Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 05 by Wheatley Dennis

Author:Wheatley, Dennis [Wheatley, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-28T00:12:01+00:00

14 - In Deadly Peril

The plane was up-ended, nose down, with its occupants a writhing heap of arms and legs struggling in the cockpit. Rex and the Duke were underneath; Richard and Marie-Lou had pitched forward on to them. Simon and Philippa, who had been seated in the tail of the plane, were on top of the pile.

Down—down—down plunged the plane, so that it seemed to them in their terror that it would never stop until its engine became embedded in the ocean bottom. From the burst window in the front of the cockpit water was foaming and bubbling up between the tangled limbs of the six trapped passengers; yet while the plane continued its hideous dive they were powerless to move against the impulse that had flung them together in its nose.

The sea was crystal clear, and Marie-Lou, who had been thrown forward so that her face was pressed against one of the side-windows, could see the under-water scene past which they were rushing as clearly as though she was staring into a plate-glass tank at an aquarium.

During her yachting holidays in peace-time she had often gone out in the glass-bottomed boats which are specially designed so that passengers can peer down at the beautiful submarine gardens which lie off the coasts of many islands in the Tropics. She had, too, spent hours swimming in warm seas, pushing along in front of her a glass-bottomed bucket through which she could study the lovely waving coral fans, the countless varieties of anemones, shrimps, prawns, seaweed, lobsters and the multitudes of rainbow-hued fish which darted in and out of the gently undulating underwater vegetation.

Now with very different emotions she saw some of those gaily-coloured denizens of the shallows. A shoal of tiny orange fish flitted by, a long barracuda, slowly opening its evil jaws, stared at her for a moment, a pair of blue-and-yellow-striped angel-fish passed so close that had it not been for the window she could have stretched out her hand and touched them; but she was no longer conscious of their beauty. One awful thought stifled all else in her mind. In a few moments those fish would be nosing their way into the submerged plane as it lay on the bottom, and very soon they would be eating her; nibbling her flesh from the bones of her drowned body.

After what seemed an interminable time, but actually was only a matter of seconds, the speed of the plane’s downward plunge decreased. Simon grabbed the back of one of the middle seats and with a great effort heaved himself off the others. Seizing Philippa’s arm he pulled her towards him. Richard and Marie-Lou struggled up after them towards the tail of the still descending plane. Now that the weight of the others had been taken off Rex and the Duke they too were able to regain a semi-upright position. Both were half-submerged in the water which continued to bubble in through the broken window. With extraordinary presence of mind,

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