Part 14 (1/2)

She was warm and smooth and trembling and crying. I held her gently and tried to soothe her. She did not speak and neither did I. There had been too many words earlier and most of them had been mine. Now was a time simply to cuddle and hold and speak without words.

At last her trembling slowed, then stopped. Her breathing became even. Then she sighed and said very softly, 'I could not stay away.'

'Margrethe. I love you.'

'Oh! I love you so much it hurts in my heart.'

I think we were both asleep when the collision happened. I had not intended to sleep but for the first time since the fire walk I was relaxed and untroubled; I dropped off.

First came this incredible jar that almost knocked us out of my bunk, then a grinding, crunching noise at earsplitting level. I got the bunk light on - and the skin of the s.h.i.+p at the foot of the bunk was bending inward.

The general alarm sounded, adding to the already deafening noise. The steel side of the s.h.i.+p buckled, then ruptured as something dirty white and cold pushed into the hole. As the light went out.

I got out of that bunk any which way, dragging Margrethe with me. The s.h.i.+p rolled heavily to port, causing us to slide down into the angle of the deck and the inboard bulkhead. I slammed against the door-handle, grabbed at it, and hung on with my right hand while I held Margrethe to me with my left arm. The s.h.i.+p rolled back to starboard, and wind and water poured in through the hole - we heard it and felt it, could not see it. The s.h.i.+p recovered, then rolled again to starboard - and I lost my grip on the door handle.

I have to reconstruct what happened next - pitch dark, mind you, and a bedlam of sound. We were falling - I never let go of her - and then we were in water.

Apparently when the s.h.i.+p rolled back to starboard, we were tossed out through the hole. But that is, just reconstruction; all I actually know is that we fell, together, into water, went down rather deep.

We came up and I had Margrethe under my left arm, almost in a proper lifesaver carry. j grabbed a look as I gulped air, then we went under again. The s.h.i.+p was right alongside us and moving. There was cold wind and rumbling noise; something high and dark was on the side away from the s.h.i.+p. But it was the s.h.i.+p that scared me - or rather its propeller, its screw. Stateroom CI09 was far forward - but if I didn't get us well away from the s.h.i.+p almost at once, Margrethe and I were going to be chewed into hamburger by the screw. I hung onto her and stroked hard away from the s.h.i.+p, kicking strongly - and exulted as I felt us getting away from the hazard of the s.h.i.+p... and banged my head something brutal against blackness.

Chapter 8.

So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging.

Jonah 1: 15

I WAS comfortable and did not want to wake up. But a slight throb in my head was annoying me and, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, I did wake. I shook my head to get rid of that throb and got a snootful of water. I snorted it out.

'Alec?' Her voice was nearby.

I was on my back in blood-warm water, salt water by the taste, with blackness all around me - about as near to a return to the womb as can be accomplished this side of death. Or was this death? 'Margrethe?'

'Oh! Oh, Alec, I am so relieved! You have been asleep a long time. How do you feel?'

I checked around, counted this and that, twitched that and this, found that I. was floating on my back between Margrethe's limbs, she being also on her back with my head in her hands, in one of the standard Red-Cross life-saving positions. She was using slow frog kicks, not so much moving us as keeping us afloat. 'I'm all right. I think. How about you?'

'I'm just fine, dearest! - now that you're awake.'

'What happened?'

'You b.u.mped your head against the berg.'

'Berg

'The ice mountain. Iceberg.'

(Iceberg? I tried to remember what had happened.) 'What iceberg?'

'The one that wrecked the s.h.i.+p.'