Madoc

by Bernard Knight

  The hour wore on and the sky blazed into reds, greens and then the blue of full daylight. There was a man up the stubby mast, but so far he was silent.

  Half the day went by and still nothing was seen. The pale water had been left behind the previous evening but before noon another came into view – perhaps the same one winding its way to the north-west.

  ‘Let’s follow it,’ shouted Madoc to Svein, who was up at his favourite place, the sternpost.

  The big man waved his assent and again the ship came around slightly, this time with ease, as she was taking the strain off herself by coming back before the wind.

  Madoc stood with his brother on the sterndeck and stared ahead with the deflated feeling of anti-climax.

  ‘That damned bird must have had strong wings,’ muttered Einion. ‘We must have sailed eighty miles since last night.’

  Madoc sighed. ‘God grant we find something soon or the men will become restive. It is worse to have been given false hope than to have had none at all.’

  As if to answer his prayer, there was a shout from the man straddled across the yard, clinging to the mast with one arm.

  ‘Arglwydd, I see … something!’

  He sounded so doubtful, that Madoc’s natural desire to yell with joy was muted.

  ‘Something? What something? Is it land?’

  ‘No land, Lord Madoc … but I see breakers. Yes, white water, not far ahead.’

  Svein came dashing to the mast and shinned up the knottedropes that dangled down the trunk.

  ‘What do you see, Svein?’ called Madoc urgently.

  Svein had beaten him to the mast, or he would have been up there himself.

  The Norseman stared intently at a point to the west of the direction in which they were headed. Then his head slowly scanned the whole horizon in front of them.

  ‘The lad is right,’ he called. ‘There are long rollers, but no land.’

  Einion was beside himself with frustration at not being able to see far enough.

  ‘Breakers … is it shoal water?’ he yelled.

  ‘Too early to say, but I can think of no other reason,’ called Svein.

  The ship rapidly closed with the mysterious waves and within the hour, Madoc, now up on the yard himself, was able to decide on the explanation.

  ‘I see sand beyond them,’ he called down. ‘There is a line of sand stretching almost as far as the eye can see, with surf rolling up to them.’

  He clambered down and came to Einion and Svein on the stern decking. ‘It is land of a sort, but a bare few inches above the sea.’

  The Norseman ran a hand through his tousled hair. ‘Then there is better land not far beyond them, I suspect. Can we pass through?’

  Madoc nodded. ‘I think so … there are several gaps, where there is no white water and no sand. It is probably shallow, but we can grope our way through.’

  Again the tacking boom was jammed against the yard and the Gwennan Gorn sluggishly came around to the west.

  The vessel cautiously approached the line of breakers that now ran from horizon to horizon in a north-west direction. But as they drew level with the sandbanks, there was still ample water for them to get through.

  ‘The tide race running through the gap must scour the sand out to form a deep channel,’ commented Madoc, as he followed Svein’s signals from the masthead. The gap was at least a mile wide, but they prudently kept to the centre in case there was shallow water on either side.

  The breakers and the sand were now easily visible from the deck and all the crew stared curiously at the first land they hadseen for so many weeks – if it could be called land. Featureless yellow sand, blasted into rounded ridges by the wind, stood at most a few feet from the level of the sea.

  There was a silence on the ship as they slipped through the gap. No wild cheering at the first sight of a New World. More interesting than the bare sand was the sight of scores of birds parading at the water’s edge, strutting and pecking in the surf. They were not the familiar birds of home, but generally resembled gulls and oystercatchers.

  ‘At least, they must have a better home than these heaps of grit,’ said Einion hopefully, as the ship slid through the opening and began to reach the open sea beyond.

  ‘Pray we reach it soon!’ said Madoc.

  This seemed to be his only prayer these past few days.

  Alun the linesman now called that he could no longer reach the bottom with his stone. The water was still the milk blue, but there was no definite current now.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Madoc asked of Svein, when he had climbed down.

  ‘If the sandbanks run true to others, there will.be land marching in line with them. Let us keep on this course, straight across to the west.’

  For the rest of the day, they travelled across calm waters, there being little wind now. Towards evening, they were cheered by the sight of birds, not like the great one they saw the previous evening, but birdsresembling gulls and cormorants, flying singly and in small groups. They went in several directions, crossing each other’s path; most of them appearing to be headed for the sand keys that the ship had just passed.

  Night fell with nothing new to see, but this time Madoc slept soundly with a fatalistic resignation to whatever the morrow might bring.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  There was no doubt about finding land the next day, for the Gwennan Gorn almost ran aground upon it.

  Some hours before dawn, the crew were curled up on their blankets and cloaks, with the few men at their sailing posts dozing off at the hour when life was at its lowest ebb. The ship was doing little more than drift along, with the sail hardly drawing at all.

  The steersman kept looking up at the star pattern overhead, but there was little he could do to influence the ship’s direction with so little way upon her.

  Even though the ship moved so slightly relative to the water under her keel, that same water was moving faster than it had done during the last few days and the vessel’s sluggishness was deceptive – in fact, they were moving at some four or five knots.

  The lookout in the eye of the ship came back for a beaker of water, now a brackish fluid low in the big leather containers. As he returned along the deck, his tired brain was slow to grasp the significance of a new sound, but as he reached the sternpost and looked ahead, he dropped his cup in consternation and let out a great yell.

  ‘Breakers! Drop the sail, for God’s sake! Put the ship about … breakers!’

  His yell was as effective as if a thunderbolt had dropped amongst the sleeping men. With a flurry of arms and legs, cursing and thrashing, a dozen of the crew staggered to their feet. The two men looking after the sail let go the halliards and brought the heavy yard crashing down to the deck to add to the confusion.

  Madoc and Einion were sleeping together under the stern deck and took longer to be affected by the din and to pull themselves together. But Svein, sleeping on top of the cargo cover in the hold, was alert within seconds.

  He raced down the side of the deck to the bow and stared over the side. The ship was sheeringaway already to the steerboard side, as the oarsman desperately tried to bring the ship about. But right under the nose of the Gwennan Gorn, long white rollers were beginning to break on their journey up a beach, dimly visible in the starlight.

  Svein saw immediately that if the ship kept turning, they would come broadside into the surf and would be rolled over.

  ‘Anchor, you fools … throw the anchors out!’ he roared. ‘And bring her back on course … steersman, do you hear, bring her back on course.’ His voice was like the crack of doom, bellowing out over the sea.

  Immediately, the steersman twisted his oar and the Gwennan Gorn swung back to point her bow directly through the waves.

  Now the surf was catching at her and the ship started to pitch up and down like a large and stately horse.

  ‘What’s happening, Svein … where are we?’

  Madoc, still half asleep, staggered up to the Norseman on t
he heaving deck.

  ‘We’re almost aground,’ yelled the Viking, as he helped a crewman heave the big stone of the steerboard anchor over the bulwark. ‘Is the stern one out yet?’ he shouted, and was answered by a splash that matched that of his own anchor going over the side.

  Now the vessel was held fore and aft by the heavy perforated rocks. As the surf hissed by her sides, she pitched and pranced, but the anchors held.

  Madoc, now fully awake, was the first to get to the mast and shin up the tangle of walrus-hide ropes that dangled down to the deck.

  ‘There is a beach … about three hundred paces ahead, by the shimmer of the surf,’ he called down. ‘But I can see nothing else in this light, only a dark line cutting off the sky above it.’

  Svein groaned. ‘Let God grant that it’s not another sand dune.’

  But when the first flush of dawn appeared in the sky, an hour or so later, they saw something better than sand.

  As the light reddened, the black line across the sky developed fuzzy outlines and soon they could see the upper fronds of trees.

  There was a ragged cheer as the first man, with the keenest eyesight, spotted this vegetation, the first they had seen for over six weeks.

  The surf was no deeper than a man’s chest and, with yells like children, a dozen men flung themselves over the side, with the big Norseman in the lead.

  Madoc shouted a warning.

  ‘Careful … there may be strange beasts or fish in these waters.’

  This stopped the more prudent from following, but as the light rapidly increased, they saw the adventurers struggling safely through the warm waters towards a great curving beach.

  As the sky lightened minute by minute, Svein’s party reached the beach and did a maniacal dance on the firm yellow sand. A few more men jumped over the side to follow them, but Madoc stopped any more.

  They lifted the stone from the foredeck and hauled her backwards by sheer muscle power until the stern anchor was tight underneath. They were still in a heavy swell, so the other one was paddled out between two of the coracles and dropped at a distance, then the warping was repeated until the Gwennan Gorn rode steadily on the calm blue sea, well beyond the breaking waves.

  ‘Six men stay with the ship, you will have your turn later,’ he ordered. The rest of them, including Madoc and Einion, took the coracles and paddled ashore, hopefully carrying a water container in each fragile craft.

  On the beach, they found Svein and the other men gambolling like children, falling down in the unmarked sand and running wildly in circles. They all felt unsteady on the dry land, after so long on the twisting, heaving deck of the little ship.

  ‘Trees and grass and all manner of plants! Where they are, so must there be water,’ said Einion.

  ‘Careful then, we know nothing of what manner of beasts there may be in this new world,’ advised Madoc.

  They sobered a little as they approached the treeline, but nothing seemed to stir and they plunged into the gloom of the high vegetation. The sky was now a glorious pink and green, but the sun was not yet over the horizon. As they stepped into the tight mass of unfamiliar trees, there was a rustle of branches and several birds flew protestingly away. Underfoot weresoft vegetation and patches of sandy soil.

  ‘This is a sand island, like the others, but one that trees have had a chance to bind together,’ observed Svein.

  ‘Is it a continent, a new world in truth?’ wondered Einion.

  But, in less than five minutes walking, he found a swift answer. Within a few hundred yards of leaving the beach, they saw thelight of the sky ahead of them and almost immediately broke out of the trees onto an almost identical beach.

  ‘That’s the narrowest continent I ever heard tell of!’ grunted Svein.

  As the slight haziness of dawn cleared, they saw that they were on the beach of a great bay, with open sea before them again.

  ‘We must be on an island … a long, narrow island,’ decided Madoc, as Einion stared at the horizon.

  ’More islands … way out there.’ He pointed and as if growing straight out of the water, they saw several masses of green trees, just like those where they stood.

  ‘We need food and water,’ said the practical Madoc. ‘Let’s get back to the other beach where we can see the Gwennan Gorn. I feel safe with her in view – and one beach looks much the same as another.’

  They retraced their steps and began walking along the first beach towards the north. After half an hour’s walk, Maldwyn, one of the steersmen, came up to Madoc after an expedition into the vegetation. ‘Arglwydd, I have seen some trees just as they had on the Fortunate Isles … the ones with the great nuts with milk and white flesh.’

  They all followed him into the trees and sure enough, there were fronded trees with huge nuts clustered at the tops.

  ‘The first man to spy food in the New World, Maldwyn,’ shouted Einion, for these trees, similar to some that grew in Spain and France, were used in the Fortunate Isles for food and there the Gwennan Gorn had sampled some on her two visits.

  One of the men had brought a plaited leather rope with him in his coracle and after much good-natured scrambling and climbing, they managed to get a dozen nuts down to the ground.

  With knives and stones, they attacked the strange fruit and lying on the soft grass, drank the white milk and chewed the crisp pulp. Some of the men were violently sick, because their stomachs, tightened by weeks of foul water, fish and coarse grain, could not deal with such a sudden change in diet.

  ‘We need water more than anything,’ commanded Madoc, prodding the party onward through the trees. ‘The ground is not so flat now, these must be old sandhills.’

  True enough, the dead flat ground of the narrow isthmus wherethey landed was now undulating into hillocks of twenty feet or more, still completely covered by scrub and low trees, with occasional higher nut palms.

  For two hours they searched, until one man, a brother of Alun Crookeye, began yelling with excitement.

  ‘Water … I’ve found water!’ Soon they were all standing around a large pool of crystal-clear water that lay in particularly green vegetation at the foot of a large mound.

  The man who had found it was lying on his stomach, joyously splashing water into his face and swallowing it greedily. The other crewmen flung themselves down and began following suit.

  ‘We have no way of knowing if it is safe,’ shouted Madoc, but no one heeded him.

  ‘There is little choice, Madoc. We have to have water and this seems to have been put before us by the Almighty,’ said Einion.

  Alun’s brother heard them and rolled over onto his back.

  ‘I saw a bird drinking … as I came up, it flew away, but there are small animal tracks at the edge, arglwydd.’

  Sure enough, on a patch of wet earth at one end there were a number of pawmarks, little bigger than those of a rabbit.

  ‘We’ll have meat before long, too,’exulted Einion, ‘when we get back to the Gwennan Gorn to find some bows and arrows.’

  The day wore on as they filled the water vessels and collected more nuts. Two of the younger lads, probably adept at poaching in Gwynedd, managed to knock down five medium-sized birds by means of sticks … for there was apparently not a single stone on that sandy island. These they cooked after a fire had been started with flint and steel.

  ‘Keep something for the men on the ship,’ commanded Svein. ‘Their mouths will be watering already, though they be a half mile out to sea.’

  Later in the day, they sent the coracles back to the ship, to let the men there have a chance ashore.

  That night, as twenty of the thirty-two men sat around a great fire of dead wood on the beach, the three leaders conferred on what was to be done.

  ‘We owe the men a few days here, to get their colour back and some decent water and fruit inside them,’ decided Madoc.

  Einion and Svein agreed. ‘Though I am sure that this ismerely some island and not the great world that everyone expects,’ add
ed the Viking.

  ‘Why not sail or row the ship around it, just outside the surf,’ suggested Einion. ‘We could discover all there is to be found and still stay within reach of our water supply.’

  Next day, half the crew went aboard with Madoc, whilst Svein and Einion walked along the beach and foraged in the bush, keeping level with the Gwennan Gorn, as she was slowly rowed along parallel with the shore.

  Some bows and arrows had been recovered from the hold of the Gwennan Gorn and with these, the unsuspecting birds of the new land fell easy prey to the skilled hunters from Wales. Several small animals, like large squirrels with ringed bushy tails, were also shot and, together with coconuts and some smaller berries that resembled Welsh blackberries, a mixed diet was slowly gathered together.

  Several more waterholes were found, almost always at the foot of higher rises in the ground. All the water vessels were full now and, by the third day, everyone was feeling well-fed and contented with this latter-day Garden of Eden on the other side of the world.

  It took them four and a half days to confirm that they were indeed upon an island. They were then on the western side of the island, at the place where they had crossed in the first hours of exploration.Here they camped and Madoc took further counsel of his lieutenants.

  ‘What do we do now?’ he asked, as they sat on the sand in the glory of a multi-coloured sunset. He nodded towards the score of men, sitting around the fire. ‘They would be content to stay here until the crack of doom, by the looks of them.’

  ‘And who can blame them after those weeks of lying on a hard deck, with food and drink that we would be ashamed to give to pigs at home,’ said Einion.

  Svein stretched his great arms luxuriously. ‘The itch to move is already upon you, Madoc, I can see that.’

  Madoc grinned sheepishly. ‘I came to find a great land … or some marvellous place like the Fountain of Youth,’ he answered truthfully. ‘This island, strange though it is, is not much different from the Fortunate Isles, which we have all seen twice before.’