Jack Higgins by Night Judgement at Sinos

nodded. “All right, if you are willing to have a try, then so am I. I’ll take you into the bay, making myrun from the southeast, but I’ll have to turn to come out again almost immediately which leaves you a quarter of a mile to cover in the dinghy.”
    â€œWe’ll manage,” I said.
    He chuckled grimly. “Let’s hope you can all swim.”
    It was a cheerful thought and I left him there and went below to prepare them for the worst.
    Â 
    The caicque was low in the waist which made disembarking simpler than it might otherwise have been, but it was still a tricky business. The run-in to the bay wasn’t too bad although there was little doubt now that conditions in the water were going to be worse than I had anticipated.
    We were all waiting in the waist and the inflatable dinghy was already over the side and held in close by the two sailors. Each man carried his own gear and wore a lifejacket. The time to go was when Demos started to turn away from land to commence his run out to sea again because it was then that the boat’s speed would drop though only for a minute or two.
    Demos gave a sudden sharp whistle, the prow of the caicque started to turn into the wind and she shuddered and heeled over, almost coming to a dead stop, the great sail fluttering wildly.
    Johnson needed no order. He went over the side briskly followed by Forbes and O’Brien. Dawson snagged his haversack on the rail and hung there for a couple of violent moments, struggling desperately while Johnson cursed him.
    Already we had picked up speed. Soon it would be too late. I lifted him over the rail bodily, dropped himinto the darkness and went after him. A second later and the caicque was a ghost ship fading into the night as silently as it had come.
    Â 
    I’d made a mistake, I knew that as soon as I felt the dinghy heel, water pouring over the gunnel. I adjusted my weight and grabbed for a paddle, but the wind was lifting the waves into whitecaps and it was impossible to keep it from slopping in over the sides.
    We were waist-deep in the stuff within seconds, but still floating which was the main thing. I told them to paddle like hell if they wanted to live, which sounds dramatic enough at a distance of years, but was a reasonably accurate statement in view of what happened.
    We moved in fast which didn’t surprise me as Demos had warned of a five- or six-knot current and the land was plain to see now, partly because the low cloud seemed to have moved away, but mainly owing to the surf white in the darkness as it pounded in across the beach at the bottom of the cliffs.
    We were moving faster now, the waves dipping in great shallow runs like a moorland burn in spate the morning after heavy rain and we were caught in a current of such strength that there was nothing to be done except to try to keep floating and hang on.
    The sea filled the night with its roaring, the waves pounded in across the rocks, tearing the shingle from the beach with a great, angry sucking and the surface of the water trembled and shook, a hundred different cross-currents pulling every which way, spinning the dinghy round and round so that we lost control altogether.
    A long comber rolled in out of the darkness, a six-footer with a white, curling head on it that would have warmed the heart of any surf-rider. It was exactly what we didn’t need at this stage. The dinghy shook violently and Forbes went backwards over the stern. O’Brien reached for him desperately and managed to catch him by the top of his lifejacket. Better for him if he had missed for a second later, the dinghy bucked violently to one side and Forbes was swept into the darkness pulling O’Brien in after him.
    The current had us then and took us into the final line of breakers at a frightening speed. A great wave swept under, rolling in to dissolve into a cauldron of froth and white spray that boiled for about fifty yards between us and the shore.