Paul Temple: East of Algiers. Francis Durbridge
foam went hissing outwards.
She must have been doing thirty or forty knots. On her present course she must surely ram us.
It was hopeless to shout and attract the attention of the pilot. He wouldn’t have heard us, and anyway his bows were riding so high that I doubted whether he could see us.
I slammed the tiller over and ducked as the boom came across. The dinghy yawed. She had lost all momentum and wallowed in a trough of water, a helpless and motionless prey for the oncoming speed-boat. She bore down on us like a swooping hawk.
When she was twenty yards away I shouted to Steve: ‘Jump for it!’
Hand in hand we leapt into the sea, as far from the path of the speed-boat as we could. Even as we rose to the surface we heard the crash behind us and the splinter of wood. The big speed-boat had cut the flimsy dinghy clean in two. Next instant a wall of creamy water hit us, filling our eyes and noses, thrusting us deep under the water. All the time I kept Steve’s hand clutched in mine.
When we got our heads above water and recovered our breath the hum of the speed-boat was quite distant. A wave lifted me up and I saw his wake disappearing in the direction of Monte Carlo.
The biggest piece of wreckage left was a section of the mast, which had a life-belt attached to it. Dragging Steve, I paddled towards it and we each grabbed hold of one side.
‘Well,’ Steve remarked to me bitterly, between gasping breaths. ‘Do you still maintain that the man in that boat was only interested in my elegant torso?’
As we bobbed aimlessly up and down, the coast seemed to be as far away as the Antipodes. None of the other craft in the neighbourhood had noticed the accident, and there was not enough of our dinghy left to attract attention. Luckily the water was not unbearably cold. I thought we could hold on till darkness at least. During that time someone must surely come near enough to spot us.
In the end it was less than ten minutes before we were found. A rather slow but obviously safe fishing-boat came chugging out straight towards us. As it drew near I began to wonder if there was going to be room on board, since half the population of Nice’s old quarter seemed to have thumbed a ride out to watch the rescue.
So many willing helpers reached down to haul us out of the water that our arms were nearly pulled out of their sockets. There were even some especially keen rescuers who would have been only too willing to apply artificial respiration to Steve.
‘Doucement, doucement! Faîtes place pour Madame.’
The accent was pretty good, but there was still that slight broadness of speech which betrays the Englishman. I looked round and saw the young man who had shared our discovery of Judy Wincott’s body. His name, as I knew all too well by now, was Tony Wyse. He seemed to have been accepted by the crew and passengers as the leader of the salvage operations, and in answer to his instructions room was made for us while dry pullovers and jackets were pressed on our soaked bodies.
‘It was a bit of luck I saw it all happen,’ Wyse told us, as he held his lighter to the cigarettes we had accepted. ‘I’m interested in sailing myself, and I was watching your yacht through one of those penny-in-the-slot telescopes they have on the front.’
Steve and I exchanged an amused glance. We had been speculating that morning on the convenience of those same telescopes for gentlemen who are keen on bird watching.
‘Did you see what happened?’ I asked him. ‘I’d like to lay my hands on the owner of that speed-boat. For one thing the dinghy’s a total loss and someone will have to pay for her.’
‘You needn’t worry about that,’ Wyse assured me airily. ‘They all have pretty comprehensive insurance.’
His day attire was as colourful as his night wear. He sported a pair of fawn flannel trousers which were as innocent of wrinkle as of spot, intermesh shoes, one of those Spanish-cut shirts with horizontal stripes and sailor neck, which you wear outside your trousers, and a silk neckerchief tied round his throat – more for beauty than for warmth. ‘Killer’ was written all over him, but strictly a lady-killer. He was not a man’s man.
‘He did it on purpose,’ Steve stated rather wildly. ‘I knew he was watching us in a malice aforethought kind of way. If we hadn’t jumped into the sea we would have been killed. I tell you, Paul, it’s all because of those confounded—’
‘It certainly was a freak accident,’ I interrupted quickly, and turned to Wyse. ‘How did it seem to you?’
Wyse raised a shoulder elegantly.
‘It’s hard to say whether he saw your boat or not. But you can’t seriously be suggesting that he ran you down on purpose, can you? I mean, you don’t even know who it was, do you?’
Wyse’s tone was that of an elder soothing the fears of children who have just awakened from a nightmare.
‘Then why—’ Steve began.
‘No, of course not,’ I said, and tried to quell Steve’s protestations with a wink. ‘It was just one of those million to one chances. We’re none the less grateful to you for coming so promptly to the rescue. It looks as if we may still catch this afternoon’s plane to Algiers.’
‘You’re flying to Algiers to-day?’ Wyse queried. He smiled broadly and his eyes rested comfortably on Steve’s face. ‘But this is going to be delightful. I shall be on the Algiers plane myself.’
We caught the Algiers plane with only a minute to spare. It had taken me a long time to come to terms with the owner of the dinghy. We were forced to fling our things into the suitcases and bolt our lunch before careering out to the airport in a taxi. The other passengers had already been escorted to the big Air France machine. Luckily there were no customs or immigration formalities to be observed, and a smartly uniformed young woman marched us rapidly out to the aircraft, just before the steps were wheeled away.
Our seats were half-way along the aircraft. At our own request we each had a seat next to the window, and so were sitting opposite to each other. By no means all the available space in the aircraft had been booked, but the seat next to Steve’s was occupied by a vision whose age I put at somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-seven. That she was French seemed obvious from the start. She drew her legs demurely aside to let Steve squeeze past and, under the guise of a friendly smile, the two women exchanged a wary, appraising glance.
The contrast between them was very marked. Whereas Steve was dark and did not have recourse to much makeup, this girl was an ash-blonde. Her hair was so immaculately dressed and glistening that I felt certain she must have been to the coiffeur that morning. Her eye-lashes were too long to be all her own, her nails were varnished and her lips were tinted by a faintly mauve lipstick. Yet there was nothing flashy or cheap about her appearance. You felt rather that she was a very lovely woman who took the maximum care to present herself well.
She must have been a novice at air travel, for when the illuminated sign was switched on she fumbled helplessly with her seat belt and got her own straps mixed up with Steve’s. Steve showed her how to fasten herself in.
The French girl smiled charmingly and groped in her mind for words.
‘Sank you very mush,’ she said, and gave a shy laugh.
‘Not at all,’ Steve said. ‘You’re not very accustomed to air travel?’
‘Please?’
‘I said: you have not travelled by air-o-plane much before?’
The French girl shook her head a little, but not so much as to disturb the ash-blonde hair.
‘Yes, sometimes already but not since several years.’
The aircraft was turning on the tarmac, preparing to lumber out to the end of the runway. The stewardess, a reassuring smile on her face, was moving up the aisle, asking passengers to put their cigarettes out, making sure their belts were properly fastened. The French girl was leaning forward, looking out of the window rather nervously at the rapidly