by Wilbur Smith
Alf Wilson took one of the longboats through a pass in the coral reef into the quieter waters of the lagoon: from there it was safer and easier to land a crew on the reef armed with knives and axes. As the water burst and foamed around them they clung to the stranded mast.
In the meantime five of the strongest swimmers, led by Aboli and Big Daniel, had swum from the pinnaces and the longboats to the reef, trailing light lines secured around their waists. They passed the ends to the men already clinging to the foremast, then swam back unhindered to the boats.
The light lines were used to pass heavier, stronger lines to the men on the mast. Once they had secured the ends to its butt, the small boats fanned out and began the attempt to haul the sixty-foot length of heavy pine off the reef.
All the boats held double crews, so that as one team tired the next could take over. They took up the slack in the lines, and when they came taut heaved together. The axemen on the mast hacked at the trailing lines and bundled canvas that were now woven into the jagged spines and needles of coral, trying to free it from this tenacious embrace. The oar blades thrashed the water, churning it white as the boats hauled at the stubborn load. The mast shifted, slid a few yards, and the crews shouted with triumph, but immediately it came up short again, stuck just as firmly as before. The backbreaking work had to begin all over again. A reluctant foot at a time the coral grudgingly yielded its grip, but Hal had to change the teams on the rowing benches three times before the mast rolled off the reef and they could tow it out into deeper water.
Alf Wilson rescued his men, who were still clinging to the mast. When they were dragged from the water, their arms and legs were lacerated and torn from contact with the merciless coral. Hal knew that many of those wounds would fester, for the coral was as poisonous as a serpent’s venom.
By this time the sun was setting. Hal changed the teams again, and the little boats set out on the long row around the point into the lagoon beyond. With the heavy load they were dragging it seemed that they were standing still in the water, straining to no avail on the long sweeps, their arms and backs burned red as raw beef by the tropical sun, their sweat puddling on the decks under the thwarts. Dwarfed by their load the boats inched painfully along the seaward side of the reef, but when they tried to tow the mast around the point of Ras Ibn Khum, the current that swirled along the headland took them in its jaws, and held them fast.
While they battled against it the sun sank into the sea. Though they were near exhaustion, every muscle in their bodies racked and aching, their eyes glazed with the agony of their efforts, they could not pause to rest: if they had, the current would have thrown them back immediately onto the reef. As an example to his men, Hal stripped off his jacket and shirt and took his turn at the oars. Neither his back muscles nor his hands were hardened to this heavy work as were those of his men, and after the first hour he was in a trance of pain, the loom of the oar stained and sticky with blood from his raw palms. But the agony that gripped his body and the hypnotic swing and heave of rowing served to distract him from the deeper pain of the loss of his son.
A little before midnight the tide changed and the ebb around the point began to work in their favour. They moved slowly around it and into the sheltered lagoon. At last, in the moonlight, they saw the Seraph lying peacefully at her anchor on the tranquil waters speckled by the reflection of the stars. When they secured the floating mast alongside the ship, few had strength left to climb the ladder to the deck and most slumped in the bottom of the small boats, dead asleep before their heads hit the deck.
Hal forced himself wearily up the ladder to Ned Tyler, who was waiting for him at the rail. In the lantern light there was respect in his eyes as he evaluated Hal’s state of exhaustion and saw his bloody hands. ‘I will have the surgeon see to you right away.’
He stepped forward to help Hal off the ladder, but Hal shook him off. ‘Where is Tom?’ he asked huskily. ‘Where is my son?’
Ned looked upwards and, following his gaze, Hal saw a small, lonely figure high in the rigging of the main mast.
‘He’s been up there ever since we dropped anchor,’ Ned said.
‘Give the men a tot of rum with their breakfast, Mr Tyler,’ Hal ordered, ‘but get them up again at first light. God knows, they’ve earned a rest, but I cannot give it to them, not until the Seraph is ready for sea again.’
Although every muscle in his own body screamed for rest and he reeled on his feet with fatigue, he crossed to the main-mast shrouds and began the long climb to the yard.
When Hal reached the main yard, Tom made room for him and they sat together wordlessly. Hal’s grief, which he had kept at bay all day and night, came rushing back upon him, sweeping away his exhaustion so that it was sharp and painful, burning coal in his chest. He put his arm around Tom’s shoulders, partly to comfort him and partly to seek comfort for himself.
Tom leaned against him, but still they were silent. The stars moved in their majestic orbit above, and the Pleiades sank below the headland before Tom began to sob silently, his hard young body racked with unbearable pain. Hal held him tightly, but Tom’s voice was broken and desolate as he whispered, ‘It is my fault, Father.’
‘It is nobody’s fault, Tom.’
‘I should have saved him. I gave him my promise. I made him a dreadful oath that I would never leave him.’
‘No, Tom, it is not your fault. There was nothing any of us could do.’ But he thought grimly, If there is any fault, it is mine. I should have left Dorian safe at High Weald. He was too young for this. All the remaining days of my life I will regret that I did not do so.
‘We have to find him, Father. We have to rescue Dorian.’ Tom’s voice was firmer. ‘He is out there somewhere. Aboli says they will never kill him. They will sell him as a slave. We have to find him.’
‘Yes, Tom. We will find him.’
‘We must swear another oath together,’ Tom said, and looked up into his father’s face. It was gaunt in the starlight, the eyes dark pits and mouth hard as if carved in marble. Tom groped for his father’s hand. It was sticky with half-dried blood.
‘You make the oath for both of us,’ Hal told him, and Tom lifted their intertwined hands to the starry sky, ‘Hear our oath, O God,’ he said. ‘We swear that we shall neither rest nor cease until we find Dorian again, wherever he may be in all the world.’
‘Amen!’ whispered Hal. ‘And amen!’ The stars were blurred by the tears that flooded his eyes.
The carpenters chamfered the stub of the broken foremast, sawing and chiselling away at the torn, splintered butt to form a step on to which the end of the mast could be rabbeted. Meanwhile the mast itself was floated ashore and another team shaped the end to make the joint. The work went on through the day and continued after dark by lantern light. Hal was demon-driven and spared none, especially not himself.
Hal and Ned Tyler observed the set of the tides in the bay and surveyed the beach. The sandy bottom was ideal for their purpose and the tide rise was above two and a half fathoms. When the mast had been prepared for fitting to its butt, they warped the Seraph onto the beach at high tide, and secured her there with heavy cables attached to palm trees at the water’s edge.
When the tide ebbed out from under her, the Seraph was left high and dry on the white sands. Using the cables they hove her over at an angle of thirty degrees. They had to work swiftly then, for in six hours the tide would float her once more. Using a system of blocks and tackles, the old mast was restepped into its rabbeted butt, and pinned with long iron spikes dipped in boiling tar.
Hal used this opportunity to inspect the ship’s bottom for evidence of the presence of the teredo worm, which in these warm waters could eat away the bottom timbers of a ship. At times these creatures grew as long as a man’s arm and as thick as his thumb. During heavy infestations they drilled their holes so close to each other that only a thin layer of wood was left between them. A ship so afflicted could have the bottom drop out of her in heavy seas. Hal w
as relieved to find that the layer of tar and canvas that covered the hull had deterred not only the ship-worm but also the growth of weed that would slow the Seraph’s passage through the water. She was as clean as he could hope for, but he could not afford the time to scrape away the light growth of weed and barnacles.
As soon as the tide lifted her off the sand they towed the Seraph back to her anchorage in the deep water of the bay. The joint in the foremast was not strong enough to withstand the pressure of sails in a high wind, and the carpenters worked to reinforce it. First they fashioned hardwood fishes to act as splints over the joint. When these were in place they clapped on seizings of soaked hemp rope and tightened these with the capstan. When the rope dried, it was iron hard.
When Hal inspected the finished work, the master carpenter boasted, ‘That joint is stronger than the mast itself. Once the stays and shrouds are rigged, no matter what you do to her, no matter how much canvas you pile on her in any gale, she’ll never break at the same place again.’
‘Good fellow!’ Hal commended him. ‘Now stand by to swing aloft her new yards and spars.’
When the work was done, and Seraph rode at anchor under her new foremast with all her canvas furled under the gaskets, ready to be cast loose, Ned Tyler came to Hal on the quarterdeck, with all the other ship’s officers behind him, and made the formal report. ‘Shipshape, and in all respects ready for sea, Captain.’
‘Very good, Mr Tyler.’
Ned hesitated, then took his courage in both hands. ‘If you please, sir, whither are we bound? Do you have a course for me to steer?’
‘I hope to have a course for you in very short order,’ Hal promised grimly. No one had seen him smile since they had lost Dorian. ‘Have the prisoners paraded on deck.’
The Arab captives were brought out of the forecastle, dressed only in their loin cloths and wearing leg shackles. The links of the chains clinked as they hobbled in a bedraggled file to the foredeck and stood there, blinking in the strong sunlight.
Hal ignored them and crossed instead to the ship’s rail. He stared down into the water. It was so clear that he could see the sea cucumbers crawling along the sandy bottom, and the shoals of small fish that hovered around the Seraph’s hull. Then, abruptly, a dark shape glided from under the ship. It was as long as one of the longboats, and as broad. Its back was banded with darker wavy lines and the monstrous tail beat to a lazy rhythm.
The Seraph had been long enough at this mooring for the galley slops and sewage she had dumped into the bay to attract the tiger sharks from the deep water beyond the reef. Hal felt his skin prickle as he watched the monster turn with a flick of its tail and disappear under the ship. The tiger shark was the creature that haunted the nightmares of every mariner in these tropical waters.
Hal left the rail and walked slowly down the line of prisoners. At last his grief had a target on which to focus. It took all his will-power to keep his anger under control and his expression neutral as he peered into the faces of the corsairs. Rachid was at the far end of the line. A filthy bloodstained rag of a bandage covered his injured ear. Hal stopped in front of him.
‘What is the penalty for piracy?’ he asked Rachid quietly, still holding his rage in check. ‘What does the Koran say of the murderer and the rapist? Speak to me of the law of Shari’ah. Expound to me the law of Islam.’
Rachid could not meet his eyes, but he trembled like a man in fever and the sweat ran down his cheeks to drip from his chin. He had learned how ruthless was this Frankish sea-devil who confronted him now.
‘Does not the Prophet tell us what must be the fate of the murderer? Does he not give the killer into the hands of the father of the victim?’ Hal asked. ‘Does he not exhort us, have no mercy upon him who has the blood of the innocent upon his hands?’
Rachid fell to his knees on the deck and tried to kiss Hal’s feet. ‘Mercy, great lord! I place my worthless soul in your hands.’ Hal kicked him away as though he were a cur, and walked back down the line.
‘The Prophet tells us that the penalty for murder is death. You are all murderers taken bloody-handed in the act of piracy. I am a servant of the English king, charged and empowered by His Majesty with the duty of ridding these seas of such offal as you.’
Hal turned to Ned Tyler. ‘Mr Tyler, have a rope reeved at the yard-arm for each of the prisoners.’ He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, head thrown back to watch the ropes carried aloft and run through the sheaves.
‘Ready to proceed with punishment,’ Ned reported at last, when the nooses were set and a party of sailors stood ready at the tail of each rope.
‘Leave that rogue for last.’ Hal gestured at Rachid, who still cringed upon his knees. ‘Hang the others.’
Still in their chains, squealing and struggling, crying to Allah for mercy, the nooses were dropped over their heads and tightened around their necks. Then the men on the rope tails walked away with them, stamping their bare feet on the deck in unison and chanting as though they were setting the mainsail. Three and four at a time, the Arabs were hoisted kicking and gasping to the high yard. Gradually their struggles quieted and they hung there like bunches of grotesque fruit, their necks twisted awkwardly, their tongues protruding, purple and swollen, from their gaping mouths.
At last Rachid was alone on the deck. Hal went back to stand over him. ‘I gave them an easy death,’ he said. ‘But you have deprived me of my youngest son. You will not be so fortunate, unless you can tell me what I need to know.’
‘Anything in my power, effendi,’ Rachid blubbered. ‘You need only ask it of me.’
‘I need to know where I can find al-Auf and my son.’
‘I do not know that, effendi.’ Rachid shook his head so violently that his tears sprayed like water from a spaniel’s back. Hal reached down and lifted him to his feet, twisted one arm up between his shoulder-blades and marched him to the ship’s rail.
‘Look down there!’ he whispered in the man’s mutilated ear. ‘See what waits you.’ Rachid let out a piercing wail, as the tiger shark slid silently through the bright waters below, rolling slightly so that they could see every detail of the grotesque foreshortened head. It looked up at them with a single pig-like eye.
‘Where can I find al-Auf? Where is his sally-port? Tell it to me and you will die swiftly and go to your God in one piece, not through the maw of that unclean creature down there.’
‘I know not.’ Rachid sobbed. ‘Very few men know where al-Auf has his citadel. I am only a poor fisherman.’
‘Aboli!’ Hal called, and the tall black man strode to his side with the tail of the last hanging rope in his hand. ‘Head first!’ Hal ordered.
Aboli knelt swiftly and looped the rope through the chains that fettered the Arab’s ankles. ‘Heave away!’ he told the sailors who held the rope’s other end and Rachid was hoisted feet first into the air, swinging out like a pendulum over the ship’s side.
‘Where is al-Auf?’ Hal called to him. ‘Where can I find my son?’
‘I know not. I call on God to witness,’ Rachid screamed.
‘Lower away!’ Hal told the men on the rope end, and Rachid dropped jerkily towards the surface of the water. ‘Avast!’ He stopped them when Rachid’s face was only a foot above the water. The man tried to turn his head to look back at Hal, who was leaning far out over the rail.
‘I know not. I swear by all things holy,’ he screamed. ‘I know not where al-Auf has your son.’
Hal nodded to Aboli. ‘Feed the beast!’ Aboli lifted one of a row of leather buckets filled with slops from the galley that he had ready beside the rail. He poured the contents over the side and the mess of fish-heads, guts and peelings splattered into the sea. The shoals of small fish darted upwards to the feast and churned the surface in their frantic greed. Aboli threw another bucketful overboard.
Within a minute there was a dark, menacing movement below the tiny milling shoals. Then a broad, striped back pushed up from the depths with awful majesty. The shoal
s of smaller fish scattered and the behemoth rose to the surface and opened its jaws, which could have engulfed a man’s torso. It’s multiple rows of teeth rose erect as it snapped at the scraps, stirring the waters even though it was still deep beneath where Rachid hung suspended. ‘You can never pass through the gates of Paradise if your body has been devoured by such an obscene, unclean fish,’ Hal called down to him.
His prisoner wriggled helplessly on the end of the line. His voice was shrill and incoherent. ‘No! I know not. Mercy, great lord.’
‘Down!’ Hal gestured to the men on the rope, and they let Rachid drop until his head and shoulders were submerged. ‘Hold him there.’ Hal watched him kick and struggle. The great shark sensed the disturbance and circled under him, rising slowly and cautiously out of the depths. Rachid’s movements were becoming weak and spasmodic as he drowned.
‘Heave away!’ Hal signalled, and they lifted Rachid clear of the surface. He dangled there upside down. He had lost the bloody bandage from around his head, and his long sodden locks dangled in the water. He was fighting for breath, twisting and writhing at the end of the rope.
‘Speak to me!’ Hal bellowed. ‘Speak to me of my youngest son.’ He felt cold, devoid of any pity or compassion. The shark smelt the blood on the drifting bandage and rose to it. Again, the huge jaws opened and it sucked in the scrap of cloth. As it dived, arching its back, its tail fin broke through the surface and struck the hanging man a heavy blow. Rachid squealed with terror and swung back and forth on the rope.
‘Speak!’ Hal encouraged him. ‘I wait to hear about my son.’
‘I cannot tell what I do not know,’ Rachid howled back, and Hal waved to the men on the rope. They dropped him back into the water, as far as his waist. Deep down the shark swirled with an agility and speed that seemed impossible in such a huge creature and rushed up towards the surface, growing even larger as it approached.