And what a sea! From here the ocean fifty feet down was a churning maelstrom of foam, with jagged shards of rock reaching up like suppliant fingers in the foam.

Suppliant fingers…hands raised in prayer. The analogy was a good one, she thought bitterly. Help was what she needed.

Action was what she needed. Here she was staring out to sea when she should be figuring out what to do with this guy.

She was figuring out how alone she was.

At least his breathing was fine. Her fingers had been moving over his face even as she looked about her, searching for what was most important. The stranger was face down but as her hand came over his mouth she felt the soft whisper of breathing. Thank God. She adjusted the position of his head a tiny bit-not enough to hurt if his neck was broken but a tiny sideways shift so his mouth and nose were clear of the mud.

So why wasn’t he moving?

‘What’s wrong?’ she whispered, but there was no answer.

Had he hit his head? He must have. Her fingers kept searching and found what they were seeking-an ugly haematoma on the side of his forehead. There was a little blood. Not much.

Maybe this was momentary. Maybe she’d just stunned him.

What else? She sat back, her trained eyes running over his body. What…?

His left leg.

She winced. It was all wrong. Just below the knee it twisted and was lying at a grotesque angle. She moved so that she was kneeling by it and winced again.

He’d snapped the bones beneath the knee. The tibia and the fibula must both be broken. She stared at it-at the position it was lying in. The position meant that there was a huge risk it’d be cutting off blood circulation. In fact…With fingers that felt numbed-horror had made her whole body seem numb-she edged off one of the guy’s shoes and stared down. There was no mistaking the blue-white tinge to his toes.