by Wilbur Smith
“Here! Take hold of this.” He guided his hand to the gunwale. The three hung there, struggling for breath.
Jim was the first to recover sufficiently to find his anger again. “Bitch-born bastard!” he gasped, as he stared after the departing ship. She was sailing on sedately. “Doesn’t even know he almost killed us.”
“She stinks worse than the seal colony.” Mansur’s voice was still rough, and the effort of speech brought on a coughing fit.
Jim sniffed the air and caught the odour that fouled it. “Slaver. Bloody slaver,” he spat. “No mistaking that smell.”
“Or a convict ship,” Mansur said hoarsely. “Probably transporting prisoners from Amsterdam to Batavia.” They watched the ship alter course, her sails changing shape in the moonlight as she rounded up to enter the bay and join the other shipping anchored there.
“I’d like to find her captain in one of the gin hells at the docks,” Jim said darkly.
“Forget it!” Mansur advised him. “He’d stick a knife between your ribs, or in some other painful place. Let’s get the skiff bailed out.” There was only a few fingers of free board so Jim had to slide in over the transom. He groped under the thwart and found the wooden bucket still lashed under the seat. They had tied down all the gear and equipment securely for the hazardous launch through the surf. He began bailing out the hull, sending a steady stream of water over the side. By the time it was half cleared, Zama had recovered sufficiently to climb aboard and take a spell with the bucket. Jim hauled in the oars, which were still floating alongside, then checked the other equipment. “All the fishing tackle’s still here.” He opened the mouth of a sack and peered inside. “Even the bait.”
“Are we going on?” Mansur asked.
“Of course we are! Why not, in the name of the Devil?”
“Well…” Mansur looked dubious. “We were nearly drowned.”
“But we weren’t,” Jim pointed out briskly. “Zama has got her dry, and the Cauldron is less than a cable’s length away. Big Julie is waiting for her breakfast. Let’s go and feed it to her.” Once again they took their positions on the thwarts, and plied the long oars. “Bastard cheesehead cost us an hour’s fishing time,” Jim complained bitterly.
“Could have cost you a lot more, Somoya,” Zama laughed, “if I hadn’t been there to pull you out—” Jim picked up a dead fish from the bait bag and threw it at his head. They were swiftly recovering their high spirits and camaraderie.
“Hold the stroke, we’re coming up on the marks now,” Jim warned, and they began the delicate business of manoeuvring the skiff into position over the rocky hole in the green depths below them. They had to drop the anchor on to the ledge to the south of the Cauldron, then let the current drift them back over the deep subterranean canyon. The swirling current that gave the place its name complicated their work, and twice they missed the marks. With much sweat and swearing they had to retrieve the fifty-pound boulder that was their anchor and try again. The dawn was sneaking in from the east, stealthily as a thief, before Jim plumbed the depth with an unbaited cod line to make certain they were in the perfect position. He measured the line between the span of his open arms as it streamed over the side.
“Thirty-three fathoms!” he exclaimed, as he felt the lead sinker bump the bottom. “Nearly two hundred feet. We’re right over Big Julie’s dining room.” He brought up the sinker swiftly with a swinging double-handed action. “Bait up, boys!” There was a scramble for the bait bag. Jim reached in and, from under Mansur’s fingers, he snatched the choicest bait of all, a grey mullet as long as his forearm. He had netted it the previous day in the lagoon below the company godown. “That’s too good for you,” he explained reasonably. “Needs a real fisherman to handle Julie.” He threaded the point of the steel shark hook through the mullet’s eye sockets. The bight of the hook was two handspans across. Jim shook out the leader. It was ten feet of steel chain, light but strong. Alf, his father’s blacksmith, had hand-forged it especially for him. Jim was certain it would resist the efforts of even a great king steenbras to sheer it against the reef. He swung the bait round his head, letting the heavy cod line pay out with each swing, until at last he released it and sent it with the chain leader to streak far out across the green surface. As the bait sank into the depths he let the line stream after it. “Right down Big Julie’s throat,” he gloated. “This time she isn’t going to get away. This time she’s mine.” When he felt the lead sinker hit the bottom, he laid out a coil of the line on the deck and stood firmly on it with his bare right foot. He needed both hands on the oar to counter the current and keep the skiff on station above the Cauldron with the heavy line running straight up and down.
Zama and Mansur were fishing with lighter hooks and lines, using small chunks of mackerel as bait. Almost immediately they were hauling in fish—rosy red stumpnose, wriggling silvery bream, spotted tigers that grunted like piglets as the boys twisted out the hook and threw them into the bilges.
“Baby fish for little boys!” Jim mocked them. Diligently he tended his own heavy line, rowing quietly to hold the skiff steady across the current. The sun rose clear of the horizon and took the chill out of the air. The three stripped off their outer clothing until they were clad only in breech clouts.
Close at hand the seals swarmed over the rocks of the island, dived and roiled close around the anchored skiff. Suddenly a big dog seal dived under the boat and seized the fish Mansur was bringing up, tore it from the hook and surfaced yards away with it in its jaws.
“Abomination, cursed of God!” Mansur shouted in outrage as the seal held the plundered fish on its chest and tore off hunks of flesh with gleaming fangs. Jim dropped the oar and reached into his tackle bag. He brought out his slingshot, and fitted a water-worn pebble into the pouch. He had selected his ammunition from the bed of the stream at the north end of the estate, and each stone was round, smooth and perfectly weighted. Jim had practised with the slingshot until he could bring down a high-flying goose with four throws out of five. He wound up for the throw, swinging the slingshot overhead until it hummed with power. Then he released it and the pebble blurred from the pouch. It caught the dog seal in the centre of its rounded black skull and they heard the fragile bone shatter. The animal died instantly, and its carcass drifted away on the current, twitching convulsively.
“He won’t be stealing any more fish.” Jim stuffed the slingshot back in the bag. “And the others will have learned a lesson in manners.” The rest of the seal pack sheered away from the skiff. Jim took up the oar again, and they resumed their interrupted conversation.
Only the previous week Mansur had returned on one of the Courtney ships from a trading voyage up the east coast of Africa as far as the Horn of Hormuz. He was describing to them the wonders he had seen and the marvellous adventures he had shared with his father, who had captained the Gift of Allah.
Mansur’s father, Dorian Courtney, was the other partner in the company. In his extreme youth he had been captured by Arabian pirates and sold to a prince of Oman, who had adopted him and converted him to Islam. His half-brother Tom Courtney was Christian, while Dorian was Muslim. When Tom had found and rescued his younger brother they had made a happy partnership. Between them they had entry to both religious worlds, and their enterprise had flourished. Over the last twenty years they had traded in India, Arabia and Africa, and sold their exotic goods in Europe.
As Mansur spoke Jim watched his cousin’s face, and once again he envied his beauty and his charm. Mansur had inherited it from his father, along with the red-gold hair that hung thickly down his back. Like Dorian he was lithe and quick, while Jim took after his own father, broad and strong. Zama’s father, Aboli, had compared them to the bull and the gazelle.
“Come on, coz!” Mansur broke off his tale to tease Jim. “Zama and I will have the boat filled to the gunwales before you have even woken up. Catch us a fish!”
“I have always prized quality above mere quantity,” Jim retorted, in a pitying t
one.
“Well, you have nothing better to do, so you can tell us about your journey to the land of the Hottentots.” Mansur swung another gleaming flapping fish over the side of the skiff.
Jim’s plain, honest face lit up with pleasure at the memory of his own adventure. Instinctively he looked northwards across the bay at the rugged mountains, which the morning sun was painting with brightest gold. “We travelled for thirty-eight days,” he boasted, “north across the mountains and the great desert, far beyond the frontiers of this colony, which the Governor and the Council of the VOC in Amsterdam have forbidden any man to cross. We trekked into lands where no white man has been before us.” He did not have the fluency or the poetic descriptive powers of his cousin, but his enthusiasm was contagious. Mansur and Zama laughed with him, as he described the barbaric tribes they had encountered and the endless herds of wild game spread across the plains. At intervals he appealed to Zama, “It’s true what I say, isn’t it, Zama? You were with me. Tell Mansur it’s true.”
Zama nodded solemnly. “It is true. I swear it on the grave of my own father. Every word is true.”
“One day I will go back.” Jim made the promise to himself, rather than to the others. “I will go back and cross the blue horizon, to the very limit of this land.”
“And I will go with you, Somoya!” Zama looked at him with complete trust and affection.
Zama remembered what his own father had said of Jim when at last he lay dying on his sleeping kaross, burnt out with age, a ruined giant whose strength had seemed once to hold the very sky suspended. “Jim Courtney is the true son of his father,” Aboli had whispered. “Cleave to him as I have to Tom. You will never regret it, my son.”
“I will go with you,” Zama repeated, and Jim winked at him.
“Of course you will, you rogue. Nobody else would have you.” He clapped Zama on the back so hard he almost knocked him off the thwart.
He would have said more but at that moment the coil of cod line jerked under his foot and he let out a triumphant shout. “Julie knocks at the door. Come in, Big Julie!” He dropped the oar and snatched up the line. He held it strung between both his hands with a slack bight ready to feed out over the side. Without being ordered to do so the other two retrieved their own rigs, stripping the line in over the gunwale, hand over hand, working with feverish speed. They knew how vital it was to give Jim open water in which to work with a truly big fish.
“Come, my prettyling!” Jim whispered to the fish, as he held the line delicately between thumb and finger. He could feel nothing, just the soft press of the current. “Come, my darling! Papa loves you,” he pleaded.
Then he felt a new pressure on the line, a gentle almost furtive movement. Every nerve in his body jerked bowstring taut. “She’s there. She’s still there.”
The line went slack again. “Don’t leave me, sweetest heart. Please don’t leave me.” Jim leaned out over the side of the skiff, holding the line high so that it ran straight from his fingers into the green swirl of the waters. The others watched without daring to draw breath. Then, suddenly, they saw his raised right hand drawn down irresistibly by some massive weight. They watched the muscles in his arms and back coil and bunch, like an adder preparing to strike, and neither spoke or moved as the hand holding the line almost touched the surface of the sea.
“Yes!” said Jim quietly. “Now!” He reared back with the weight of his body behind the strike. “Yes! And yes and yes!” Each time he said it he heaved back on the line, swinging with alternate arms, right, left and right again. There was no give even to Jim’s strength.
“That can’t be a fish,” said Mansur. “No fish is that strong. You must have hooked the bottom.” Jim did not answer him. Now he was leaning back with all his weight, his knees jammed against the wooden gunwale to give himself full purchase. His teeth were gritted, his face turned puce and his eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets.
“Tail on to the line!” he gasped, and the other two scrambled down the deck to help him, but before they reached the stern Jim was jerked off his feet, and sprawled against the side of the boat. The line raced through his fingers, and they could smell the skin, burning like mutton ribs grilling on the coals, as it tore from his palm.
Jim yelled with pain but held on grimly. With a mighty effort he managed to get the line across the edge of the gunwale and tried to jam it there. But he lost more skin as his knuckles slammed into the wood. With one hand he snatched off his cap to use as a glove while he held the line against the wood. All three were yelling like demons in hellfire.
“Give me a hand! Grab the end!”
“Let him run. You’ll straighten the hook.”
“Get the bucket. Throw water on it! The line will burst into flames!”
Zama managed to get both hands on the line, but even with their combined strength they could not stop the run of the great fish. The line hissed with the strain as it raced over the side, and they could feel the sweep of the great tail pulsing through it.
“Water, for the love of Christ, wet it down!” Jim howled, and Mansur scooped a bucketful from alongside and dashed it over their hands and the sizzling line. There was a puff of steam as the water boiled off.
“By God! We’ve almost lost all of this coil,” Jim shouted, as he saw the end of the line in the bottom of the wooden tub that held it. “Quick as you can, Mansur! Tie on another coil.” Mansur worked quickly, with the dexterity for which he was renowned, but he was only just in time; as he tightened the knot the rope was jerked from his grasp and pulled through the fingers of the other two, ripping off more skin, before it went over the side and down into the green depths.
“Stop!” Jim pleaded with the fish. “Are you trying to kill us, Julie? Will you not stop, my beauty?”
“That’s half the second coil gone already,” Mansur warned them. “Let me take over from you, Jim. There’s blood all over the deck.”
“No, no.” Jim shook his head vehemently. “She’s slowing down. Heart’s almost broken.”
“Yours or hers?” Mansur asked.
“Go on the stage, coz,” Jim advised him grimly. “Your wit is wasted here.”
The running line began to slow as it passed through their torn fingers. Then it stopped. “Leave the water bucket,” Jim ordered. “Get a grip on the line.” Mansur hung on behind Zama and, with the extra weight, Jim could let go with one hand and suck his fingers. “Do we do this for fun?” he asked, wonderingly. Then his voice became businesslike. “Now it’s our turn, Julie.”
Keeping pressure on the line while they moved, they rearranged themselves down the length of the deck, standing nose to tail, bent double with the line passed back between their legs.
“One, two and a tiger!” Jim gave them the timing, and they heaved the line in, swinging their weight on it together. The knotted joint came back in over the side, and Mansur, as third man, coiled the line back into the tub. Four times more the great fish gathered its strength and streaked away and they were forced to let it take out line, but each time the run was shorter. Then they turned its head and brought it back, struggling and jolting, its strength slowly waning.
Suddenly Jim at the head of the line gave a shout of joy. “There she is! I can see her down there.” The fish turned in a wide circle deep below the hull. As she came round her bronze-red side caught the sunlight and flashed like a mirror.
“Sweet Jesus, she’s beautiful!” Jim could see the fish’s huge golden eye staring up at him through the emerald-coloured water. The steenbras’s mouth opened and closed spasmodically, the gill plates flaring as they pumped water through, starving for oxygen. Those jaws were cavernous enough to take in a grown man’s head and shoulders, and they were lined with serried ranks of fangs as long and thick as his forefinger.
“Now I believe Uncle Dorry’s tale.” Jim gasped with the exertion. “Those teeth could easily bite off a man’s leg.”
At last, almost two hours after Jim had first set the hook in the hinge of t
he fish’s jaw, they had it alongside the skiff. Between them they lifted the gigantic head clear of the water. As soon as they did so the fish went into its last frenzy. Its body was half as long again as a tall man, and as thick around the middle as a Shetland pony. It pulsed and flexed until its nose touched the wide flukes of its tail, first on the one side, then on the other. It threw up sheets of seawater that came aboard in solid gouts, drenching the three lads as though they stood under a waterfall. They held on grimly, until the violent paroxysms weakened. Then Jim called out, “Hang on to her! She’s ready for the priest.”
He snatched up the billy from its sling under the transom. The end of the club was weighted with lead, balanced and heavy in his big right hand. He lifted the fish’s head high and swung his weight behind the blow. It caught the fish across the bony ridge above those glaring yellow eyes. The massive body stiffened in death and violent tremors ran down its shimmering sun-red flanks. Then the life went out of it and, white belly uppermost, it floated alongside the skiff with its gill plates open wide as a lady’s parasol.
Drenched with sweat and seawater, panting wildly, nursing their torn hands, they leaned on the transom and gazed in awe upon the marvellous creature they had killed. There were no words to express adequately the overpowering emotions of triumph and remorse, of jubilation and melancholy that gripped them now that the ultimate passion of the hunter had come to its climax.
“In the Name of the Prophet, this is Leviathan indeed,” Mansur said softly. “He makes me feel so small.”
“The sharks will be here any minute.” Jim broke the spell. “Help me get her on board.” They threaded the rope through the fish’s gills, then all three hauled on it, the skiff listing dangerously close to the point of capsizing as they brought it over the side. The boat was barely large enough to contain its bulk and there was no room for them to sit on the thwarts so they perched on the gunwale. A scale had been torn off as the fish slid over the side: it was the size of a gold doubloon and as bright.