Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 53
He passed the glasses to Colin, who gazed in his turn.
“Making for the bay,” he commented, peering out into the failing light. “Must be mad, surely. Never get through that skerry channel in weather like this, unless they know the coast well. Even then it’s taking a bigger chance than I’d care about myself. . . . By Jove! . . . No, they’re all right still, but a few more waves like that might fill the engine and leave ’em scuppered. . . . Damn fools, they must be. Why don’t they run for shelter?”
As the minutes passed the wind dropped more and more. The black hull of the motor-boat crept doggedly shoreward in safety, though Colin marvelled at the courage or ignorance of the men aboard her. Time and again it seemed nothing short of a miracle that she escaped swamping. At last the wind fell till there was a comparative calm, and the motor-boat’s crew evidently decided to take the risk of running the channel. On she came, riding up on the advancing waves as they passed her, or falling almost out of sight into the trough as the crest went by. Colin’s excitement grew as he watched. There was no need of the glasses now; the boat was close in. They could see the balers at work and the helmsman braced at the wheel.
“By Jove! They’ve done it!” Colin ejaculated with a gasp of relief.
For a few moments the boat had been almost hidden from the watchers by the clouds of spray which dashed about it from the rooks, but now it rode clear out of the jaws of the channel and into the bay. It neared the jetty.
“Look!” Wenlock exclaimed involuntarily.
A sudden squall caught the vessel, drove her off her course, and dashed her against the end of the pier just as she was about to round it into safety.
“Stove in! She’s done for!”
With a shudder of sympathy, Colin saw the little human figures in frenzied movement: struggling, scrambling, leaping to the stonework of the jetty in a desperate effort to gain a safe foothold before the next wave came upon them. Five of them were successful. Colin caught his breath as the sixth, too late in his jump, fell short and vanished in the boiling waters as the wreck of the motor-boat drifted clear of the pier-end and went down. Then, as he watched in impotent compassion, a wave lashed across the jetty and hid the survivors in its foam. When the smother cleared, Colin counted only four figures. It was almost incredible to him that two men had been swept out of existence in a time which he could count in heart-beats. Suddenly he was galvanised into action.
“Come on!” he cried to the detective. “Run!”
He had no very clear idea in his mind except that help was needed and that it was shameful to stand there, an idle spectator. But Wenlock, who had been watching intently through the binoculars, checked him with a gesture.
“Not much use,” he said coolly. “That wave washed one of them against a stanchion before it swept him over. I saw his head hit it. There’s no hope for a stunned man in that kind of water, Mr. Trent. The other fellow—the one who missed his jump—never turned up on the surface again, so far as I saw. I guess the boat crushed him. They may drift ashore on the sands, down there——”
He broke off in surprise, then continued :
“Well, their mates don’t seem to bother much about them. Look!”
The four survivors had made a dash to the landward end of the jetty; but they did not stop there, as Colin expected they would when they reached shelter. Instead, all four raced up the rude stairway which led to Wester Voe.
“Gone for ropes?” he suggested.
“It doesn’t take four men to borrow a rope,” the detective said sceptically. “Why don’t some of them stand-by, in case their mates turn up and need help? Blind funk, if you ask me, Mr. Trent. It takes some men like that, at times.” Colin was still quivering with the excitement of the disaster, and to him the detective’s cool psychological reflections seemed wholly ill-timed.
“Come on!” he repeated. “May need help of some sort, these fellows. Broken bone or what not. And there are only two girls in the house. You know something about first aid, I s’pose? Come on!”
Wenlock unslung the binoculars and handed them back to Colin.
“Better run for it,” he agreed, briefly.
The wind had died down again to a steady breeze, which made progress easier than the earlier squalls, and the rain had almost stopped. For a minute or two Colin ran with his attention fixed on Wester Voe; but as they skirted the descent to the bay a fresh idea crossed his mind.
“Look here!” he said. “It’s just on the cards one of these poor devils may be washed up on the sands and need help. You go on to the house. I’m no good there. Couldn’t put a broken arm in splints if I tried. Tell my wife I sent you. I’ll go down to the beach and see if there’s anything I can do. If not, I’ll follow on. Right?”
“Very good,” said the detective, without slackening his pace.
Colin diverged to the left, halted on the edge of the descent, and peered out over the water in the hope of seeing some sign of a human form. A sullen dusk had fallen, and he found his range of vision narrowed down in comparison with that which he had a few minutes before. He could see nothing that looked like a body in the waves; but to make sure he climbed down the declivity to the sands and ran hither and thither along the strand where the foam-drift lay thick at the edge of the water. It did not take him long