The wall of water didn’t look like an ocean wave.
It looked like the horizon had stood up on its hind legs and decided to walk ashore.
Giles Croft didn’t drop his clipboard.
He had dropped a clipboard once during an unexpected sewer surge in Leeds, and retrieving damp survey logs from raw drain water had cured him forever of sudden physical gestures.
Instead, he pulled his pocket watch, checked the second hand. Then he sighted the dark crest against the iron cap of the lighthouse tower.
“Distance two miles,” Giles said.
“Speed thirty-two knots. We have three minutes and forty seconds before wave-front contact.”
Kenneth Drake stood beside him on the lower staging, his iron-shod pacing rod planted deep in the gravel.
