that he was, had risked his neck to save a man whom he regarded as among the most dangerous enemies to British supremacy in India.

If only he had waited! If only he had asked questions before he had jumped. It had been Moulson's remark that had undone him. Moulson had said: ‘It's only one of those blacks—' and Alex had instantly lost his temper. With the result that he had fallen into a booby-trap, for it was Kishan Prasad whom he had saved. The salt sea-water was bitter in Alex's mouth and he looked into Kishan Prasad's grey face and laughed.

Kishan Prasad's lips drew back from his teeth in an exhausted grin that was a grimace of complete comprehension. He said in a hoarse voice between difficult breaths: ‘Whom did you think you had saved … Sahib?' - the appellation was nearer an insult than a term of respect - ‘One of your own kind? The General Sahib, belike?'

‘No,' said Alex, treading water. ‘I thought it was one of your
nauker-log
.'

He saw the flare of astonishment and disbelief in the dark eyes.

‘My
servant
?'

‘Yes,' said Alex shortly. ‘Had I known it was you—'

‘You would have let me drown,' finished Kishan Prasad, fighting for each breath.

‘Yes,' said Alex bluntly. ‘Do not talk. You will tire yourself and the boat will not reach us for some time yet.'

Kishan Prasad was silent for a long while. The slow swell lifted them up lazily so that at intervals they could see the distant ship and the small speck that was a boat rowing towards them, then it would slide them down into a long blue-black hollow and the ship would vanish and there were only two men and a wooden hen-coop alone in all those endless leagues of ocean.

Kishan Prasad looked down into the glassy water and thought of the unimaginable depths that lay beneath him: the cold fathoms that stretched downward and ever downward to the slimy darkness of the sea floor; and his fingers tightened convulsively on the rough wood that supported him.

He spoke at long last, and softly, in a voice that despite himself he could not keep quite steady: ‘You say that had you known it were I who had fallen, you would have left me to my death. But it would seem that death is here now for one of us. Look there—'

Alex turned his head, and his diaphragm seemed to contract and turn to ice, for in the glassy swell beyond them lay a long silvery-brown body, the triangular dorsal fin just clear of the water. Shark! …

The sea was darkening below them and the low sun burned along the water, turning the surface of the swell to gold and outlining the creature with fire. It did not move, but hung motionless like a fly embedded in amber.

Alex seemed to have lost all power of movement. He held onto the edge of the hen-coop with one hand and stared back at that small cold eye. It had seen them and was watching them, idly curious.

Kishan Prasad said in a hoarse whisper: ‘This wooden thing will not bear two upon its surface, and my life is forfeit to thee.' He had forgotten to speak in English. He began to slide softly from the coop and Alex said furiously: ‘Don't be a fool! Get back onto that. You can't swim.'

At the first movement the shark had flicked away and now they saw its fin cut the water on the far side of them. The swell swung them up once more and they could see the boat, the low sun flashing along the oar-blades. But it was still a long way off.

Alex remembered having heard that sharks disliked noise and he beat the water with his cupped hand. The fin sheered away, circled and came back. Kishan Prasad was in the water holding on with only one hand, and Alex said again: ‘Get back, you fool!' He grasped the Indian about the waist and heaved, and releasing him, caught his legs and thrust him onto the top of the hen-coop where he remained on all fours gripping the edge. It was a perilous and inadequate raft, and now that it bore Kishan Prasad's full weight it lay barely an inch or two out of the water. But at least it held his body clear of the surface.

The fin cut slowly through the water, cruising gently along the flank of a long glassy slope parallel to them, and Alex suffered a spasm of cold, crippling panic. ‘Oh God, if only I had a knife,' he said in a whisper, unaware that he had spoken aloud.

‘Here,' gasped Kishan Prasad: he fumbled among his wet clothes, the flimsy raft rocking dangerously, and drawing out a knife with a slim wicked eight-inch blade, thrust it into Alex's hand. It was an inadequate enough weapon to pit against the twelve-foot monster who circled warily about them, but the feel of it in his hand gave Alex a sudden surge of hope. It was something. He had read of pearl divers off the coast of Ceylon who fought off sharks with a knife.

He beat the water again and shouted and the creature shot away, hovered and returned. It seemed to hang in the water above him and he realized suddenly that if it came at him while he held to the hen-coop, the rush of its great body would overturn that makeshift raft and dislodge Kishan Prasad. He had forgotten that Kishan Prasad was an enemy whose death he would have welcomed and whom a few short minutes ago he had been passionately regretting that he had not left to die. The man on the raft was a fellow-human and as such they were leagued together against this finny cold-blooded killer from the deeps beneath them.

He released his hold and swam away at a tangent, his eyes on that cruising dorsal fin. The swell lifted it up and once again the creature seemed to hang in the water above him. It came at him quite slowly, and as it came it turned. Alex avoided it with a superhuman effort, kicking backward with all
his strength and twisting again to face it. He heard a hoarse shout of warning from Kishan Prasad and the thought flashed through his mind that the boat had come.

‘Just in time,' thought Alex grimly. And then he saw a flicker of movement to his left … another fin. There was a second shark - a third. They circled him as though merely curious, and he felt the heave of the water under him as the first shark returned to the attack, and somehow he avoided it. Now they would all rush in. He would not wait for them to come at him, and be torn to pieces without a fight. His fingers tightened hard on the haft of the knife and he swam towards the nearest shark.

It was apparently an unexpected movement, for the creature sheered off at lightning speed, and he turned quickly and saw in the slow swell that bore down upon him the swift shape of another coming in. For the flash of a second he saw too, with uncanny vividness, the tiny striped bodies of the pilot fish who raced before and beside it; and then he had dived to meet it and as it rolled to bring the wicked jaws into play he struck with all his strength.