He appealed to Andrew Burgess, and Ronny saw his father brighten visibly, as if glad of something to do. “Perhaps you could show them, sir,” Bill further suggested, and Andrew turned and slid back gingerly over the wet surface, lowering himself with one hand on a strut down on the incline, so that he rested with his legs in the water, but his body supported. “It is better,” he said promptly. “Come along, Gloria. Help Mrs. Kinney, Colonel. Here, grab my hand. You won’t get any wetter than you are now. It’s not half bad.” Ronny and Bill and the colonel, splashing in the water, held Mrs. Kinney and lowered her, quite mute now, down to Andrew Burgess. Gloria went next, laughing. Her green silk dress clung wetly to her lithe figure, and she moved with much more assurance than the other woman, and seemed somehow more suited to the watery and difficult background. Her face was not so tense either, but somehow the bright spots of rouge on each cheek, the darkened eyelashes, the scarlet curve of mouth seemed to stand away from her face a little, as if the flesh were shrinking. After Colonel Kinney had followed them with ponderous caution and a very tight grip of Ronny’s shoulder, the four hung there in a row, their eyes looking upward at Bill and Ronny clinging above them, and at the jagged wave crests racing down upon them, with the same look. It was a mute look, guarded, expectant, a little humble. Their lifted eyes made something in Ronny ache with pity for them. They looked so helpless, hanging there, in the smashing dangerous water. They were looking at Bill and him as if the two had suddenly taken on an unguessed power and significance. Ronny tried to think of something else to do for them to still the tightness in his throat. “Let’s cut some of that wire, Bill,” he said. “Maybe we can put it around them, so that they wouldn’t have to hang on so tightly. Got a knife? I have.” They worked, balancing, slipping, plunging about on top of the fuselage, over which the highest waves sent a skim of water, twisting and cutting and clinging to the wing frames as they could. When four lengths of the wire had been hacked off, Bill slid down to the Kinneys, Ronny to his father and Gloria. There was enough to twist around the body of each, but it was hard to bend it around a strut so that it would stay fastened against the roll and jerk of the plane. Half the time Ronny was completely in the water, working with one hand, sprawling, while his father helped. When a higher wave reared above them, hissing, they had to stop working and hang on tightly, their heads and shoulders barely above the smother, their bodies banging against the wood.