Monsoon

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘She ain’t the high and mighty lady she pretends,’ Tom told himself angrily. ‘Under all those fancy petticoats she loves it just like Mary or any of the other village girls. I bet a gold guinea to a pinch of dried horse droppings, she knows how to play Bury the Mannikin with the best of them.’

  He had removed his pallet to a niche behind one of the cannon, so that neither Guy nor Dorian could lie beside him and keep watch on his comings and goings during the night. The hours of the watch seemed interminable. Once or twice he dozed, but then he would jerk awake, trembling with anticipation or consumed with doubts.

  When seven bells in the first watch was struck on the deck above where he lay, he could contain himself no longer and crept out from under his blanket to make his way stealthily to the head of the companionway, holding his breath in case one of his younger brothers accosted him.

  Once again he paused outside the tiny cabin in which the three girls slept, and placed his ear to the door. He heard nothing, and felt the temptation to tap on the panel to find out if Caroline was lying awake as he had been. Good sense prevailed, however, and he left the door to creep down onto the lower deck.

  To his relief the key to the magazine was where he had left it along with the tinderbox. He unlocked the door, slipped through it, climbed onto the ready rack to reach the lantern in its gimbals then took it out into the passage and closed the door carefully so that a spark from the tinderbox would not touch off any loose grains of powder on the magazine floor.

  He brought the tinderbox down from its hiding-place, and, squatting on the deck, considered the risk he was taking in striking a flint in the darkness of the ship. It was not so much the danger of explosion that worried him, but that any light might attract attention. His father’s cabin was at the top of the companionway, and beside it was that of Mr Beatty and his wife. They might be sleepless, or one of them might leave the cabin to answer nature’s call. The officer of the watch might move through the depths of the hull on his rounds and come to investigate any unusual illumination.

  Yet Tom knew with absolute certainty that Caroline would have neither the courage nor the knowledge of the layout of the hull to find her way down to the magazine in complete darkness. At least he must give her that much encouragement.

  He crouched over the tinderbox, shielding it with his body, and struck the steel to the flint. There was a blinding eruption of blue sparks and the tinder caught. His heart was beating fast as he lifted the mesh screen of the lantern, lit the wick and cupped it with his hands until it caught fairly. Then he lowered the screen, which dimmed the flame but protected it from setting off any loose grains of powder. He tucked away both key and tinderbox in their hiding-place, then carried the lantern back into the magazine and replaced it in its gimbals.

  He retreated from the magazine and drew the door to behind him, adjusting the gap so that only the merest glimmer of light showed through, not enough to attract undue attention but sufficient to tempt a timid girl to try the ladder of the companionway.

  Then he crouched beside the door, ready to close it at the first indication of any trouble and blot out the light. He could not hear the ship’s bell down here so close to the bilges, so he lost count of time.

  ‘She’s not coming,’ he told himself, after what seemed to him the passage of several hours. He half rose, but still he could not bring himself to leave. ‘Just a little longer,’ he decided, and settled back against the timber bulkhead. He must have dozed, for the first warning he had of her arrival was the perfume of her body, that kitten smell of a young girl, and then he heard the slither of her bare feet on the deck, very close at hand.

  He sprang up, and she screamed in terror as he rose out of the darkness at her feet. He seized her desperately. ‘It’s me! It’s me!’ he whispered. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

  She clung to him with surprising strength. ‘You frightened me.’ She was shaking wildly, so he held her to his chest and stroked her hair. She had let it down. It was thick and springing under his hands, reaching halfway down her back.

  ‘It’s all right. You’re safe. I’m here to look after you.’ In the dim light he saw that she wore a nightdress of pale cotton. It was fastened at her throat with a ribbon, and reached down to her ankles.

  ‘I should never have come,’ she whispered, her face pressed to his chest.

  ‘Yes. Oh, yes!’ he told her. ‘I’ve waited so long. I wanted you to come so so much.’ He was amazed at how small she was, and how warm her body was against his. He hugged her tighter. ‘It’s all right, Caroline. We’re safe here.’

  He ran his hands down her back. The cotton was sheer and flimsy and she wore no other garment under it. He could feel every swell and hollow of her body.

  ‘What if my father—’ Her voice was breathless and broken with fear.

  ‘No, no.’ He stopped her. ‘Come with me.’ He drew her swiftly into the magazine and pushed the door shut behind them. ‘No one can ever find us here.’

  He hugged her close and kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelt faintly aromatic. Her shaking eased, and she lifted her face and looked up at him. Her eyes were huge and luminous in the dim light of the screened lantern. ‘Don’t be rough with me,’ she begged. ‘Don’t hurt me.’

  The very idea appalled him. ‘Oh, my darling. I could never do that.’ He found that the words of reassurance came naturally and convincingly to his lips. ‘I love you – I have loved you since the first moment I laid eyes on your beautiful face.’ He did not yet realize that he had the gift of eloquence that sets great lovers apart, nor did he know how well it would serve him over the years ahead. ‘I loved you even when you treated me so coldly.’ Her waist was so slim that he could almost encircle it with his hands. He pulled her harder against himself and her belly felt hot against his.

  ‘I never wanted to be unkind to you,’ she told him piteously, ‘I wanted to be with you, but I couldn’t help myself.’

  ‘You don’t have to explain,’ he said, ‘I know,’ and he kissed her face, rained kisses on her forehead and her eyes, until at last he found her mouth. At first her lips were firmly closed to him, then slowly they opened like the fleshy petals of some exotic flower, all hot and moist and filled with a nectar that made his senses swim. He wanted to have all of it, to suck out her essence through her mouth. ‘We are safe here,’ he reassured her. ‘No one ever comes down here.’ He kept whispering reassurances, to distract her as he moved her towards the racks of silk powder bags.

  ‘You are so lovely.’ He eased her backwards. ‘I have thought about you every waking moment.’ She relaxed, and let herself fall backwards onto the mattress of silk and gunpowder.

  Her head was thrown back, and he kissed her throat. At the same time he gently loosed the ribbon that held the top of her nightdress. His instinct warned him to proceed so slowly that she could pretend that it was not happening.

  He whispered to her, ‘Your hair is like silk and it smells of roses.’ But his fingers were quick and light.

  One of her breasts popped out of the top of her nightgown, whereupon her whole body stiffened and she gasped, ‘We mustn’t do this. You must stop. Please.’

  Her breast was very white, and much bigger than he had expected. He made no move to touch it, although it sagged softly against his cheek. He held her tightly and murmured assurances and flattery until slowly the tension left her body, and one of her hands groped up to the back of his head. She took a handful of his pigtail, and her grip tightened on it until his eyes watered, but he did not mind the pain.

  Almost as though she was unaware of what she was doing she used the handful of his hair to direct him. The warm soft breast pressed against his face so that, for a moment, he could not breathe. Then he opened his mouth and sucked in the nipple. It was rubbery and firm in his mouth. Mary had liked him to do this – ‘feeding the baby’, she had called it.

  Caroline made a soft humming sound in the back of her throat, and began to rock him softly as though he were an in
fant. Her eyes were closed and a small half-smile curved her lips as he sucked upon her rhythmically.

  ‘Touch me,’ she murmured, so faintly that he did not understand what she had said. ‘Touch me,’ she repeated. ‘Touch me like you did before.’ Her gown had rucked up almost to the top of her thighs and now she moved her knees apart. He reached down, and she sighed. ‘Yes, like that.’

  She began to thrust with her hips as though she was posting on a trotting pony. It did not take more than a few minutes before her back arched and he felt every muscle in her small body tense.

  It’s like drawing a longbow, Tom thought, when the nocked arrow is ready to loose.

  Suddenly she shuddered and gave a cry that startled him, then fell back and went limp in his arms like a dead woman. He was alarmed. He looked into her face and saw that it was flushed, her eyes were closed and dewy droplets of sweat sparkled on her upper lip.

  She opened her eyes and stared at him blankly. Then, suddenly, she drew back and struck him a ringing open-handed blow across the cheek. ‘I hate you!’ she whispered fiercely. ‘You should never have made me come here. You should never have touched me like that. It’s all your fault,’ and she burst into tears.

  He recoiled in astonishment, but before he could recover she had leaped to her feet. With a rustle of cloth and small bare feet on the wooden deck she pushed open the magazine door and fled down the passageway.

  It was some time before Tom had recovered sufficiently from the shock to stir himself. Still bemused, he doused the lantern then locked the magazine door behind him carefully. He would have to find an opportunity to return the key to his father’s desk, but there was no urgency for that. So far there had been no indication that its absence from the drawer had been discovered. Yet it was too dangerous to keep it on his person, so he returned it to the hiding-place above the lintel.

  When he crept past the door of Caroline’s cabin, he found he was trembling with indignation and anger. He felt an almost irresistible urge to drag her from her bunk and vent his feelings upon her. He managed to contain himself, and to make his way back to his pallet on the gundeck.

  Guy was waiting for him, a silent shadow crouching beside the gun-carriage.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded, in a whisper.

  ‘Nowhere.’ Tom was taken by surprise, and the fatuous reply was out before he could stop it. ‘I was in the head.’

  ‘You’ve been gone since seven bells in the first watch, almost two hours,’ Guy told him grimly. ‘You must have filled the bucket. It’s a wonder there’s anything left of you.’

  ‘I went on deck,’ Tom started defensively, then broke off. ‘Anyway, I don’t have to tell you. You’re not my keeper.’ He threw himself on the pallet, curled into a ball and pulled the blanket over his head.

  Stupid little vixen, he thought bitterly. I wouldn’t give a fig if she fell overboard and was eaten by the sharks.

  The Seraph bored on into the south-west, never shortening sail during the starry nights. At noon each day Tom was on the quarterdeck with the other officers, using his own backstaff, a gift from his father, to observe the noon passage, and to calculate the ship’s latitude. His father and Ned Tyler made simultaneous sun-shots, then compared their results. On one unforgettable noonday Tom finished the complex calculation, and looked up from his slate. ‘Well, sir?’ his father asked, with an indulgent smile.

  ‘Twenty-two degrees sixteen minutes thirty-eight seconds south latitude,’ Tom answered uncertainly. ‘By my reckoning, we should be only a few leagues north of the Tropic of Capricorn.’

  Hal frowned dramatically and looked across at Ned. ‘A gross error there, Mr Mate?’

  ‘Indeed, Captain. He’s out by at least ten seconds.’

  ‘I make it fifteen seconds of error.’ Hal’s expression softened. ‘No need to take the cat to him?’

  ‘Not this time.’ Ned gave one of his rare grins. The difference between the three calculations amounted to no more than a few nautical miles of the ocean’s vastness. No man alive could have said which of the three was correct.

  ‘Well done, lad.’ Hal ruffled his hair. ‘We might make a seaman of you yet.’ The glow of pleasure those words gave Tom lasted him the rest of that day.

  As they crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, the weather changed abruptly. They had entered the wet quadrant of the southern Atlantic, and the sky ahead was filled from horizon to heavens with dark, brooding thunderclouds, their immense heads flattened into the shape of the anvils of Vulcan, the blacksmith of the gods. Lightning rippled and glowed in their dark bellies. Thunderclaps beat down like the strokes of the god’s hammer.

  Hal passed the order to shorten sail, and made a signal to the Yeoman astern of them: ‘Keep station on me.’

  The sun went down behind the stormclouds, and stained them with its blood, then the rain fell upon the two ships in torrents. Solid sheets of water hammered the wooden decks so hard that the din drowned the men’s voices and blotted out their vision. They could see nothing through the roaring curtains of water from one rail to the other. The scuppers could not clear the water from the main deck fast enough, and the helmsman stood knee-deep. The crew cavorted in this world of sweet water, holding up their faces with mouths wide open, drinking it down until their bellies bulged, stripping off their clothing and washing the salt from their bodies, laughing and splashing each other.

  Hal made no effort to restrain them. The salt had galled all their bodies, in some cases forming suppurating sea-boils in the armpits and crotch. It was a relief to wash the corrosive crystals from their skins. Instead he ordered the empty water-casks filled. The men scooped up bucket-fuls of the sweet, pure water and by nightfall every cask aboard was brimming.

  The rain never let up all that night or the next day, and on the third day, when the sun rose over the watery wilderness of creamy whitecaps and towering cloud ranges, the Yeoman was nowhere in sight. Hal ordered both Tom and Dorian to the masthead, for their young eyes had already proved themselves the sharpest on the ship. Though they stayed aloft most of that day, they could make out no flash of the Yeoman’s canvas on the disturbed horizon.

  ‘We won’t see her again afore we drop anchor off Good Hope,’ Ned Tyler opined, and secretly Hal agreed with him. There was only the remotest possibility that the two ships would find each other again in this endless expanse of wind-whipped ocean. It did not worry Hal unduly: he had planned with Anderson for just such an eventuality. Their prearranged rendezvous was in Table Bay, and from now onwards each ship would have to make its passage independently of the other.

  On the fifty-second day out of Plymouth Hal ordered the Seraph put about on the starboard tack. By his calculation they were less than a thousand miles off the coast of South America. With the backstaff and the navigational tables he could confidently place the ship’s longitude to within twenty miles. However, the determination of longitude was not an exact science but more an arcane ritual, based on a study of each day’s pegs on the traverse board and a series of guesses and extrapolations of the ship’s distance and course made good.

  Hal knew full well that he could be several hundreds of miles adrift in his dead reckoning. To make a landfall on Good Hope, he would now have to ride the trade winds down until he struck thirty-two degrees of south latitude, then hold due east until he raised the distinctive table land that marked the tip of the African continent. This would be the slowest, most wearying leg of the voyage: with the wind almost in his face he would have to tack every few hours.

  To avoid missing the Cape to the south, and running through into the Indian Ocean beyond, he must lay his course to strike the savage African shore some leagues to the north of Good Hope. There was always the danger of making that landfall in the black of night or in the dense fog that so often shrouded the southern Cape – many great ships had found a watery graveyard on this treacherous shore. With this threat on his mind, Hal was thankful that, when the time came, he would have Tom’s and Dorian’s sharp y
oung eyes at the masthead.

  Thinking of his two sons, Hal was pleased with the progress they were making with their Arabic. Guy had dropped out of these lessons on the grounds that there was precious little Arabic spoken in Bombay, but each afternoon Tom and Dorian huddled for an hour with Alf Wilson on the forecastle and chattered away in the language like parakeets. When Hal tested them he found they could hold their own in a conversation with him. Their growing fluency in the language would stand them in good stead on the Fever Coast. It was a good strategy to speak your enemy’s language, Hal thought.

  Apart from the Yeoman they had not seen another ship since they had left Ushant, but this ocean was not an empty wasteland: there were strange and wonderful sights to intrigue and delight Tom and Dorian as they squatted shoulder to shoulder in the crow’s nest high above the deck.

  One day out of the great wilderness of water there came an albatross. Circling the ship on wide pinions, dipping and rising on currents of air, gliding and planing, sometimes so close to the crests of the waves that it seemed to become part of the spume, it kept station with the ship for days on end. Neither of the boys had seen a bird of that size before. At times it sailed close to where they crouched in their barrel-shaped perch, seeming to use the updraught from the Seraph’s mainsail to hold its position, never flapping its wings, only gently fingering the air with the black feathers at the tips. Dorian particularly delighted in the creature whose wingspan was three or four times that of his arms.

  ‘Mollymawk!’ He called it by the sailors’ pet-name, meaning ‘Stupid Gull’, for its trusting, confiding nature when it settled to earth. Dorian had begged scraps of food from the ship’s cook and tossed them to the circling bird. Very soon the albatross had learned to trust and accept him, came winging to his whistle and cry. It sailed beside him almost close enough to touch, hanging almost motionless in the air, daintily snapping up the morsels he threw to it.

  On the third day, while Tom hung on to his belt to prevent him falling, Dorian reached out as far as he could with a piece of fat salt pork in his hand. Mollymawk regarded him with a wise, ancient eye, banked in on his spreading pinions and took the offering from him with a delicate pinch of his formidable curved beak, which could easily have lopped off one of the boy’s fingers.