by Wilbur Smith
The wrecked mast saved them. Hanging in the water, it acted as a giant outrigger, steadying the ship and stopping her from rolling over. It was small respite.
I’ve lost her, Tom thought. The starboard side had collapsed; the sea was flooding in. Soon she would be sunk. Even so, he could hardly bear to give the order.
Francis seized his arm. Tom had not seen him come on deck. ‘The bilge is flooded; the pumps are overwhelmed.’
The words crushed Tom’s last hopes. ‘Abandon ship,’ he ordered. ‘Into the jolly boat.’
There was no thought of lowering the boat. The davits had been swept away. As soon as Tom cut away the ropes that held it, it slid down the tilting deck into the water. The men scrambled headlong to climb into it before the sea carried it away.
Sarah had come up from the cabin. Something flashed in her hands, bright even in the dark of the storm. The Neptune sword, in its gilded scabbard. Tom felt a surge of gratitude. She knew if there was one thing he would want to save from the wreck it was the sword.
‘Get in the boat.’ He held her hand, guiding her across the slanting deck so she would not fall. A surging tide moved the boat away; she leaped, almost capsizing it as she landed, still clutching the sword.
‘You next,’ Tom told Francis. Again, he helped him across the deck to the splintered wreckage that had once been the side.
‘Jump.’
Francis paused. ‘Where is Ana?’
Tom looked around. The deck was empty.
‘She must be in the boat already.’ There was no time to delay. Tom lifted Francis and hurled him into the boat, then leaped himself. He landed on top of Francis in a heap of limbs, while the boat bucked and tossed beneath.
Francis shook him off and sat up. ‘Where is Ana?’ he said again.
Tom scanned the faces around him. Ana was not in the boat.
‘She came down to the cabin with me,’ said Sarah.
Francis looked stricken. ‘Did she come up?’
‘She said she was going to look for you.’
The ship shuddered. With a groan like a wounded beast, the foremast snapped and toppled over into the sea, so close to the boat it nearly smashed it to splinters. Tom put his hand on Francis’ shoulder and shouted in his ear, ‘You cannot save her now.’
‘I must.’
A wave lifted the boat high into the air, so close to the ship’s hull they almost touched. Before Tom could stop him, Francis leaped. Tom cried out and watched in horror as Francis hurtled over the boiling sea. His outstretched arms flailed in the spray; a wave surged over the ship and buried him. Tom lunged, but the same wave caught the jolly boat and swept it far away from the ship.
But Francis had survived. As the foam subsided, Tom saw him with his arms wrapped around the shrouds, clinging on and pulling himself up against the water pouring off the ship.
‘We must go back and help him,’ Tom yelled to Alf Wilson.
Even as he spoke, another wave carried the boat still further away. Half the oars were missing, and the other half broken. If they tried to fight the sea, the boat would flip and they would all drown.
Francis was on his own.
Francis hauled himself over the Kestrel’s shattered side and crawled across the sloping deck, praying no more of the cannons would break loose. He crouched by the hatch and peered down. The ladder had torn away. Down below, he saw deep water sluicing around the hold. It chilled his heart. Could anyone have survived down there? He doubted it.
All he saw was black water.
‘Ana?’ he shouted.
No answer.
The ship lurched further over as more of her hull gave way. He had no time. He braced himself against the opening and lowered himself through, into the water. In the heeling ship, water filled the lower side to the ceiling, but there was still air on the upward side. He crawled along, clinging on to the ship’s ribs and keeping his head just above water.
If she rolls over, I’ll be trapped, Francis thought. He forced himself not to panic. He put out his hand to steady himself and felt—
Flesh. Cold and wet, but unmistakeably human flesh. In the darkness, he could not even tell if it was Ana. He pulled the body towards him, feeling all around until he found the head. He put his finger to the neck and sensed a feeble pulse beat.
The ship lurched again, settling deeper in the water. The last pockets of air disappeared. Francis just had time to take a last breath before he was submerged.
Get to the hatch, he told himself. The water pushed him against the low ceiling. Holding the other body under his arm, he dived, forcing his eyes open against the stinging salt water to find his way to the ladder. He saw the brightness of the open hatch and kicked desperately for it. Flotsam banged into him; he almost caught his eye on an iron hook suspended from a beam. But he was there and now, finally, the ocean helped him. The rising water lifted him through the hatch, over the broken ladder and out onto the deck.
Now at last he could see who he had rescued. It was Ana – though that would matter little if they did not make good their escape. He knew they had but seconds. The ship was going under.
‘We must get off this ship,’ Francis shouted. But the water around the hull was thick with wreckage. If they tried to swim through it, they would most likely be dashed to pieces. But the mainmast made a bridge across the debris, its rigging like roots tethering it in place.
Ana stirred in his arms. She opened her eyes.
‘What—?’
‘No time.’ Francis thumped her back. Great gouts of seawater spurted out of her mouth. ‘Can you move?’
Ana nodded. ‘I think so.’
‘Then let’s get off this ship.’ Francis heaved Ana onto the mast. Without having to be told, she started crawling out along it, across the churning water. Francis followed her.
It was like riding a wild horse, unbroken and unsaddled. The mast was in constant motion, twisting and writhing with every wave that struck. Francis wrapped his arms and legs around the trunk, inching forward. Sometimes he crawled on top, other times he clung on upside down like a monkey dangling from a branch. Waves snapped below him.
Ahead, he saw the bulk of the main top spreading out from the mast. He crawled through the lubber’s hole and there, at last, was shelter. He crouched against its side with Ana, cupped in its railings and protected, a little, from the storm.
But they could not stay there. The wrecked ship was still shifting in the headwinds of the storm; at any moment the mast might roll over and trap them underwater. They were free of the worst of the debris, but any one of the waves was enough to dash them to pieces. Francis looked out into the storm for the jolly boat, praying that Tom and the others had survived. He could not see them.
‘Can you swim?’ Francis shouted at Ana.
She shook her head. Francis did not hesitate. Wrapping his arms around her, he jumped into the water. He could see the shore, a few hundred yards away, but he did not make straight for it. Instead, he used all his strength merely to stay afloat in the surging sea. He cupped his arm under Ana’s shoulders to keep her head above water. He let the undertow take them, pulling them away from the broken ship until the wreckage thinned out. Only then did he start to swim.
After all Francis had suffered, he barely noticed the waves. He didn’t fight them; instead, he let them push him under, then kicked back to the surface to draw breath when they released him. Abruptly, he felt firm sand underfoot. The waves, which had done so much damage, finally took mercy: they lifted him up and threw him down on the beach.
With the last of his strength, he dragged Ana away from the water and to safety, before the sea could reclaim them. Further up the beach, a fringe of palm trees offered shelter from the rain, but he kept clear. The wind was bending their trunks like reeds, stripping away leaves and fruit. A falling coconut was as fatal as a cannon ball.
Francis’ body ached, and his legs were so weak from fighting the sea he could barely stand upright. The storm winds battered him. All h
e wanted was to bury himself in the sand and wait for the storm to pass. But he couldn’t. Tom was out there; and so was Sarah, and the rest of the crew.
Francis left Ana where she lay, barely conscious. Half crawling, half running, he worked his way along the beach. Warm rain stung his face. The wind whipped up sand that flayed his skin. He never thought of stopping. He searched the beach, shouting Tom’s name with every aching breath. He looked at the crashing waves, and doubted that the little jolly boat could have survived in such turmoil.
Ahead, further down the beach, he saw a cluster of wreckage spread across the sand. As he hurried closer, he saw it was the jolly boat – battered and overturned, but still in one piece. The dark shapes around it were people, lying where they had fallen from the boat. He ran between them, turning each over until he found Sarah and then, at last, Tom.
‘Thank God you are here.’
‘And Ana?’ said Tom, scanning the sea fearfully.
Francis pointed back to where he had left her. ‘She is safe.’
‘Where are we?’ Sarah croaked, her throat ravaged by the salt water she had swallowed. Beside her, pressed into the sand, Tom saw the gleam of the Neptune sword. Through all that, she had somehow clung onto it.
Tom shrugged. ‘Alive – and that is all that truly matters.’ He forced himself not to think of the unfortunates who had gone down with the ship. There would be time for that later.
Sarah tried to stand but the effort was too much. Her face went white, she dropped forward onto her hands and knees and vomited into the sand.
‘Wait here,’ said Tom.
Tom and Francis went to fetch Ana – though when they reached him, she had come to, and insisted she was strong enough to walk by herself. She stood, swayed, and fell into Francis’ arms.
‘I thought I was dead.’
‘I would not let that happen.’
The storm had changed him, Tom realized. Francis carried himself with a new sense of inner strength. As he helped Ana regain her balance, Tom saw the way she gazed at Francis, a look that carried far more than gratitude. She no longer saw him as a boy, but as a man. Suddenly, Tom felt as if he was intruding.
‘We should return to the others.’
The day drew on. The winds dropped, the rain eased to a drizzle, but the waves never relented, pounding the beach, each one breaking with a sound like thunder. The jolly boat had vanished, dragged out by the tide and smashed to matchwood. Tom was exhausted, but he continued scouring the beach until he had found all the men from Kestrel’s crew who had made it ashore. To his relief, Alf Wilson was among them. He gathered them together as far up the beach as he dared, huddling together to protect each other from the rain.
Out to sea, he could see Kestrel’s hulk with the waves breaking over her, so low she often disappeared into the surging sea. One look at her, and Tom knew she would never sail again. Her back had broken, cracking open her hull. Her foremast was a stump; her main and her mizzen had been carried away. Half her planking seemed to have washed up on the beach. Seabirds settled on the flotsam around her, like vultures picking over a corpse.
He could hardly bear to look. Then he thought of the men he had lost, and felt ashamed. He would have traded the ship and all her cargo twice over to bring them back.
‘What shall we do now?’ said Francis.
‘We will find a way,’ said Sarah. Her colour had returned. Now, she was able to move about, binding the sailors’ wounds as best she could with cloth strips torn from their clothing, and splints cut from driftwood.
‘I never found that sitting feeling sorry for myself improved matters.’ Tom stood and strode a few paces up the beach. He pointed to scars on the palm trees, where knives had cut the coconuts.
‘Someone has harvested those. There must be a village nearby.’
A little way down the beach they found a creek that opened up the interior. A path ran along its banks, trodden to mud by many feet.
‘Francis and I will go and explore.’ Tom hooked the Neptune sword to his belt. ‘Sarah and Ana will wait here with Alf and the men.’
‘No,’ said Sarah firmly. ‘We have come too close already to losing each other today. Ana and I will come with you.’
Tom knew better than to argue. Leaving Alf in command of the remaining crew, the four of them followed the path along the creek. It led through a forest of palm and jack trees, bright green against the red soil. The rain had released the odours of the forest, and the air was heavy with smells of vegetation and damp earth.
They had not gone far when Francis let out a yell. Ahead, they saw a thorn fence surrounding a low, mud-walled house and a yard. Beyond it, more houses straggled along the creekside, each standing at a distance from the others in its own compound, so that the whole village stretched more than half a mile. Out in the creek, a woman stood waist deep washing clothes. Gaunt, and naked except for a small cloth tied around her hips, she seemed impervious to the pelting rain.
‘Have they no modesty in this country?’ Francis wondered.
‘We are a long way from London society here,’ Tom pointed out.
‘There is no shame in nakedness in their religion,’ Ana explained. ‘And, in this climate, little need for clothes.’
The woman heard them speaking and looked up. With a cry, she gathered her laundry to her and waded ashore.
‘Wait,’ called Tom. She ran into one of the huts, shouting unintelligibly. Before Tom could follow, a man came striding out, dressed little differently from the woman. Others, hearing the commotion, emerged from their huts. Soon the whole village had gathered around them, chattering and pointing.
A wizened old man with white hair and a long beard stepped forward, evidently the chief or headman. Ana spoke to him in Portuguese, and then in an Indian language. The headman remained impassive. He replied slowly.
‘Can you understand it?’ he asked Ana.
‘They speak a dialect of Malayalam,’ she answered. ‘It is similar enough to Tamil that I can make out what he is saying.’
‘Tell him we need food. Ask him where the nearest port is.’
Ana spoke. When she had finished, the headman gave orders. A skinny boy ran off through the trees. Several of the women went to fetch food. Another woman went into the nearest hut with a lump of what looked like dried mud. She rubbed it over the beaten-earth floor, and then over all the walls.
‘What is she doing?’ asked Francis.
‘Cleaning the house.’
‘With mud?’
Ana gave a sly smile. ‘It is not mud. It is cow dung.’
‘Dung?’ cried Francis, astonished. ‘Do they clean their houses with filth?’
‘The cow is holy to these people,’ Ana explained. ‘Even its excrement purifies the house.’
The woman came out. The headman pointed them inside.
‘He invites us to enter.’
Tom peered in. The door was low, and there were no windows. The only light came through cracks where dung plaster had flaked off the wicker frame. But it was dry, and out of the rain, and a small fire smouldered in a stone circle.
Even so, it was more like an animal pen than a house. In an unknown country, among strangers, Tom’s instincts warned against letting himself be confined.
‘I’d rather sit outside.’
Ana put this to the villagers, but either they didn’t understand or it was some grave breach of etiquette. They crowded around the Courtneys, herding them in through the doorway. More than one of them touched the Neptune sword on Tom’s belt, marvelling at the intricacy of the workmanship, and the enormous sapphire in the pommel.
They sat on the floor, while the villagers waited at the door, ignoring the rain that soaked their skins. Naked children pushed through their parents’ legs to stare at the strangers. Women brought them balls of rice and lentils served on broad vine leaves. Tom devoured the food. His stomach craved more, but looking at the tight ribs and spindly limbs of the children he guessed they had already given more than t
hey could afford.
When they had eaten, Tom moved to the door. The crowd gave no ground.
‘They say we have to stay here,’ said Ana.
‘Why?’
‘From what I heard, I think they have sent to their local chieftain,’ Ana explained. ‘Perhaps he will be able to help us.’
Tom went back to his place. He drummed his fingers on the earth floor in frustration. ‘Have they even told you where we are?’
‘No. Can you not tell from our last course and heading?’
Tom shrugged. ‘That storm drove us so hard, I could not place us within fifty miles. It might be Ceylon …’
‘It is not Ceylon,’ said Ana. ‘Their language is different.’
‘India, then. The Malabar coast.’
Ana nodded. ‘I think so – and that is to our benefit. The British and Portuguese have trading factories all along this coast. We will find one.’
‘Will they help us?’ Francis wondered.
‘Our ship does not lie in deep water,’ said Sarah. ‘Perhaps, when the storm calms, we could salvage her cargo and buy their aid, if they will not give it freely.’
‘Most of our goods will be spoiled, I fear,’ said Tom. ‘But we may retrieve the ivory. Also, Dorian and Aboli have Centaurus, and a good cargo of their own to trade. When we do not arrive at the rendezvous, they will return to Cape Town. If we can find passage back there ourselves, we may yet survive with only a few bruises.’
They waited. Rain drummed on the roof. The villagers never moved.
‘They look as if they’re waiting for something,’ Francis remarked.
‘Their overlord,’ Ana suggested. She sat beside Francis, nestling against him for warmth. ‘These people live in terror of their masters. They will do nothing without permission.’
‘I hope this overlord has a set of dry clothes that will fit me,’ said Sarah. Her skin itched from hours in her wet, salt-ridden dress, but she had nothing to change into.
‘And a ship to carry us home,’ Francis added.
‘And a haunch of mutton,’ Tom suggested drowsily. He leaned against the mud wall. The fire had started to warm him. He had not slept in two days. His eyelids started to droop.