Two Peasants and a President Read Free

each grabbing one of her husband’s arms and easing him down onto the deck.
    “Not on the deck!” she said.  “You need to lay him on a bed, then get him to a doctor.”  There was no response as the crewmen turned their atte n tion toward the other craft, which was now quite near.  Its spotlight suddenly illuminated the side of the junk.  To her relief, she saw that it looked like a police boat.  The crew must have already alerted the authorities.
    The other craft maneuvered sideways and two figures near its rail heaved lines toward the junk which were quickly retrieved and secured.   A moment later it was alongside and in the stern a man who appeared to be an officer shouted something.  Jimmy replied, then barked another order to the two seamen on the junk.  Each took one of Holly’s arms. 
    “No, you need to help my husband first!” she said urgently.  Their only response was to tighten their grip.  Then she saw Grace step out of the shadows and walk toward her.  Holly started to ask her if she could explain to the crew that she needed them to help her husband first.  That was when she noticed that Grace’s right hand held a syringe.
    “Oh, my God,” she said to herself as the sickening realization that her honeymoon had ended crept like an early frost into her bones.  Her last thought before she slipped into unconsciousness was that they were a long way from home. 
    A pair of stretchers were handed over to the junk from the other craft.  The now unconscious Raymond was placed on the first.  Carefully judging when the rails of the two bobbing craft would be close to even, the seamen from the junk passed his stretcher to waiting arms on the other craft. 
    Grace, kneeling over the supine Holly and holding her wrist, looked up.
    “Her pulse is strong; she will travel well,” she said to her husband, whose friendly smile was now a grim mask .  He spoke again to the seamen and they lifted Holly onto another stretcher and passed it carefully to the other craft. 
    The spotlight blinked out and t he lines that held the two craft together were loosed.  Within minutes only the distant throb of the police boat ’s e n gin es could be heard from the junk whose helmsman once more swung the giant oaken rudder and began the turn back to Hong Kong.

2
     
     
     
    Holly pulled the blanket up around her neck.  It’s cold, she thought.  In her semi-sleep state, her brain processed the information slowly, not wishing to awaken itself entirely, not yet ready to abandon the comfort of sleep.  She drifted back into her dream for a few moments, then decided that her pillow needed to be snugged around the back of her neck.  Again her brain started to let itself slip back into the dream, but part of it was processing what it sensed outside her body and that jolted her into consciousness.
    A bruptly, she sat up and blinked.  Blinked again, as if opening and closing her eyes would dispel the mystery and the darkness.  Her brain and skin confirmed the reason she had pulled the blanket around her: it was cold and damp.   Now unsettlingly awake, she sensed that it was not the darkness of her room, darkness that could be banished simply by reaching for the light switch. 
    A thin, barely discernible, horizontal band of illumination emanated from somewhere in front of her.  She focused on it for several minutes, hoping to ascertain its source.  Like light that finds its way under a door but at the same level as her eyes, it continued to puzzle her until she leaned back, placing her hands behind her.  It was then she realized she was on a floor, lying on a mattress, with a pillow and blanket.  She knew this because she could feel them, but the rest of her surroundings existed only as dark shadows in the place that she had begun to suspect was her prison. 
    Like an unexpected wave washing over her, the honeymoon suddenly flooded back into her mind.  She reached out as if to pull it closer, to cling to some