by Wilbur Smith
Hal was still so deep in remorse and guilt that he was aware of little around him, until he heard a soft, conspiratorial whispering near at hand. His wits returned to him with a rush, and he looked towards the bows.
A small group of figures was hiding in the shadows cast by the cargo stacked under the rise of the forecastle. Their furtive movements alerted him to something out of the ordinary.
After their trial by their peers, Sam Bowles and his men had been frogmarched down into the galleon’s lower decks and thrown into a small compartment, which must have been the carpenter’s store. There was no light and little air. The reek of pepper and bilges was stifling, and the space so confined that all five could not stretch out at the same time on the deck. They settled themselves as best they could into this hellhole, and lapsed into a forlorn, despairing silence.
‘Whereabouts are we? Below the waterline, do you think?’ Ed Broom asked miserably.
‘None of us knows his way about this Dutch hulk,’ Sam Bowles muttered.
‘Do you reckon they’re going to murder us?’ Peter Law asked.
‘You can be sure they ain’t about to give us a hug and a kiss,’ Sam grunted.
‘Keel-hauling,’ Ed whispered. ‘I seen it done once. When they’d dragged the poor bastard under the ship and got him out t’other side he was drowned dead as a rat in a beer barrel. There weren’t much meat on his carcass – it were all scraped off by the barnacles under the hull. You could see his bones sticking out all white, like.’
They thought about that for a while. Then Peter Law said, ‘I saw ’em hang and draw the regicides at Tyburn back in ’fifty-nine. Them as murdered King Charlie, the Black Boy’s father. They opened they bellies like fish, then they stuck in an iron hook and twisted it until they had caught up all they guts, and they pulled their intestines out of them like ropes. After that they hacked off their cocks and their balls—’
‘Shut your mouth!’ Sam snarled, and they lapsed into abject silence in the darkness.
An hour later Ed Broom murmured, ‘There’s air coming in here some place. I can feel it on my neck.’
After a moment Peter Law said, ‘He’s right, you know. I can feel it too.’
‘What’s behind this bulkhead?’
‘Ain’t nobody knows. Maybe the main cargo hold.’
There was a scrabbling sound, and Sam demanded, ‘What you doing?’
‘There’s a gap in the planking here. That’s where the air’s coming in.’
‘Let me see.’ Sam crawled across and, after a few moments, agreed. ‘You’re right. I can get my fingers through the hole.’
‘If we could open her up.’
‘If Big Daniel catches you at it, you’re in bad trouble.’
‘What’s he going to do? Draw and quarter us? He aims to do that already.’
Sam worked in the darkness for a while and then growled, ‘If I had something to prise this planking open.’
‘I’m sitting on some loose timber.’
‘Let’s have a piece of it here.’
They were all working together now, and at last they forced the end of a sturdy wooden strut through the gap in the bulkhead. Using it as a lever they threw their weight on it together. The wood tore with a crack and Sam thrust his arm into the opening. ‘There’s open space beyond. Could be a way out.’
They all pushed forward for a chance to tear at the edges of the opening, ripping out their fingernails and driving splinters into the palms of their hands in their haste.
‘Back! Get back!’ Sam told them, and wriggled headfirst into the opening. As soon as they heard him crawling away on the far side they scrambled through after him.
Groping his way forward Sam choked as the fiery reek of pepper burned his throat. They were in the hold that contained the spice casks. There was a little more light in here: it came in through the gaps where the hatch coaming had not been secured.
They could hardly make out the huge casks, each taller than a man, stacked in ranks, and there was no room to crawl over the top, for the deck was too low. However, they could just squeeze between them, but it was a hazardous passage.
The heavy casks shifted slightly with the action of the ship. They scraped and thumped on the timbers of the deck and fretted against the ropes that restrained them. A man would be crushed like a cockroach if he were caught between them.
Sam Bowles was the smallest. He crawled ahead and the others followed. Suddenly a piercing scream rang through the hold and froze them all.
‘Quiet, you stupid bastard!’ Sam turned back in fury. ‘You’ll have ’em down on us.’
‘My arm!’ screamed Peter Law. ‘Get it off me.’
One of the huge casks had lifted with the roll of the hull and then come down again, its full weight trapping the man’s arm against the deck. It was still sliding and pounding down on his limb, and they could hear the bones in his forearm and elbow crushing like dry wheat between millstones. He was screeching in hysteria and there was no quieting him: pain had driven him beyond all reasoning.
Sam crawled back and reached his side. ‘Shut your mouth!’ He grabbed Peter’s shoulder and heaved, trying to drag him clear. But the arm was jammed, and Peter screamed all the louder.
‘Ain’t nothing for it,’ Sam growled, and from around his waist he pulled the length of rope that served him as a belt. He dropped a loop over the other man’s head and drew the noose tight round his throat. He leaned back on it, anchoring both feet between his victim’s shoulder blades, and pulled with all his strength. Abruptly Peter’s wild screams were cut off. Sam kept the noose tight for some time after the struggles had ceased, then freed it and retied it about his waist. ‘I had to do it,’ he muttered to the others. ‘Better one man dead than all of us.’
No one spoke, but they followed Sam as he crawled forward, leaving the strangled corpse to be crushed to mincemeat by the shifting casks.
‘Give me a hand here,’ Sam said and the others boosted him up onto one of the casks below the hatch.
‘There’s naught but a piece of canvas ’tween us and the deck now,’ he whispered triumphantly, and reached up to touch the tightly stretched cover.
‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ Ed Broom whispered.
‘Still broad day out there.’ Sam held him as he tried to loosen the ropes that held the canvas cover in place. ‘Wait for dark. Won’t be long now.’
Gradually the light filtering down through the chinks around the canvas cover dulled and faded. They could hear the ship’s bell tolling the watches.
‘End of the last dog watch,’ said Ed. ‘Let’s go now.’
‘Give it a while more,’ Sam urged. After another hour, he nodded. ‘Loose those sheets.’
‘What we going to do out there?’ Now that it was time to move they were fearful. ‘You’ll not be thinking of trying to take the ship?’
‘Nay, you donkey. I’ve had enough of your bloody Captain Franky. Find anything that floats and then it’s over the side for me. The land’s not far off.’
‘What of the sharks?’
‘Captain Franky bites worse than any sodding shark you’ll meet out there.’
No one argued with that.
They freed a corner of the canvas, and Sam lifted the flap and peered out. ‘All clear. There’s some of the empty water casks at the foot of the foremast. They’ll do us just Jack-a-dandy.’
He wriggled out from under the canvas and darted across the deck. The others followed, one at a time, and helped him tear at the lashing that held the empty casks in place. Within seconds they had two clear.
‘Together now, lads,’ Sam whispered, and they trundled the first across the deck. They heaved up the cask between them and flung it over the rail, ran back and grabbed a second.
‘Hey! You men! What are you doing?’ The challenge from close at hand shocked them all and they turned pale faces to look back. They all recognized Hal.
‘It’s Franky’s whelp!’ one cried, and they dropped the cas
k and scampered for the ship’s side. Ed Broom was first over. He dived headlong, with Peter Miller and John Tate close behind him.
Hal took a moment to realize what they were up to, and then bounded forward to intercept Sam Bowles. He was the ringleader, the most guilty of the gang, and Hal tackled him as he reached the ship’s rail.
‘Father!’ he shouted, loud enough for his voice to carry to every quarter of the deck. ‘Father, help me!’
Locked chest to chest they struggled. Hal fastened a head-lock on him, but Sam threw back his head then butted forward in the hope of breaking Hal’s nose. But Big Daniel had taught Hal his wrestling, and he had been ready: he dropped his chin on his chest so that his skull clashed with Sam’s. Both men were half stunned by the impact, and broke from each other’s grip.
Instantly Sam lurched for the rail but, on his knees, Hal grabbed at his legs. ‘Father!’ he screamed again. Sam tried to kick him off but Hal held on grimly. Then Sam looked up and saw Sir Francis Courtney charging down from the quarterdeck. His sword was out and the blade flashed in the starlight.
‘Hold hard, Hal! I’m coming!’
There was no time for Sam to free the rope belt from around his middle, and drop the loop over Hal’s head. Instead he reached down and locked both hands around his throat. He was a small man, but his fingers were work-toughened, hard as iron marlinspikes. He found Hal’s windpipe and blocked it off ruthlessly.
The pain choked Hal, and his grip loosened on Sam’s legs. He seized the man’s wrists, trying to break his stranglehold, but Sam placed one foot on his chest, kicked him over backwards, then darted to the side of the ship. Sir Francis aimed a sword cut at him as he ran up, but Sam ducked under it and dived over the rail.
‘The treacherous vermin will get clear away!’ Sir Francis howled. ‘Boatswain, call all hands to tack ship. We will go back to pick them up.’
Sam Bowles was driven deep by the force with which he hit the water, and the shock of the cold drove the wind from his lungs. He felt himself drowning, but fought and clawed his way up. At last his head broke the surface, he sucked in a lungful of air and felt the dizziness, and the weakness in his limbs, pass.
He looked up at the hull of the ship, trundling majestically past him, and then he was left in her wake, which glistened slick and oily in the starlight. That was the highway that would guide him back to the cask. He must follow it before the swells wiped it away and left him with no signpost in the darkness. His feet were bare and he wore only a ragged cotton shirt and his canvas petticoats, which would not encumber his movements. He struck out overarm for, unlike most of his fellows, he was a strong swimmer.
Within a dozen strokes he heard a voice in the darkness nearby. ‘Help me, Sam Bowles!’ He recognized Ed Broom’s wild cries. ‘Give me a hand, shipmate, or I’m done for.’
Sam stopped to tread water and, in the starlight, saw the splashes of Ed’s struggles. Beyond him he saw something else lift on the crest of a dark swell, something black and round.
The cask!
But Ed was between him and this promise of survival. Sam started swimming again, but he sheered away from Ed Broom. It was dangerous to come too close to a drowning man, for he would always seize you and hang on with a death grip, until he had taken you down with him.
‘Please, Sam! Don’t leave me.’ Ed’s voice was growing fainter.
Sam reached the floating cask and got a handhold on the protruding spigot. He rested a while then roused himself as another head bobbed up beside him. ‘Who’s that?’ he gasped.
‘It’s me, John Tate,’ the swimmer blurted out, coughing up sea water as he tried to find a hold on the barrel.
Sam reached down and loosened the rope belt from around his waist. He used it to take a turn around the spigot and thrust his arm through the loop. John Tate grabbed at the loop too.
Sam tried to push him away. ‘Leave it! It’s mine.’ But John’s grip was desperate with panic and after a minute Sam let him be. He could not afford to squander his own strength in wrestling with a bigger man.
They hung together on the rope in a hostile truce. ‘What happened to Peter Miller?’ John Tate demanded.
‘Bugger Peter Miller!’ snarled Sam.
The water was cold and dark, and both men imagined what might be lurking beneath their feet. A pack of the monstrous tiger sharks always followed the ship in these latitudes, to pick up the offal and contents of the latrine buckets as they were emptied overboard. Sam had seen one of these fearsome creatures as long as the Lady Edwina’s pinnace and he thought about it now. He felt his lower body cringe and tremble with cold and the dread of those serried ranks of fangs closing over it to shear him in two, as he might bite into a ripe apple.
‘Look!’ John Tate choked as a wave hit him in the face and flooded his open mouth. Sam raised his head and saw a dark, mountainous shape loom out of the night close by.
‘Bloody Franky come back to find us,’ he growled, through chattering teeth. They watched in horror as the galleon bore down on them, growing larger with each second until she seemed to blot out all the stars and they could hear the voices of the men on her deck.
‘Do you see anything there, Master Daniel?’ That was Sir Francis’s hail.
‘Nothing, Captain,’ Big Daniel’s voice boomed from the bows. Looking down onto the black, turbulent water it would be nigh on impossible to make out the dark wood of the cask or the two heads bobbing beside it.
They were hit by the bow wave the galleon threw up as she passed and were left twisting and bobbing in her wake as her stern lantern receded into the darkness.
Twice more during the night they saw its glimmer, but each time the ship passed further from them. Many hours later, as the dawn light strengthened, they looked with trepidation for Resolution, but she was nowhere in sight. She must have given them up for drowned and headed off on her original course. Stupefied with cold and fatigue, they hung on to their precarious handhold.
‘There’s the land,’ Sam whispered, as a swell lifted them high, and they could make out the dark shoreline of Africa. ‘It’s so close you could swim to it easy.’
John Tate made no reply but stared at him sullenly through eyes scalded red and swollen.
‘It’s your best chance. Strong young fellow like you. Don’t worry about me.’ Sam’s voice was rough with salt.
‘You’ll not get rid of me that easy, Sam Bowles,’ John grated, and Sam fell silent again, husbanding his strength, for the cold had sapped him almost to his limit. The sun rose higher and they felt it on their heads, first as a gentle warmth that gave them new strength and then like the flames of an open furnace that seared their skin and dazzled and blinded them with its reflection off the sea around them.
The sun climbed higher, but the land came no closer: the current bore them inexorably parallel to the rocky headlands and white beaches. Idly Sam noticed a patch of cloud shadow that passed close by them, moving darkly across the surface of the water. Then the shadow turned and came back, moving against the wind, and Sam stirred and lifted his head. There was no cloud in the aching blue vault of the sky to cast such a shadow. Sam looked down again and concentrated his full attention on that dark presence on the sea. A swell lifted the cask so high that he could look down upon it.
‘Sweet Jesus!’ he croaked, through cracked salt-seared lips. The water was as clear as a glass of gin, and he had seen a great dappled shape move beneath, the dark zebra stripes upon its back. He screamed.
John Tate lifted his head. ‘What is it? The sun’s got you, Sam Bowles.’ He stared into Sam’s wild eyes, then turned his head slowly to follow their gaze. Both men saw the massive forked tail swing ponderously from side to side, driving the long body forward. It was coming up towards the surface and the tip of the tall dorsal fin broke through, only to the length of a man’s finger, the rest still hidden deep beneath.
‘Shark!’ John Tate hissed. ‘Tiger!’ He kicked frantically, trying to turn the cask to interpose Sam between him
self and the creature.
‘Stay still,’ Sam snarled. ‘He’s like a cat. If you move he’ll come for you.’
They could see its eye, small for such girth and length of body. It stared at them implacably as it began the next circle. Round it went, and round again, each circle narrower, with the cask at its centre.
‘Bastard’s hunting us like a stoat after a partridge.’
‘Shut your mouth. Don’t move,’ Sam moaned, but he could no longer control his terror. His sphincter loosened, and he felt the fetid warm rush under his petticoats as involuntarily his bowels emptied. Immediately the creature’s movements became more excited and its tail beat to a faster rhythm as it tasted his excrement. The dorsal fin rose to its full height above the surface, as long and curved as the blade of a harvester’s scythe.
The shark’s tail beat the surface white and foamy as it drove forward until its snout crashed into the side of the cask. Sam watched in terror as a miraculous transformation came over the sleek head. The upper lip bulged outwards as the wide jaws gaped. The ranks of fangs were thrust forward, fanning open, and clashed against the side of the wooden cask.
Both men panicked and scrabbled at their damaged raft, trying to lift their lower bodies clear of the water. They were screaming incoherently, clawing wildly at the barrel staves and at each other.
The shark backed off and started another of those terrible circles. Beneath the staring eye the mouth was a grinning crescent. Now the thrashing legs of the struggling men gave it a new focus, and it surged in again, its broad back thrusting aside the waters.
John Tate’s shriek was cut off abruptly, but his mouth was still wide open, so that Sam looked down his pink gulping throat. No sound came from it but a soft hiss of expelled breath. Then he was jerked beneath the surface. His left wrist was still twisted into the loop of line and, as he was pulled under, the cask bobbed and ducked like a cork.