For it had always seemed to her and the Carpenter as they waited on the island, and strained their eyes with starings-out to sea, that there must be a ship just beyond the horizon, a ship or another island.
Just out of eye-shot, Miss Ranskill, just out of eye-shot, that’s the devil of it.
She snatched at the paddles and began to row frantically. The faster she could make the boat travel the sooner she would be – where? If only there were corners to be turned or the top of a hill to reach. As she tugged savagely at the paddles visions of maps filled her mind, big splodges of continents, little spatterings of islands set in the immense splashes of blue. She was jerking at the paddles now in her exhaustion and presently she was obliged to rest in order to relieve her sobbing breath.
Would it be better, after all, to go back – home? What a ridiculous word, for there was no home on the island now. It took more than one person to make a home where there wasn’t even a dog or cat or canary. But there was her shelter there – her shelter and a grave and a familiar stream where she could drink and wash. There was space to walk about. If the island was not home then this boat was hell – a tiny wooden hell. There was nothing between her and the deep water except a frail planking, nothing at all between her and the sky. Perhaps there were other little floating hells, dotted about, beyond any sight, on the surface of the sea. If people could fall overboard from ships as she and the Carpenter had done without being noticed, perhaps other people had done the same. There must be ships somewhere.
She began to paddle faster along the golden path (now paling to silver) that streamed eastward. Yes, she must get away if there were anywhere to go.
Easy now, Miss Ranskill, you don’t need to dig, see.
It was noon, and the sea was still calm, monotonously interrupting and fretting by the lip-lap of its restless tongues of water. The sun was high overhead, glaring down at her with a demoniacal gold eye.
‘And how do I know where to go now?’ thought Miss Ranskill, ‘I shan’t know, till the sun begins to go west so that I can row away from it if I’m to keep an eastward course. I don’t know my way about the sea. I don’t know whether to go to the right or left.’
Naturally, port and starboard meant nothing to her.
Now, with the sea as empty as the tracing paper she had admired in childhood, before she had spoiled it with her spluttering pen, how was she to find her way?
It was evening and Miss Ranskill was asleep, her head against the gunwale and one arm crooked round a paddle. Not so very far away a small island deepened to indigo against the red-gold of the setting sun. She stirred her cramped legs, opened her eyes, blinked and looked at it.
It was the most beautiful island, welcome and welcoming. In that moment of half-wakefulness when she seemed roused from the horror of nightmare into the peace of a happy day, she had no doubt of its friendliness, just as when she was a child she had always been sure of recognising her own among the many mansions of Heaven and all her ancestors too. Yes, she was quite familiar with the island.
She knew that creek and the outline of rock that was like a sleeping giant. She knew that tree with the solitary lopped branch. She knew that tree very well.
‘Oh, no!’ She spoke the words aloud. ‘Oh, no, it can’t be: it mustn’t be.’
But the lopped-off branch was part of the planking beneath her feet. The boat had drifted back to the island while she slept.
If the beacon fire had been alight, perhaps she would have pulled inshore towards homeliness and warming flames.
‘But I can’t start again,’ said Miss Ranskill, ‘I can’t.’
She hated the island then, as she unshipped the paddles and began to pull away from the sun; and hoped to get further away this time before sleep won another battle or the currents played their alien tricks.
One-two-one-two. The rhythm of rowing was beating her body and beating into her brain until it seemed she would never forget it.
A few stars were out now – small delicate hazy ones. Presently she would choose one to steer by. If she did not, she might row in a great circle for ever – the island out of sight but never any nearer or any farther away.
She must rest sometime, but the trouble was that if she slept by day she might not see the ship as it crept over the horizon. If she slept by night she would have no guiding star.
One-two-one-two-one-two.
There was neither sun nor star to steer by, and hard grey waves cracked and slapped at the boat.
For hours, Miss Ranskill had abandoned the paddles; and now she was clutching the tiller in an attempt to make the boat ride bow-first through the water instead of broadside on, as she had done for the sickening minutes when Miss Ranskill had left the tiller to grovel for the dried but now sodden fish.
She was terribly exhausted and frightened too, for the water seemed to crash from every direction, now cracking against the bows as though determined to split them, now leaping at the port gunwale, now hurtling at the starboard. Those sudden rushes up the sides of steep waves were terrifying, so was the shudder and humping of mounted water as it shook the small boat from its shoulder to the trough before the upward ploughing began again.
The tiller quivered and fought for freedom.
Suddenly Miss Ranskill surprised herself by a yawn, for she was not sleepy. Terror is not a soporific until after it is passed. The yawn was followed by another and by jaw-stretching successors. Something seemed to be clutching at her solar plexus: something inside her responded to the rise and fall of the sea. She felt colder than ever and realised she was going to be sick.
Her hands let go their grip and she sagged sideways into the stern-sheets.
As she did so the tiller caught her sharply on the side of the head and she was not conscious of any more movement for some time.
Now Miss Ranskill was riding a horse and the animal was running away with her. It charged at a telegraph pole, but the jarring crash scarcely checked its speed. It swerved sideways and jumped a stone wall – jumped it sideways too. On it went over brooks and hedges and walls, over a cottage once – up and up, then crack on the tiles and down again.
A small boy, sitting on a rock by the sea, called out to her.
Don’t dig, Miss Ranskill, you’ve no need to dig, see.
She was riding a merry-go-round ostrich now, and there was whirligig music. Faster and faster, up and down, round and round went the ostrich, and it smelled of fish.
The merry-go-round spun so quickly that the bird broke away, and went striding round and round in a widening circle, until it hopped on to a swing and flapped its wings.
‘Faster! Faster!’ screeched the ostrich. ‘We’ll swing level and then we’ll go over the top!’
She was slipping off its back now, and all the tail feathers came away in her hand. Down she went, splash into a pool of water, but when she tried to swim she found she was moving her limbs in glue which hardened swiftly.
Now she was in a picture-gallery and searching desperately for the Botticelli Venus because she needed the great curved shelclass="underline" it was full of clear water that did not smell of ostriches.
There were a great many pictures in the gallery and nearly all of them moved. There was a still-life painting of a knife that lay on a tray with a bowl of pansies, a toy boat and an orange. As Miss Ranskill looked, the blade of the knife closed, folding up into itself the golden reflection of the flowers. One of the pansies made a face at her.
There was a picture, too, of the flight into Egypt. Joseph, the Carpenter, tugged at the donkey’s bridle until it moved forward, carrying its burden of Holy Mother and Holier Child, and only stopping when its muzzle touched the heavy gilding of the frame. The next picture showed the face of another Carpenter, bearded too, but more familiar. As she looked, he died.