“Dainty Jane,” someone roared, without looking round, and Bethany’s shriek rose high on the wind. “Look!” A figure was moving on the deck, struggling with the foremast. “That’s Harry. Where’s Aaron?”
“Can they swim for it?” Ben asked aloud, and got a pitying shake of the head from a neighbour. It hadn’t seemed likely, with the plunging waves breaking over dark rocks on both sides of the harbour, but he could see no other way. He glanced round at Jonah, who stared out at the sea, eyes wide and strained. Ben wondered if there was something, anything he could do, and dismissed the idea. If Jonah could quell this storm, he would be a god.
A general cry went up. Ben whipped round, just in time to see the figure fall from the deck of the Dainty Jane, over the side. A flash of lightning illuminated the scene, freezing everything in place: the boat, rolled at a terrible angle, the waves curled like a great cat’s claw to strike, the man hitting the dark thrashing water, flailing.
“Oh, damn,” Jonah yelled, as the thunder crashed down. “I have to go, Ben.”
Ben turned. Jonah was stripped to his shirtsleeves, lashed by rain, oilskins in a heap at his feet. He had one end of a massive coil of rope seized in both hands. Ben grabbed his arm. “No!”
Jonah wrenched himself free, starting to shout something, but Ben was already reaching for the nearest fisherman with his free hand. George Tapley, Aaron’s big, slow older brother. “Tie it round his waist!” he bellowed over the storm, indicating the rope. “You need your hands, Jay!”
“What the—” George began, and both Jonah and Ben roared at him, “Tie the bloody rope!”
“Are you mad?” Dora cried. Her face was wet with rain and tears. “Nobody can swim that.”
“He’s not going to swim,” Ben said. This was it, this was discovery, but it had to be done, and they were caught anyway. Not that Jonah had known that, and Ben felt a wild pride rising in his erratic lover. “Good luck, Jay. Go.”
Jonah grinned crazily back, teeth already chattering, eyes blazing unnaturally blue. “I tell you what!” He was shouting to be heard, a whoop in his voice. “This wind! This is for walking!”
He leapt into the storm.
Dora screamed, long and shrill. It was the only human sound for endless seconds, as everybody saw Jonah jump up from the edge of the harbour. He was thrown wildly sideways by the wind, and scrabbled upwards as if climbing a wall, staggering up till he’d gained a gap of ten feet above the crashing waves, fighting his way to the Dainty Jane. The coil of rope was already beginning to run low by the time the babble of incredulity began.
“Help me hold him!” Ben shouted. He thought nobody had heard, then there was a rush of movement, hard competent hands seizing the rope, and Ben’s waist. Ben hung on to the thick, sodden rope that tore at his palms, eyes fixed on Jonah as he was whipped around like a kite.
“How the devil—”
“Bucca…”
“’E’s made it!”
Jonah was at the Dainty Jane’s plunging side. Ben couldn’t see the fisherman struggling in the water any longer, but Jonah’s form came briefly to rest on the ship’s side, peering down for an instant, before he dropped into the sea.
“Oh God.” It was Dora, next to Ben, one of the dozen of them gripping the rope, braced and desperately holding on. It was pulled very tight now. “Did he fall? Can he swim?”
“He never falls,” Ben said, wishing it were true. “He never falls.”
“Can he swim?” she shrieked.
“I don’t know!” Ben screamed back. They all lurched as the taut rope slackened horribly. “Jonah!”
Lightning seared the air bright, and in that second, Jonah erupted from the water, arms out, an angel without wings. He crashed back down, splashed vertically up again, and this time hauled a form up with him. There was a general cry.
“Harry! ’E got Harry! Pull!”
Jonah had looped the rope round Harry, under his arms. He was behind the fisherman, thrashing to keep them both above the waves. The ropemen on the shore pulled furiously, hauling with all their strength in defiance of the sea and waves and gravity.
“’Ware rocks!” someone bellowed, fruitlessly because there was no way it would carry over the storm, but Jonah was already dragging Harry sideways, around, and into the calmer waters.
“Heave! Heave!” A whole crowd on the jetty now, calling, yelling or just gaping.
Their strange cargo lurched towards them, the rope-holders moving down the quay to keep level in an awkwardly coordinated group. Jonah splashed and struggled in the water as he forged forward, pushing and pulling Harry in, and then half a dozen men and women were extending hands to drag the sodden men in to safety. Harry rolled over, gasping. Jonah flopped over the stone after him, retching seawater.
“Jonah.” Ben grabbed for him.