Job - A Comedy Of Justice Part 14

She was warm and smooth and trembling and crying. I held her gently and tried to soothe her. She did not speak and neither did I. There had been too many words earlier and most of them had been mine. Now was a time simply to cuddle and hold and speak without words.

At last her trembling slowed, then stopped. Her breathing became even. Then she sighed and said very softly, 'I could not stay away.'

'Margrethe. I love you.'

'Oh! I love you so much it hurts in my heart.'

I think we were both asleep when the collision happened. I had not intended to sleep but for the first time since the fire walk I was relaxed and untroubled; I dropped off.

First came this incredible jar that almost knocked us out of my bunk, then a grinding, crunching noise at earsplitting level. I got the bunk light on - and the skin of the ship at the foot of the bunk was bending inward.

The general alarm sounded, adding to the already deafening noise. The steel side of the ship buckled, then ruptured as something dirty white and cold pushed into the hole. As the light went out.

I got out of that bunk any which way, dragging Margrethe with me. The ship rolled heavily to port, causing us to slide down into the angle of the deck and the inboard bulkhead. I slammed against the door-handle, grabbed at it, and hung on with my right hand while I held Margrethe to me with my left arm. The ship rolled back to starboard, and wind and water poured in through the hole - we heard it and felt it, could not see it. The ship recovered, then rolled again to starboard - and I lost my grip on the door handle.

I have to reconstruct what happened next - pitch dark, mind you, and a bedlam of sound. We were falling - I never let go of her - and then we were in water.

Apparently when the ship rolled back to starboard, we were tossed out through the hole. But that is, just reconstruction; all I actually know is that we fell, together, into water, went down rather deep.

We came up and I had Margrethe under my left arm, almost in a proper lifesaver carry. j grabbed a look as I gulped air, then we went under again. The ship was right alongside us and moving. There was cold wind and rumbling noise; something high and dark was on the side away from the ship. But it was the ship that scared me - or rather its propeller, its screw. Stateroom CI09 was far forward - but if I didn't get us well away from the ship almost at once, Margrethe and I were going to be chewed into hamburger by the screw. I hung onto her and stroked hard away from the ship, kicking strongly - and exulted as I felt us getting away from the hazard of the ship... and banged my head something brutal against blackness.

Chapter 8.

So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging.

Jonah 1: 15

I WAS comfortable and did not want to wake up. But a slight throb in my head was annoying me and, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, I did wake. I shook my head to get rid of that throb and got a snootful of water. I snorted it out.

'Alec?' Her voice was nearby.

I was on my back in blood-warm water, salt water by the taste, with blackness all around me - about as near to a return to the womb as can be accomplished this side of death. Or was this death? 'Margrethe?'

'Oh! Oh, Alec, I am so relieved! You have been asleep a long time. How do you feel?'

I checked around, counted this and that, twitched that and this, found that I. was floating on my back between Margrethe's limbs, she being also on her back with my head in her hands, in one of the standard Red-Cross life-saving positions. She was using slow frog kicks, not so much moving us as keeping us afloat. 'I'm all right. I think. How about you?'

'I'm just fine, dearest! - now that you're awake.'

'What happened?'

'You b.u.mped your head against the berg.'

'Berg

'The ice mountain. Iceberg.'

(Iceberg? I tried to remember what had happened.) 'What iceberg?'

'The one that wrecked the ship.'

Some of it came tumbling back, but it still did not make an understandable picture. A giant crash as if the ship had hit a reef, then we were dumped into water. A struggle to get clear - I did b.u.mp my head. 'Margrethe, we're in the tropics, as far south as Hawaii. How can there be icebergs?'

'I don't know, Alec.'

'But-' I started to say 'impossible,' then decided that, from me, that word was silly. 'This water is too warm for icebergs. Look, you can quit working so hard; in salt water I float as easily as Ivory soap.'

'All right. But do let me hold you. I almost lost you once in this darkness; I'm frightened that it might happen again. When we fell in, the water was cold. Now it's warm; so we must not be near the berg.'

'Hang onto me, sure; I don't want to lose you, either.' Yes, the water had been cold when we fell into it; I remembered. Or cold compared with a nice warm cuddle in bed. And a cold wind. 'What happened to the iceberg?'.

'Alec, I don't know. We fell into the water together. You grabbed me and got us away from the ship; I'm sure that saved us. But it was dark as December night and blowing hard and in the blackness you ran your head into the ice.

'That is when I almost lost you. It knocked you out, dear, and you let go of me. I went under and gulped water and came up and spat it out and couldn't find you.

'Alec, I have never been so frightened in all my life. You weren't anywhere. I couldn't see you; I reached out, all sides, and could not touch you; I called out, you did not answer.'

'I'm sorry.'

'I should not have panicked. But I thought you had drowned. Or were drowning and I was not stopping it. But in paddling around my hand struck you, and then I grabbed you and everything was all right - until you didn't answer. But I checked and found that your heart was steady and strong, so everything was all right after all, and I took you in the back carry so that I could hold your face out of water. After a long time you woke, up - and now everything is truly all right.'

'You didn't panic; I'd be dead if you had. Not many people could do what-you did.'

'Oh, it's not so uncommon; I was a guard at a beach north of K0benhavrt two summers - on Fridays I gave lessons. Lots of boys and girls learned.'

'Keeping your head in a crunch and doing it in pitch darkness isn't learned from lessons; don't be so modest. What about the ship? And the iceberg?'

'Alec, again I don't know. By the time I found you and made sure that you were all right and then got you into towing position - by the time I had time to look around, it was like this. Nothing. Just blackness.'

'I wonder if she sank? That was one big wallop she took! No explosion? You didn't hear anything?'

'I didn't hear an explosion. Just wind and the collision sounds you must have heard, then some shouts after we were in the water. If she sank, I did not see it, but - Alec, for the past half hour, about, I've been swimming with my head pushed against a pillow or a pad or a mattress. Does that mean the ship sank? Flotsam in the water?'

'Not necessarily but it's not encouraging. Why have you been keeping your head against it?'

'Because we may need it. If it is one of the deck cushions or sunbathing mats from the pool, then it's stuffed with kapok and is an emergency lifesaver.'

'That's what I meant. If it's a flotation cushion, why are you just keeping your head against it? Why aren't you on it, up out of the water?'

'Because I could not do that without letting go of you.'

'Oh. Margrethe, when we get out of this, will you kindly give me a swift kick? Well, I'm awake now; let's find out what you've found. By Braille.'

'All right. But I don't want to let go of you when I can't see you. I

'Honey, I'm at least as anxious not to lose track of you. Okay, like this: You hang onto me with one hand; reach behind you with the other. Get a good grip on this cushion or whatever it is. I turn over and hang onto you and track you up to the hand you are using to grip the pillow thing. Then we'll see -we'll both feel what we have and decide how we can use it.'

It was not just a pillow, or even a bench cushion; it was (by the feel of it) a large sunbathing pad, at least six feet wide and somewhat longer than that - big enough for two people, or three if they were well acquainted. Almost as good as finding a lifeboat! Better - this flotation pad included Margrethe. I was minded of a profane poem pa.s.sed around privately at seminary: 'A jug 'of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou - '