Part 22 (1/2)

I was abattle with the h my medical kit was still in the boat at the bottoe bottle ofiale, with the antiseptic and a roll of cotton wool she anointedcondolences and sy fussed over, and I stood there in a se as I was bidden The first hint that I received that Miss North was not treating ravity they deserved hen she suddenly elee and daubed my most delicate extremity with a scarlet splash of mercurochrome

”Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer,” she chortled, and I roused myself to protest bitterly

”Hey! That stuff doesn't wash off”

”Good!” she cried ”I'll be able to find you now if you ever get lost in a crowd” I was shocked by such unseenity and went to find a pair of dry pants

Sherry reclined on theis this going to last?” she asked

”Five days,” I told her, as I paused to listen to the unabated roar of the wind

”How do you know?” ”It always lasts five days,” I explained, as I stepped into ive us a little tied by the cyclone, locked together in the confined few square feet of the cave, and it was a strange experience

Any venture out into the open forced upon us by nature, or to check how Chubby and Angelo were faring, was fraught with discoh the trees were stripped ofthe first twelve hours and the weaker trees fell during that period also yet there was still the occasional tree that ca down, and the loose trash and fronds flew like arrows on the ith sufficient force to blind a person or inflict other injury

Chubby and Angelo worked away quietly on thethe to keep them busy

In our cave, once the initial novelty had passed there developed some crisis of will and decision which I did not properly understand, but which I sensed was critical

I had never pretended to understand Sherry North in any depth, there were too many unanswered questions, too many areas of reserve, barriers of privacy beyond which I was not allowed to pass She had not to this tis, there was never any discussion of the future This was strange, for any other woman I had ever known expected - demanded - declarations of love and passion I sensed also that this indecision was causing her as ainst which she struggled, and in the process her e badlyspoken of - for I had accepted the tacit agrees for each other I found this restricting, for I am a lover with a florid turn of speech If I have not yet succeeded in talking a bird down out of a tree - it is probably because I have never seriously made the attempt I could make this adjustment without too much pain, however, it was the lack of a future that chafed at me

It seemed that Sherry did not look for our relationshi+p to last longer than the setting of the sun, yet I knew that she could not feel this way, for in the loom, there could be no doubts

Once when I started to speak of my plans for e had mised the treasure - hoould have another boat built to n, a boat that incorporated all the best features of the beloved Wave Dancer - hoould build a neelling at Turtle Bay that would not deserve the title of shack - hoould furnish it and people it - she took no part in the discussion When I ran out of words, she turned away froh I could feel the tension in her body without touching her

At another ti look While an hour later she was in a frenzy of physical passion which was in dia fro with neat business-like stitches When I thanked her, she beca row until she flung herself out of the cave and ran through the raging wind to Chubby's cave She did not return until after dark, with Chubby escorting her and holding a lantern to light her way

Chubby regarded me with an expression that would have melted a lesser man and frostily refused my invitation to drink whisky, which , then he disappeared again into the stor darkly

By the fourth daye behaviour frole and I reached my conclusions

Cooped up withforced at last to consider her feelings forin love, probably for the first ti the experience I cannot say in truthfulness that I was enjoying it very much either - or rather I enjoyed the short periods of repentance and loving between each new tantrum - but I looked forward fervently to the moment when she accepted the inevitable and succu that happy moment when I awoke in the dawn of the fifth day The island was in a grip of a stillness that was al after the uproar of the cyclone I lay and listened to the silence without opening my eyes, but when I felt movement beside me I rolled my head and looked into her face

”The storm is over,” she said softly, and rose from the bed

We walked out side by side into the earlyaround us at the devastation which the storraphs of a World War I battlefield The pale, the bare masts pointed pathetically at the sky and the earth beloas littered thickly with pal over it all, no breath of wind, and the sky was pale milky blue, still filled with a haze of sand and sea

Fro bear and little bear, at the end of winter They too stood and looked about theelo let out a Comanche whoop and leaped four feet in the air After five days of forced confineer be suppressed He took off through the palreyhound

”Last one in the water is a fascist,” he shouted, and Sherry was the first to accept the challenge She was ten paces behind him when they hit the beach but they dived sian i each other with handfuls of wet sand Chubby and I followed at a sedate pacehis vividly striped pyjamas, Chubby lowered his ot to tell you, ravely I drew deeply on my cheroot as I sat beside him waist deep, then I handed him the butt

”We lost five days, Chubby,” I said, and irowled, sitting in the lagoon in yellow and purple striped pyja

frooon and although they were still a Flittle murky with spindrift and churned sand, yet the whaleboat was clearly visible She had drifted sideways in the bay and was lying on the bottom in twenty feet of water with the yellow tarpaulin still covering her deck

We raised the whaleboat with air bags and once her gunwales broke the surface ere able to bale her out and row her into the beach The rest of that day was needed to unload the waterlogged cargo, clean and dry it, pump the air bottles, jet the motors- aboard and prepare for the next visit to Gunfire Reef

I was beginning to become, seriously concerned by the delays which had left us sitting on the island, day after day, while Manny Resnick and his merrywe discussed it around the caress in ten days other than to confire had fallen into the pool

However, the tides were set fair for an early start in the h the channel with hardly sufficient light to recognize the coral snags, and e took up our station in the back of the reef the sun was only just showing its blazing upper ri the five days we had lain ashore, Sherry's hands had alested tactfully that she should allow Chubby to accompany me for the next few days, my tact and concern asted Sherry North was suited and finned and Chubby sat in the stern beside theus on station

Sherry and I went down fast, and entered the forest of sea ba up position from the markers that Chubby and I had left on our last dive

We orking in close to the base of the coral cliff and I placed Sherry on the inside berth where it would be easier to hold position in the search pattern while she orientated herself

We had hardly begun the first leg and had swuently on her bottles to attract h the baainst the side of the coral cliff upside down like a bat, closely exa a fall of coral and debris that had slid down to the floor of the pool She was in deep shade under the loom of dark coral so I was at her side before I sahat had attracted her

Propped against the cliff, its botto cylindrical object which itself was heavily infested with ested by the living coral

Yet its size and regular shape indicated that it wasand twenty inches thick, perfectly rounded and slightly tapered

Sherry was studying it with interest and when I cans of inconized what it was immediately and the skin of my forearms and at the nape of my neck felt prickly with exciteer andit, but she did not understand and shook her head so I scribbled quickly on the underwater slate and showed it to her

”Cannon” She nodded vigorously, rolled her eyes and blew bubbles to register triu back to the cannon

It was about the correct size to be one of the long ninepounders that had forht's armament but there was no chance that I should be able to read any inscription upon it, for the surface was crocodileskinned with growth and corrosion Unlike the bronze bell that Jimmy North had recovered, it had not been buried in the sand to protect it

I floated down along theit closely and alloom nearer the cliff However, three-quarters of this weapon had been incorporated into the cliff, built into it by the living coral polyps

I swa under the first barrel and went into the jumble of debris and fallen coral blocks I ithin two feet of this amorphousand flushed war at

Quickly and excitedly I finned over thewhere it ended and the unbroken coral began, forcing h the sea ba or irregularity in it

The total mass of debris was the size of a couple of railway Puller floating cluun port, from which the muzzle of a cannon still protruded and which had not been co coral, that I was certain that e had discovered was the entire forward section of the frigate Daurn Light, broken off just behind the main mast

I looked around wildly for Sherry and saw her finned feet protruding froe I pulled her out, removed herit She was laughing with excite, she shook her head vehemently and shot away from me to continue her explorations It was fully fifteenher away and take her up to the whaleboat

We both began talking at once the moment we had the rubber mouthpieces out of the way My voice is louder than hers, but she is hts as expedition leader and I could-begin to describe it to Chubby

”It's the Dawn Light sure enough The weight of her aro must have pulled her down the instant she was clear of the reef She went down like a stone, and she is lying against the foot of the cliff Some of her cannons have fallen out of the hull, and they're lying junize it at first,” Sherry chiain, just when I had her quiet&led down ”It's like a rubbish due she must have broken her back abaft the main th The cannon undeck and it's only the two ports nearest the bows that are intact, -” ”How does she lier Chubby de immediately to the pith of the matter

”She's bottom up,” I admitted ”She must have rolled as she went down”