The Island Where Time Stands Still Read Free

weary.
    In an effort to keep his mind off Erika he tried to conjure up scenes from his life before he met her. Memories of other women drifted into his mental vision. Sabine, the beautiful Hungarian, as he had first seen her at the casino at Deauville; lovely, laughing Phyllis, with whom he had taken a stolen holiday up the Rhine; wicked little black-eyed Minnette, who had so nearly caused his death in China, during the first secret industrial investigation that he had carried out for Sir Pellinore. His thoughts turned to his closest men friends, then to other people—just faces, to many of which he could not put a name. Some were those of old enemies, others of girls with whom he had had only casual flirtations, a few of desperate idealistic loves which had tormented him in youth. One was sweet seventeen, with golden cork-screw curls, blue eyes and a big floppy hat bedecked with corn-flowers. He had adored her all one summer, living through the weeks only for Sundays to come again, when he would see her walking sedately with her parents after Church; but he had never even spoken to her. At that time he had been a Cadet in H.M.S.
Worcester
. The thought carried him back still further, to childhood days.
    He was thinking of the wall-paper in his day-nurserywhen the oar slipped from his grasp. The effort needed to recover it brought him back with a jerk to the grim present. It occurred to him then that to recall episodes from one’s past life was said to be usual with people on the point of drowning—and that he was drowning.
    In sudden revolt he began to kick out vigorously. He was still in the prime of life. It could hold many joys and interests for him yet. He did not want to die. Somehow he must win through, as he had so often won through before. If he could only keep afloat long enough, some unforseeable twist of fate would surely save him.
    Moderating his movements in order to husband his strength, he kept his chin well up and endeavoured to breast each wave he met without taking in more water. It was not easy; and a fresh surge of despair at the thought that he would never again see Erika took the heart out of his new bid for survival. None the less, an inherent conviction that one should never surrender to an enemy or adverse circumstance kept him going until it seemed to him that he had spent a lifetime gliding up long watery slopes and sliding down their far sides.
    The water was not cold, but its constant pressure had the effect of gradually numbing his limbs. His neck began to ache intolerably from the strain of keeping it rigid. From time to time he could no longer prevent his chin falling on his chest and, with his head rolling a little, his face slipping under water. Again his thoughts drifted to the past; the night he had drunk Stefan Kuporovitch under the table at Kandalaksk; the final bout in his year’s-long duel with Gruppenführer Grauber; the beach at Dunkirk, from which he had watched the British Army taken off in little boats; his old henchman Rudd describing in graphic cockney how he had won a darts match at the local in Gloucester Road; his first assignment as a journalist. Then a succession of long-forgotten scenes from his youth floated before his mental vision.
    He was thinking of the two great mulberry trees in his grandfather’s garden when, unnoticed this time, the oaragain slipped from his grasp. Above him the Southern Cross and a myriad of other stars shone with serene indifference. All effort spent, and now buoyed up only by his life-jacket he lapsed into unconsciousness, becoming no more than an inert speck on the bosom of the mighty ocean.

1
The Cage
    It was some fishermen collecting the catch from their lobster pots who came upon Gregory’s body the following morning. Had he remained conscious a little longer he might have seen against the star-spangled sky the dark bulk of the island towards which the aftermath of the hurricane had carried him, for its volcanic