by Wilbur Smith
They climbed the hill in the intermittent lightning flashes, but they both had the night-vision of youth so they went swiftly. The grave was on the eastern slope, sited deliberately to face each morning's sunrise. Jim remembered every detail of the funeral. Tom Courtney had slaughtered a black bull and Aboli's wives had stitched the old man's corpse into the wet hide. Then, Tom had carried Aboli's once great body, shrunken now with age, like a sleeping child, down into the deep shaft. He had sat him upright, then laid out all his weapons and his most
treasured possessions around him. Lastly the entrance to the shaft was sealed with a round boulder. It had taken two full spans of oxen to drag it into position.
Now, in the darkness, Jim and Zama knelt before it and prayed to the tribal gods of the Lozi, and to Aboli, who in death had joined that dark pantheon. The rolling thunder counterpointed their prayers. Zama asked his father for his blessing on the journey that lay ahead of them, then Jim thanked him for teaching him the way of the musket and the sword, and reminded Aboli of when he had taken him to hunt his first lion. "Protect us your sons as you shielded us that day," he asked, 'for we go upon a journey we know not where." Then the two sat with their backs against the gravestone, and Jim explained to Zama what he must do. "I have loaded a string of mules. They are tethered by the stream. Take them up into the mountains, to Majuba, the Place of Doves, and wait for me there."
Majuba was the rude hut, hidden in the foothills, that was used by the shepherds who took the Courtney flocks up to the high pastures in the summer, and by the men of the Courtney family when they went out to hunt the quagga, the eland and the blue buck It was deserted at this season of the year. They said their last farewells to the old warrior who sat eternally in the darkness behind the boulder, and went down to the clearing beside the stream in the forest. Jim took a lantern from one of the packs and, by its light, helped Zama load the mules with the heavy packs. Then he set him on the path that led northwards into the mountains.
"I will come in two days, whatever happens. Wait for me!" Jim shouted as they parted, and Zama rode on alone.
By the time Jim arrived back at High Weald the household was asleep. But Sarah, his mother, had kept his dinner warm for him on the back of the stove. When she heard him clattering the pots, she came down in her nightgown and sat to watch him eat. She said little but her eyes were sad, and there was a droop at the corners of her mouth. "God bless you, my son, my only son," she whispered, as she kissed him goodnight. Earlier that day she had seen him lead away the mule train into the forest and, with a mother's instinct, she had known he was leaving. She picked up the candle and climbed the stairs to the bedroom where Tom snored peacefully.
Jim slept little that night, while the wind buffeted the house and rattled the window-frames. He was up long before the rest of the household. In the kitchen he poured a mug of bitter black coffee from the enamel kettle that always stood on the back of the stove. It was still dark as he went down to the stables, and led out Drumfire. He rode down to the seashore, and as he and the horse topped the dunes the full force of the wind came at them out of the darkness like a ravening monster. He took Drumfire back behind the shelter of the dune and tethered him to a low saltbush, then climbed again on foot to the crest. He wrapped his cloak closer round his shoulders and pulled his wide-brimmed hat low over his eyes as he squatted and waited for the first show of dawn. He thought about the girl. She had shown herself to be quick-witted but was she sensible enough to realize that no small boat could come out to the anchorage in the bay until this storm abated? Would she understand that he was not deserting her?
The low, scudding clouds delayed the dawn, and even when it broke it could hardly illuminate the wild scene before him. He stood up, and had to lean into the wind as though he were crossing a fast-flowing river. He held onto his hat with both hands and searched for a glimpse of the Dutch ship. Then, far out, he saw a flash of something not as evanescent as the leaping foam and spray that strove to extinguish it. He watched it avidly, and it persisted, constant in this raging seascape.
"A sail!" he cried, and the wind tore the words from his lips. However, it was not where he had expected to find the Meeuui. This was a ship under sail, not lying at anchor. He must know if this was the Meeuw, trying to fight her way out of the bay, or if it was one of the other ships that had been anchored there. His small hunting telescope was in his saddlebag. He turned and ran back through the soft sand to where he had left Drumfire out of the wind.
When he reached the crest again he searched for the ship. It took him minutes to find her, but then her sails flashed at him again. He sat flat in the sand and, using his knees and elbows like a tripod to steady himself against the buffeting of the wind, he trained the lens on the distant ship. He picked up her sails, but the swells obscured the hull until suddenly a freak combination of wave and wind lifted her high.
"It's her!" There was no doubt left. "Het Gelukkige Meeuw." He was swamped by an enervating sense of doom. Before his eyes Louisa was
being carried away to some foul prison at the far ends of the earth and there was nothing he could do to prevent it happening.
"Please, God, don't take her from me so soon," he prayed, in despair, but the distant ship battled on through the storm, close-hauled, her captain trying to get clear of the deadly lee shore. Through the lens Jim watched her with a seaman's eye. Tom had taught him well, and he understood all the forces and counter-forces of wind, keel and sail. He saw how close to disaster she was hovering.
The light strengthened and, even with the naked eye, he could make out the detail of this dreadful contest of ship against storm. After another hour she was still locked in the bay and Jim trained the telescope from the ship on to the black, sharklike shape of Robben Island that guarded the exit. Every minute that passed made it more apparent that the Meeuw could not break out into the open sea on this tack. The captain would have to come about. He had no alternative: the bottom under him was already too deep for him to drop anchor again, and the storm was pushing him down inexorably on to the rocks of the island. If he went aground there, the hull would be smashed to splinters.
"Go about!" Jim jumped to his feet. "Tack now! You're going to murder them, you idiot!" He meant both the ship and the girl. He knew that Louisa would still be battened down below, and even if by some miracle she escaped from the gundeck the chains around her ankles would drag her under as soon as she went over the side.
Doggedly the ship held her course. The manoeuvre of bringing such an ungainly ship about in the weather would entail terrible risk, but soon the captain must realize that no other course lay open to him.
"It's too late!" Jim agonized. "It's already too late." Then he saw it begin to happen, the sails slanting and their silhouette altering as she turned her head to the storm. He watched her through the lens, his hand shaking as her turn slowed. At last she hung there, caught in stays, with all her sails flogging and hammering, unable to complete the turn on to the other tack. Then Jim saw the next squall bearing down on her. The sea boiled at the foot of the racing curtain of rain and wind, which caught her and laid the ship over until her bottom planking showed, thick and filthy with weed and barnacles. Then the squall smothered her. She was gone as though she had never existed. In anguish Jim watched for her to reappear. She might have turned turtle to float keel uppermost, or she might even have been trodden right under there was no way for him to know. His eye burned and his vision blurred with the intensity of his stare through the lens of the telescope. It seemed to take an age for the squall to pass. Then, abruptly,
the ship appeared again, but it seemed that it could not be the same vessel, so drastically had her silhouette altered.
"Dismasted!" Jim groaned. Though tears brought on by strain and wind ran down his cheeks, he could not take his eye from the lens. "Main and fore! She's lost both masts." Only the mizzen poked up from the rolling hull and the tangle of sails and masts hanging over her side barely slowed her as she paid off before
the wind. It swept her back into the bay, clear of the rocks of Robben Island but straight towards the thundering surf on the beach below where Jim stood.
Swiftly Jim calculated the distance, angles and speed. "She will be on the beach in less than an hour," he whispered to himself. "God help all those on board when she strikes." He lowered the telescope and, with the back of his arm, wiped the wind-tears from his cheek. "And, most of all, God help Louisa." He tried to imagine the conditions on the gundeck of the Meeuw at that moment, but his imagination balked.
tiisa had not slept all that night. For hour after hour, while the Meeuw rolled and surged and snubbed against her anchor cable, and the storm howled relentlessly through the rigging, she had crouched under the gun carriage, working away with the file. She had padded the chain links with the canvas bag to deaden the scraping sound of metal against metal. But the file handle had raised a blister in her palm. When it burst she had to use the bag to cushion the raw flesh. The first pale light of dawn showed through the chink in the port-lid, and there was only a thin sliver of metal holding the chain link when she lifted her head and heard the unmistakable sounds of the anchor cable being hauled in, the stamp of the bare feet of the sailors working at the windlass on the deck above her. Then, faintly, she heard the shouted orders of the officers on the main deck, and the rush of feet to the masts as men went aloft in the storm.
"We're sailing!" The word was passed along the gundeck and women cursed their misfortune, or shouted abuse at the captain and his crew on the deck above or at God as their mood dictated. The respite was over. All the tribulations of making passage in this hell-ship were about to begin again. They felt the altered motion of the hull as the anchor flukes broke out of the mud bottom, and the ship came alive to begin her struggle with the raging elements.
A dark, bitter anger swept over Louisa. Salvation had seemed so close. She crept to the chink in the port-lid. The light was too poor and the spray and rain were too thick to allow her more than a dim glimpse
of the distant land. "It is still close," she told herself. "By God's grace, I might reach it." But in her heart she knew that across those miles of storm-driven sea the shore was far beyond her reach. Even if she managed to shed her leg irons, climb out through the gun port and leap overboard, there was no chance of her surviving more than a few minutes before she was driven under. She knew that Jim Courtney could not be there to rescue her.
"Better to go quickly by drowning," she told herself, 'than to rot away in this lice-infested hell." Frenziedly she sawed at the last sliver of steel that held the chain link closed. Around her the other prisoners were screaming and howling as they were thrown about mercilessly. Close hauled against the gale the ship pitched and rolled wildly. Louisa forced herself not to look up from her work. Just a few strokes more of the file, the link parted and her chains fell to the deck. Louisa wasted only a minute to massage her swollen, galled ankles. Then she crawled back under the cannon and took out the horn-handled knife from where she had hidden it. "Nobody must try to stop me," she whispered grimly. She crawled back to the gun port and prised loose the shackle of the lock. Then she tucked the knife into the pouch under her skirt. She wedged her back against the gun carriage and tried to force open the port-lid. The ship was on the starboard tack, and the heel of the deck was against her. With all her strength behind it she could push the heavy port-lid open only a few inches, and when she achieved this a solid jet of salt water spurted through the crack. She had to let it slam closed again.
"Help me! Help me get the port-lid open," she called desperately to her three allies among the prisoners. They stared back at her with dull, bovine expressions. They would rouse themselves to help her only if their own survival depended on it. Between waves Louisa stole another quick glance through the chink of the port-lid, and saw the dark shape of the island not far ahead.
We will be forced to tack now, she thought, or we will be driven aground. Over the months aboard she had picked up a working knowledge and understanding of the ship's navigation and handling. On the other tack, I will have the heel of the hull to help me get it open. She crouched ready, and at last felt the bows coming up into the wind, the motion of the hull changing under her. Even above the keening of the wind she heard, from the deck above, the faint bellowing of orders and the running of frantic feet. She braced herself for the heel of the deck on to the opposite tack. But it did not happen, and the ship rolled with a heavy, slack motion, dead in the water.
One of the other prisoners, whose putative husband had been a boatswain on a VOC Indiaman shouted, with rising panic, "Stupid pig
of a captain has missed stays. Sweet Jesus, we're in irons!" Louisa knew what that meant. Head to the wind, the ship had lost her way through the water and now she could not pay off on the other tack. She was pinned down helplessly before the storm.
"Listen!" the woman screamed. Then, above the din of the storm, they all heard it coming. "Squall! She's going to lay us over!" They crouched helplessly in their chains, and listened to it grow louder. The shriek of the approaching squall deafened them, and when it seemed that it could not rise higher, it struck the ship. She reeled and staggered and went over like a bull elephant shot through the heart. They were stunned by the crackling uproar of breaking rigging, then the cannon shot of the mainstay parting under the strain. The hull went on over, until the gun deck was vertical, and tackle, gear and human beings slid down the slope until they piled up against the hull. Loose iron cannon-balls slammed into the piles of struggling prisoners. Women were shrieking with pain and terror. One of the iron balls came rolling down the slanting deck towards where Louisa clung to her gun carriage. At the last moment she threw herself aside, and the cannon-ball hit the woman who crouched beside her. Louisa heard the bones in both her legs shatter. The woman sat and stared at the tangle of her own limbs with an expression of astonishment.
One of the great guns, nine tons of cast bronze, broke out of its tackle and came hurtling down the deck. It crushed the struggling women who lay in its path as though they were rabbits under the wheels of a chariot. Then it struck the hull. Even the massive oaken planking could not check its charge. It burst through and was gone. The sea poured through the splintered opening, and swamped the gundeck under an icy green wave. Louisa held her breath and clung to the gun carriage as she was engulfed. Then she felt the hull begin to right itself as the squall raced past and relinquished its grip on the ship. The water poured out through the gaping hole in the side of the hull, and sucked out a struggling, screaming knot of women. As they dropped into the sea their chains dragged them under instantly.
Still clinging to her gun carriage Louisa could look out of the gaping wound in the ship's side as though it were an open doorway. She saw the broken mast, the tangled ropes and canvas hanging down into the churning water from the deck above. She saw the bobbing heads of the seamen who had been swept over the side with the wreckage. Then, beyond it, she saw the shore of Africa, and the high surf bursting upon its beaches like volleys of cannon fire The crippled ship was drifting down upon it, driven on by the gale. She watched the inexorable progress, terror mingled with burgeoning hope. With every second that
passed the shore was drawing closer, and the runaway cannon had smashed open an escape hatch for her. Even through the driving rain and spray she could make out features on the shore, trees bending and dancing in the wind, a scattering of whitewashed buildings set back from the beach.
Closer and closer the stricken ship drifted in, and now she could make out tiny human figures. They were coming from the town, scurrying along the edge of the beach, some waving their arms, but if they were shouting their voices could not carry against that terrible wind. Now the ship was close enough for Louisa to tell the difference between man, woman and child in the gathering throng of spectators.
It took an immense effort for her to force herself to leave her place of safety behind the gun carriage, but she began to crawl along the heaving deck, over the shattered h
uman bodies and sodden equipment. Cannonballs still rolled aimlessly back and forth, heavy enough to crush her bones and she dodged those that trundled towards her. She reached the hole in the hull. It was wide enough for a horse to gallop through. She clung to the splintered planks, and peered through the spray and the breaking surf at the beach. Her father had taught her to tread water and to swim in a dog-paddle in the lake at Mooi Uitsig. With his encouragement, as he swam beside her, she had once succeeded in crossing from one side of the lake to the other. This was different. She knew she could keep afloat only for a few seconds in this maelstrom of crazed surf.
The shore was so close now that she could make out the expressions of the spectators who waited for the ship to strike. Some were laughing with excitement, two or three children were dancing and waving their arms above their heads. None showed any compassion or pity for the death struggle of a great ship and the mortal predicament of those aboard her. For them this was a Roman circus, with the prospect of profit from salvaging the wreckage as it washed ashore.