'It's not possible!” Ray cried. The others simply stared, struck dumb.
The raised hollow in which they'd been sitting had made it impossible to see the floor of the bay or even the lower fortifications of the abbey. Now they saw that their hump of sand had become a miniature Mont St. Michel, a six-foot-high island surrounded by a great tissue-thin sheet of water broken by dry patches wherever the land rose a little. Behind them the sheet thickened and extended to the horizon. In front, they could see the advancing edge of it about a thousand yards ahead, creeping unevenly towards the Mont like a film of quicksilver.
'The tide!” Claire said, still staring. “How can it be?” She looked at her watch. “It's only 3:40.'
'Can—can a tidetable be wrong?” Ray murmured.
'No, no,” Claire said. “I don't think so. I've never heard of such a thing.'
Gideon and John exchanged a brief glance. Maybe tide tables couldn't lie, but Ben Butts sure as hell could. Gideon clenched his teeth; dammit, he had felt a faint stirring of—what? Wariness? Suspicion?—when Ben had read from the tide table, but he had dismissed it as so much paranoia. And he hadn't been able to think of a civil way of asking to see the table for himself.
But there was no time to pursue the thought now. And unless they got out of there in a hurry, there wouldn't ever be time to pursue anything else. Even in the few seconds they'd been watching, the water level around the dune had risen smoothly, like liquid seeping into a pool from the bottom, and some of the dry areas had already been swallowed up. The sound that had awakened Gideon, he realized, was the buzzing hum of millions of bubbles bursting on the sand as the water percolated through it. And now there was a louder sound, farther off but more ominous; a steady booming, like a colossal waterfall deep inside a cavern. Even as they turned automatically towards it, a cold wind full of the rank, wet odor of sea bottom tugged at their hair and slapped against their faces.
'That's the main body of the tide,” Claire said without expression. “It will be here in a few minutes. We'll have to run for the Mont.'
'But how will we see the quicksand?” Ray asked, sounding more curious than frightened. “Won't we step into it?'
'If we do, it won't hurt us so long as we keep our heads and stay together. It won't suck you under the way it does in the movies, but it grabs at you and holds you for the tide. But if you don't struggle, if you throw yourself flat when you feel yourself caught, someone else can pull you out.” She made an effort to smile. “Most of the time. I think now we'd better try to get back.'
'Forget that ‘try’ business,” John said. “Let's just do it.'
They scrambled down the dune and sloshed forward at a steady jog through calm, ankle-deep water, trying to catch up with the advancing rim of the tide and get to dry sand, but by the time they got to where the rim had been, it had rolled another five hundred feet forward, and the water was up to their calves. Behind them, the roaring was wilder, the wind stronger, the sky a scowling, turbid gray. John and Gideon were breathing hard, Claire and Ray panting. Their shoes, filled with water, were like weights, but impossible to do without on account of the pebbles and shells. The lamb in Gideon's stomach was no longer so delightful.
All the same, things were better than they might have been. No one had stepped in quicksand, and they were already over halfway to the Mont. Unless the speed of the tide increased, they were likely to make it all the way, encountering nothing worse than a soaking.
They pushed on, and in five more minutes they had reached the area of sloping sand that leads up to the base of the Mont. Exhilarated and laughing, they made a show of stepping over the crawling, inch-high verge of water onto dry land. On the North Tower a few watchers were shouting and waving. John grinned and clasped his hands over his head, boxer-style, which seemed to confuse them.
'Now that,” Raymond said as they moved on up the slope in shoes that squished water at each step, “is what I call adventure. Outracing the tide of Mont St. Michel! Just as in Vercel! I never imagined it would happen to me.” He grinned happily, clear-eyed and breathless. “Not that I'm sorry it's over.'
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NINETEEN
* * * *
IT was a long way from over. Instead of continuing to slope smoothly upward the sandy floor dipped, and in a few more moments they found themselves on the edge of a six-foot-high bank, looking down into a shallow, brown, fast-moving stream. They were no more than a hundred yards from the rocky base of the Mont.
'Where the hell did that come from?” John said, his brows pulled together. “We didn't cross that when we came out.'
'It was dry before,” Claire said bleakly. “This isn't a river, it's the tide. It flows in over the lowest ground first, then spreads. There are new channels every day. We'd better get across quickly.'
Ray seemed puzzled by her gravity. “It doesn't really look too difficult. It can't be more than a dozen feet wide, and I think it's only about two feet d—'
He was cut off by a new sound, different from the cataract-roar behind them; a strange, sibilant grumble that was coming unmistakably and rapidly closer. They looked anxiously towards it, and in a few seconds a thick surge of dark water, almost as high as the banks of the stream, rolled heavily down it at their feet, pushing an edging of dirty yellow foam and bits of driftwood and plastic before it. When it had passed, hissing, the water in the stream rocked back and forth and then subsided restlessly, like water in a bathtub. But it didn't subside all the way.
'It's gone up almost a foot,” Gideon said grimly, telling them what he knew they knew. It was also flowing faster, with little swells and eddies where there had been none before.
'We
But John, as Gideon well knew, was not big on tactical plans. “We'll make a chain,” he said tersely. “I go in first. Then Claire gives me her hand, then you grab hers, Doc, then Ray grabs yours.” He moved to the edge of the
