An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition

by Cartland, Barbara

  Over and over in his mind he asked himself the question whether he had done the right thing in running away. He could see again – all too vividly – the surprise and contempt in Lizbeth’s eyes, the expression of astonishment on Barlow’s face and what he fancied was scorn on those of his other officers.

  The Sea Hawk had played the part of a coward, and yet Rodney could see no other course which he could possibly have taken without being foolhardy to the point of suicide. It might sound very heroic to die fighting against overwhelming odds, but Rodney wanted to live, he wanted to take the Sea Hawk back to Plymouth, not to leave her, a broken hull, at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea.

  There was nothing else he could have done, he told himself as he set his jaw in defiance. And yet he was human enough to mind the unspoken criticism of those he commanded, to want to recapture their faith and confidence in him.

  Just before dawn broke was for Rodney a most searing experience in which he knew a vast and empty loneliness and realised, as he had never realised before, that the responsibility of command was not always pleasant. His men were tired, the ship was damaged, and yet when the light came they might have to fight a bitter and bloody battle which they must win to live, for to lose meant extermination.

  Then by the blessing of God, the sea was empty! The waves, choppy from last night’s wind, reflected the deep, vivid blue of the sky. For some moments Rodney waited, tense, for the voice of the look-out telling him there was a sail in sight. When no voice came from the masthead, he looked round the dock and realised there was a great deal to be done.

  The quarter-deck was furrowed and grooved with jagged splinters pared off the wood. There were piles of torn rigging and wreckage on the half-deck and around the fo’c’sle. The surgeon, Master Dobson, lay where he had died, but someone had had the decency to throw some sailcloth over him.

  Rodney heard Barlow give an order to two seamen who proceeded towards the shrouded corpse. There would have to be a burial service later, Rodney knew, and he wondered how many more bodies would join that of the surgeon.

  But before he had time to trouble himself with the dead he must attend to the living. The Sea Hawk was moving heavily and was much lower in the water than she had been the day before. He looked round for Barlow and saw that he had gone below.

  For a moment it appeared that the damage was not great, and yet Rodney remembered only too clearly the sound of the last shot entering the Sea Hawk’s hull. He had wondered frequently through the night how much damage had been done, but he dared not leave the deck, believing that, when it came to a matter of picking up the sound of a wave beating over a rock, or sensing danger before it was quite upon them, his ears and senses were better than those he commanded. But now he began to be troubled, and Barlow’s face, when he came on deck a few minutes later, told him the worst.

  “How deep?” Rodney asked before Barlow could speak.

  “Seven feet and more, sir.”

  “Where is the hole?”

  “A foot above the water-line, sir. She would be all right in a dead calm sea, but the waves were beating in all last night!”

  “Can we fother a sail and get it over the hole?” Rodney asked.

  “I’m afraid it is too bad for that, sir. The water we have already shipped will make it impossible for the men to work below. We can try, of course, and the men are at the pumps, but the hole is about three feet across.”

  There was nothing they could do save get the ship ashore and mend her properly. The trouble was, how? They must find a place where they could be undisturbed long enough to make the necessary repairs. It was at that moment that the look-out shouted “ Land ho, sir!”

  Rodney looked at Barlow.

  “We will have to find the best place we can,” he said briefly. “What is the casualty list?”

  “Two men killed besides Mister Dobson, sir, and twelve wounded.”

  “Then do the best you can for them,” Rodney said, “and get the dead ready for burial. We must make for the shore, the wind shows no sign of abating.”

  Rodney spoke impersonally, but his eyes met Barlow’s and there was a look of perfect understanding between them. Both knew that the ship was getting heavier and sinking lower every minute that passed. The white crests of the waves splashing happily against the sides of the ship were as deadly a menace as a Spanish gun.

  The pumps, small and never very effective, would be quite useless against such a weight of water as the Sea Hawk had shipped during the night and was still taking aboard. It was something that land was in sight. That meant they had anything from fifteen to twenty miles to sail before they reached the nearest point, and God alone knew if that would prove a safe harbour.

  Neither Rodney nor Barlow expressed further the fears that were locked within their breasts. The men were set to work cleaning the decks, and the bodies of the dead were sewn tightly into shrouds and laid in a row waiting for Rodney to conduct the burial service.

  Having instructed Master Baxter to call him if there was the slightest difficulty in steering, if there was a sail in sight or anything untoward happened, Rodney went below. He would have liked to have a wash and snatch some breakfast, for he had had nothing either to eat or drink since the evening before when they sighted the Spanish carrack, but he knew it would be expected of him first to see the wounded.

  With Barlow following him he went below decks. It was dark and the oil lamps flickering from the beams cast long dark shadows. It was desperately hot and even to Rodney, who was used to the stench and fug of a ship, the atmosphere was stifling. The wounded men lay in a row, some of them cursing blasphemously as the roll of the ship hurt their shattered limbs or made it difficult for them to retain the posture in which they lay.

  It was only as he reached the men that Rodney remembered that, having seen Dobson killed, he should have appointed someone to act as surgeon in his place. It was the usual procedure when the ship’s surgeon was killed, but he wondered now who on board would have the slightest conception of what that post entailed.

  Rodney had not liked Dobson and could not pretend to be sorry that as a man he was dead, but from any other point of view his death was vastly inconvenient. On a voyage of this sort a ship’s surgeon was a vital necessity, and although they usually killed as many men as they saved, they at least had some knowledge of their profession, however inadequate.

  As he moved forward now in the darkness, disliking the heat, the smell of bilge and unwashed bodies, Rodney tried to remember all that he had learnt when he was with Drake. That amazing man had a vast knowledge of medicine. He had studied the uses of healing herbs, and the men with whom he sailed would rather have trusted him to doctor them than any surgeon, however skilled by reputation.

  But as he tried to recall what he had seen and heard, Rodney felt helpless. He could not be certain that his memory was to be relied on and in reality, he thought, he was as inexperienced in the matter as the merest cabin boy.

  It was then, as he reached the men, that the wavering light of the lantern showed him a kneeling figure by one of them. Someone had the doctor’s polished case with all its paraphernalia of bottles open on the floor. Rodney stared as the swaying lantern flickered on a red-gold head and he saw who knelt there.

  Lizbeth was bandaging a man’s arm while he swore one resounding oath after another at the pain his wounds were giving him.

  “Quiet there!” Rodney’s voice was crisp and authoritative and the man was instantly silent, and then he stared down at Lizbeth, not knowing what to say.

  It was a shock seeing her tending a half-naked man in such a manner. No decent or superior woman was interested or concerned with the dirty work of nursing. Gin drinking old women might hire themselves out as midwives, women of the lower orders without any training or special skill took up nursing as an inferior means of livelihood, but in the main it was men’s work to look after the sick, and at sea, as on the shore, the weakest and most inefficient men were ordered to such a menial and unimpor
tant task.

  And yet it was difficult in the circumstances for Rodney to know what to say. He would have liked, if he could have expressed himself naturally, to order Lizbeth to leave the man alone and go on deck immediately. And yet, even as the words framed themselves on his lips, he knew he could not say them. Someone had to take up Dobson’s job and he intended to appoint a Petty Officer – the one most easily spared. But this was not the moment to do so with his supposedly honoured guest concerning himself with the men’s well-being.

  “Have you any aqua vitae on board?” Lizbeth asked, looking up at Rodney as he stood speechless beside her.

  “Aqua vitae?” he echoed stupidly.

  “Yes, I require it for the next man.”

  She nodded as she spoke to a man lying on the other side of the one she was treating. He had been hit in the shoulder – a great open wound, torn, bleeding and blackened with powder.

  “Give him spirits if you have no laudanum,” Rodney said, well aware there were only two sorts of medicine for wounded men when the pain became really unbearable.

  “He has had some laudanum,” Lizbeth replied, “and I do not wish him to drink the aqua vitae, I want to pour it into the wound.”

  “God’s light! Whatever for?” Rodney ejaculated.

  There were a few bottles aboard of the precious brandywine, which he himself enjoyed, but he thought for a moment that Lizbeth was demented when she asked that he should sacrifice his special liquor for such a cause.

  She saw his confusion and explained patiently.

  “You see how dirty the wound is. When the Spanish cannonball hit him he was carrying the powder and shot between our own cannons. ‘Twas spilled all over him. A wound that is as dirty as that is bound to get gangrene unless we can get it clean. If I had herbs such as I have at home, I could deal with it. A clove of garlic is excellent, but I have none here and I believe that aqua vitae will clean it up equally as well.”

  “Who told you such things?” Rodney asked.

  “I have heard men talk since I was a child of the hurts they have suffered. It was a favourite topic of conversation at my father’s table. I know, too, a little of the healing properties of herbs and the cleaning value of raw spirit. Can I have the aqua vitae?”

  Quickly, because he could not find the words to refuse her, Rodney sent a ship’s boy to his cabin for a bottle.

  The man cursed and swore as Lizbeth poured it on his wound, but when she had bound it up he thanked her.

  There were three men left to bandage and Rodney waited until Lizbeth had finished with them. There were splinters which had to be extricated from a seaman’s burly chest with very inadequate instruments in Dobson’s medicine-case. Another man had lost a foot, but Lizbeth knew she could do nothing about the jagged, mutilated limb which needed amputating. It was a job for the butcher as Dobson was dead, and was best left, Rodney decided, until they could be steady in harbour.

  The last man was dead. There was a great pool of blood on the floor beside him. There was another stream which had flowed in a sticky trickle from his mouth. His eyes were wide open, startling in their fixed stare, and Rodney’s voice was harsh as he gave orders for the man to be carried on deck to join the other three bodies awaiting burial.

  He knew the man well. He was a big, burly man of Devon called Clerihew and had sailed in the Golden Hind on Drake’s brilliant exploit when they captured the Cacatuego and sailed home rich with plunder. Now Clerihew was dead, and Rodney felt as if he had lost an old friend. It almost surprised him how much he resented the fact that such a man should die for no good reason. They had achieved nothing, they had run away, and that in itself was more bitter than anything else.

  Lizbeth’s task was done. She stood up, looked at the row of men bandaged and drugged, and told a man who was not wounded to make them as comfortable as possible.

  “It’s hot here,” she said hesitatingly, conscious of the sweat on her own forehead. “Perhaps they could have some air?”

  “They can be taken on deck later,” Rodney promised.

  He would have promised anything at that moment to get Lizbeth away. He was feeling more embarrassed every moment by her proximity to the wounded men.

  “Thank you, that will help them, I am sure,” Lizbeth said.

  She turned to a seaman who was in attendance and asked him to carry the medicine-chest back to her cabin, and then she turned and walked along the lower deck to the companion-way.

  “’Tis best that the medicine should not be left with the men. They might be tempted to help themselves,” she remarked. “there are many drugs there which I am sure are deadly poison.”

  Rodney said nothing until they reached the upper deck, and then, as he drew a deep breath of fresh air, he said,

  “I must thank you for doing your best with the men, but there is no need for you to attend to them any more. I will appoint an Acting-Surgeon.”

  He was speaking to Lizbeth, but his eyes were looking around as he spoke. There was no sign of a ship, but the coast was in sight. They had reached it none too soon, Rodney thought. He had no intention of alarming anyone, but while he had been below watching Lizbeth bandaging, the wounded men, he had heard sounds which were all too ominous to a man used to ships.

  There was a sound of water beneath the lower deck, he could hear the lap and swirl of it, a burbling sound which was, very unlike the usual wash of the bilge. He could hear, too, the monotonous clang of the pumps, but he knew how little they would achieve. It took a lot to sink a ship such as the Sea Hawk and yet it was by no means an impossibility, and there were still eight or ten miles ahead of them before they could reach the coast.

  Lizbeth was speaking, but for a moment he could not concentrate on what she was saying.

  “Is there anybody on board who has any knowledge of medicine – real knowledge?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” Rodney replied. “I shall have to make enquiries.”

  “If there is no one, as I suspect,” Lizbeth said, “then I shall continue to do what I can for the men. I am not afraid of blood, as some women are, and at least I shall be gentler with them than the man I found trying to move them about when I went below.”

  “I forbid it,” Rodney retorted quickly.

  “In this I refuse to obey you,” Lizbeth replied. “You may be in command of the ship, but men should not be allowed to die because there is no one to care for them.”

  “I have told you, it is no work for you or for any woman for that matter,” Rodney said.

  “I shall look after them, and nothing you can say can stop me,” Lizbeth answered.

  Tired though he was, preoccupied with other things, Rodney glared back at her. He felt so irritated by her defiance that he had half a mind to take her by the shoulders and shake her. He almost forgot in that moment that she was a woman. She was instead something quite impersonal that was defying him, and Rodney was not used to being defied.

  “You will do as I say or I will put you in irons.”

  She laughed at him then, her head thrown back a little, the sun glinting on her red hair.

  “You would not dare,” she replied.

  He remembered then what she had said to him the evening before. He remembered how during the night he had thought often of how she despised him for having run away from the Spanish ships.

  “Go to your cabin,” he said furiously, “or I swear I will have you carried there!”

  She did not move, but her green eyes gleamed beneath her dark lashes. They were both tense, both burning with indignation, both tingling alive with fiery anger which made everything forgotten save themselves.

  An interruption came like a thunder-clap.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Barlow said at Rodney’s elbow. “There is a small fishing-boat just ahead of us with three men in it. Shall we take them on board?”

  Rodney looked out to sea-nothing else was in sight.

  “Take them on board, Mr. Barlow,” he said, “but delay our passage as little as p
ossible.”

  Barlow understood and, forgetful of Lizbeth, Rodney strode up to the quarter-deck and watched the drama taking place below.

  The fishing-boat was forced to heave to as the ship’s boat which had been lowered drew alongside her and in a short time the three men were hauled aboard. One was an Indian – there was no doubt about that – the other two were darker-skinned with high cheek-bones. At first glance Rodney was sure these were Cimaroons. Bitter enemies of the Spaniards, Cimaroons were Negro slaves who had run away from the cruelty of their masters and lived with Indians of the woods.

  So many had escaped during the Spanish rule that they had now grown into a people who lived in the forests around the Isthmus of Panama. They had their own king and were split into several tribes. But all were united by one controlling spirit – a common hatred of those who had oppressed them.

  The three men were dragged across the deck. Their faces were sullen, their eyes smouldering with suppressed fires. Rodney spoke to them in Spanish. He asked them who they were and when the oldest man answered him surlily that he and his brother were Cimaroons he smiled.

  “Release the prisoners,” he ordered. “Let them stand free.”

  The seamen obeyed him wonderingly. As he went on to speak in Spanish to the men he had captured, they stared in even more astonishment. For as Rodney talked, a vast change came over the three fishermen. First they looked surprised, then their mouths were wreathed in smiles and finally they were down on their knees, touching their foreheads to the deck in servitude.