Silver (47 page)

In my fifth or sixth dive I was able to stay underwater for no more than a few seconds at a time. After that, my efforts were pure instinct, and had nothing to do with hope or reason. I was certain I had lost Natty. If my heart had not been frozen already, it would have broken there and then.

This is when I surrendered to the forces of the world. When it did not matter to me any longer whether I sank or swam, breathed air or water, lived or died. I was not even concerned to notice the storm, still less the moon sailing above me, or the stars. Sleep was all I wanted; or rather indifference; or rather unconsciousness. I therefore let the waves turn me onto my back, and spread my arms and legs wide so the current would take me wherever it chose.

My preference (supposing I had the will to make any choice at all) was for oblivion. My fate, which the numbness of my mind and body allowed me to understand only very gradually, was to live.

To survive, at any rate. For while others struggled and died in
the lee of the ship, I was lifted and carried – swept away from the furious battering of the waves, and along the edge of the reef which had been our undoing, until I was brought into a stretch of water that lay cradled between a crescent of rock and the shore.

I did not immediately see what sort of place it was, or what a safe harbour it must be. But as warmth and stillness restored feeling to my body, as well as wits to my head, I began to realise that within this shelter the sea was calm as a lake. Like a man raised from the grave, I lifted my head and looked about me. On my left, a hundred yards out to sea yet apparently in a different world, I saw moonlit waves continuing to pound the
Nightingale –
as remote as if she were an etching on glass. Looming close on my right were the black cliffs I had thought entirely featureless, but which I now saw were incised with little paths here and there, which had steps cut ingeniously into the stone, and hand-rails made of rope. At their foot lay a narrow and gently sloping beach. As I continued to float towards it, I heard waves that were really no more than ripples, making a peaceful silvery clatter.

I had been saved, as surely as if the sea itself had chosen me. I had been saved – along with another who was already waiting on the shore. I could not tell who this was, only that they appeared slim and youthful; the head was covered with a shawl and the face was invisible. When I had drifted closer still, and felt my shoulders brush against smooth stones, this figure lifted one hand in a solemn salute and a voice spoke. ‘Are you there, Jim?’ it said, with a sweet note I recognised. ‘Is it you?’