The galleon's grave hg-3

by Martin Stephen

  'And what is there to stop me?' he said, finding himself almost shouting at her. He suspected quite a lot of people ended up shouting at this particular young lady. He got control of himself.

  'Because if you do I shall throw myself overboard,' she said, simply.

  Something like despair clutched at Gresham. Was it a bluff? No, he decided, looking her up and down. She was daft enough to do it. 'But you will be so much more comfortable on board the San Felipe

  'I am comfortable here, thank you very much.' She was sitting primly now, hands in her lap, in one of the only two, tiny cabins on the boat. 'I'm sure you've much to do with… winching sails or… heaving ballasts.' Clearly her grasp of matters nautical was hazy. 'You have my leaves to go and do whatever it is you have to do.'

  'It's "leave", not "leaves", and thank you, my ladyship,' said Gresham sarcastically. 'I'm most honoured that your gracious majesty in her infinite wisdom and mercy grants me her permission to do what no one can stop me doing anyway.'

  The Ice Queen said nothing. Gresham had clearly been dismissed the presence. In the final count God took the decision for them, as Drake might have said. The steady wind allowed no turning back towards Drake's fleet and the San Felipe, and seemed determined to blow them away from it as fast as possible.

  'Could be worse,' muttered Mannion.

  'How?' said Gresham. 'Just tell me how.' One of the sailors, a huge raspberry birthmark on the side of his face, who had just hurled a coil of rope in Gresham's path, stood there. Gresham looked at him. The smile faded from the sailor's face, and slowly he bent to move the coils.

  'Just think, if Drake 'ad gone and got her pregnant. Any child from that pair'd be Anti-Christ.'

  They left the captain to sleep in his noisome hole of a cabin, both men standing watch in turn, sleeping on a mattress outside Anna's door.

  'This lot'd as soon cut our throats as look at us,' said Mannion. It was not simply that the crew seemed to blame Gresham and Mannion for their exile on to this leaking graveyard. They must have guessed that a man of Gresham's obvious wealth would have at least some gold stitched into his clothing. Robert Leng had clung pathetically to Gresham's side. Let him, thought Gresham. I have questions to ask of you, but later.

  The crisis came three days into the voyage. The sky started to take on a hard, metallic sheen on the second day, though the wind stayed steady, and the heat was electric. 'Storm,' said Mannion. 'And she's letting in water faster than we can pump it out.' Two men had been permanently manning the Daisy's battered pump. It was numbing work, but the water level in the bilges was rising and the ship was riding heavily, the bow more happy to drive into the bottom of the waves than to rise up on their crests. Soon they could hear the thump and splash of the water as it surged backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards in the hold.

  Then the wind dropped. There was an hour, a fearful hour in which the sailors looked always towards the far horizon, an hour of clammy stillness and heat. They saw the black clouds rolling towards them before they heard their thunder. Within the hour all light was gone, and the sea was a roaring, heaving maelstrom, the Daisy plunging down huge walk of water, the careering bow burying itself up to a third of the hull, before dragging itself reluctantly up for the ship to rear stomach-sickeningly high on the crest of the next huge wave. With a snap as of a broken limb, the mains'l split into two halves, and within seconds was mere loose strips of canvas blowing from the yards. The Captain, all alcohol bleached from him by terror, was screaming orders, but the men were refusing to climb the yards, seeing only death aloft. Gresham and Mannion were clinging on for dear life to the guardrail, all pride cast away, kneeling on the deck. Mannion yelled in Gresham's ear.

  'He wants them to take in sail! Trying to haul to, ride out the storm with bare yards! 'Cept he's probably wrong!'

  The two tops'ls, one on the main and the other on the foremast, were holding, God only knew how, driving the Daisy forwards. At times the effect was almost as if the ship was surfing, clinging on the edge of massive waves and driving forward with them. She was almost impossible to hold on the tiller, with three men on it. It gave vicious kicks as the waves slapped and boiled over the stern. Yet now she felt like a lead-filled barrel on the waves, water over the maindeck half the time.

  'Pump!' yelled Mannion above the roar of the storm. The two men manning the pump were enfeebled, flapping at the handle. The rest of the crew were cowering under the forecastle. One was screaming a prayer, mouth agape. A great wave passed over the whole bunch, green fury laced with delicate white foam, and when it finally receded there were two fewer men. The one praying was retching, coughing up the bitter salt water from his mouth where he had inhaled it. Gresham and Mannion grabbed the pump handle, and swung themselves into working the antiquated mechanism. They had been soaked through within minutes of the storm's onset. Gresham could feel his skin red-raw where the salt-encrusted fabric was rubbing on his shoulder and elbows, yet where the pain of salt on open flesh should have been there was only a dull, numbing hurt.

  They had been driving before the wind for hours when a huge, green boiling sea reared up over the stern and slammed into it. With a wail two men were hurled away from the tiller, crashed into the bulwark and sucked over the side, hands held up beseechingly as if in prayer. The tiller kicked viciously back, flinging the helmsman away from it. What was left of the Daisy above the surface started to swing sluggishly round. To be side-on to these gargantuan seas was to be dead, rolled right over and swamped. With a massive leap the helmsman hurled himself back at the wildly flailing tiller, managed somehow to grab and with superhuman strength forced it over. The next vast wave was already towering over them. Slowly, so slowly as to torture every sense, the waterlogged stern swung round. With effortless power, it was as if the tower of water gave the ship the tiniest of little kicks, swooping and streaming under instead of over the stern.

  A wave crashed down into the well of the boat. There was a scream from Gresham's side. Robert Leng had been plucked from the deck as if he was weightless, stretched out over the side, his only claim on life one white-knuckled hand clinging with the ferocity of a new-born child to Gresham's upper arm. Gresham looked into the eyes of the man who had betrayed him, wanted to deliver him up to a drum-head court-martial and a hanging. With a shrug of his arm Gresham could have sent him to the bottom of the sea. Instead, with a surging lunge that threatened his own hold on the boat, Gresham reached forward and hauled Leng back on board by the scruff of his neck.

  'And would you do the same for me?' he yelled in the teeth of the storm.

  But Robert Leng was sobbing, his arms wrapped round the stump of the lanteen mast, clinging to it as if it were his mother, father, wife, brother, sister and child.

  The storm stopped without warning. The howl and shriek of the wind through the torn rigging was no longer a constant, but a rising and falling crescendo. Then it lost any rhythm, occasional gusts whipping through the air, snarling at the impudence man had built like an animal circling a beaten foe, unwilling to give up the fight. For hours a huge, rolling sea of mountainous wave after mountainous wave picked the Daisy like a sodden cork, flinging her this way and that.

  It was a desperate sight that met the salt-scarred eyes of the survivors. The Daisy was riding with scarcely two feet of freeboard, the water in the hold nearly up to the level of the hatch. If she had had gun ports cut into her side she would have sunk by now, the water above them and the ports undoubtedly stove in, but her few cannon were placed high on the maindeck, firing through the rail. Three of the guns had smashed through the thin wood, the fourth they had cut free and sent after its companions to lighten the ship. Rigging was streaming from the main and the foremast, and the main mast was swinging ominously.

  There were ten of the crew left alive, not including Gresham, Mannion, the gibbering Leng, the man still at the tiller and Anna. The Captain had been swept overboard, as had two crew. Two others lay crumpled, lifeless, on the deck. One had been crushed
by a cannon as it careered across the deck, another flung against the bulkhead, the impact smashing his head in as effectively as a blow from a mallet. The survivors were huddled by the forecastle, the position they had taken up for most of the storm.

  It was exhaustion that did it. Gresham had gone aft to check that Anna was still alive. She emerged, swinging the wooden door wide open, still somehow composed. Then her eyes opened wide in terror, and Gresham sensed rather than saw a rush of men. He turned, to see that the crew had risen as one, and brought a smashing blow down on Mannion's head with a baulk of timber as he had bent over, struggling to remove the hatch cover. With a sickening thud he collapsed over the half-open hatch, and the men roared their approval, turning like a pack of hyenas on to Gresham.

  He did not know what came over him, had no control. It was as if another dark figure stepped up from the deepest recesses of his mind, pushed him to one side and took over his life for the allotted time, the time in which it could and probably should have ended.

  Drake had not barred Gresham from claiming his sword from the Elizabeth Bonaventure. Stupidly, he had kept the beautiful weapon strapped to his side throughout the storm. Madness of course. Its length threatened to trip him at any time as he was hurled about the tiny deck, and no steel could be a weapon against the ferocious hatred of nature.

  The sailors were a vision of Hell. Most had the clothes half-ripped off their backs, most had lost their teeth and the involuntary snarls on their faces revealed gaping black holes. Yet of all things it was the slap, slap of their bare feet on the sodden deck that Gresham remembered most vividly.

  The sword flickered once. A backswing to give it momentum, right to left, and then a sweeping curve across the path of the advancing mutineers. He caught the first man in the side of the cheek, and the force of the swinging blow was so great that the metal blade slit through the skin, ran across his tongue and flew out of the other side of his face with a jet-like explosion of blood and particles of flesh. Gresham had cut his face in half, the flap of his lower cheek on both sides hanging down dripping red blood, the man's eyes wide open in shock and horror. There was still force in the blow. The men faltered, stumbled, their primeval instinct seeing the glitter of the blade before their conscious minds registered it. It was not enough for one of them to stop in time. The blade collided with the side of his head, Gresham at full stretch, angling it upwards with a flick of his wrists just before impact. As clean as a surgeon's knife, the man's ear leapt out from the side of his head, flying obscenely through the air like a ball kicked by a child.

  The men's eyes swivelled upwards to follow the ludicrous piece of flesh and heard a soft thud as it hit the deck. The man whose face Gresham had opened had been pushed forward by his momentum. As from nowhere, the long, cruel blade of an ornate Italian dagger had appeared in Gresham's other hand. Curling his sword arm, at the end of its swing now, round the back of the man's head he drew him almost lovingly on to the blade, driving it hard under and up through his rib-cage. Blood was streaming from the man's ruined face. His eyes opened wide, a soundless scream in them. In an instant his life flickered out. Gresham stood for a moment, cradling the man as if he were a lover, holding him upright on the blade. Then he flung his sword arm back and savagely withdrew the dagger, at the same time flinging the corpse backwards. Like a wet rag doll it flew through the air, collapsing like a sodden sack of rubbish on to the deck.

  The other men fell back. One stumbled over the prostrate form of Mannion, who moaned and stirred. Gresham made two quick paces forward, his sword a lightning bolt pointed at the souls of the mutineers. They fell back, leaving Mannion halfway between them. Suddenly Gresham felt a presence, half turned. The girl was there, clutching the snapped-off half of the pole used for sponging out the cannon. Mannion drew himself groggily to his feet. A line of blood streaked his face, from what was clearly a fearsome gash on his skull. The man must have a skull of iron, thought Gresham. The blow he had been given would have killed any other man.

  'Longboat!' he croaked, swaying but staying upright. 'Put the buggers in the longboat. Let 'em row home!'

  The longboat was stowed in the middle of the deck though to call it a longboat was a misdirection. It was a stumpy little rowing boat, capable of taking six men at a pinch. What was remarkable was that it appeared to be undamaged, alone of anything on board the Daisy. Its lashings had remained firmly secured, and somehow the careering cannons had scraped by instead of into it.

  What was Mannion thinking? Was he thinking at all, and had the blow addled his brains? The longboat looked about the only thing on board the Daisy that should be floating, that was seaworthy. Wasn't it their only chance? As if reading his mind, Mannion turned to Gresham. Turned his back on his attackers, in an act of supreme arrogance.

  'Do what I says’ he hissed. 'Just this once, do it without arguing!'

  Gresham looked at Mannion, sword arm still outstretched, looked at the men, huddling back now, courage replaced by stark fear.

  'In the boat,' he said, 'and off this ship.'

  The men turned to each other, startled. Was this man mad? This was why they had attacked him, to get the longboat, the only chance of survival! The officers and that bloody woman were bound to get it, weren't they? That was how it worked.

  Shuffling, they started to free the longboat from its moorings. It should have been hoisted overboard, with a line rigged from the main mast, but that piece of rigging had long gone. Instead, freed of its ropes, the men manhandled the boat to the side and simply tipped it into the water. The surface was so close to the top of the Daisy's hull that the boat hardly splashed as it hit. The one who seemed to be their leader looked enquiringly to where four barrels of water had been lashed to the deck. Two had gone, two were left. God knows if the water inside them had been penetrated by the sea, but the water was fresh enough, loaded off one of the tiny islands by San Miguel. Gresham gave a quick nod. Three men manhandled the barrel into the boat, which sank dangerously under their combined weight, but righted itself again. Without a word, the men pushed off, fumbling for the oars stowed in the bottom of their craft, rowing in an ungainly fashion. Only when long out of sword range did they cry back over the water to them. 'Bastards!'they screamed. *Why did you give them the boat?' asked Gresham.

  ' "Are you alright?" might've been a nicer thing to ask me first,' said Mannion, ruefully touching his head where a large hole the size of a salt mine seemed to have been opened up.

  "You're talking, so you must be alright. Stupid bloody idiot to get caught out like that anyway. Serves you right. But answer the question! That boat's our only chance of survival.'

  'No it ain't,' said Mannion. 'We needed them off here. Ten to three still isn't good odds. And anyway, watch that boat. I should think it'll happen before we lose sight of them.' *What will happen?' *You just wait.'

  The boat was almost on the horizon when it happened. The mutineers had rigged the tiny sail the boat carried, and suddenly Gresham saw it topple, fall over the side. Men were standing up in the boat, dark silhouettes against the sky. One of them suddenly vanished, as if he had fallen through the deck.

  'Rot,' said Mannion, 'the whole boat's riddled with rot. It was one of the first things I checked for. Someone's put a coat of paint over it all, but there's hardly a sound bit of timber in the whole bloody lot. Worst o' the lot round where they seat the mast. Once they put a sail up, they'll tear the heart out of her.'

  The men were frantically stumbling and scrambling, arms and legs increasing the speed with which the rotten wood disintegrated. Soon heads were bobbing in the water.

  'Don't imagine as any of them can swim,' said Mannion. 'Usually can't, sailors. And they'll panic, of course. Flail out, drive the good bits of timber away instead of grabbing on to them. Couple of them might grab something big enough to keep 'em afloat. Could take, two, three maybe even four days to die, if the weather stays good.'

  Across the sea from them men were praying, screaming, not going gently int
o the good night but fighting for every scrap of life, and losing. Men with thoughts, with feelings, some with wives, all with lovers, men with children, men whose mothers had wept and laughed over them. Bad men, probably, the sweepings of God's earth, but men with the same capacity to feel pain and the same desire to hold on to existence as all of us, life being the only gift they had been given free of charge. Men brought crying into the world, leaving it crying their pain. Until the waters finally closed over their heads. And from the sinking deck of the Daisy — how odd that word sounded, redolent of English meadows, the smell of Spring and good solid earth, here on this rolling, oily expanse of grey water where no roots could ever take hold and everything was impermanent, fluid — these little dramas were being played out without sound, the figures in the water mere marionettes, detached, somehow not real.

  Except they were real for Mannion.

  'Bastards,' said Mannion, with total sincerity. 'Remember not to creep up on me again.'

  Gresham had just killed a man, face to face. He was watching six men die. Yet he felt almost light-headed. Nothing mattered any more. It was all Fate. Man decided nothing. It was all decided for him. It felt very different from the time in Grantchester meadows. Was it maturity? Or was he simply becoming even more callous?

  They turned away from the pathetic frail figures struggling in the water. Soon they were lost to view as Gresham and the others found a barrel of water, broached it, and drank until the taste of salt was no longer quite so strong in their mouths. The olives and the biscuit they found in other barrels were the best thing they had ever tasted. Was it the food they were tasting, or was it simply the taste of being alive? Anna ate with them. She had said virtually nothing, except to confirm that she had no lasting injuries. The tattered dress no longer concealed the girl's ankles, and Gresham found his eyes drawn unstoppably towards them, a different hunger surprising him now that he had taken the edge off the hunger for food and clean water. Suddenly the feet swirled away, and the girl was back to her cabin. God knew what terrors she had gone through there in the storm. She had seen a man killed in front of her, must have known her fate had Gresham and Mannion been overcome. She had not seen fit to share her fears with them. Perhaps they had had enough of their own.