The Island Where Time Stands Still Read Free Page A

cliffs rose sheer and high from a narrow strip of beach. Luckily for him it was not upon the beach that he had been washed up, otherwise he might have remained there unnoticed until the birds had picked his carcass clean. A wave had thrown him into a shallow pool on the barrier reef, between which and the shore lay a half-mile-wide stretch of placid water. The lobster pots were on the lagoon side of the reef and could be reached only in a small boat which had to be manœuvred through a narrow channel from the sea. It was while the little boat was nosing its way through that one of the men in it caught sight of Gregory’s head and shoulders protruding from the pool.
    Scrambling across the rocks, they bent above him in a chattering group. At first they thought him dead, but after a brief examination the eldest among them declared that his spirit still inhabited his body; so they took him to the larger vessel which had brought them to the outer side of the reef, and set about endeavouring to revive him.
    Their methods were primitive but effective. Having stripped him naked they threw him face down across the low gunwale with his head hanging over the side; then they proceeded to pummel and slap him all over. The treatment restored his circulation and caused him to spew up much of the water he had swallowed; but when his mind begandimly to grope for its surroundings again, it was for a long time conscious only of his body as one universal ache. This was hardly surprising as, apart from the rawness of his internal membranes caused by the salt water, he had suffered severely from having been thrown up on the reef. Two of his ribs had been broken, the back of his skull fractured and in a score of places he had been terribly bruised.
    When his rescuers heard his breath whistling regularly between his teeth, and saw his shoulder muscles twitching from his retching, they pulled him inboard, laid him on the bottom boards in the stern, threw his clothes over him in a heap to protect him from the sun, and went about their own business. Staring upwards. Gregory took in the fact that the one of their number they had left behind to tend the tiller looked like a Chinaman, then he again lapsed into unconsciousness.
    When next he came to, he was lying on a mat bed with a light cotton covering over him. As he opened his eyes there was a slight stir beside him. Another Chinese face bent over his and he was given a few mouthfuls of a pleasant-tasting drink; but no sooner had he moved his head than an excruciating twinge shot through it and his senses once more ebbed away in a wave of pain.
    For most of the four days that followed he was either in a drug-induced sleep or delirious; but during his few lucid intervals he gathered that he was in a small, clean, sparsely furnished room that had a vaguely oriental atmosphere.
    When his thoughts at length became intermittently coherent, actual memories of his immediate past began to mingle with frightful nightmares, in which he was again upon the sinking yacht or struggling in turbulent seas. At first he could not bring himself to believe that these were anything other than appalling dreams. Yet as his mind became clearer it demanded to know how otherwise he could be where he was and physically in such a shocking state.
    Eventually he rallied his strength enough to question theman who was looking after him, but the oriental spoke no English. Having spent the best part of a year in China in the early nineteen-thirties, Gregory had learned to speak ‘pidgin’ fairly fluently and picked up a smattering of ‘Mandarin’. With an effort he managed to recall a few words of the latter, but they proved insufficient to make himself understood.
    The attempt had taken a lot out of him, so he abandoned it and drifted off to sleep. When he woke there was another Chinaman sitting on the chair beside his bed, whose face he recalled having seen several times while he was semi-delirious. This one was