She coiled the ropes, and looked up as Ernie called, Are you ready, luv? Ready. She stood and balanced uncertainly on the tossing raft with the guide rope from the top of the mast in her hands taking up the slack, ready to assist Ernie to raise it back into position.
Then something moved beyond the old man's bobbing head, and she froze and lifted her hand to shade her eyes.
She puzzled over the strangely shaped object. It rode high on the green current, as high as a man's waist, and the early morning sun glinted upon it like metal. No, not metal, but like a lustrous dark velvet. It was shaped like the sail of a child's yacht, and with a nostalgic pang she remembered the little boys around the village pond on a Sunday afternoon, dressed in their sailor suits, sailing their boats.
What is it, luv? Ernie had seen her expectant pose and her puzzled expression.
I don't know, she pointed. Something strange, coming towards us, fast, very fasCErnie swivelled his head.
Where? I don't see- At that moment a swell lifted the raft high.
God help us! screamed Ernie, and flailed the water with his arms, tearing at it in an ungainly frenzy as he tried to reach the raft. What is it? Help me out! Ernie gulped, smothering in his own wild spray. It's a bloody great shark. The word paralysed Centaine.
She stared in stony horror at the beast, as another swell lifted it high, and the angle of the sunlight changed to pierce the surface and spotlight it.
The shark was a lovely slaty-blue colour, dappled by the rippling surface shadows, and it was immense, much longer than their tiny raft, wider across the back than one of the hogsheads of cognac from the estate at Mort Homme. The double-bladed tail slashed as it drove forward, irresistibly attracted by the wild struggles of the man in the water, and it surged down the face of the swell.
Centaine screamed and recoiled.
The shark's eyes were a catlike golden colour with black, spade-shaped pupils. She saw the nostril slits in its massive, pointed snout.
Help me! screamed Ernie. He had reached the edge of the raft and was trying to drag himself on board4 He was kicking up a froth of water and the raft rocked wildly and listed towards him.
Centaine dropped to her knees and grabbed his wrist.
She leaned back and pulled with all the strength of her terror, and Ernie slid halfway up on to the raft, but his legs still dangled over the side.
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.