‘Agreed.’
The two of them turned and ran down the slope towards the cutter in the bay, but the natives came on relentlessly, tirelessly. Before Killigrew and Molineaux had covered a couple of hundred yards, their pursuers were close enough to start hurling spears in their direction. The swathe of jungle before them offered Killigrew and Molineaux some hope of respite, and they redoubled their efforts. A spear buried itself in a tree just ahead, the shaft quivering. Then they were running between the trunks, with fronds of bracken and dangling creepers lashing at their faces. They wove in and out of the trunks, Killigrew hoping that if they followed the line of the valley down it would take them to the bay where they had seen the cutter.
He glanced over his shoulder: he could see the natives behind them moving through the trees on either side, seeking to encircle them. Then he found himself crashing through a wall of foliage, and broke out on the other side to run straight into a brown-skinned figure.
The two of them went down. Killigrew barely had time to see another two dozen or so natives standing around, and then one of them had hefted a war club to aim a blow at his skull.
It never landed. A spear whipped through the trees to bury itself in the native’s chest. He fell with flecks of blood spraying from his lips, and suddenly the jungle was full of war-whoops, screams of agony and the sound of bones crunching as clubs smashed against skulls. Dazed, Killigrew still sprawled on the ground, and was aware only of the brown feet stamping on the ground all around him when the native he had bumped into launched himself at him with a wooden dagger. Killigrew managed to smash him in the face with the stock of the musket, and then Molineaux grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to one side before a blow from another native could crush his skull.
There was nothing to distinguish the natives of the first tribe from the second as far as Killigrew could tell, but they certainly knew the difference as they set about one another with appalling savagery. ‘It’s like Parliament Square on election night!’ he gasped.
‘Yur, well, I don’t want to wait around until the result’s declared,’ said Molineaux. ‘Do you?’
Killigrew shook his head and the two of them took advantage of the confusion to disappear through the bushes once more. As soon as they were clear, they broke into a run, dashing off through the trees. They could not be more than a couple of miles from the coast now. Seeing sunlight dappling the ground in a glade, Killigrew headed for it, where the gap in the trees offered an easy passage. Molineaux followed him, and a moment later the two of them sank up to their chests in a quagmire.
Molineaux swore. ‘If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.’
Killigrew kept very still, knowing full well that if he moved about too much it would only hasten things. ‘Try to stay calm,’ he said, holding the musket above his head so that the filthy ooze would not get in its workings.
‘I am calm!’ Molineaux snapped back. ‘Cowcumber Henson, that’s me.’
‘Buck up, man. Things could be worse.’
‘Worse? Worse! We’re marooned on a cannibal-infested island and up to our necks in a swamp! How could things possibly be any worse, sir?’
Killigrew thought for a moment. ‘Well, it could be rai—’
‘Don’t say it!’ hissed Molineaux. ‘Don’t even think it. Christ, sir! You’ve got a lot to learn about not tempting fate.’
With the leaves carpeting the forest floor, it was difficult to tell where the quagmire ended and more solid ground began, but the gnarled roots of trees about ten feet ahead offered some purchase. Killigrew tried to move through the morass towards them, but the ooze held him fast and sucked him down remorselessly. Already he was up to his shoulders, and behind him Molineaux was little better off.
‘Got any notion as to how we’re going to get out of this one, sir?’
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Well, look lively, sir.’
‘You might try to come up with a suggestion, instead of complaining.’
‘As soon as I think of anything, I’ll let you know.’
The morass was over their shoulders and up to their chins now. Killigrew stared at those gnarled roots. Ten feet away – it might as well have been ten thousand miles. He glanced about, looking for inspiration, and saw a strand of creeper stretching from one tree to the next about twenty feet overhead. ‘Ah-ha! See that creeper above us, Molineaux?’
‘Yur, but I don’t think I can reach it from here,’ the seaman replied sourly.
‘The musket, man!’ Killigrew handed it back to him. ‘You’re always boasting about how good a shot you are. Let’s see what you can do, Dan’l Boone.’
Molineaux aimed the musket, and hesitated. ‘If them savages are still around, you know the sound of the shot will bring them running?’
‘We’ll worry about that when the time comes.’
Molineaux squinted along the barrel, and fired. The bullet tore a piece out of the creeper, but not enough to break it in two. The recoil drove him a couple of inches deeper into the morass, and he had to tilt his head back to keep his nose and mouth out of the filth.
Killigrew fumbled for the cartouche box and took out a cartridge. ‘The last one, Molineaux.’
‘You’d better tear it open for me, sir.’
Killigrew complied and handed the cartridge carefully to Molineaux. Holding the musket above his head, Molineaux tipped the powder into the muzzle. He hissed.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Got gunpowder in my eyes, sir. Hang on…’ Holding the musket by the stock, he raised it upright so the powder would fall to the breech. ‘Ball?’
Killigrew took out a bullet and wrapped a piece of wadding around it, before handing it to Molineaux. The seaman thumbed it into the muzzle, then took out the ramrod and tried to ram the bullet home.
Molineaux spat out a mouthful of mud. ‘It’s no good, sir. I can’t get any purchase, holding it like this.’
‘Rest the stock against my back.’
Molineaux did so. ‘Thanks… that’s got it. Percussion cap?’
Killigrew handed him a cap and the seaman primed the musket. He took aim once more.
‘Don’t miss,’ Killigrew told him.
Molineaux glared. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Sorry?’
The seaman took a couple of deep breaths, and squeezed the trigger. The recoil forced him under so that only his forehead showed above the morass. The creeper parted, and one end of it fell on to the surface of the quagmire.
Where the creeper lay closest to Killigrew, it was still two or three feet away. He reached for it, but his grasping fingers came up inches too short. Painfully conscious that Molineaux was suffocating now, Killigrew took the musket from his flailing arms and used the muzzle-sight to hook the creeper. He dragged it towards him and threw the musket aside when he could grasp it. He hauled on the creeper until it was taut. One of the branches it rested on bent under the strain, and then snapped, leaving Killigrew with several feet of useless slack to haul on.
The morass was over his mouth, now. He hauled on the creeper again, and this time it held.
All that was visible of Molineaux was his hands, groping weakly above the surface. Killigrew seized him by the wrist, and pressed the creeper into his palm. Molineaux’s fingers closed over it, and then he had the creeper in both hands and was hauling on it. At first it looked as though he were losing the tug-o’-war to the quagmire; then there was an obscene sucking noise, and he came up all at once, his face covered in mud. Coughing and spluttering, he started to haul himself to solid ground.
By now the ooze was over Killigrew’s nose and mouth even with his head tilted back, but he waited until Molineaux was safe before pulling on the creeper himself, for fear that their combined weight would be enough to tear it from whatever purchase it had at the other end.
It took all of his strength to pull him free of the quagmire’s vile embrace. Holding on to the branch of a tree with one hand, Molineaux leaned out as far ove
r the morass as he could, reaching out for him. Killigrew clasped his hand, and the seaman dragged him to safety.
The two of them collapsed on dry ground, sobbing for breath, the dead leaves clinging to their filthy clothes.
‘Good shooting,’ Killigrew gasped at last.
‘Yur. Not a bad shot, though I say so myself. Am I good, or am I just lucky?’
‘You’re good,’ acknowledged the lieutenant. ‘There’s only one problem now…’
‘Huh?’
Killigrew pointed to where a dozen natives had emerged from the trees to surround them in a semi-circle, spears poised to thrust. The necklaces they wore were unmistakably made from human fingerbones.
‘Out of the frying pan…’ said Killigrew.
‘And into the cooking pot,’ Molineaux concluded for him gloomily.
* * *
Mrs Cafferty awoke with a splitting headache. One glass of wine too many, she told herself. But at least she did not have to get up for anything that she could think of. Besides, apart from the headache, it was nice to be able to luxuriate between the clean sheets of a huge bed after four nights sleeping in one of the cramped bunks on board the Wanderer…
She sat up abruptly, staring about in confusion. She lay in a huge, four-poster bed, in an unfamiliar bedroom decorated à la chinoise. Some small bottles stood on a lace doily on the bedside cabinet. She picked up one and glanced at the label: Rowlands’ Kalydor. ‘Gentlemen after shaving will appreciate its softening and ameliorating properties,’ the label assured her. A man’s room, then. A portrait of Thorpe himself hung on the opposite wall: hardly what she would have chosen to wake up to, but at least it gave her some idea of who the room belonged to.
She had no recollection of how she had come there. The last thing she could remember, she had been drinking coffee in the saloon of the Wanderer, listening politely while Thorpe had bored her with grandiose schemes of civilising the natives of Éfaté and setting up his own state on the island.
She threw back the covers. Beneath, she was still fully dressed, but for the boots she had been wearing. Whoever had put her to bed had been too delicate to undress her; either that, or they had simply not bothered. She swung her legs off the bed and found the boots neatly placed on the floor beside it. Feeling disorientated, she padded across the bare wooden floorboards to the window and threw open the shutters.
She gasped.
The window looked out from the first floor of a house. Immediately in front of the building, a long flight of broad stone steps led down to a square with deserted-looking buildings on either side and a wharf overlooking the lagoon opposite. The Wanderer was tied up at a wooden jetty that ran out from the wharf, and the only signs of life she could see were a couple of sailors coiling ropes on the deck of the yacht. The lagoon was about half a mile wide; on the far side she could see lush jungle stretching for about three or four miles, and beyond that the wide ocean. Either it was dawn or dusk, the sun halfway over the horizon to her right casting a golden glow over the exotic scene.
Now she was too intrigued to care about her headache or how disorientated she was. She sat down on the edge of the bed and hurriedly laced on the boots. She looked in the wardrobe in one corner to see if she could find a shawl, but only discovered some blankets. She threw one over her shoulders anyway, and crossed to the door. For some reason she could not fully explain to herself, she half expected to find it locked, but the handle turned to her touch and she stepped out into the corridor beyond.
She could hear a voice raised in anger, and followed it to the top of a stone staircase running down a wall on one side, with a wrought-iron banister on the other. A few steps down she found herself overlooking a hallway where Thorpe was berating a grubby-looking man who flinched at the trader’s tirade.
‘I gave you specific instructions to keep the Avon here, Mr Underwood! Don’t you realise there’s a ship coming in tomorrow with a consignment of sandalwood for Shanghai? How am I to get it there? I’m ruined, you fool! Ruined!’
‘You didn’t say anything to me about any consignment of sandalwood, sir,’ whined the grubby little man. ‘What was I supposed to say to Captain Hawkes? He asked me why you wanted him here, and I couldn’t give him a reason. He left. I tried to stop him—’
‘Obviously you didn’t try hard enough!’
They were too busy arguing to notice Mrs Cafferty’s arrival, so she coughed into her fist to draw their attention to her presence. ‘Mr Thorpe? Is everything all right?’
The scowl was gone from Thorpe’s jowly face in an instant, to be replaced by a broad beam as he tried to put a friendly arm around Underwood’s shoulders, but the man shied away. ‘Everything’s fine, Mrs Cafferty. How are you this evening?’
‘I must confess I’m a little confused, Mr Thorpe. Where am I?’
‘Thorpetown, m’dear. And this is my home: Thorpe Hall.’ He gestured proudly around him, although the rather bare hallway did not seem to boast much to be proud of. ‘You fainted. Perhaps you don’t remember. Hardly surprising. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal, and you lost a good deal of blood from that wound in your arm.’
She raised a hand to her shoulder. The wound had been healing nicely, and after a couple of days living in the luxury the Wanderer had to offer, she had soon recovered her strength. If she had been going to faint, surely she would have done so shortly after she had come on board the yacht, not four days later?
‘Is the Tisiphone here?’ she asked.
‘Alas, no,’ replied Thorpe. ‘Mr Underwood here tells me the Tisiphone sailed for Aneiteium several hours before our arrival…’
Underwood lowered his eyes guiltily to the flagstone floor.
‘…but I believe she will return in a couple of days,’ concluded Thorpe. ‘In the meantime, you are more than welcome to share whatever comforts my humble abode has to offer.’
‘It would seem I have little choice in the matter,’ she replied drily, descending the last few steps to the floor.
A bell jangled noisily close by, making Underwood start visibly. The three of them stood there, staring at one another, until Thorpe rounded irritably on Underwood. ‘Well, don’t just stand there, you nincompoop! Go and see who it is.’
‘Yes, Mr Thorpe, sir. Right away.’ Underwood hurried across to the front door.
‘Just now you said I was welcome to share whatever comforts your humble abode has to offer,’ Mrs Cafferty reminded Thorpe, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead. ‘I wonder if those include Dr James’s Powders?’
‘You are feeling a little unwell? I’ll have some brought as soon as possible. It seems we’re suffering from a little servant problem at the moment.’
‘Are there any?’ she asked sceptically.
‘I employ natives from some of the neighbouring villages as my servants,’ explained Thorpe. ‘Naturally I gave them permission to visit their families in my absence. It will take time for them to return. However, until then I’m sure Mr Underwood and my cook and steward from the Wanderer will be able to attend to our needs very nicely.’
Underwood returned from the front door with one of the hands from the Wanderer. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but there’s a ship entering the lagoon – a whaler. Mr Irwin says it looks like the Acushnet. He said you’d want to know.’
‘The Acushnet?’ echoed Thorpe, rubbing his podgy hands together. ‘Splendid, splendid! This could be the solution to all our problems.’
* * *
Molineaux was humming a tune. Killigrew recognised it as ‘The World Turned Upside Down’. In view of the fact that the pair of them were hanging upside down from rough bamboo tripods, bound like pigs for the slaughter along with Moltata and his warriors, Killigrew found Molineaux’s sense of humour anything but hilarious.
Kowiowi’s people were performing a war dance. Somehow Killigrew had a feeling it wasn’t for the entertainment of himself and the other captives. Wearing grotesque masks and feathered headdresses, the Erromangans leaped about and c
avorted by the light of fires and flambeaux, performing intricate patterns that Killigrew did not doubt had some deep significance that was lost on him. And all the time the tam-tams beat out a wild, savage rhythm that matched the fearful pounding in his heart.
Kowiowi sat on a mat on the opposite side of the dancing ground, surrounded by his wives and guzzling kava from a coconut shell. One of the younger men had been appointed to act as guard over the captives. He did not seem to be taking his duties too seriously, but then he did not have to: Killigrew, Molineaux and the twelve Tannese were all quite helpless.
The Tannese warriors seemed to have accepted their fate with stoicism; but then, Killigrew was trying to give the same impression himself, while secretly (and futilely) working at the bonds of creeper which bound him; if it was untrue for him it might be equally untrue for them. He had already noticed Moltata and his son talking to one another in low voices out of the corners of their mouths. Perhaps they were planning something. But what? Their hands were tied, and even if they could break loose, they were in an enemy village, trapped on an island where they could expect to find no help.
But Killigrew had not survived countless encounters with slavers and pirates to die at the hands of savages. He would not go down without a fight. What was it Cusack had said? Sometimes it’s the fights we cannot win that are most in need of fighting. He would see about that.
Periodically, one of the Erromangoans engaged in the dance would break off from the intricate figures and leap about in front of the captives, waving a spear or a club threateningly at them, to the approval of the other villagers. It was frightening at first, but after a while it just became wearisome. They were showing off in front of their women, like sailors flexing their muscles in a Portsmouth tavern.
‘You wouldn’t be so brave if my hands were free,’ Molineaux sneered at one of them, although his voice was drowned out by the general clamour of drums and chanting. Their posturing might put the fear of whatever gods they worshipped in these islands into the Tannese, but this time they were picking a fight with a couple of British tars.
Killigrew and the Incorrigibles Page 38