There was suddenly more sharks and so many that Sebastian could not count them, as they circled and dived in ecstatic greed, until the sea around the raft trembled and swirled in agitation.
Sebastian and his Arabs managed to drag two more of the crew into the raft and they had a third half out of the water when a six-foot white-pointer shot up from the depths, and fastened on his thigh with such violence that it almost jerked all of them overboard. But they steadied themselves and held on to the man's arms, frozen in this gruesome tug-of-war, while the shark worried the leg, so dog-like in its determination that Sebastian expected it to growl.
Little Mohammed staggered to his feet, snatched up an oar and swung it against the pointed snout with all his strength. They had dragged the shark's head from the water, and the oar fell on it with a series of rubbery thumps, but the shark held on. Fresh, bright blood squirted and trickled from the leg in its jaws, running down the shark's glistening snake-like head into the open slits of its gill covers.
"Hold him!" gasped Sebastian, and drew his knife. The raft rocking crazily under him, he leaned over the man's outstretched body and drove the knife blade into the shark's expressionless little eye. It popped in a burst of clear fluid, and the shark stiffened and trembled. Sebastian withdrew the blade and stabbed into the other eye. With a convulsive gulp the shark opened its jaws and slid back into the sea to meander blindly away.
There were no more swimmers. The little group on the raft huddled together and watched the shark pack milling hungrily, seeming to sniff at the tainted water as they gathered the last morsels of meat.
The shark victim hosed the deck with his severed femoral artery and died before any of them could rouse themselves to apply a tourniquet.
"Push him oVer," grunted Flynn.
"No," Sebastian shook his head.
"Chrissake, we're crowded enough as it is. Chuck the poor bastard over."
"Later on, not now." Sebastian could not stand to watch the sharks squabble over the corpse.
"Mohammed, get a couple of your lads on the oars. I want to pick up as many of those coconuts as we can."
By the time darkness stopped them, they had retrieved fifty-two of the floating coconuts, sufficient to keep the seven of them thirst-free for a week.
It was cold that night. They crowded together for warmth and watched the underwater pyrotechnics, as the shark pack circled the raft in phosphorescent splendour.
"You've got to cut for it," Flynn whispered, and he shivered with cold in the burning heat of the midday sun.
"I don't know anything about it," Sebastian protested, yet he could see that Flynn was dying.
"You've got to do it!" Flynn's eyes had sunk into plum-coloured cavities and the smell of his breath was that of something long dead.
Staring at the leg, Sebastian had difficulty controlling his nausea. It was swollen fat and purple. The bullet hole was covered with a crusty black scab, but Sebastian caught a whiff of the putrefaction under it and this time his nausea came up acid sweet into the back of his throat. He swallowed it.
"You've got to do it, Bassie boy."
Sebastian nodded, and tentatively laid his hand on the leg. Immediately he jerked his fingers away, surprised by the heat of the skin.
"You've got to do it," urged Flynn. "Feel for the slug. It's not deep. Just under the skin."
He felt the slug, It moved under his fingers, the size of a green acorn in the taut hot flesh.
"It's going to hurt like Billy-o." Sebastian's voice was hoarse.
The rowers were resting on their oars, watching with frank curiosity, while the raft eddied and swung in the drift of the Mozambique current. Above them the sail that Sebastian had rigged from salvaged planking and canvas flapped wearily, throwing a shadow across the leg.
"Mohammed, you and one other to hold the master's shoulders. Two others to keep his legs still."
Flynn lay quiescent, pinioned beneath them on the slats of the deck.
Sebastian knelt over him, gathering his resolve. The knife he had sharpened against the metal edge of the raft, and then scrubbed clean with coconut fibre and seawater.
He had sluiced the leg also, and washed his hands until the skin tingled. Beside him on the deck stood half a coconut shell containing perhaps an ounce of evaporated salt scraped from the deck and the sail, ready to pack into the open wound. "Ready?"he whispered.
"Ready," grunted Flynn, and Sebastian located the lump of the bullet and drew the edge of the blade across it timidly.
Flynn gasped, but human skin was tougher than Sebastian allowed. It did not part.
"Goddamn you!" Flynn was sweating already. "Don't play with it. Cut, man, cud'
This time Sebastian slashed, and the flesh split open under the blade. He dropped the knife and drew back in horror as the infection bubbled up through the lips of the knife wound. It looked like yellow custard mixed with prune juice and the smell of it filled his nostrils and his throat.
"Go for the slug. Go for it with your fingers." Flynn writhed beneath the men who held him. "Hurry. Hurry. I can't take much more."
Steeling himself, closing his throat against the vomit that threatened to vent at any moment, Sebastian slipped his little finger into the slit. Hooking with it for the bullet, finding it, easing it up although tissue clung to it reluctantly, until it popped from the wound and dropped on to the deck.
A fresh gush of warm poison followed it out, flowing over Sebastian's hand, and he crawled to the edge of the raft, choking and gagging.
"Wished we had some red cloth." Flynn sat against the rickety mast. He was still very weak but four days ago the fever had broken with the release of the poison.
"What would you do with it?" Sebastian asked.
"Catch me one of those dolphins. Man, I'm so god damned hungry I'd eat it raw."
A four-day diet of coconut pulp and milk had left all their bellies grumbling.
"Why red?"
"They go for red. Make a lure."
"You haven't any hooks or line."
"Tie it to a bit of twine from the sack and tease them up to the surface then harpoon one with your knife tied to an oar."
Sebastian was silent, peering thoughtfully over the side at the deep flashes of gold where the shoal of dolphin played under the raft. "It's got to be red, hey?" he asked, and Flynn looked at him sharply;
"Yeah. It's got to be red."
"Well..." Sebastian hesitated, and then flushed with embarrassment under his tropical sunburn.
"What's wrong with you?"
Still blushing, Sebastian stood up and loosened his belt then, shyly as a bride on her wedding night, he drew down his pants.
"MY God," breathed Flynn in shock, as he held up his hand to shield his eyes.
"Haul Haul"was the chorus of admiration from the crew.
"Got them at Harrods," said Sebastian with becoming modesty.
Red, Flynn had asked for but Sebastian's underpants were the brightest, most beautiful red; the most vivid sunset and roses red, he could have imagined. They hung in oriental splendour to Sebastian's knees.
"Pure silk," said Sebastian, fingering the cloth. "Ten shillings a pair."
"Whoa now! Come on, little fishy. Come on there, Flynn whispered as he lay on his belly, head and shoulders over the edge of the raft. On its thread of twine, the scrap of red danced deep in the green water. A long, slithering flash of gold shot towards it, and Flynn jerked the twine away at the last instant. The dolphin swirled and darted back. Again Flynn jerked the twine. Chameleon lines and dots of excitement showed against the gold of the dolphin's body.
"That's it, fishy. Chase it." The other fish of the shoal joined the hunt, forming a sparkling planetary system of movement around the lure. "Get ready!"
"I'm ready." Sebastian stood over him, poised like a javelin thrower. In the excitement he had forgotten to don his pants and his shirt-tails flapped around his thighs in a most undignified manner. But his legs were long and finely muscled, the legs of an
athlete. "Get back!" he snapped at the crew who were crowded around him so that the raft was listing dangerously. "Get back give me room," and he hefted the oar with the long hunting knife lashed to the tip.
"Here they come." Flynn's voice trembled with excitement as he worked the scrap of red cloth upwards, and the shoal followed it. "Now!" he shouted as a single fish broke the surface four feet of flashing gold, and Sebastian lunged.
The steady hand and eye that had once clean-bowled the great Frank Woolley directed the oar. Sebastian hit the dolphin an inch behind the eye, and the blade slipped through to lacerate the gills.
For a few seconds the oar came alive in his hands as the dolphin twitched and fought on the blade, but there were no barbs to hold in the flesh, and the fish slipped from the knife.
"God damn it to hell! "bellowed Flynn.
"Dash it all! "echoed Sebastian.
But ten feet down the dolphin was mortally wounded; it jigged and whipped like a golden kite in a high wind while the rest of the shoal scattered.
Sebastian dropped the oar and began stripping his shirt.
"What are you doing? "demanded Flynn.
"Going after it."
"You're mad. Sharks!"
"I'm so hungry, I'll eat a shark also," and he dived over the side. Thirty seconds later he surfaced, blowing like a grampus but grinning triumphantly, with the dead dolphin clasped lovingly to his bosom.
They ate strips of raw fish seasoned with evaporated salt, squatting around the mutilated carcass of the dolphin.
"Well, I've paid a guinea for worse meals than this said Sebastian, and belched softly. "Oh, I beg your pardon."
"Granted," Flynn grunted with his mouth full of fish; and then eyeing Sebastian's nudity with a world-weary eye, "Stop boasting and put your pants on before you trip over. Flynn O'Flynn was slowly, very slowly, revising his estimate of Sebastian Oldsmith.
The rowers had long since lost any enthusiasm they might have had for the task. They kept at it only in response to offers of bodily violence by Flynn and the example set by Sebastian, who worked tirelessly.
The thin layer of fat that had sheathed Sebastian's muscles was long since consumed, and his sun-baked body was a Michelangelo sculpture as he leaned and dug and pulled the oar.
Six days they had dragged the raft across the southward push of the current. Six days of sun-blazing calm, with the sea flattening, until now in the late afternoon, it looked like an endless sheet of smooth green velvet.
"No," said Mohammed. "That means, The two porcupines
:.
make love under the blanket."
"Oh!" Sebastian repeated the phrase without interrupting the rhythm of his rowing. Sebastian was a dogged pupil of Swahili, making Lip in determination what he lacked in brilliance. Mohammed was proud of him, and opposed any attempt by the other members of the crew to usurp his position as chief tutor. "That's all right about the porcupines shagging them selves to a standstill," grunted Flynn. "But what does this mean... and he spoke in Swahili.
"It means, Big winds will blow across the sea," interpreted Sebastian, and glowed with achievement.
"And I'm not joking either." Flynn stood up, crouching to favour his bad leg, and shaded his eyes to peer into the east. "You see that line of cloud?"
Laying aside the oar, Sebastian stood beside him and flexed the aching muscles of his back and shoulders.
Immediately all activity ceased among the other rowers.
"Keep going, me beauties!" growled Flynn, and reluctantly they obeyed. Flynn turned back to Sebastian. "You see it?"
"Yes." It was drawn like a kohl line across the eyelid of a Hindu woman, smeared black along the horizon.
"Well, Bassie there's the wind you've been griping about.
But, my friend, I think it's a little more than you bargained for."
In the darkness they heard it coming from far away, a muted sibilance in the night. One by one, the fat stars were blotted out in the east as dark cloud spread out to fill half the midnight sky.
A single gust hit the raft and flogged the makeshift sail with a clap like a shotgun, and the sleepers woke and sat up.
"Hang on to those fancy underpants, "muttered Flynn, "or you'll get them blown right up your backside."
Another gust, another lull, but already there was the boisterous slapping of small waves against the sides of the raft.
"I'd better get that sail down."
"You had, and all," agreed Flynn, "and while you're at it, use the rope to fix lifelines for us." In haste, spurred on by the rising hiss of the wind, they lashed themselves to the slats of the deck.
The main force of the wind spun the raft like a top, splattering them with spray; the spray was icy cold in the rush of the wind. The wind was steady now and the warm raft moved uneasily like the jerky motion of an animal restless at the prick of spurs.
"At least it will push us towards the land , Sebastian shouted across at Flynn.
"Bassie boy, you think of the cutest things," and the first wave came aboard, smothering Flynn's voice, breaking over their prostrate bodies, and then streaming out through the slatted deck. The raft wallowed in dismay, then gathered itself to meet the next rush of the sea.
Under the steady it" of the wind, the sea came up more swiftly than Sebastian believed was possible. Within minutes the waves were breaking over the raft with such weight as to squeeze the breath from their lungs, submerging them completely, driving the raft under before its buoyancy reasserted itself and lifted it, canting crazily, and they could gasp for air in the smother of spray.
Waiting for the lulls, Sebastian inched his way across the deck until he reached Flynn. "How are you bearing up?" he bellowed.
"Great, just great," and another wave drove them under.
"Your leg?" spluttered Sebastian as they came up.
"For Chrissake, stop yapping, "and they went under again.
It was completely dark, no star, no sliver of moon, but each line of breaking water glowed in dull, phosphorescent malevolence as it dashed down upon them, warning them to suck air and cling with cramped fingers hooked into the slats.
For all eternity Sebastian lived in darkness, battered by the wind and the wild, flying water. The aching chill of his body dulled out into numbness. Slowly his mind emptied of conscious thought, so when a bigger wave scoured them, he heard the tearing sound of deck slats pulling loose, and the lost wail as one of the Arabs was washed away into the night sea but the sound had no meaning to him.
Twice he vomited sea water that he had swallowed, but it had no taste in his mouth, and he let it run heedlessly down his chin and warm on to his chest, to be washed away by the next torrential wave.
His eyes burned without pain from the harsh rake of wind flung spray, and he blinked them owlishly at each advancing wave. It seemed, in time, that he could see more clearly, and he turned his head slowly. Beside him, Flynn's face was aleprous blotch in the darkness. This puzzled him, and he lay and thought about it but no solution came, until he looked beyond the next wave, and saw the faint promise of a new day show pale through the black massed cloud banks
He tried to speak, but no sound came for his throat was swollen closed with the salt, and his tongue was tingling numb. Again, he tried. "Dawn coming," he croaked, but beside him Flynn lay like a corpse frozen in rigor mortis.
Slowly the light grew over that mad, grey sea but the scudding black cloud-banks tried desperately to oppose its coming.
Now the seas were more awesome in their raging insanity. Each mountain of glassy grey rose high above the raft, shielding it for a few seconds from the whip of the wind, its crest blowing off like the plume of an Etruscan helmet, before it slid down, collapsing upon itself in the tumbling roar of breaking water.
Each time, the men on the raft shrank flat on the deck, and waited in bovine acceptance to be smothered again beneath the white deluge.
Once, the raft rode high and clear in a freak flat of the storm, and Sebastian looked about
him. The canvas and rope, the coconuts and the other pathetic accumulation of their possessions were all gone. The sea had ripped away many of the deck slats so that the metal floats of the raft were exposed; it had torn the very clothing from them so they were clad in sodden tatters. Of the seven men who had ridden the raft the previous day, only he and Flynn, Mohammed and one more, were left the other three were gone, gobbled up by the hungry sea.
Wilbur Smith - Shout At The Devil Page 7