The way she said it, one would think it the most unimaginable thing in the world. He grunted. “Once.”
“Did you jump ship?”
“Not exactly.”
“So what happened?”
“My ship sank.”
She turned her head to look at him. “Was it your fault?”
“The Admiralty thinks so.”
She kept her gaze leveled on his face. “Was it?”
He gave a low, harsh laugh. “In a sense, yes.”
“In what sense wasn’t it?”
It was a perceptive question, but not one he intended to answer. A silence dragged out between them and lasted so long that Jack decided she’d forgotten the subject. She hadn’t. All of a sudden, she said, “He told me he was once your friend.”
“Simon? He was.”
“It was a vile thing, what you did, forcing him and his men to walk back to their ship in such a state.”
“Natives spend their entire lives running around the jungle bare-assed. Why not Simon and his bluejackets?”
“Because they’re white men.”
“What’s the matter? Never seen a naked white man before?”
“Of course I have.”
Jack laughed. “I guess you saw me, all right.”
“I wasn’t referring to you.”
He turned to stare at her, and was surprised to discover a faint hint of color staining her cheeks. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have said Miss Indomitable McKnight was blushing. “My dear Miss McKnight, you are full of surprises. Where?”
Her gaze met his, then veered away. “I don’t see how that is any of your business.”
“How old was he? Two?”
Instead of answering him, she continued to stare off into the jungle until her toe caught on a root and she tripped.
“It helps if you watch where you’re going,” he said pleasantly, but she simply threw him a withering glance, and kept walking.
India had formulated and discarded four different plans for her escape before she finally settled on the only course of action that promised any reasonable chance of success.
They had long since veered away from the trail she had originally followed and onto a narrower path that snaked its way toward what she supposed must be the northern end of the island. At first, the path ran along the steep side of the volcano’s slope, then plunged down into a jungle-filled glen that separated Mount Futapu from the craggy heights of the next, even higher volcanic peak. With every step she took, India was painfully conscious of the growing distance that separated her from the Barracuda and the safety it had come to represent. But if she were to have any chance of escaping this vile, machete-wielding madman, she would need to pick her moment very, very carefully.
Her chance came at the base of the glen, where they ran across a small stream, gurgling clear and sweet between moss-covered, fern-draped banks. Jack Ryder knelt on a flat stone to cup his hands in the burn and splash water on his face, his worn cotton shirt pulling taut against the muscles of his chest as he shut his eyes and let the water run in glistening rivulets down his tanned cheeks and corded throat. But India hung back, her voice tight with an embarrassment that was only half feigned as she said, “I need a few moments to myself behind those rocks there.”
He glanced up at her, his dark brows drawing together as he regarded her thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t be so stupid as to try to run off, now would you?”
She let out a short, mirthless laugh. “How far would I be likely to get?”
“Before who caught you? Me, or the cannibals?”
Not even bothering to dignify that remark with a reply, India moved toward the pile of massive, moss-covered basalt boulders that effectively hid the trail that led back to the bay from his sight.
“I don’t care which rock you choose,” he called after her, “as long as I can still see the top of your pith helmet when you squat.”
“You, sir, are disgusting.”
“No. Just very untrusting.”
Ducking quickly behind the rocks, India cast a frantic glance around for some sort of prop, and found it in the form of a stout length of bamboo. Driving it deep into the soft, spongy earth, she began, very carefully, to remove her pith helmet.
“Don’t take too long, you hear?” Jack Ryder called.
“I . . . I fear I am rather unwell,” she replied shakily. “Do have patience, Mr. Ryder.”
She heard him mutter something in response, but she didn’t think he really expected her to run away from him. He wasn’t even looking toward the rocks when she slipped away, leaving her pith helmet swaying gently in the afternoon breeze.
Chapter Nine
THE WAY INDIA figured it, she had at best five minutes before he discovered she was gone.
Every nerve in her body was screaming for her to run, but she forced herself to concentrate on moving as quietly as she could until she had put some distance between them. The dank, steaming jungle closed around her, dark and dense, swallowing sound and light. She threw one quick, apprehensive glance over her shoulder, and broke into a run.
On and on she ran, her knapsack banging awkwardly against her hip, her feet sliding on the muddy path, her world a blur of varying hues of vivid green that swirled in a hooting, rustling rush around her. She had always considered herself a strong, fit woman, but as the path angled sharply upward, weaving between tropical beeches and mountain pandanus and swaying vines, her breath began to come in ragged, agonized gasps. And still she pressed on, her lungs bursting, her face hot with sweat, loose strands of hair slipping from her prim chignon to plaster against her wet neck.
She had no illusions about her ability to outrun him. Her skirt might be split, but it still didn’t give her the freedom of movement a man would enjoy. And after what she had seen both yesterday and this morning, she had no doubts about the condition of this particular man’s powerful, leanly muscled body. If he came after her, he would catch up with her eventually.
But she didn’t think he would come after her. She’d already served her purpose. He’d used her to escape Simon Granger and his men, and while her presence might be a handy bargaining chip in a similar situation, she didn’t think Jack Ryder would risk taking the time to turn around and come after her. Oh, he might flail about, swearing, for a few minutes, looking for her. She smiled quietly to herself, delighting in the thought of his impotent fury when he realized that she’d tricked him. But she was confident that he would waste little time before pushing on toward La Rochelle.
India’s toe caught on a root and she stumbled, pulling herself up short. Her heart was pounding so hard, her entire body was shaking and she was starting to feel light-headed. With a groan, she leaned her back against the trunk of an aito tree that grew beside the path, the muscles in her legs quivering, her eyes squeezing shut as she drew great, exotically scented gulps of steamy jungle air into her aching lungs. Just half a minute, she told herself. She would rest here for half a minute, and then she would press on.
Perhaps it was the sudden stillness of the primeval forest around her that warned her, or perhaps it was the unexpected and entirely instinctive shiver of fear that licked up her spine. India felt her breath back up in her throat, choking her. Slowly, and quiveringly afraid of what she would see, India opened her eyes.
The breath she’d been holding expelled itself from her mouth in a queer rushing sound of terror as she stared with wide-eyed, paralyzing horror at the dark-skinned, naked men who stood in a tight half circle not five feet from her.
Jack squinted up at the thick canopy of entwined leaves and branches overhead. The rain had held off so far, but he could smell it coming, and feel it, too, hanging over the island like an oppressive hush.
“Bloody hell, woman,” he shouted. “How much more time do you need?”
The gentle murmur of the stream beside him filled the answering silence. He stood abruptly, an awful suspicion forming as he stared at the rounded, unmoving crest of that bloody pith
helmet. “Miss McKnight? You’d better say something quick, because if you don’t, I’m coming around to the other side of those rocks.”
Even as he said it, he knew there would be no answer. He was alone in the glen, and if he hadn’t been sitting there lost in dark, useless thoughts of the past, he’d have realized it sooner.
Swearing softly to himself, Jack sprinted around the side of the pile of silent boulders. The pith helmet was there, carefully propped up so that it just showed above the rocks. But Miss India McKnight was gone.
“Sonofab—” He swung around in a circle, his gaze sweeping the dense stand of mara and hutu trees thickly undergrown with ferns and orchids and native jasmine. There was only one way she could have gone: back up the path, toward the bay and the Barracuda.
For one, ugly moment, Jack hesitated, his gaze narrowing as he stared at the steep trail that led back the way they had come. She might be all right, he told himself. She might even meet Simon and his boys coming up from the bay. But as hard as he wanted to believe it, Jack knew she didn’t have a chance. He hadn’t seen the natives who had been shadowing them for the last hour or more, but he’d known they were there, watching.
He told himself that she wasn’t his responsibility. She was the one who had insisted on coming to this bloody island. He’d warned her about the cannibals, hadn’t he? And yet there was no denying, either, that she wouldn’t be in this situation now if he hadn’t stopped her from leaving with Simon when she’d had the chance.
With one last, despairing glance toward the north, Jack loosed the machete at his side and set off at a slow trot back toward Mount Futapu.
Alex stood in the open doorway of the captain’s quarters and watched as Simon Granger quickly thrust first one foot, then the other into his spare pair of boots. “Let me come ashore with you this time.”
The captain’s fair head fell back as he looked up and grinned. “I think I should have let you come with us last time. Being forced to strip bare-assed naked in the middle of a cannibal-infested jungle is quite an experience.”
Alex felt himself go red in vicarious humiliation. “It was a shocking thing the man did. Disgraceful.”
“And very clever.”
Puzzled, Alex gave the captain a long, steady look. “One might almost think you admire him.”
A strange, not altogether pleasant smile curled the other man’s lips. “Oh, I have always admired Jack Ryder’s cleverness.” The smile faded. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking I have any intention of letting him get away from us.”
Alex nodded, although he wasn’t entirely convinced. “One shudders to think of the shocking indignities to which that poor woman will be subjected in the meantime.”
“Miss McKnight? Jack won’t rape her, if that’s what you mean.”
It was exactly what he meant, of course, but Alex knew a moment’s discomfort at the other man’s plain speaking. He cleared his throat. “You can’t be certain of that.”
The captain stretched lazily to his feet. “You forget, I know Jack Ryder.”
Alex cleared his throat again, his hands clasped tight behind his back. “You haven’t said if I may join the landing party, sir.”
A strange light gleamed in the other man’s eyes. “By all means, come with us, Mr. Preston. I think you need it.”
They tied her hands and feet together and hung her, pig-fashion, from a pole slung between the shoulders of two of the men. Long pig, she thought with a bubble of what must be hysterical laughter. But the laughter never erupted because she had her teeth clenched firmly together. She had to, to keep from screaming.
She hadn’t fought them. It would have been useless, in any case, and would simply have earned her a whack on the head from a war club, which might have killed her, or at least rendered her insensible. And India had no desire to be insensible. She was going to need all of her wits if she was to have any chance of getting herself out of this alive.
It was an uncomfortable way to travel through the jungle, hanging from a pole, her hands and feet quickly going numb, each step taken by her captives setting her to swaying back and forth in a hideous evocation of a rocking baby’s cradle. They left the main path almost immediately, striking out along a trail so obscured by tall cane grass and pendant ropes of lianas that no one but a native could ever find it. And with each step they took, India knew, her chances of rescue grew fainter and fainter. Bent as they were on their pursuit of Jack Ryder— and thinking her with him—Simon Granger and his men would rush right past this hidden trail. And as for Jack Ryder himself, well, any man who would threaten to sail off and abandon a woman on a cannibal-infested island was not likely to play the part of a rescuing hero.
The realization that he had been telling her the truth about the cannibals did nothing to improve India’s disposition toward him. He had known there were cannibals out there in the jungle, watching them, and still he had deliberately, wantonly exposed her to this danger by kidnapping her and forcing her to embark on some wild overland journey to the north. If there were any justice in this world, it would be Jack Ryder, not her, who would end his days in a cooking pot.
But there was no justice in this world, and India knew it.
The intensely green, swaying branches overhead blurred, and she blinked furiously. She would not cry. She would not scream, and she would not cry.
She became aware, slowly, of the scent of smoke overlaying the other jungle smells, and knew they must be nearing the native village. She heard women’s voices, and a child’s shrill laughter, and the banked terror within her flared up hot and bright and so all-consuming that the blood roared in her head and her stomach clenched so violently she almost vomited.
She could see it now, a small village of no more than a dozen huts made of thickly woven palm leaves lashed to pole frames and elevated some five feet off the jungle floor. Everywhere was a stinking litter of fish bones and putrid breadfruit and blackened banana peels, the women and children of the village wading unconcernedly through the muddy filth as they came to crowd around her. Her world filled with the reek of hot sweaty bodies and wild wooly hair and black, flat-nosed faces, eyes wide and excited, open mouths jabbering all at once. A grubby hand closed over the watch pinned to her bodice and tore it away. Fingers poked her hips, her midriff, as if assessing how much meat she had to offer.
“Don’t touch me,” she said in a tight, carefully controlled voice, except of course that no one here understood English, and she frantically searched her memory for an appropriate line in Pidgin, the lingua franca of the South Seas. One of the men, an unusually tall and skinny man with the ashen white skin of an albino and hair dyed a frizzy ginger color, pinched her breast hard enough to make her eyes water. “Yu gettim bek,” she shouted in his face. He laughed, showing her a mouth full of rotten teeth stained red from betel-chewing. But he didn’t pinch her again.
She remembered reading, once, about a German botanist trekking through the jungles of the Solomons who had come across two women staked out up to their necks in a stream. Every bone in their arms and legs had been broken, but they had still been alive, for it was said that exposing an animal to the action of running water before killing it made the flesh more tender for eating. She wondered with a rising spike of horror if these people meant to do that to her, but then the men carrying the ends of her pole dumped her ungently into the muck beneath a pawpaw tree. Her back hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of her. She was still gasping for air when they jerked her into a sitting position and yanked her numb hands over her head again to lash them high up to the tree’s trunk.
She sat there, panting, her arms over her head, her hair hanging in her face in tangled, sweat-soaked strands, and stared at the men, women, and children who meant to eat her.
They were a small, short-legged, heavily jowled people, their faces savagely decorated with tattoos on their foreheads and bones through their noses and ceremonial scars on their cheeks. The bare-breasted women wore tattered gra
ss skirts, but the men were nearly as naked as the children, their only covering a penis purse made of grass and held in place with a length of twisted vine. Nambas, they were called. Namba meant number, and there was a time India had found that funny.
She didn’t find it funny anymore.
She swallowed hard, her throat so dry it hurt, but she had no intention of asking this ring of curious, hungry-looking man-eaters for water. Gradually, they began to drift away in groups of twos and threes, their interest in her waning as she simply sat and stared back at them. A couple of little boys amused themselves for a time by picking up pebbles and tossing them at her, laughing when she twisted this way and that in an effort to avoid the sharp sting of the rocks. But they soon tired of the game and went away, too. After that, no one paid her any more attention than they might have given to a tethered goat, or a cow.
Beneath her terror began to build, slowly, a deep and powerful rage. She was a human being, not a walking piece of meat, ready for the slaughter. She had tried, always, in her travels and in her writings to respect the various traditions and customs of the different societies she encountered, but she found it impossible to dredge up anything except revulsion for these people, who lived in filth and ate their own unwanted babies, and disposed of the aged or sickening members of their families by stoning them to death. They seemed devoid of so much that she had always thought typified her species, and it was profoundly disturbing to realize that the Eden-like beauty of these islands could have produced something so dark and terrible. Or was this, she thought with a strange, hollow weight of inner despair, the natural state of man?
Surreptitiously, she began to move her hands, testing the bindings on her wrists. They seemed tight and unbreakable, but she kept moving her hands anyway, trying to loosen them. She had no real hope of being able to escape these cannibals in the daylight, but perhaps tonight, when everyone was asleep . . .
Always assuming, of course, that they didn’t have her for dinner.
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