It was a golden October and people were talking about an Indian summer. The days were warm and hazy and there was no sign of the gales. Jago said it was hardly possible that we should avoid them altogether and that they had probably delayed their visit until November.
I took the Ellen out every day. I loved to row round the Island. The place was growing on me. Jago used to talk to me about the troubles of the various people and I was beginning to know a few of them. They accepted me and I was gratified when they appeared to like me, and I felt especially delighted when they hinted what a good landlord Jago was.
"Stern," said one old woman, "but just. You've got to keep your cottage neat and clean and the garden shipshape, then he'll see your roof's mended if the need arises."
It was a lovely afternoon with a rather hazy sun visible through the slightly misty atmosphere. My thoughts were with the people of the Island—not so much those who lived there at this time, but those vague figures of the past whom it was so difficult, on the flimsy evidence available, to bring to life.
Why was I so anxious to know about the lives of people who were gone?
"Idle curiosity," Philip would have said.
"Oh, you always want to know everything," I could hear Esmeralda telling me. "Particularly about people."
Yes, it was true. But there was something more. I could not help feeling that my life was interwoven with those of the people who had lived here and that there was some reason why it was important to me to know what had happened to them.
Never far from my thoughts was Jago himself. My feelings for him were so varied that he was of perpetual interest to me. I often looked at the pictures in my mother's sketchbook, from which I would not be parted. She, too, had been aware of a dual personality. But then she had felt the same about Silva. Perhaps she had meant to convey that there were two sides—and often more—to everyone's character. My father, for instance. He seemed to have been very difficult to live with and yet both my mother and Effie must have been in love with him at one time to have married him.
I shipped the oars and drifted on the tide. It was so beautiful with the faint cool breeze on my face and that benign reddish sun up there. The clouds drifting slowly in the wind were taking on weird shapes. There was a face up there—a woman's face, a nutcracker of a face—and I immediately thought of Tassie. Dark shadows hovering over all of us, she had said. "Be watchful." Had that been an oblique reference to some danger threatening me, or was it just the fortuneteller's jargon? When I was with Jago it had been all the "happy ever after if you take the right turning" theme. Wouldn't that apply to anybody? Wasn't there a "right turning" in everybody's life which if taken at the flood leads on to greatness ... or happiness, which was more to be desired? I was misquoting and mixing metaphors but truth was there.
I had drifted nearly a mile out from the Island, I should think. Perhaps I ought to go back.
As I moved the oars I stared at the bottom of the boat in sudden consternation. Water was seeping in.
I bent forward and felt with my hand. The water was very shallow so the boat had only just started to leak. I touched the bottom of the boat. There was something sticky on my hand. It looked like sugar.
Even as I looked the water started to come in faster. The whole of the bottom of the boat was covered now. I seized the oars and started to row for the Island as fast as I could.
The Ellen had sprung a leak. There was no doubt of that. How far off the Island seemed! The boat was going to sink at any moment and I was not a strong swimmer.
It was sooner than I expected. The Ellen tipped to one side and I was in the water.
Frantically I sought to get a hold on the boat. By great good luck I managed to clutch at the keel as she turned upside down. She was floating and I was clinging to her with all my might. Temporarily I was safe... but it could not last, I was well aware.
Could I swim to the shore? I could feel the water saturating my skirts and making them heavy. They were dragging me down. I had swum very little; Esmeralda and I had bathed in the sea at Brighton when our governess had taken us for holidays there, but then we had gone into bathing machines set up on the beach and emerged from them straight into the water and just let the waves toss us about as we hung on to the ropes. I could manage a few strokes but could I reach the Island, hampered as I was by my clothes?
My hold on the boat was precarious. I shouted: "Help!" My voice sounded feeble. Overhead gulls wheeled, screeching in what seemed to me a mocking fashion.
"Oh, God," I prayed, "let someone find me." And into my mind there flashed an image of Silva in another boat. They never found her but the boat was washed up.
Oh, this treacherous sea! How powerful it seemed even in its present moderate mood.
Should I try for the shore? I could feel my wet skirts wrapping themselves around my legs and I knew it would be disastrous to attempt it, and yet with every passing second my hold on the Ellen was becoming more and more slight.
My hands were growing numb. I can't cling much longer, I thought. Is this the end? It was strange that it should all have led to this. No, no. Someone would come. Jago would come. Yes, it must be Jago. If only I could will him to be taking a stroll along the cliffs.
"Jago!" I called. "Jago."
I'm slipping, I thought. I can't hold on much longer. What is it like to drown?
I would make an attempt to swim. Who knew, I might manage it. It was said that when one was in danger nature provided extra reserves of strength. I wouldn't die, I was going to fight for my life.
I heard a shout and it was as though my prayer had been answered, but I dared not turn to look towards the shore for fear I should lose my grip on the boat.
The shout came to me over the water. "Hold on, Miss Ellen. I be on the way."
Slack!
He was near to me now. I knew that he swam like a fish; I had seen him twisting and turning in the water, as much at home there as he was on land.
" Tis all right, Miss Ellen. I be here now... ."
How small he was! How fragile! He had the body of a child, but of course he was not much more.
"There now. Here I be." His voice was soothing, comforting, as though I were a wounded bird.
"Now now, I be taking 'ee to the shore."
I still clung to the boat.
"I... can't swim... very well, Slack."
"Never 'ee mind, Miss Ellen. I be here."
I released my grip on the boat and for a moment was submerged. I was on the surface again and I felt Slack's hand under my chin holding my head above the water.
The boat had moved away from us and the shore seemed a long way off.
How can this delicate boy bring me safely ashore? I wondered.
Then I heard Jago's voice.
"I'm coming."
Then I knew that everything was going to be all right.
I remember vaguely being brought onto the land. I remember Jago's strong arms about me as he carried me to the castle. I remember being laid on my bed and soothing drinks being brought to me. I was wrapped in blankets and hot-water bottles were placed round me. I was told I was to stay there for a day or two. I had had a shock which was greater than I would realize at the time. I had come near to death by drowning.
As I lay in my bed I could not stop thinking of the terrifying moment when I had noticed that the boat was leaking. I knew that could have been the end of me if Slack had not been there—and later Jago. I still wondered whether little Slack could have brought me in; and I rejoiced that Jago had come. The moment I had heard his voice I had ceased to be afraid.
Jago came and sat by my bed.
"What happened?" he asked. "Do you feel you can talk about it, Ellen?"