by L. A. Meyer
"All right, lads, let's go."
It takes us about a half hour to get to the western tip of the key, then we start to work our way eastward close to shore, peering into the wall of mangroves for any sign of an opening. The bottom, about four feet down, is mostly sandy with occasional large patches of waving sea grass. I'm standing at the mast, Davy's in the bow, Tink's tending the sail, while Daniel's on the tiller. I wanted to give Daniel some experience in small-boat handling, plus let him show off to Joan-nie what a fine young sailor lad he is. She is seated beside him, feigning disinterest in his manly display.
The Doctor has a long glass with him and scans the treetops for any species of bird he might not yet have seen and recorded. We see a flock of pink things flying overhead, which gets him most agitated. "Roseate spoonbills! If I could just get one to have stuffed and taken back to London! Jones, shoot one!"
Davy lifts the rifle and looks to me and I shake my head and say, "Nay, Doctor, if it please you, they are much too high. And we wouldn't want to alert any wild savages that might be lurking about to our presence, now would we?" Davy lowers the rifle. Dr. Sebastian may be in charge of the expedition, but I run the ship. "There will be other opportunities, Doctor, I assure you."
There was actually a good chance Davy might have brought down one of the birds. The old smooth-bore muskets of twenty years ago have no place on my ship. No, now we have fine rifles with grooved barrels to give the bullets a spin on their way to the target, making them much more deadly accurate. Plus, these rifles use percussion caps instead of flintlocks. They cost Faber Shipping a bundle, but, hey, while the Nancy B. Alsop may be small compared to a man-o'-war, all her gear is the very finest. On the way down from Boston, I had the crew practice with the weapons, blasting countless bottles off the fantail, and Davy and Tink in particular have grown into superior marksmen. Looking at the rifle in Davy's hands, I reflect that science marches ever onward and advances us in many, many ways—the ways of war and killing not being the least of them.
"Whole bunch of the same damn thing," grumbles Davy as we glide along the featureless shore. We are about a mile from the western tip now and have seen nothing. Everybody on the Nancy B. has known for a long time that what we are seeking is not just scientific specimens but rather Spanish gold, and they are growing impatient.
"Hey. Wait a minute."
This from Joannie, who, having grown bored by the never-ending mangroves, has taken to leaning over the side, rump in the air, looking at the bottom scudding by.
"There's a bunch of shells or something down there."
"Bring her about, Daniel," I order, so he puts the tiller over and we circle around the spot. Sure enough, there seems to be a pile of discarded shells leading from the shore into the deeper water.
"Hmmm," says the Doctor, peering down. "It could be what's called a midden, a native shell mound."
I immediately look to the shore. Could that be a slight opening there? Would that be where the Indians came through to launch their boats and dump their shells?
"Tink. Strike the sail." The sail comes down. "Everyone grab an oar and let's try to shove her through right there." There are four oars onboard and Davy and Tink sling their rifles over their shoulders and each grabs one. I take one, too, as does Dr. Sebastian, and we point the Star's nose to the opening and strain to pole her through. Joannie jumps up forward to push the branches aside as we slide in.
Yes. We are in. There is a low body of dark water on the other side of the mangroves, and then the land comes up to a low plain. We pull the boat up and look about. It is a desert area, with a large lagoon in the middle of it.
"Daniel. Joannie. Take your buckets and fill them up, like Jemimah told you, while we explore."
The kids groan and wade in the water and begin pulling the plentiful oysters off the exposed mangrove roots and dropping them into the pails. They're called coon oysters because, I suppose, the local raccoons like them as much as we do. Davy and Tink and I go looking around, while the Doctor noses about in the brush. I go to the lagoon and dip my hand down into the water and bring it up to taste it. Then I quickly spit it out again. Salt. No fresh water here, that's for sure.
Davy and Tink unshoulder their rifles, looking, no doubt, for some poor innocent creature to shoot—boys, I swear—while I look about the land close to the shore.
Hmmmm ... Close to the path we came in on is a curiously flattened-out spot. It is rectangular and seems to have some vestiges of postholes. I could be wrong—trees could have fallen in that particular pattern naturally, but somehow I don't think so. I walk to the center of the place and fall to my knees and begin to dig in the soft sand. I don't have to dig long before my hand hits a hard thing, and I pull it up and look at it. It is a bone and has teeth on it and it seems to be a jawbone of some sort.
"Doctor," I call. "Could you come here a second?"
He ceases his relentless pursuit of the local insect population and comes over near me. Taking the jawbone from my hand, he weighs it and remarks, "Probably the jaw of one of those tiny deer we spotted on these keys." He looks about him. "This could be a homestead. That might have been a fire pit right there." I look over and see a depression in the ground that I had not noticed before.
"I believe you are right, Doctor. This could have been a large thatched hut on a cleared shore back in 1733. Just what Carlos Juarez could have seen as the Santa Magdalena was going down."
"Could very well be, Miss," he says, plainly anxious to get back to his scientific explorations.
"Well, I am going to mark this spot," I say, and wade back through the opening we had come through. Taking the red scarf from my neck, I tie it to a branch where it should be plainly visible from the Nancy B. and then I head back to the interior.
"Doctor! Doctor! Come look at this!" I hear both Joan-nie and Daniel call out. They are close to the edge of the quiet lagoon, pointing down. Dr. Sebastian goes over to see what they are on about, and so do I.
There, covering the shore, are hundreds of tiny crabs, each holding up an outsized claw to fend off intruders. I reach down and scoop one up and look at the brightly colored little beast in my palm. While it is only about a half inch across and I could easily crush it by simply closing my fist, it holds its claw up in my face, challenging me to do it.
"Ah," says Dr. Sebastian, "they are called fiddler crabs, because they look like they are fiddling when they brandish their claws. Uca pugnax." He scoops up a few unlucky ones, which I will draw and which will ultimately take a dip in pure alcohol. I put my own feisty warrior back on the ground, allowing him to scurry back to his hole. Courage is not always a function of size.
Daniel and Joannie have made a game of herding the swarm of fiddler crabs as they course back and forth across the mucky sand next to the lagoon.
"Head 'em off, Danny!" shouts Joannie. "They're gonna ... they're gonna...Oh my God?"
I jerk my head around and see that a monstrous form has surged out of the quiet lagoon and is running straight for the kids.
"Run!" I shriek. "It's a gator! Run!"
They try to run, but the footing is bad, and the gator rushes on, bellowing. Joannie slips in the loose sand and falls down. The gator keeps coming on, so Danny grabs Joannie by her arm and tries to haul her forward, but the gator is too fast. It keeps rushing toward them, and its jaws open and then clamp down on Joannie's middle. The gator gives her a violent shake, and her eyes, which had been wild with fear, now roll back in her head, and she falls limp in the monster's jaws.
The alligator then turns to drag his prey into the water.
Daniel takes his knife from his side and leaps on the gator's back and begins stabbing at it, but I know it ain't doin' no good. The hide is just too thick. Oh God, Joannie, no!
I pound over, pulling out my pistols as I go. "Davy! Tink! To me! To me!" I point the barrel of the gun in my right hand point-blank at the creature's forehead and fire.
It doesn't even flinch.
"Boys! Fire ju
st behind its front leg!" Maybe we can find its heart! Oh God, please!
Tink and Davy fire and two holes appear in the gator's side, but still it moves inexorably onward. In a few feet it'll be in the water and Joannie will be lost forever.
Desperate, I leap up on the monster's back and aim my remaining pistol at the monster's left eye and pull the trigger.
That gets its attention. It opens its mouth to bellow out its pain and anger and Joannie flops out.
"Davy! Pick her up and get her back to the boat!" I yell. "Watch out for its tail! And its teeth!"
Davy nimbly jumps out of the way of the thrashing tail and tosses his rifle to Daniel. Careful of the snapping jaws, he picks up Joannie's limp form and cradles her in his arms. Spots of blood are appearing and beginning to spread on her once white swimsuit.
As Davy starts his run with his pitiful burden, we hear a loud roiling of the water behind us. What...?
"Good God, there's more of 'em!" I shout, as what looks to be dozens of the huge creatures come roaring out of the water. They gaze balefully at us and then begin to move forward. "Run!"
We run for all we're worth, through the mangroves and back to the boat. Whether the alligators are slower than we are, or they pause to devour their wounded comrade, I do not know. Or care. All I know is we make it back to the boat and push off, raise the sail, and head back to the Nancy B. as fast as we can go.
"Put her on the transom and let's have a look," orders Dr. Sebastian, and Davy puts her down on the thwart—where the rowers normally sit. I kneel down beside her on the left and the Doctor kneels down on the right. Joannie liesmotionless,unconscious ... or maybe...
"Is she dead, Doctor?"
He leans over and presses his ear to her chest.
"No. Not yet. I can hear her heart..."
Hang on, Joannie, hang on...
"...but her breathing is not right. I hear wheezing. I hope the lung was not punctured," he says, "because if it has been..."
He does not have to say it.
"Take off that halter," is what he does say, and I reach back and undo the buttons and pull it away from her. There are teeth marks all over her chest, and the right half of it looks sickeningly deflated.
"Yes, I see. The beast broke her ribs on that side. We've got to get more air into her."
Taking my cue, I lean over, suck in a deep breath, put my mouth on hers, and blow. But all that happens is the air comes pouring out her nose to brush against my cheek. I try again. This time I hook my thumb in the corner of her mouth to make a tighter seal with my lips, and hold her nostrils shut with my other thumb and forefinger. This time her chest rises.
"Good," says the Doctor. "Do it again."
I do it again ... and again ... and again.
"Let me listen. Everyone quiet."
A hush falls over the boat as Dr. Sebastian puts his ear over each of the chest wounds as I keep Joannie's chest inflated.
"Good," he says. "You can stop now. I hear no aspiration, no sucking wounds. The lung is sound, I think. Flip her over."
Davy and I turn her on her stomach. There are bleeding teeth marks on her back, but they do not appear deep, thank God.
"But wh-wh-why is she still not awake?" asks a very stricken Daniel from back on the tiller.
"Three possibilities, boy," says the Doctor. "One, the beast broke her back when he shook her. That is how many carnivores kill their prey, you know. Let us see." The Doctor splays out the fore and middle fingers of his right hand and, starting high on the back of Joannie's neck, runs those two fingers slowly down on either side of her spine all the way down to her tailbone. "Hmmm ... seems all right. Can't feel any break. But I can't be positive. Turn her over again."
We do it.
"Another possibility is that she fainted from terror, which would certainly be understandable. But knowing this girl, I do not think that is the case. Plus, she would have revived by now."
"Then what?" I ask. Now that she's face-up again, I give her another puff of air, but it seems that her own thin chest is now doing that job on its own.
"Her head could have been slammed against the ground in her struggle with the alligator, giving her a concussion of the brain and rendering the girl unconscious," says the Doctor. He runs his fingers up the side of Joannie's head, feeling for any wound.
"Ah," he says, "there is a swelling here. On her left temple. And it looks like it is starting to discolor. A good sign. But we can't be sure. There could still be internal bleeding. We don't know. Time will tell."
We have a kind, following wind on the way back, and soon the masts of the Nancy B. loom over us.
As we approach, we shout out the nature of our distress, and as we pull in next to the raft, John Thomas is there to gather up Joannie and hand her to Higgins on the deck.
"Put her on the mess table, Higgins, and bring up my medical kit, if you would."
I hop over the rail and head down to the mess deck, where I find Joannie already stretched out, with the Doctor beginning to thread his stitching needles.
Jemimah is there and lightly smoothes the hair away from Joannie's forehead, and, without being told, holds a cool compress to the bruise on the side of her face.
"Poor baby," she croons as she does it. "Poor little child, poor little thing."
Higgins, knowing my mind, has opened my medical kit and poured some of the pure alcohol into the shallow little basin. I thread my own needle and dip both needle and thread into the liquid.
"Doctor," I say, as I get ready to start sewing, "if you will humor me, please put your own surgical tools in the alcohol bath before you apply them to the patient. I have found that it decreases the chances of infection."
Dr. Sebastian shrugs. "It can't hurt, so why not?" He does it and we get to work sewing her up.
I start sewing up a nasty rip on her belly after pouring some pure alcohol on the wound. She jerks when I lay it on, which, I find, is a good sign—hey, if it hurts, it's gotta be good is what I figure.
"There are some cuts down below. Get the pants off her," orders the Doctor.
I pull off the suit and get to work on what I find down there.
"I worry about that one there," he says, pointing to one particularly deep puncture. "If it penetrated the peristaltic sac, then she's in serious trouble. We shall see. Let's get on with it."
Before he can sew the lips of the gaping wound shut, I pour some pure spirits of alcohol down on it, and Joannie's eyes fly open. She screams and starts to cry and struggle and twist about.
"Hold her down," orders Dr. Sebastian. "We're almost done."
"There, there, baby," says Jemimah softly. "Hush, now. You're gonna be all right. Jus' be still."
"Here, Joannie," I say, shoving a plug of leather between her teeth. "Bite down on this. Be brave. It'll all be over soon."
She subsides to an agonized groan and the Doctor finishes up his stitching.
He then takes a roll of wide bandage. "We've got to wrap those ribs. Sit her up," and he starts rolling the cloth around her thin chest. "All right, that's it. Time will tell. Clean her up and put her to bed."
The Doctor puts his tools away as Jemimah and I take wet cloths and begin cleaning the bloody smears from Joan-nie's body. When we are done, I ask of Higgins, who has been standing by, "Please take her up and put her in my bed. The air is better in there than down here, and it might do her some good."
He picks up the now quietly weeping girl and goes out the hatch, past a very distressed Daniel Prescott, who has been waiting anxiously there. Jemimah and I follow him out and into my cabin. I pull back the sheets from my bed and Joannie is placed upon it, while Jemimah sits down next to her and tries to calm the plainly still terrified girl. It's clear that I will not be the only one suffering from nightmares.
There's a bottle containing a special liquid in the cabinet where I keep my medical supplies. It's got lots of names—paregoric, laudanum, tincture of opium—but I call it Jacky's Little Helper 'cause it's gotten me
out of many a scrape, and now it's going to help Joannie get through her horrors. I take up the bottle and pour a dollop into a small glass and then lift Joannie's head and hold it to her lips.
"Here, Joannie. Drink this. It will make you feel better."
She manages to swallow it, and I let her sink back into the pillow. Jemimah takes up her hand and says, "Now, child, you just rest now. Ain't nothin' can harm you here." Then she begins to sing a lullaby.
Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,
Go to sleepy, little baby.
When you wake, you'll have cake,
And all the pretty little horses.
Blacks and bays, dapples and grays,
All the pretty little horses.
Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,
Go to sleepy, little baby.
The terror in Joannie's eyes slowly fades, and she sleeps.
Later, before the fall of evening, I go out on deck. I take my long glass and look over at the key to see if I can locate the red scarf that I had tied to that mangrove. Yes, there it is, plain as day. I lower the glass.
Well, we got the bearing, I think with a deep sigh, but if Joannie dies, we will have paid very dearly for it.
Chapter 21
...By my reckoning we were about two miles from the shore, but I cannot be sure, as the storm was so fierce.
I thank the Good God for my deliverance and I pray daily for the souls of my lost comrades.
You were off by a good mile, Lieutenant Carlos Maria Santana Juarez, but that is understandable, given your circumstances, and so we forgive you.
Yesterday, using the newly acquired cross-bearing, we maneuvered to our new position and dropped the hook. We found ourselves in somewhat deeper water, about three miles offshore. Probably five fathoms down. Still, when I looked over the side of the raft, I could see clear to the bottom and should be able to reach it.
I went into my cabin to suit up and to get ready to dive.