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  “A honeymooning whale,” sighed Carl. “I told you they came up here. If you keep on looking you’ll probably see a shark or so, they attack the whales.”

  It was around four in the afternoon, and the sun beginning to trek to the west, when they heard the sound of a plane. At least at first they thought it was a plane, then Carl, listening intently, said triumphantly: “No, it’s a chaff cutter.”

  “A what?”

  “A helicopter, Ros, and for a helicopter to come here can only mean one thing: they’re looking for us.”

  “But couldn’t it be a Navy ’copter?”

  “Yes, but still looking for us. Someone would have contacted them and asked them to search.”

  “Well, I only hope they look here.”

  “Get ready, anyway. Tear off anything bright and arresting that you can and wave it ... I mean wave it if it comes our way.”

  “If—” Roslyn sighed.

  It did not. After standing poised, after straining their eyes and ears, they realized the helicopter was retreating. Disappointed, they sat down again on the deck. But within half an hour the helicopter was scouting a second time, and this time it did see them. Not only saw them but wasted no time in hovering over them.

  “I thought they’d just pinpoint us and then send a boat,” appreciated Carl, “but by heaven, I believe they’re going to pick us up!”

  “How?” she asked.

  “Like they do in the movies,” Carl laughed. “At any moment now you’ll be winched up.” He pointed to a descending ladder.

  “Oh, no!” Roslyn refused.

  “It’s that, or spend the night here,” pointed out Carl factually, “since it would be too late and too dark to direct a boat instead. Well, I know which I’ll choose.” He put his hand on Roslyn’s shoulder. “Look, girl, it’s nothing. Just climb into the harness when it descends and leave the rest to them up there.”

  “I—I can’t!”

  Roslyn was speaking the truth, she knew she was physically incapable of making that necessary move. The strain of the past twenty-four hours had caught up with her. She felt weak and giddy and a little sick. She turned away, refusing the ladder, and the winch went up again.

  The helicopter circled, then settled a second time. Once more the winch came down.

  “Ros, for heaven’s sake—” appealed Carl.

  “I can’t. Carl, I just can’t!”

  “Then I can’t either, Roslyn. Look, come with me.”

  “I still can’t,” Roslyn gasped.

  Again the ladder went up. Again the helicopter circled. Again the winch came down. ‘But this time a man came with it.

  As if miles away Roslyn heard the man speaking to Carl. She did not decipher one word that he said. She saw the man’s face only inches away, but he was still a blur.

  “See, Ros, it’s nothing.” That did reach Roslyn, as did the sight of Carl strapping himself in and being drawn upward.

  Then the ladder was down again, and the man who had stopped with Roslyn was forcing her into the harness, forcing her none too gently. When she still resisted, resisted hysterically, he deliberately gave her a light but telling blow across her cheek. Then when she resisted again, he climbed in, too, and held her firmly.

  She felt them being borne aloft. She felt iron arms forcing her in, keeping her there. She felt more arms again extending from the helicopter to gather her up.

  It was some time before Roslyn focussed properly. Focussed on the dark, sardonic eyes of Marcus Moreno. He was rubbing a torn hand where something must have bitten into him, probably the wire rope or a rough edge of the harness. Either that, she thought vaguely, or she had kicked or scratched him. He had released her now. The bubble of the helicopter tightly encased them and they were turning to the mainland again.

  So the night that they had dreaded was not to be that ordeal after all.—Or was it?

  Marcus Moreno had not spoken to Roslyn, but as he looked across to Carl to answer some question, his glance flicked briefly but sufficiently at her, and Roslyn knew that any ordeal had not yet begun.

  The helicopter put down on a pad that could have been anywhere as far as Roslyn was concerned. After they had been helped out, and after Marcus had crossed somewhere to get his car, Carl told Roslyn that the ’copter was a Navy craft up here on exercise. It was now returning to its carrier.

  “Did Marcus alert them?” she asked.

  “Yes. It appears that the case didn’t close with Belinda after all.” Carl gave Roslyn a quick, enigmatical look.

  “Was he angry?”

  “On the contrary. He said the same thing had happened to him, as a boy.” This time Carl laughed ruefully. “I didn’t like that ‘boy’ bit. But he was pretty decent over it, and the Navy took it as part of a day’s work. In fact they welcomed the practice.”

  “Everyone happy except me,” said Roslyn.

  “I have a reefed boat,” Carl reminded her.

  “Yes, I’m terribly sorry about that. But you’d be insured, which is more than I am against wrath.”

  “Again—Oh, come on, Ros, you’re not going to be browbeaten.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” she said ruefully.

  “Well, there’s no need for you to take it. You don’t belong up there any more.”

  “Belinda does,” she sighed.

  “Yes—Belinda.” Carl could not say any more. Marcus was beckoning them across.

  The doctor got in the car beside Marcus. Roslyn climbed in the back.

  “If you could take me to where I moor ... where I used to moor the Dorothea, I could pick my car up there,” Carl requested.

  “Will be done. After that I’ll leave you two. Cutting is at its peak right now.”

  “Yes, and that brings me to my speech of thanks. How you found time to wonder about us, raise an alarm about us—”

  “Some time when I have more time I’ll tell you.”

  “All the same, thanks.” Carl half-turned for Roslyn to add her thanks, but Roslyn couldn’t.

  “...I’ll leave you two.” Marcus had just said it, and Roslyn kept hearing the words again and again. But Belinda had not finished her week yet. Surely he would not deprive her of that week?

  “I have some clothes of Belinda’s,” she muttered.

  “We’re a healthy mob at Clementine just now, we invariably are when the money is flowing and every cutter is earning a fat cheque each week. So there’ll be no need, I should think, to call up. Neither you, Doctor Carlton, nor” ... an icy flick of dark eyes ... “you, Sister Young. In which case perhaps you can post the clothes up.”

  “Post them?” she echoed.

  “We do have a service,” he said coolly, and he swept the car down to the bay where Carl’s car waited by the jetty.

  Roslyn had dreaded what was to come, but now that nothing came, and in that empty nothing she included Belinda, it was much worse.

  Incredulous ... not believing that she was so coldly, definitely cut off, she watched Marcus open the door of the car for her without bothering to get out himself.

  He did not bother to say goodbye, either. He nodded to Carl, pressed down on the accelerator, and the next moment Roslyn and the doctor were standing alone by, the empty jetty.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Although he watched Marcus’s abrupt departure, abrupt as far as Roslyn was concerned, Carl did not speak on the subject, neither then nor in the days that followed.

  They were busy days. Though Marcus Moreno was probably right when he said that when money was flowing people were healthy, he left out the fact that people also invited accidents in their making of the money. Clementine might be having a lucky break, or perhaps Marcus was having a lucky break with his home doctor, but the other sugar farms came forward with all the patients, and more, than Carl Carlton could deal with.

  Bites, cuts, rashes, strains, sprains, breaks presented themselves either to the surgery or the hospital. It made little difference, anyway, since Carl had to attend both places, si
nce the medical service from the nearest big town was being held up while the flood-ravaged strip was reorganized.

  The busy pace was a blessing in a way, for Roslyn had little time to think of Belinda. Then a particularly vicious virus began to sweep through their community, and she thought often and anxiously about Belinda. Belinda, she mulled over and over again, had never been ill, and the previously healthy ones were the ones who generally succumbed the first. A dozen times she picked up the phone to ring Clementine, but a dozen times she put the phone back. She doesn’t belong to me, she thought forlornly, I have no right to interfere ... except that right of love.

  Occupied as he was, her anxiety still must have reached Carl.

  “You’re worried about the kid,” he said.

  “I can’t help it,” she sighed.

  “Of course you can’t.” A thoughtful pause, and then:

  “Did you and Marcus come to this agreement?”

  “What agreement?”

  “That he takes over.”

  “Why, no, but after all, it’s his right,” Roslyn admitted bitterly.

  “You’re not a Women’s Libber, then, eh?”

  “What do you mean, Carl?”

  “You think the man should have precedence.”

  “No, of course I don’t, but after all, Belinda is the Clementine heir.”

  “But unable to take over the reins for many years, so why should you stand down in the meantime?”

  “That must be obvious,” Roslyn said despairingly. “My relationship to Belinda can scarcely compete with Marcus Moreno’s, can it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Carl. “You’ve never explained it, but taking into consideration your very obvious love for her—”

  “I think he cares about her too, now.”

  “Then I’d say you were far ahead,” finished Carl, ignoring Roslyn’s interruption.

  She appreciated his backing her up. “You’re being sweet, Carl,” she smiled, “as ever, but—”

  “But just not sweet enough,” he came in quickly.

  “I wasn’t going to say that. I think we’re on different tracks now.”

  “The way I look at it, it could be the same track. I told you before, Ros, I’d like the little girl ... along with you.”

  “For a doctor you’re so naive it’s unbelievable,” said Roslyn, and without waiting to explain, without waiting for his response, she ran outside to the garden. The thought of Belinda with her for all time was so heady she had to look around for a bench on which to sit.

  “I’d like the little girl ... along with you.” Again she heard Carl offering. Dear, unaware Carl, only aware of ills and people needing his help for ills. Unaware of the strict precedence, with a child, of a parent. Dear foolish Carl, who had meant he would welcome Belinda as well as her. Oh, if only it could be like that, if only ... Roslyn had found a bench by this time, and she sat down. She found she needed to sit, for she was thinking the same thought that had come to her on the wreck, and, like then, it was disturbing. What Carl had offered was impossible, but if it had not been impossible would she still ... could she still have agreed ? She liked Carl, and that was what really mattered, but she loved—

  “No. No.” she proclaimed aloud.

  “You needn’t be so emphatic,” reproached Carl, who must have followed her out. “I believe I know the answer by now without such underlining. Ros, we’ve had a call from Sugar Hills” ... Sugar Hills lay to the south-west of them ... “and the wog has reached there. Can you come?”

  “Of course,” Roslyn said.

  They were three days at Sugar Hills, choosing the worst cases to be flown by Carl to the coast hospital, then selecting sensible women who had gone down with the virus but now were better again to take over the supervising of the antibiotics and the taking of temperatures once they had left for home again. But when they did leave it was not for home. An SOS came from Jasper. Jasper was further west again, and its cane stretched as far as the eye could reach. It was a collection of smallholdings, but added together they made a world of shining green grass and an eternal song of wind through silken leaves. Cane music.

  Jasper was really hard hit, and now Roslyn became very anxious. Some of the people were seriously ill, an illness that seemed to resist their particular antibiotic. She knew Carl was desperately concerned. It was no use asking for help; by now the entire state of Queensland had succumbed to the germ, and no doctors were available. Also the big cities, Carl said, had gone down. Every medical man had to stay at his post.

  “But they’re trying a different strain of stuff,” he went on, “and getting results at last. Can you manage here while I fly down and get some?”

  “Can’t it be flown up?”

  “There’s a shortage of pilots,” Carl sighed. “This thing has really done damage.”

  “Then you must go, of course,” Roslyn said unhappily. There were some grave cases among the patients, and she dreaded being left alone.

  Carl touched her hand in understanding. “I’ll be back in the proverbial flash, and if I can possibly wangle it I’ll bring help from our hospital.”

  “That would be wonderful, Carl.”

  “No need to brief you, you know as much as I do. And for heaven’s sake, girl, don’t go down yourself.”

  He left soon afterwards, and after she had watched the Cessna until it was only a speck in the sky, then not there at all, Roslyn turned back to her improvised hospital, which was the biggest barn belonging to the biggest of the houses, and owned by a Mr. Macaulay who had agreed that his property be taken over for the doctor’s and nurse’s convenience. He had been glad to, for he was very ill himself. As she walked to the rough ward Roslyn felt uneasy somehow. It was certainly not a matter for lightheartedness, she was acutely aware of that, but the heaviness on her seemed so real she could almost feel the weight on her shoulders.

  The virus, unidentified as yet, had hit every person attached to Jasper. The milder cases, able to receive prophylaxis, were doing fairly well, but doing it, Roslyn sighed, very slowly. The more advanced patients were still on the inoculations that Carl had decided should be dropped for a new strain. These sufferers worried Roslyn considerably. There were several high temperatures among them, and two of the children, Jenny and Mark Macaulay, were now complaining of abdomen pains.

  Around four she faced up to the fact that she must do something more. She knew that the coast had enough worries of its own, the entire state had enough worries, but she must telephone for advice at least on the small ones.

  She asked Peter, the first cutter to recover sufficiently to help her, to direct her to the station phone, then to tell her how to get through. She left him watching as she went across to the house, a much smaller house than Clementine even though it was Jasper’s largest, and surrounded entirely by cane right up to its walls.

  The house was empty. Mrs. Macaulay had been one of the first to go down to the coast and Mr. Macaulay was still on Roslyn’s more acute list. Their children, Jenny and Mark, comprised the reason she was ringing now.

  She found the phone, did what Peter had told her, then sat on the edge of the chair willing an answer.

  It came almost at once, and she could have cried out in joy ... except that the joy turned to surprise. How was it that Marcus Moreno was responding?

  “Marcus!” she exclaimed with disbelief.

  “It’s Roslyn.”

  “Yes. But how—”

  His voice, characteristically impatient, reminded her: “You did ring my number.”

  “No, I rang the coast ... I mean, I intended to. I mean—” She must have dialled automatically, she realized; how often these last weeks had she dialled Clementine, then put down the phone before there could be an answer.

  “You mean you instinctively rang me instead.” There was something curious in his voice, something enigmatical, but she did not try to categorize it. Suddenly all her wretchedness was unburdened in her cry of:

  “Oh, Marcus!”

/>   “Yes, Roslyn?”

  “I’m at Jasper,” she told him.

  Yes, I know they’re in a bad way. Otherwise I would have—”

  She did not wait for him to finish. She burst out: “Carl’s not here.”

  “What?”

  “He went down for a new vaccine. Also for help if he can get it. We do need it desperately, and Carl—”

  “Yes, but skip all that. Just tell me this: Isn’t he back?”

  “I told you.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me earlier? Like hours ago, Roslyn? You know it’s not far for a crow.”

  “I wasn’t alarmed or worried, at least only for myself. I knew he might have trouble getting the vaccine, more trouble getting help. I understood any delay.”

  “How did you understand it? Did he ring from the coast and tell you?”

  “No.”

  “But wouldn’t he?”

  “It would depend on how busy he was, I expect.”

  “Oh, come off it, Roslyn, he would have told you.”

  “He could have tried, but I might have been in the improvised hospital. We’ve made up wards and if you’re at the far end you wouldn’t hear a ring.”

  “He would ring and ring, you little fool. Why on earth didn’t you raise a rumpus before?” demanded Marcus angrily.

  “Before what? He had a journey to make and that takes time.”

  “It takes fifteen minutes if you have wings, and you must have known that. Why in tarnation didn’t you contact me ... anyone ... before this?”

  “A nurse copes,” Roslyn said angrily. She did not know what he was getting at.

  “So does a doctor cope if he’s anywhere that he can cope. My God, the man could have gone down hours ago!”

  “What?”

  “Carl could have had a forced landing, in fact I’d say he has had one, otherwise he would not have left you without a word like this. Look, ring off, and I’ll contact the coast, see if he ever arrived. Then I’ll ring you back.”

  “But—” Roslyn spoke to silence. She looked at the phone, then slowly cradled it again. She went over to Peter and told him to go and sit on the verandah, then call to her when the bell rang. It was of vital importance, she said to him, but so, she knew, were her patients. If anything had happened to Carl; though it was unthinkable, it had still happened, but these people in her care were still here, and still alive. She shivered at her choice of a word. Of course Carl was all right, he was an excellent pilot, and the coast was only a short journey away.