The land ahead looked a most promising haven. To the left it was rocky, with grassy cliffs, but straight ahead lay a much greener part, with houses and hotels, and a strip of sand. Civilisation, hot baths, freedom and a razor. I swam towards them steadily, taking rests. A mile was a long way for a moderate swimmer, and I was nothing like as strong as I had been twelve days earlier.
I looked back at the boat. It had gone a good way along the coast: growing smaller.
The big mainsail was sagging down the mast.
God, I thought, my heart lurching, if they’re taking down the sails they’ll see the open hatch.
Time had run out. They knew I had gone.
I ploughed for the shore until I felt dizzy with the effort. Swam until I had grey dots before the eyes and even greyer dots in the mind.
I wasn’t going back into that dark hole. I absolutely couldn’t.
When I next looked back all the sails were down and the boat was turning.
The hotels ahead were in a sandy bay. Two big hotels, white, with rows of balconies, and a lot of smaller buildings all around. There were some people on the beach, and four or five standing in the water.
Five hundred yards, perhaps.
It would take me years to swim five hundred yards.
I pushed my absolutely useless muscles into frantic efforts. If I could only reach the other bathers, I would be just one more head.
The boat had not been travelling very fast under sail. They would motor back faster. I feared to look round; to see them close. My imagination heard him shouting and pointing, and steering the boat to intercept me, felt them grabbing me with boathooks and pulling me in. When in the end I did nerve myself for a look, it was bad enough, but still too far to distinguish anyone clearly.
Next time I looked, it was alarming. They were catching up like hares. The nearest point of land was still about three hundred yards away, and it was uneven rock, not easy shelving beach. The sand lay in the centre of the bay: the curving arms were shallow cliffs. I would never reach the sand, I thought.
And yet... sailing boats had deep keels. They wouldn’t be able to motor right up to the beach. Perhaps, after all, I could get there.
I had never felt so tired, so leaden. The hardest steeplechase had never demolished me so completely, even those I’d lost from being unfit. My progress through the water grew slower and slower, when speed was all that mattered. In the end it took me all my time to stay afloat.
There was a current, which I hadn’t noticed at first, carrying me to the left, drifting me off my line to the beach. Nothing fierce; but simply sapping. I hadn’t enough kick left to overcome it.
Another look back.
Literally terrifying. I could see him on deck, standing in the bows, shading his eyes with his hand. He had come back on a course closer to the shore than when I’d jumped, and it was the shoreline he seemed to be scouring most closely.
I swam on with feeble futile strokes. I could see that I was not going to reach the sand. The current was taking me inexorably towards the higher left hand side of the bay, where there were trees to within ten feet of the waterline, and rocks below the trees.
When I’d got to the numb stage of thinking drowning would be preferable to recapture, and doubting if one could drown oneself in cold blood, I found suddenly that I could no longer see for miles along the coast. I had at last got within the embracing arms of the bay. When I looked back, I couldn’t see the boat.
It didn’t stay out of sight long. It crept along in a straight line until it reached the centre of the bay, and there dropped anchor. I watched it in sick glimpses over my shoulder. Saw them unbuckle a black rubber dinghy and lower it over the side. Caught an impression of them lowering an outboard engine, and oars, and of two of them climbing down into the boat.
I heard the outboard splutter into life. Only about thirty feet to go to touch the land. It seemed like thirty miles.
There was a man-made strip of concrete set into the rocks ahead of me at the water’s edge. I glanced along the shore towards the beach, and saw that there were others. Aids to bathers. The most heartening aid in the world to the bather approaching at snail’s pace with the hounds of hell at his back.
The dinghy pulled away from the anchored boat and pointed its bulky black shape towards the shore.
I reached the strip of concrete. It was a flat step, set only inches above the water.
No grips for hauling oneself out. Just a step. I put one hand flat on it and raised a foot to it, and used jelly muscles to flounder up onto my stomach.
Not enough. Not enough. The dinghy would come while I was lying there.
My heart was pounding. Effort and fear in equal measures. Utter desperation took me to hands and knees and set me crawling up the rocks to find shelter.
Ordinarily it would have been easy. It was a gentle shore, undemanding. A child could have jumped where I laboured. I climbed up about six feet of tumbled rocks and found a shallow gully, half full of water. I rolled into the hollow and lay there panting, hopelessly exhausted, listening to the outboard engine grow steadily louder.
They must have seen me, I thought despairingly. Seen me climbing up out of the sea. Yet if I’d stayed at the water’s edge they would have found me just as surely. I lay in defeated misery and wondered how on earth I could live through whatever was coming.
The dinghy approached. I kept my head down. They were going to have to come and find me and carry me, and if I could raise enough breath I’d yell until some of the people on the beach took notice, except that they were far enough away to think it was all a game.
The engine died and I heard his voice, raised but not exactly shouting.
He said, ‘Excuse me, but have you seen a friend of ours swim in from the sea? We think he fell overboard.’
A woman’s voice answered him, from so close to me that I almost fainted.
‘No, I haven’t seen anybody.’
He said, ‘He takes drugs. He might have been acting funny.’
‘Serves him right, then,’ she said, sanctimoniously. ‘I’ve been reading. I haven’t seen him. Have you come from that boat?’
‘That’s right. We think he fell overboard about here. We heard a splash, but we thought it was just a fish. Till after.’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you ask along the beach?’
‘Just starting this side,’ he said. ‘We’ll work round.’
There was a noise of oars being fitted into rowlocks, and the splash and squeak as they pulled away. I stayed where I was without moving, hoping she wouldn’t have hysterics when she saw me, dreading that she would call them back.
I could hear him, away along the shore, loudly asking the same question of someone else.
Her voice said, ‘Don’t be frightened. I know you’re there.’
I didn’t answer her. She’d taken away what was left of my breath.
After a pause she said, ‘Do you take drugs?’
‘No,’ I said. It was little more than a whisper.
‘What did you say?’
‘No.’
‘Hm. Well, you’d better not move. They’re methodical. I think I’ll go on reading.’
Incredulously, I took her advice, lying half in and half out of the water, feeling heart and lungs subside slowly to a more manageable rhythm.
‘They’ve landed on the beach,’ she said.
My heart stirred up again. ‘Are they searching?’ I said anxiously.
‘No. Asking questions, I should think.’ She paused. ‘Are they criminals?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But... would they take you from here by force? With people watching?’
‘Yes. You heard them. If I shouted for help, they’d say I was crazy with drugs. No one would stop them.’