The Hellfire Club(73)
Now, ten years later, standing on her tiptoes on a sandbar in the Atlantic Ocean, saltwater waves splashing into her nose and down her throat, Margaret had some understanding of what Charlie had described.
The previous night, Margaret had made a glorious discovery. Quadrani and Hinman, their counterparts on Susquehannock Island, had found the three ponies that had swum to their island and concluded they were a stallion, mare, and foal—a family. On walkie-talkies, they shared what they’d learned. Gwinnett assigned each of the members of his team night shifts in which they were to surreptitiously watch the sleeping strings to see if any made their way to the beach and then the ocean. They did that for three nights straight, with no results. But then Margaret found a string in a field and patiently waited behind a shrub thicket of marsh elder. Within an hour, just after midnight, she watched a mare lead her family down a narrow path toward the beach. Margaret, crouched over and scurrying quietly behind them, watched as they galloped into the shallows of the surf and onto an apparent sandbar, after which the stallion, mare, and two foals swam out across the bay, the stallion now taking the lead. She raced back to wake up her colleagues and share with them the confirmation of what was something of a revelation in their field—that the ponies, quite unusually, apparently traveled in families, not larger strings, and that the mare, at least in this case, was the driving force to get the family to the water.
Tonight, however, as they watched a new string make the journey, it seemed the foal might prove too weak. A strong wind raised a more pugilistic surf than normal, with trains of swell waves hitting shore. As the stallion and mare boldly galloped into the surf, the foal stumbled, her legs wobbly and spindly.
“She looks off,” said Kessler, kneeling in a patch of beach heather behind a dune, where the group had been sitting since dusk.
“Maybe she was premature? Or just a runt,” Cornelius speculated.
The foal made her way to the sandbar, which was within a few dozen feet of shore, the waves slapping into her flank as she followed her parents.
“Is she going to be able to handle the swimming part of this?” Gwinnett asked. “I think I saw her two days ago struggling to keep up just on land.”
Aiming Kessler’s powerful flashlight at the sandbar, Margaret watched the foal stumble and fall behind while her parents set out into the water. Margaret had long been interested in the bond between mares and foals and whether it had an impact on the larger string, but right now, her intense focus was less academic in nature; she realized that at some point the foal would need to begin swimming, and she didn’t know if the young pony was up to the task. The foal looked weak but determined, faltering and nearly collapsing before taking a few halting steps, falling farther behind her parents. Margaret held her breath, wondering whether the stallion or, more likely, the mare would opt for nurturing heroism or if more Darwinian impulses would decide the foal’s fate.
“Jesus,” Margaret said as a wave smacked the foal’s shoulder and half submerged her head in the water.
“Maybe best not to watch, Margaret,” Gwinnett said, placing his hand on her arm. She twitched instinctively and his hand fell back to his side.
The foal, now ten or so yards behind her galloping parents, continued on her path to Susquehannock Island, but her struggle seemed to increase with each step. She slowed as she waded into deeper water, and she began to disappear. The farther and deeper she went, the harder it was for the team to track her progress.
Margaret snatched the flashlight from Kessler and ran down the beach, trying to get a better view of the foal.
“Margaret, what are you doing?” Gwinnett shouted from behind her.
The slight extra weight in her midsection slowed Margaret a tad as she began sprinting down the beach, trying to catch up with the foal, running parallel to the angular path of the sandbar and into the surf, lifting her knees to avoid being slowed by the breakers.
“Margaret!” shouted Gwinnett. “Margaret?”
But Margaret barely heard him; she was focused on the young pony, who was trying to keep her head above the waves, fighting not to be dragged down. Margaret waded in and then threw the flashlight onto the sand and dived into the water. She had the foal in her line of sight, maybe twenty feet away, still vaguely illuminated by the moon. The water was shockingly cold.
Gwinnett, Kessler, and Cornelius began running down the beach, following Margaret’s general direction in the water but remaining on land.
Margaret was maybe ten feet away from the foal, whose ears were all that were visible as the rip current dragged her from the shore. As a wave approached, Margaret inhaled deeply, then dived into the sea, extending her arms as far forward as possible until finally her fingertips, then her full palms, touched the pony, covered in soft, silky hair. She slid her arms around the sides of the foal’s body, clasped her fingers under her barrel, and tried to stand. As she straightened her legs, the depth of the water surprised her. She was able to stand, but barely, on the balls of her feet, with her head and mouth just reaching the air above. She found herself trapped in a tug-of-war with the undertow as she and the foal battled against the current.
It was then that she thought, for just a split second, of Charlie and his stories from training for D-Day.
She could hear the men yelling from the shore, but she didn’t know what they were saying and she didn’t care. The foal couldn’t have weighed that much, and given natural buoyancy, Margaret thought she should have been able to quickly float the pony to the shallows, but it proved more difficult than she’d anticipated. The foal’s thrashing complicated her attempts to hang on to her as the ocean dragged her out to sea. Soon Margaret could no longer touch the bottom of the ocean. She was athletic enough to keep holding the foal’s head above the water, the scissor kick of her legs preventing them from drifting farther, but the result was essentially stasis.