The next morning, after a hasty and unsatisfying breakfast, Curley Green chivvied us all down to the beach. There was activity to seaward — it looked like a reef out there, like breakers. But the sea was calm, with only a hint of swell. And then I could see that the broken water was moving shorewards, could see the dark bodies that were plunging in the foam.
The engineer, pistol in hand, remained on the dry sand, but ordered us out into the sea. “Don’t lose anything!” he ordered. “See that you bring up every muckin’ thing that they’ve got for me!”
Shoreward drove the porpoises, and as they began floundering in the shallows it was evident that those we had seen on the surface were only a small percentage of their number. And there were crates there, and wooden boxes, and loose objects held firmly in the mouths of the sea beasts. At one moment I was accepting a wrench so proffered — thrusting it into the waistband of my trunks — at the next, with Sally and John and Mary, I was struggling to manhandle a heavy crate up the slight declivity.
And still they came with their salvage — with boxes marked Made in Japan, Made in Germany, Made in U.S.A. with tools, rusted but still serviceable, with useful objects and with objects of quite spectacular uselessness. (Mind you, if I’d been a skilled watchsmith I might have done something with that chronometer, in spite of the years of immersion in sea water …)
And still they came, and still the pile on the beach grew. For Curley Green this was Christmas morning. Every time that we struggled ashore with new additions we could see him gloating. To him that heap of junk was the wealth of Croesus.
At last there was a pause in the operation. The last of the porpoises had headed out to sea again. We slumped on the sand, breathless, exhausted. Green stood over us, obviously on the point of telling us to begin the heavy work of lugging the materials up the cliff, then thought better of it. He just scowled and then resumed his restless prowling around the heap, looking at this marking and that, picking up and examining tools. He extracted a pair of prismatic binoculars from their soggy leather case, put them to his eyes to scan the horizon, threw them down with disgust.
I didn’t like to see instruments maltreated. “Don’t throw them around like that,” I admonished. “I may be able to do something with them when they’re dried out …”
“If you have the muckin’ time, Petey boy,” he snarled. Shading his eyes with his hand he was still staring to seaward.
And then we saw them — the broken water at first, as before, then the leaping bodies. This time their approach was slower. We had been waiting thigh-deep in the sea for some minutes — ordered there by the impatient Curley Green — before we could see what it was that they were bringing.
Sheets of steel, it was, torn and ragged. (The water was stained by the blood from gashed bodies and mouths.) The four of us — Bible Bill wasn’t of much assistance, tended merely to hover on the outskirts of any activity — managed to get our hands on one of them. It wasn’t all that heavy — not while its weight was waterborne, that is — but it was awkward. I tore my right thumb painfully on a sharp edge, and another projection caught Sally’s sari. She made a futile attempt to save the garment, abandoning it when the steel sheet, deprived of her support, sagged dangerously. She muttered, “If he expects us to work like horses we might as well dress like them …”
Somehow, her nudity didn’t register. We were all of us too busy to worry about it. One by one we lugged the sheets ashore, stacking them more or less neatly. I noticed that they were grey painted, that there were Japanese ideograms on some of them. Not that it was of great importance. It wouldn’t have mattered if they’d been the wreckage of a crashed flying saucer from Rigil Kentaurus VII — they were steel, and its origin was of no concern.
And then the big porpoise, the leader, appeared. He came driving in like a torpedo, pulled up sharply in the shallows, rearing with his great head well clear of the water.
“Gurley!” he called in his thick, unhuman voice.
“Gurley!”
“Yair?” Curley Green put down the wrench with which he had been fiddling, strolled to the edge of the sea. “What d’yer want now?”
“What do you want? We have brought you … enough?”
“Can’t rightly say, as yet. Have ter check this muckin’ lot. Let yer know, anyhow. Just keep the tucker comin’ in, that’s all.”
“We want … results.”
“You’ll get ‘em, you fish-faced old bastard. You’ll get ‘em. Don’t blow a muckin’ gasket.”
“I do not … understand your words.”
“Just a technical term,” said Curley airily.
I got up from the sand and waded out from the beach. My thumb was painful, and, with a vague idea that sea water was antiseptic, I wanted to wash the cut well. Sally came with me. She whispered, “Peter, I’m scared.”
“So am I,” I said. “I’ve been scared ever since those bloody whales made kindling of the poor little Sue Darling.”
“But this is an immediate danger,” she said sharply.
“What is?”
“One of those cases that they brought, in the first wave. It was about the only work that Bible Bill did, to lug it ashore … It’s under all the others now.”
“What was in it?” I asked, wincing at the sting of the salt water on my gashed thumb.
“Whisky,” she told me. “Perhaps the old man has the same idea as you had, that when Curley is drunk he can be disarmed and deposed …”
“I still think that it’s a possibility,” I said.
“Any bloody thing is possible!” she flared. “But the probable results aren’t likely to be so pleasant!”
“Don’t blow a gasket,” I told her, grasping her arm with my uninjured hand. And then a slight movement of the sea threw us together — and, abruptly, I was conscious of her nakedness, and she was, too. I heard the gasp of her indrawn breath, felt her breasts pressing against my chest.
Roughly I broke away from her — so roughly that she lost her balance and tripped, floundering in a flurry of spray. From the beach came Green’s raucous bellow, “Break it up, you two! Break it up! Unless you want me to come an’ give yer a hand, Petey!”
Flushing, I put out my hand again to help her to her feet — and was knocked off my own balance by a sudden surge of sleek, muscular bodies. Surfacing, I heard Sally scream, saw her rolled over and down. I plunged into the melee, was knocked off balance again. But a flailing arm struck something soft, my hand closed on an ankle and, towing the struggling girl, I staggered towards the beach.
Faintly I heard shouting — shouting, and a chorus of snorts and whistles. Dimly I was aware that Sally and I were alone, that she was struggling to extricate her ankle from my grasp. Letting her go, I turned to look at her. She was sitting there in the shallow water, bedraggled, pale, badly frightened. From seaward I heard the receding sound of whistling and snorting. I swung my head, saw a mob of porpoises being chased by another mob. No, not a mob — the pursuers were maintaining a tight, quasi-military formation.
John and Mary stood at the water’s edge, fear and concern on their dark faces. A little back from them stood Bible Bill, his expression vindictive and scornful. Sitting at the base of his pile of stores was Curley Green, holding his sides as he laughed uncontrollably, the tears streaming down his stubbled cheeks.
“You’ll be the death of me yet,” he gasped. “You’ll be the muckin’ death o’ me, you two! To see a smoochin’ session broken up like that! But what ever have yer done to ‘em, Lady Clara Vere-de-Vere, that they should take such a muckin’ dislike to yer?”
She whispered, for my ears only, “But it’s not dislike. That’s the trouble …”
“Come on, Petey boy. Out o’ that muckin’ water. You’re the seaman. Figger out some way o’ gettin’ this junk up the cliff!”
• • •
The task of getting the junk up the cliff face wasn’t too heavy — once the preliminaries were over. There were three heavy wooden beams among the salvage. I don’t know what sort of timber they were; they obviously weren’t buoyant, but that may have been due to the fact that they were waterlogged. But they still looked strong enough, and they weren’t eaten away by marine worms.
We got them up the cliff face somehow, one by one, John and Mary, Bible Bill and myself. (It gave me an unkind pleasure to see the old man sweating.) Sally was exempt from the heavy work. Curley Green allowed her to go back up to the camp for another sheet, then insisted that she stay with him as a guarantee of our good behaviour.
Curley Green had to come up then, to unlock his storeroom. There were a couple of coils of one inch line in there, in quite fair condition, and one of those small, useful purchases known as a handy billy. Some of the line I utilised to lash the ends of the three beams together and to use as stays, the rest was rove off through the blocks.
Then there was the rolling of heavy stones to anchor the three legs of the tripod, after rough pits had been dug for their reception with a crowbar. The contraption had to be raised then. One block of the handy billy was made fast to the top of the sheerlegs — where it would remain — and the other to the top of a convenient tree which John was able to climb. I hoped that the tree would stand the weight that we were going to put on it. I hoped, too, that the apex of the sheerlegs would hang just clear of the cliff edge — as was my intention — so that the tackle would plumb the beach unimpeded.
When all was ready we tailed on to the hauling part and walked away with it. The thing lifted easily. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw that the two cliffside legs were remaining in their pits as they turned, that the third leg was sliding towards the pit that had been prepared for it.
“Watch it, Curley!” I shouted. “I can’t be everywhere at once!”
He grunted surly acknowledgment.
Then, “Yer can stop pullin’.”
“Avast heaving,” I ordered. “But keep the weight on it.”
I relinquished my own grip on the line, went to inspect the sheerlegs. Curley Green kept well away from me as I approached. (He had to have enough room to draw and to aim his pistol, should it be necessary.) Everything seemed to have turned out as planned. I told John to make the hauling part of the tackle fast to the base of the tree, losing no slack. It would serve as a stay until we had the proper stays rigged, until we rolled the rocks into place.
And then, these tasks completed, the sheerlegs was ready for use.
“Time we had a meal break,” I said to Green.
He complained, “I want all that muckin’ lot up here before dark. If you hadn’t mucked around playin’ at sailors we’d’a got it carried up by now.”
“The sheerlegs will stand,” I said. “What time we’ve lost now, we shall save on future occasions.”
“I suppose yer right,” he admitted grudgingly. “All right, all of yer. Stuff yer guts — an’ make it snappy.”
As we munched our cold beans Sally and I sat a little apart from the others.
“What did you mean,” I asked, “about the porpoises not disliking you?”
She smiled wrily. “I’d have thought it would have been obvious — expecially after the second attack … Don’t forget that this last time I was sexually excited …”
“But … But they couldn’t possibly … After all, different species …”
“Don’t forget,” she said, “that human beings, both male and female, have been capable of intercourse with members of other species …”
“But the sea’s full of females of their own kind …”
“Yes. But …” She paused, then went on. “Some time ago, when there was a lot of press publicity on the American scientists studying the intelligence of the cetacea, we commissioned a marine biologist, a Dr. Ogilvy, to do us an article …”
“I’ve heard of him,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter a damn whether you’ve heard of him or not. He impressed me, when he came into the office, as being something of a dirty old man. And, in his article, he did seem to be more concerned with sex than intelligence.
“Anyhow, it seems that the female porpoise is on heat only twice a year — whereas the male is potent all the year round. Ogilvy reckoned that the well-known playfulness of the porpoise is the way in which he works off his frustration … And now that they’re intelligent they’re capable of … of … What would you call it? Miscegenation?”
“I don’t think intelligence has anything to do with it,” I said. “We had a tom cat once who tried to rape the next-door dog. Bitch, rather — he wasn’t queer …”
“Cut the bleedin’ cackle!” Curley was bawling. “You’ve all had yer tucker — now back ter muckin’ work!”