The Undertow Read Online Free PDF

waiting in their places; he can see the dark mass of soldiers sitting in the belly of the boat. Earlier, when the dark was perfect, he had felt he was entirely alone, passing in the night from one world to the next. But now it’s clear that he’s in company.
    There’s no joking, no ribbing, not even any complaining, the usual army–navy rivalry overridden. Everyone is chilled by the night. There is just the occasional creak or shuffle as a soldier eases the discomfort of sitting still for too long.
    Then the towlines go slack: the trawler’s stopped. It seems too far out from shore. He twists round to look, but then the order comes to unhitch; he feels the change in the cutter as it’s released, like a horse that’s slipped its harness; in the grainy half-light he watches as the trawler’s coxswain spools the rope into a coil, dragging it through the waves, a flickering snake. Beyond, he can make out dark cliffs, blue sand; where the waves lick up onto the shore, they glimmer. Still quite a way to go.
    They lower oars carefully so as to make no splash. They heave, and glide across water smooth as glass. William moves with the oar. His palms heat with its friction. He drops into the rhythm of it. He can see the soldiers clearly now, though leached of colour. They adjust chin stays, sling their rifles. He thinks, I am lucky, I am immeasurably lucky here.
    The cutter lurches, then grinds forward a little way. A shoal, or a reef; something underwater.
    An army officer on board gives the order. There is a moment’s hesitation—the soldiers just not shifting—and then the first stirrings as they get to their feet. The boat is beached and so barely rocks. William feels the warmth and breath of the men as they crowd past him. The boat lists as the first chap clambers over the gunwale, and drops into the water. There’s a splash, and then the catch of the breath as he hits the cold. It’s deep. And then another goes, and then another, each time the same caught breath: each body’s identical response to shock. He can feel the way the cutter lightens, and sits more cockily on the water. They should have no trouble shifting her once they’ve unloaded.
    William twists in his seat to get a good look at where the boys are going. It’s like an image on a bioscope screen, all shades of dawn grey. He gazes at the slope of sandy beach, the gully with its low rocky cliffs. The other boats are dotted out at a distance from the shore: they’ve all hit the same line of reefs. And from them columns of men push on through the water, towards the beach, and as William watches the first of the soldiers is into the shallows, dashing up through the spray, and onto the sand.
    It’s so quiet. An offshore breeze brings the scent of dust, and wild sage, and pine. They shove off from the reef, and begin to bring the cutter about to head back to the trawler, and as they’re turning, parallel to the shore, the sun clears the horizon and everything is suddenly brilliant and the drips from the oars are diamonds. Just the space, the joy of it—the milky white light and the new warmth and there, just yards away, the land: pale gold, hazed with scrub, plumed with dark green cypress—and if it wasn’t for the war, if it wasn’t for the dark trickle of soldiers onto the beach and up towards the gully, like trails of ants—if he could do what he wanted, William would leap in himself and wade to shore and climb up that gully and walk out into the empty spaces, towards the desert cities, in the wide space and the rising heat.
    And then the air rips itself apart. A shot crunches itself in a flower of splinters just by William’s arm. Then another bullet hisses past his shoulder, hits the water like a hot horseshoe.
    “Sniper!”
    “Fuck!”
    “Get moving!”
    There is a horrible slowness and fluster as they complete the turn.The bullets arrive almost silently, sometimes a soft huff, sometimes a buzz like an insect. The cutter turned, they heave