by Alex Archer
Somewhere in the midst of all the bouncing and battering I lost consciousness.
I awoke to the silence of the dead.
The rogue wave carried us several miles inland before depositing us like so much rejected flotsam in the middle of a stretch of decimated jungle. We are sitting more or less upright, the hull wedged between what is left of a dozen trees. A ten-foot hole on the aft section of the port-side hull will need to be repaired before we can even think about being seaworthy again, but I am not in a rush to assign a detail to repair it. It seems futile; there is no way to get the ship back to the coast even if we could fix the damage to the hull.
The loss of life in the storm was significant. Of all the souls that were aboard the Reliant when we bid goodbye to the Mary Dear, only forty-five remain. Of those forty-five, only eleven, counting myself, are actually fit for duty. The damage to our company is staggering and the men wander about like punch-drunk fighters, waiting for the next blow to fall....
That’s one question answered, Annja thought. They had all been wondering how the Reliant had ended up in the middle of the jungle and now they knew. The tsunami that had brought the ship here certainly must have been an impressive sight, if Captain Jeffries’s guess regarding its size was correct. It might not be the largest on record—that belonged to a 1,720 foot wave in Lituya Bay, Alaska—but it was astounding just the same. Annja had been through a tsunami herself, albeit a much smaller one, and knew the devastation it could bring. She had no trouble believing that the crew of the Reliant had encountered something so big that their only choice had been to buckle down the hatches and ride it out.
She started reading ahead in the journal, only to discover a few pages later that it hadn’t taken long for that “next blow,” as Jeffries had called it, to fall on the crew of the Reliant. The beginning of the entry was washed out, but she was still able to understand the gist of it.
The natives returned during the night and this time they were not content to just observe. The men of the watch were slain instantly with arrows through the eyes. The brigands then scaled the hull of the ship and entered the lower gun deck through the open sally ports. Four additional men died before the noise woke the others. The general melee that followed was swift and bloody.
In the end, we were able to repulse the attackers with the judicious use of the ship’s firearms but it was close just the same. If they come back with a larger party, we are going to be in trouble. I needed all hands on deck. I informed Mr. Thompson that, given our present circumstances, I was granting him a temporary pardon and releasing him from confinement, provided that I had his word as an officer and gentleman that he would not seek to act against myself or my crew in any fashion.
Thompson agreed.
Additional guards were posted and several of the cannons were moved into the sally ports and primed for use. If the natives returned, it was my intention to blow them out of the jungle before they could attempt to storm the ship a second time.
I needn’t have worried. The natives weren’t coming back. They had already beaten us; we just didn’t know it yet.
Eighteen men had sustained serious injury in the attack, so we converted one side of the lower gun deck to an infirmary to allow the ship’s doctor to treat them all in one location. Thankfully, the need for amputations and other major surgical procedures was limited as the natives didn’t have firearms or cannons to cause injuries deserving of such treatment.
Three hours after the doctor had finished treating all of their wounds, the first of the injured men grew sick. By dawn the next day, all of the injured men had come down with the same illness. Concerned, I had the lower gun deck declared off-limits to the rest of the crew and restricted access to the doctor and his staff only. It didn’t do any good.
Less than forty-eight hours later, the first of the uninjured men became sick.
After that, it was just a matter of time.
There were several pages after that point that were illegible due to weather damage, the pages having stuck together and, on those that weren’t, the ink so faded and overgrown with mold that Annja couldn’t even tell where one sentence began and another ended.
Then, on October 18, an entry with just a single sentence.
Thompson has fled.
The last entry in the log was written on the very next day, October 19, and within its stark phrases Annja found the answer she was seeking. She knew what had happened to Dr. Knowles and, more importantly, what to do to get him back.
She closed the journal and, taking it with her, went to find the others.
26
The day had grown late while Annja read and reread the captain’s journal. By the time she stepped out of the wardroom and onto the upper gun deck, she discovered that the sun had all but set.
The smell of cooked meat wafted up over the side of the ship, causing Annja’s stomach to grumble; her body had already grown tired of rehydrated rations, it seemed. She walked to the edge and found her three companions sitting around a large fire, the carcass of the boar they’d killed earlier roasting within the flames. Their voices drifted up to her, but she couldn’t make sense of what they were talking about from the few isolated words that reached her.
She turned and made her way back down through the ship to exit exactly as they had entered.
Marcos saw her first.
“Well? Did you find all of the answers we need?”
Annja kept her face even but inside she was frowning. Marcos seemed to be getting more belligerent the farther away from civilization they got. She needed to watch him a bit more carefully, she decided.
To the others, she said, “As a matter of fact, yes. I think I know what happened to Dr. Knowles and his team.”
“Really?” Claire said, her voice full of surprise and excitement.
Annja accepted a plate of food from Hugo and sat down at the fire with the rest of them. She tore off a piece of meat and began to eat while telling her story.
“According to the logbook, Thompson revealed the location of the treasure to Captain Jeffries of the Reliant in exchange for his life. Jeffries promptly ordered the treasure dug up again and put half aboard the Mary Dear and half aboard the Reliant. The Mary Dear left for England while the Reliant remained to finish up a few repairs.”
She paused to gulp down a few more bites; the food was terrific.
“Before the Reliant could leave the area, however, she was caught in a massive storm. In the midst of the storm, the Reliant was struck by a tsunami of incredible size that carried the ship halfway across the island to where you see it now.
“Here’s where it gets interesting. Most of the crew was lost in the storm, but Captain Jeffries managed to get the others organized and working as a team. They buried their dead—” Annja pointed over her shoulder at the graveyard several yards behind her “—and buried the treasure in the cave.”
“Wait a minute,” Marcos said. “If they were all marooned here, how did word of the treasure’s location get out? How did Dr. Knowles know to look along the ridge instead of down by the coast, where it would have made sense for the pirates to bury it?”
Claire beat her to the answer. “Thompson escaped.”
Annja nodded. “Jeffries refused to keep him locked up, said they needed every spare hand they could get. Thompson bided his time and then hightailed it out of camp one night when Jeffries wasn’t paying attention. Somehow, someway, he made it off the island.”
“So Keating wasn’t lying—the directions he’d been given to the treasure had actually come from Thompson, just as he claimed!” Claire exclaimed.
“Your husband must have recognized the truth, as they brought him to this place, as well.”
“So what?” Marcos said, his irritation plain. “All that ancient history doesn’t do a thing to tell us what happened to Knowles. Or the treasure.”
Annja didn’t agree. “On the contrary, I think it does. Listen to this.”
She opened up the logbook and,
with the help of the light from the fire, read out loud Jeffries’s comments about the attack by the natives.
“Like I said before. So what?”
Annja ignored Marcos, focusing her attention on Claire, for it would be up to Claire where the team went next.
“No one knew there were natives on the island in 1821. In fact, this logbook is the only mention of them that I’ve ever come across. More than two dozen expeditions have been to this place, looking for the gold, and not a single one of them have encountered them?”
“Because they’re all dead! It was hundreds of years ago.”
Annja’s gaze never left Claire’s face. “We know at least one of them who is not. And where there is one, there are probably a lot more.”
“Do you believe that?” Claire asked. “That it was an actual native and not someone trying to horn in on the treasure? Perhaps even one of Richard’s men?”
“I do. Listen to this.... ‘The morning brings with it a shocking revelation,’” Annja quoted, reading the final entry from the logbook aloud. “‘The last of my crew disappeared in the night. Eighteen healthy men vanished without a trace.’
“‘At first I thought they had decided en masse to reject my leadership. That they had headed for the coast despite my fears that the island would be struck by a secondary wave. But when I checked on the men in the infirmary, I discovered that they had, to a man, been murdered in their beds. Standing in the midst of their lifeless bodies was another of those monkey-faced idols we’d discovered before.’
“‘The natives had returned and, for whatever reason, had slain the sick and taken the healthy men of my crew with them when they’d left.’”
Annja glanced up from the logbook and knew from the expression on Claire’s face that she’d put two and two together.
But Annja wasn’t finished reading. Not yet.
She went on. “‘Knowing I couldn’t live with myself if I left my crew at the mercy of the natives,’” she read, “‘I’ve decided to go after them. I have several days of food and plenty of water, so when I am done writing this, I will set out in pursuit. I will leave the logbook behind so that there will be a record if I fail in my task. I will also mark the trail in my wake in the rare case that someone finds this logbook and attempts to come after me.’
“‘Written this twenty-third day of October, in the year of our Lord Eighteen Twenty-One.’
“‘Captain Martin Jeffries.’”
Even Marcos understood the similarities now. Two hundred years, give or take a decade or two, separated them from Captain Jeffries and his crew, but what they had experienced was almost identical to that of the British commander.
“Are you suggesting that not only Dr. Knowles and his team but also the crew of the Sea Dancer were taken captive by these so-called natives?” Claire asked.
Annja nodded, her gaze locked with that of Claire. “I am.”
“And what are you proposing we do about it?”
“I would think that would be obvious,” Annja said with a smile. “Go after them, of course.”
From the look on Marcos’s face, he agreed with her for a change.
It wasn’t long before they decided to investigate the area around the ship for the marker Captain Jeffries claimed to have left. If they found it, they would continue in that direction. If they did not, they would discuss the issue a bit further and, hopefully, come to some consensus as to the direction they should take.
With their plan made, the group finished their meal and then settled in for the night, with each of them taking a turn at watch.
Sunrise could not come soon enough for Annja.
* * *
ANNJA WAS CLIMBING high in the rigging of a sailing ship, the rain lashing against her face as she moved upward with every step. She kept her attention on the ropes in front of her, knowing one slip would mean a long fall either onto the deck or into the sea, neither of which would be good for her.
She could hear the captain shouting out orders below, but she had a hard time understanding them over the crack of the thunder overhead and the howl of the wind in her ears. It didn’t matter, really; she knew the orders weren’t for her. She had a job already—cutting down the sail on the main mast—and that took precedence over everything else for one simple reason. If the sail stayed up, they were all dead, anyway.
She planted her feet, gripped the shrouds tightly and turned her head to look out toward the vast ocean. A flash of lightning lit the sky, and for a second, she saw it silhouetted there against the darkness.
The wave that was coming to consume them alive.
Fear raced down her spine and for a moment she was frozen there, knife between her teeth, fingers clenched around the shroud lines like a corpse trapped in rigor, and it was only the realization that she would become exactly that—a corpse—if she didn’t get moving that sent her clambering upward again.
Reaching her destination, she wrapped her hand tightly about the lines, then used the other to take the knife from her mouth and begin sawing through the thick ropes that held the sail to the crossbeam of the mast. The cold rain wasn’t making it easy; her fingers were having a hard time holding on to the knife.
A frantic glance over her shoulder.
The wave was not only closer, but larger, as well.
She began to saw faster....
The scene shifted. The wave was left behind and she found herself in the dimness of the lower gun deck, cutlass in hand as she fought in the half-light against an unknown assailant.
It was the cutlass that clued her in that she was dreaming. There was only one sword she would willingly choose to fight with, and a cutlass certainly wasn’t it. She tried to get herself to wake up, but either her subconscious wasn’t listening or there was something it wanted her to see, for it completely ignored her commands and the dream continued around her, unabated. Unable to stop it, Annja simply went with the flow.
The lanterns had been extinguished earlier, and without them it was hard to see exactly who they were fighting against. What little moonlight there was showed Annja glimpses of men in tunics, carrying shields and spears. They shouted in an unfamiliar language as they charged the line of half-awake sailors....
Another scene shift and this time she found herself standing outside the hull of the Reliant in a light tropical rain, gazing back at the wreckage with a mixture of sorrow and determination. She had the sense she wouldn’t see the old girl again and that saddened her; the Reliant had been her command for the past several years and the two of them had taken care of each other for all that time. She was a sturdy ship and it wasn’t fair that she should end her days marooned in the middle of the jungle on an ignored island like this one, but there was little that could be done about it.
Filled with the sense of abandoning an old friend, she stared out into the jungle, wondering if they were out there, watching, even now. She suspected that they were. Believed, in fact, that they’d been under continuous observation ever since the storm had dumped them in this place.
So be it.
She cast about looking for the ideal spot to affix her mark. Several rocks jutted out of the jungle floor nearby and from this perspective they reminded her of a giant python. She stepped over to the first stone, the head of the snake, so to speak, and, taking out her knife, carved an arrow pointing north onto the surface of the stone. Beneath it she carved the date—1/25.
Satisfied that she’d done what she could to direct anyone who might come after her, she set off into the jungle.
From the bushes, several pairs of eyes watched her go....
* * *
ANNJA AWOKE WITH A START. Her heart was racing and her body was covered with a sheen of sweat, as if she’d just run a mile through the rain.
It was early morning, the sunlight just beginning to filter through the trees. Mists of steam rose from the jungle floor as the heat began to bake away the moisture from the night before. A glance showed Claire and Hugo still in their sleeping bags.
For a moment she couldn’t find Marcos, but then spotted him sitting against the hull of the Reliant, looking outward into the trees around him; he’d had the night’s final watch. He nodded in her direction but didn’t make any move to get up, for which Annja was grateful. She didn’t want to make small talk and take the chance of forgetting some of the details from her dream. She had this crazy idea...
Annja slipped out of her sleeping bag, pulled on her boots and walked around to the other side of the Reliant. In her dream she’d been standing with the wreckage of the ship to her left and slightly behind her, so she put herself in a similar position and then began searching for the snakelike rock formation.
It took a few minutes. The rocks had sunk deeper into the earth and were hidden in part by an overgrown patch of ferns, but after some searching she found them. Once she’d located them, she moved to the stone that served as the snake’s head and began examining its surface, looking for the mark. The fact that the stones themselves were here at all had buoyed her confidence that she wasn’t totally crazy for thinking there was even a speck of truth to her dream. Now all she had to do was find the arrow....
But it wasn’t there. She searched the top of the rock, even scraping away the lichen that had grown there, looking for it to no avail.