The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur - Страница 67

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The shark seemed to hump out of the water, its back rose glistening blue, streaming with sea water, and the tall fin stood up like an executioner's blade. Centaine had read somewhere that a shark rolled on its back to attack, so she was unprepared for what happened now.

The great shark reared back and the grinning slit of its mouth seemed to bulge open. The lines of porcelain-white fangs, rank upon rank of them, came erect like the quills of a porcupine as the jaws projected outwards, and then they closed over Ernie's kicking legs. She clearly heard the grating rasp of the serrated edges of its fangs on bone, then the shark slid back, and Ernie was jerked backwards with it.

Centaine kept her grip on his wrist, although she was pulled down on to her knees and started to slide across the wet deck. The raft listed over steeply under their combined weight and the heavy drag of the shark on Ernie's legs.

Centaine could see its head under the surface for an instant. Its eye stared back at her with a fathomless savagery, and then the inner nictitating membrane slid across it in a sardonic wink, and quite slowly the shark rolled in the water with the irresistible weight of a teak log, exerting a shearing strain on to the jaws still clamped over Ernie's legs.

Centaine heard the bones part with a sound like breaking green sticks.

The drag on the old man's body was released so suddenly that the raft bobbed up and swung like a crazy pendulum in the opposite direction.

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 jaw's, 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 of er 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.

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