"So that's why you are so wet," remarked Riina.

Wind and flying water made it difficult to start the fire, besides, the firewood was wet. Arne had hard work to get the fire lit and hissing shielded by the tarpaulin.

"We should have taken an electric cooker along," said Inger. "Where's your power point here?" Riina giggled.

"You're right, of course, but then we could have brought a coffee maker instead," Inger went on thoughtlessly.

Now they all were laughing their heads off.

After breakfast the men began to dry their clothes, waving their jeans and sweaters over the fire. But no sooner had Arne put his steaming jeans on than he exclaimed: "Boat!" and hotfooted it into the flying water.

When he returned, he was as soaking wet as before, but glad he'd run into the water in time to catch the boat, for the sea was higher still and what if it had taken the boat away? Then they would have been really and truly marooned ... Even he hadn't seen such outrageous weather before, it was a rare chance they happened to be on the islet just then. Of course, here, in the lee of islands, the storm was nothing to write home about. It would be quite another cup of tea on the open seas, on the ocean where booming waves were as high as a ten-storeyed house, but how could you get there! And there was something akin to regret in Arne's voice.

The rain was coming down much harder now and they had to crawl into their tent. Their wet clothes began steaming, but because of the flying water the doorway couldn't be kept open.

The party was sitting cheek by jowl, sheltering from the storm. Riina took pleasure in a long yawn.

"Just my luck to forget to take playing cards along," regretted the student. "Who could have foreseen that we would have to sit here in a foursome. It would have been quite a novel experience to sit on an islet in a storm, playing bridge ... "

"Let's start sinking ships," offered Riina. "Who's got pencil and paper?"

Although Kiur had left the pack of playing cards on his bed, he did have a pencil and some paper. Riina stretched out her legs to be settled more comfortably. Kiur tore a squared page out of his pad and the game was on its way.

Inger watched Riina and Kiur pass the pencil from hand to hand, smile slyly, hide their ships with their palms and, pondering profoundly, cross out squares.

Peering out through the slit at the doorway, she saw something strange. "What's that?" she asked Arne in a low voice. "Wind," the man replied.

"How can it move the ground so strangely up and down?"

"No need for that. It pulls at the birch and its roots in their turn raise the ground."

"What if it's pulled up and takes our tent along?"

Inger visualized how the storm would sweep their tent along, how it would tangle somewhere in bent trees or even vanish in the flying water. Horror sent a shiver down her spine. When she went on imagining the howling and thundering all around them during their flight and there being nothing to clutch at, for trees would be flying and one wouldn't be able to count on rocks either, and there would be only flying water everywhere about, from the sea and from the sky–and thinking these thoughts she whispered:

"I'm scared."

"It won't come out this easily, a birch has its roots dug deep in the earth." said Arne soothingly.

Inger gave the man a thoughtful appraising look. The man had dark beetling eyebrows, grown together over the bridge of the nose. His hair was black, too, and yet, with his brown eyes and tanned skin he was somehow brown.

I wonder what he is thinking deep inside?

Meantime, Riina had sunk Kiur's whole fleet, one of her own two-masted ships was absolutely intact. His Waterloo made the student fidgety, he hunted for blank pages in his pad to start a new, this time certainly more successful, battle. However Riina yawned blissfully.

"I don't feel like it. The storm makes me sleepy ... "

"Want to snuggle against me?"

"I do, but only if you lie down in that puddle in the corner."

Arne unbuttoned the doorflap, crawled out and disappeared in the rain. He was long time coming back and when he did return he said,

"The boat is waterlogged."

"So what now?" asked Riina, her heart in her mouth. Arne shrugged his shoulders.

"What's wrong with this place," the trainee said. "We'll spit a bull and live in clover."

Suddenly, drifting on the howling storm, Inger heard weak snatches of the put-put of an engine. For a long time she listened intently and told the others about it, too, but they didn't believe her. "Auditory illusion," said Kiur. Inger didn't bother to argue with, the student. Fairly and squarely, what kind of boat could have happened here in such weather! Nevertheless, in a short while she heard the sound of the engine again, carried to her ears by a gust of wind out of the roaring of the storm. She decided to go out and see. But before she had the flap open, a deep bass voice said just outside the tent, "Good evening if there is anybody here."

Those inside looked at one another in puzzlement: where did the voice come from?

Outside the doorway stood a hulking man in yellow oilskins and a sou'wester of the same colour, he stooped clumsily and stiffly to look into the tent, like a giant peeping into a dwarfs' cave.

"You seem to be snug as bugs in a rug," he rolled out, grinning.

"How did you get here?" was Kiur interested.

"By sea, only by sea! Up to now they haven't built any road down here," the man chuckled.

Suddenly they all were galvanized.

"Leave the things in the tent," said Arne. "The boat must be hauled in anyway at some later date."

Off the lee-side shore a fixed-net boat was bobbing at her moorings. The hulking man whisked the girls one by one into the boat. Meanwhile the other, taller fisherman had weighed the anchor.

Stove was lit in the fore cabin, in there it was cosy and warm.

The man in oilskins kept his eyes on the sea over the glass screen of the cockpit and spoke in a loud voice that they had already circled the islet once but hadn't happened upon anybody, not even a boat. Then they had thought of making one more circle, who's to say the boating party could still be somewhere under a bush, chilled to the bone. The man gave a contented chuckle, "That tent of yours was so nicely hidden that neither hide nor hair could be seen from sea. "They had already saved several men and three women as well. Early in the morning those three had hoofed it through the sea to an islet to check their sheep, but hadn't been able to come back, the storm had blown up so suddenly, sea running fresh. They had huddled on a stone, scared of the storm and chilled, too. One man was still missing. They didn't happen to notice any distress signal, did they?

"Girls, don't you dare to be sick," warned Kiur.

Who did the trainee take them for, himself a landlubber just like them. The girls exchanged glances and Inger began, "Red sails in the sunset ... ", They sang clear through all the sea and land-songs they could remember, themselves merry and excited. It was a way-out chance to be caught in a storm. The boat went thump! and thump! against the rocks on the seabed, as if someone was mashing potatoes, and so what! But maybe she didn't thump against the rocks, the yellow men seemed to have their job completely in hand. No, everything was just great–the storm and the sea and the fishermen. And, of course, they too, in the turmoil of the elements. No, it was simply terrific!

The hulking man changed the course and sea abeam made the boat roll.

"This rocking and rolling won't take long now," Arne soothed. "We'll be soon there."

The fishermen had caught the girls' buoyant mood. The taller man remarked,

"Mainland girls, but not afraid of sea ... If we had such passengers every day, fishing would be beer and skittles."

The fishermen took them to the neighbouring islet where there was a weatherproof shelter available and whither they had already gathered other storm marooned people. There was no point in going to the island proper, the sea was still angry enough and anyway they wouldn't be able to leave the landing place, the wind had certainly brought down many trees and blocked the roads–even in case the jetty was still there.

The farmhouse with its mossy thatched roof, done over to serve as a summer cottage, already reared up. There were many people there, mostly weekenders. The only one the girls knew was a boy, a fifth-former of their school, who bashfully gave the teachers the time of day.

People were sitting at the table, finishing their supper. The newcomers were also kindly invited to join them for tea, but the faces of those at the table showed something akin to puzzlement or disappointment. As if the new addition didn't look bedraggled enough for people so recently saved. And, indeed, they weren't blue with, cold, starved or even wet to the skin.

Or did their odd glances signify something else again?

At any rate their attitude made Inger Uunvald uneasy. She went out.

The occidental side of the sky was glowing wide and red, ill-boding. In the farmyard the shadoof of the draw-well and a forked thunder-struck dried oak loomed black against the red radiance of the sky like the only surviving signs of fire, destruction or plague.

Wasn't it an evening just like this in 1710 A. D. when man. Fate and the elements were breast to breast, wrestling with might and main, that a grey laddie came ashore from an alien, dismal ship to show Gerdruta Carponai her rightful place and make her admit that men were men if one could only find them?

Must it be ascertained by plague again and again?

Gladly exchange one's loneliness for serfdom to become free?

There was something enchanting and painful in the afterglow. Inger stood transfixed, her hair was streaming in the wind, flying wild round her head. Yonder white horses were rushing to the shore, clouds were flying across the sky. Everything was on the move and in a rush.

Arne came from the shed with a big armload of straw to make a bed in the room.

"Why are you standing here, girl? You'll be cold."

In the morning the sky had taken on a grey cast and there was a chill wind blowing: the storm had put an end to the summer. Again the three of them were in the jeep, Arne had remained in the harbour. They were driving as though along a passage, everywhere around them there were smashed trees, sawn somehow in lengths and dragged away from the road to give the cars room to pass.

"By the way, don't tell Aet about the trip," said Kiur. "Why not?" was Riina interested.

"Well, you know, no particular reason ... "

This time nobody made an issue of their being late, the storm had thrown everything into confusion anyway. There were no buses, the telephone lines were down, only pupils who lived in town had turned up. At headmaster's orders all the lessons had been cancelled and a Disaster Day had been announced. Soova was on the ball round the schoolhouse and in the park, aided by pupils and teachers, he was everywhere where there were broken trees and branches on the ground.

Boys were sawing tree-trunks in lengths. Ash, linden and maple blocks were meant for the furniture factory; alders were sawn for firewood.

The whole town was out, everyone speaking about the storm. The main talking point was the selfsame man who was lost together with his boat. There were many different versions of his sad story, the only unchanged element being a beautiful girlfriend left to grieve for him. The school secretary, a shapely young woman who had been his classmate in the junior school, remembered that sea had drawn him from childhood, he simply hadn't been able to fight its call. It was preordained, no doubt about it, the women, raking twigs, sighed.

Returning home, Inger saw already from afar that there was still a roof over her house, but the old bird-cherry tree beneath her kitchen window had been broken by the storm. How that tree had sweetened the spring nights with its maddening scent, itself white all over as though it hadn't any leaves at all, only blooms.

At least I've got rid of one charmer, Inger thought although she was very sorry for the tree. She picked some withered berries from the tumbled tree and put into the mouth. Thank God that the rowan trees on the other side of the fence still stood! Although they weren't her trees, they were that nevertheless, belonging to her world and giving it colour.

The storm was over, but its aftereffects only just began to make themselves known. On the following morning Inger felt headachy. She brewed her coffee a bit stronger than usual and went to school. But when she entered the staffroom and opened her mouth for the first time to greet her colleagues, all she could produce was an ugly unintelligible croaking.

"I say, you're ill," said Riina.

Inger shook her head and went to her place.

Riina came and felt her brow. "Did you take your temperature in the morning?"

Continued in Part VIII...

Christopher Marquet

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