Stormswept. Helen Dunmore

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ rise again. A few of them – a very few – survived. Their lungs were bursting and burning for air. They couldn’t hold out against the water any longer and there wasn’t a chance of getting back to the surface. They had to breathe in.

      They did breathe in. Seawater filled their lungs and salt swept through every vein in their bodies. They should have died but the sea didn’t kill them. They were filled with agony at the first breath of salt water, but then they took a second breath, and a third. Each time, their breathing grew easier. Their bodies took in the sea and became part of the sea, and they didn’t die.

      It’s only a legend. Nobody ever saw one of those people who had been changed so that they could live in the sea. They could never come back, because they belonged to the sea now. Their skin changed until it looked like the skin of a seal, not the skin of a human being. They could swim as far and as fast as dolphins. They had their own language, and their own world.

      Once Jago Faraday was out in his boat, night-fishing, over the place where the drowned city is said to be. It was a calm night and the sea was flat. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Jago dropped his anchor, and as he did so he looked down into the depths of the water. He saw shadows moving far below the surface.

      “Shoal of mackerel, most likely,” said the men in the pub, as he told his story.

      “Shoal of mackerel never looked like that,” Jago answered.

      “A seal then.”

      “Think I don’t know a seal when I see him?”

      “Maybe it was that good old Tribute you been drinking, Jago.”

      Jago scowled even more.

      “I was stone-cold sober as I stand now,” he growled. “I saw shadows and I heard music. Had to turn on the engine so I wouldn’t hear it no more.”

      “Don’t you like music then, Jago?” they teased him.

      “Music like that, it pulls you after it,” said Jago, and he was dead serious. “You got to stop your ears and make for shore, ’fore you find yourself diving down among the fishes.”

      No one believed him about the shadows and the music. But I’m not so sure…

      Jago doesn’t care for music. He never listens to Ynys Musyk when we’re playing – he calls it “a load of old caterwauling”, or else he says it all sounds the same to him and he can’t understand why we waste our time playing the same stuff over and over.

      “Or ‘rehearsing’, as it’s known,” I whispered to Jenna, the last time he said it.

      Jago glared at me. “I heard that, you vixen.”

      So why would Jago make up a story about wanting to dive into the sea because he’d heard music?

      I love storms, and I hate them. They are in my blood. That’s why I’m already out of the gate with the wind whipping my hair and salt spray all over my face so that I can taste it on my lips. I’ll go down to the shore—

      “Morveren! Morveren! Where are you? The meal’s ready! MORVEREN!”

      It’s Jenna. The wind is still pushing me, as if it knows exactly where it wants me to go. I want to go with it. I’m curious, excited and a little bit frightened too. The night of the flood is all mixed up in my mind with nearly getting caught on the causeway, as if somehow the two things are connected – and I’ve got to find out why—

      But Jenna’s calling again. She’ll be scared if I don’t answer. She’ll think something’s happened to me. I can feel her thoughts as if they were my own.

      “All right, Jenna! I’m coming!”

      I fight the wind all the way back to our cottage, open the door and go inside.

      

e’ve all eaten and Mum is saying goodnight to Digory.

      “Your dad’s gone for a quick one in the pub with the others,” Mum told us when she got back from rehearsal, and we thought he’d be there for a while, talking and maybe singing. But as Jenna and I are clearing the table, the door flies open and there he is.

      “The lifeboat’s gone out from Penmor,” he tells us, not coming in. Rain streams off his waterproofs. Mum hears him and comes downstairs.

      “What’s happened?”

      “There’s a Polish cargo ship drifting off Carrack Dhu. Lost power to the engines they say.”

      “Is the helicopter out from Culdrose?”

      “That’s as much as I’ve heard. With the wind as it is, she’s drifting this way, on to the reef. They’ll try to get a tow on her, but—”

      We stare at each other.

      “We’re going to ready the boat,” says Dad.

      There’s no lifeboat station on the Island. Dad means the fishing boat he has a share in, along with Josh Matthews and Will Trebetherick.

      “Where’s the sense in that?” cries Mum. “If the Penmor lifeboat’s already gone out?”

      “It’ll need more than one lifeboat, if the ship breaks up on the reef. There’ll be men in the water.”

      We all know how many ships have broken up on the reef. The sea around the coast here is full of wrecks. Dad knows the sea like the back of his hand. If we lived on the mainland he’d be in the lifeboat for sure.

      “I’ll help you, Dad,” I say.

      At that moment the gate bangs open. It’s Josh, streaming wet as well and out of breath.

      “Been a message to the pub, she’s on the reef with the sea going over her. Crew got off in the lifeboat but two, maybe three, were thrown in the water. Come on.”

      “Is the lifeboat still out there?” shouts Mum.

      “She’s coming in. Sennen lifeboat’s on its way too. The Sea King’s had to turn back to Culdrose, technical problem.”

      Everybody’s heading for the shore. The reef is a mile east of us and we’re the nearest landfall. Even though it’s dark, we can see all too clearly in our minds the way the sea will be boiling around the reef, ready to swallow ships and human lives. The wind is a hard south-westerly, maybe severe storm by now. Dad mustn’t go out in that.

      But they are readying the boat.

      Suddenly there is a shout. “Lights! Lights!”

      It could be the Penmor lifeboat, or maybe the ship itself. The lights are close to where the reef is. Mum’s hand digs into my shoulder. The light disappears behind mountainous waves, then we see it again.

      “I’m going to climb up the Mound!” I say. I’ll be able to see more from there.

      “No,” СКАЧАТЬ