Buccaneer (11 page)

Whatever the source of the detonation, it had stampeded the wild cattle. Tails held high in panic, they abandoned their island and dashed deeper into the lake, then began swimming away. All that was visible was a line of horned heads disappearing in the distance.

Hector was about to turn and speak to Jezreel when the big man’s voice said ‘Hold still!’ and the muzzle of a musket slid past beside his right cheek. The barrel was placed on his shoulder. He froze in position, all thought of paddling gone. Instead he gripped the sides of the canoe, scarcely breathing. He heard Jezreel behind him shifting his stance, and felt the musket barrel on his shoulder move a fraction. There was a whiff of slow match. The next moment there was the flat explosive crack of the weapon firing. The sound was so close to Hector’s face that it made his head ring, and left him half deaf. His eyes watered with the cloud of gun smoke, and for a moment his vision was obscured. When the gun smoke blew away, he looked forward to where the cattle had been swimming. To his amazement one of the animals had swerved aside. The creature was already dropping back, separating from its fellows. Jezreel’s marksmanship was far out of the ordinary. To have hit his target from such a distance while seated in an unstable canoe was a remarkable feat. Even Dan, whom Hector considered the best marksman he knew, would have found it difficult to achieve such accuracy.

Already Jezreel was back at work, driving the canoe forward with huge paddle strokes. Hastily Hector joined his effort, for the wild cow was still able to flounder through the water and had turned directly for shore. Moments later it was in the shallows, and with great thrashing leaps was plunging towards safety, blood streaming from its neck and staining the water a frothy red.

The two hunters reached their prey while the animal was still hock deep on the shelving edge of the lake. It was a young bull, wounded and very angry. It turned to face its tormentors, snorting with pain and rage, and lowered its vicious horns.

Hector put down his paddle. The bull was perhaps fifteen yards away, still at a safe distance. The young man poured priming powder into the pan of his musket, blew gently on the burning matchcord to make it glow, raised his musket, and pulled the trigger. At that range it was impossible to miss. The ball struck the bull in the chest and he saw the animal stagger with the impact. But the animal was young and strong, and did not drop. It still stood on the same spot, menacing and dangerous. Hector expected his companion to hold back, until the two men had reloaded, then finish off their prey. Instead Jezreel drove the canoe into the shallows, and leaping out into the water began to wade towards the wild bull. To Hector’s alarm he saw that the logwood cutter was empty-handed. There was a long hunting knife in Jezreel’s belt but it stayed in its sheath. The young man watched him advance until, at the last moment, the bull lowered its head and charged. The attack could have been mortal. But Jezreel stood his ground, and in one sure movement leaned down and seized the creature’s horns before the animal could lift its head and impale him. As Hector watched, the big man twisted and, using his great strength, threw the bull off its feet. In a welter of foam and muddy water, the beast fell on its side, the logwood cutter dropped one knee on the animal’s neck, then forced its head under water. For several moments there was a succession of desperate heaves as the trapped animal attempted to escape. Then gradually its struggles eased and, after one last shudder, it ceased to move.

Jezreel held the drowned creature’s head submerged a full minute to make sure that it was really dead. Then he rose to his feet and called to Hector. ‘Pull the canoe up on land, then come and give me a hand to butcher the beast. We’ll take what we can carry, and they can have the rest.’

Following his companion’s glance, Hector saw the snouts of two large alligators gliding across the water towards them.

‘You’ll see plenty of others,’ explained his companion. ‘Mostly the caymans stay their distance. But if they are hungry or in a bad humour, just occasionally they will run at you and take you down.’

Working quickly, they began to butcher the wild bull into quarters. Here, too, Jezreel was an adept. The blade of his hunting knife sliced through skin and flesh, skilfully working around the bones and severing the sinews, until the slabs of fresh meat had been separated from the carcass. They dropped them into the canoe, and pushed off, heading back towards their camp. Looking over his shoulder, Hector saw the caymans crawling up the slope. As he watched, they began to snap and chew at the bloody carcass, like huge olive brown lizards attacking a lump of raw flesh.

When they arrived at their original departure point, Jezreel secured the canoe. Then he leaned over and picked up a great slab of raw beef from the bilges. With his knife he cut a long slit in its centre. ‘Stand closer,’ he demanded, ‘and take off your hat.’ Hector did as he was told, and before he could react, his companion held up the meat, and slipped it over the young man’s head so the beef hung like a tabard, front and back, the blood soaking through his shirt. ‘Best way to fetch it to camp,’ said Jezreel. ‘Leaves your hands free so you can carry a musket. If it’s too heavy, I’ll trim off a portion and lighten the load.’ He carved slits in two more of the meaty parcels, and with a double load draped over his own massive shoulders, started walking back along the track.

As they trudged back along the path, Hector asked about the explosion that had scared the cattle. ‘At first I thought it was Captain Gutteridge signalling his return. But the sound came from the savannah. It wasn’t Spaniards was it?’

Jezreel shook his head. ‘If it had been Spaniards, we would have made ourselves scarce. That was one of our companions preparing logwood.’

‘But it sounded like a cannon shot.’

‘Most of the logwood is small stuff, easy to handle. From time to time you fell a big tree, maybe six feet around, and the wood is so tough that it’s impossible to split into smaller pieces. So you blow it apart with a charge of gunpowder, shrewdly placed.’

‘The captain asked me to make a list of all the logwood ready to load. Can we do that tomorrow?’ asked Hector. But the giant did not reply. He was looking away to the north where a thick bank of cloud had formed. It lay in the lower sky as a heavy black line, its upper edge as clean and sharp as if trimmed with a scythe. It looked motionless, yet unnatural and menacing.

‘Tomorrow may prove difficult,’ Jezreel said.

T
HE CLOUD BANK
was still there at dawn. It had neither dispersed nor come any closer. ‘What does it signify?’ Hector asked. He and Jezreel were eating a breakfast of fresh beef strips cooked on the barbacoa.

‘The sailors call it a North Bank. It could be a sign that the weather is changing.’

Hector looked up at the sky. Apart from the strange black North Bank, there was not a cloud in the sky. There was only the same baking haze that he had seen every day since his arrival on the Campeachy coast. He detected just the faintest breath of a breeze, barely enough to disturb the plume of smoke rising from their cooking fire.

‘What makes you say that?’ he enquired.

Jezreel pointed with his chin towards dozens of man of war birds that were circling over the area where the hunt had taken place. The fork-tailed sea birds were dipping down in spirals, then rising up, clearly disturbed, and constantly uttering their shrill high-pitched cries. ‘They don’t come inland unless they know something is going to happen. And these last two days I’ve noticed something odd about the tides. There’s been almost no flood, only ebb. The water has been retreating as if the sea is gathering its strength.’ He rose from his seat and added, ‘If we are checking on the logwood stocks, we better hurry.’

As it turned out, the logwood cutters still had much work to do. Their caches of timber were widely scattered, and they had yet to carry them to the landing place on the creek. Jezreel was more advanced in this work than his companions because he had the strength of two men. Transporting the billets of wood was as much drudgery as cutting the timber in the first place. The men worked like pack animals, stooped under immense loads which Hector calculated at two hundred pounds a time, and staggering through the swamps. He wondered why the Bay Men did not make rafts of the timber and float them along the many backwaters, but realised the reason when one of the logs slipped from Jezreel’s load. The dense timber sank like a rock.

An hour before sunset the wind, which had continued faint all day, moved into the north and began to strengthen. The increase was steady, rather than dramatic, but continued through the night. At first Hector, dozing on his platform, was aware only that the sides of his cloth pavilion were stirring and lifting in the breeze. But within an hour the folds of cloth were flapping and billowing, and he got up and took down the cloth because it was evident that no insects would be flying in such conditions. He enjoyed the respite for a short while, listening to the rushing of the wind as it swept through the mangroves. But soon the wind was plucking at the thatch of his shelter and he found it difficult to get to sleep. He lay there, thinking of Susanna and wondering whether he would be able to see her again after Gutteridge had loaded the logwood and brought him back to Jamaica. Maybe he would have earned enough money from the logwood sale to invest in a commercial enterprise and start to make the fortune that would impress the young woman into accepting him as a formal suitor. Riches, by all accounts, were swiftly gained in the Caribees.

Eventually he did fall into a deep sleep, only to be woken shortly before daybreak by a rattling noise. The wind was so strong that the fiercer gusts were shaking the entire fabric of his shelter. Unable to rest, Hector swung his legs over the side of his sleeping platform, and stood up. To his shock, he found that he was standing in six inches of water.

As the light rapidly strengthened, he saw that the entire camp site was under water. In places it was submerged to a depth of at least a foot. The flood was flowing inland like a vast river. He dipped a finger into the water and sucked on it. He tasted salt. The sea was invading the land.

Splashing his way out of the hut, he found Jezreel assembling a bundle of his possessions, his guns and powder, a coil of rope, a water bottle, a hatchet, food. ‘Here, take these, you may need them later,’ he said to Hector, handing him a spare water bottle, a cutlass and a gun. ‘What’s happening?’ enquired Hector. He had to raise his voice for the sound of the wind had now risen to a steady roar. ‘It’s a North,’ shouted the giant. ‘December and January is their time and this looks to be a bad one.’

The big man looked round to make sure that he had everything he needed, then led Hector inland towards a swell of rising ground. As they waded through the water, the young man observed that the water level was constantly rising. It was now halfway up the supports of his sleeping platform.

‘How much higher will it flood?’ he shouted.

Jezreel shrugged. ‘No way of telling. Depends how long the gale blows.’

They reached the knoll. Here stood a single enormous tree, fifteen or twenty feet around its base. Lightning must have struck it, for all but a handful of the upper branches were shorn away, and those which survived bore no leaves. Jezreel went to its farther side. There the lightning had left a jagged open gash which extended almost down to the ground. Jezreel swung his hatchet and began to widen the crevice, enough to jam in hand or foot. ‘You better climb up first. You are more nimble,’ he advised Hector. ‘Take the rope and get as high as you can. At least up to the first large branches. Once you’re there, lower the rope to me and we’ll haul up our gear.’

Half an hour later they were both seated some twenty feet above the ground, each astride a thick branch. ‘Might as well make ourselves secure,’ said Jezreel, passing him the end of their rope. ‘If the wind gets stronger we’ll be blown off like rotten plums.’

Fastened in place with a rope around his waist, Hector watched the floodwaters rising. It was an extraordinary sight. A great swirling, rippling brown mass of water was sliding inland, carrying everything before it. Branches, leaves, all sorts of clutter were being swept along. Bushes disappeared. The corpse of a wild pig floated by. What made the scene all the more remarkable was that the sky still remained bright and sunny, except for the ominous bank of cloud which lay heavily on the horizon. ‘Will rain come?’ Hector asked his companion.

‘No, a North is not like a hurricane,’ answered Jezreel. ‘Everyone knows of the hurricane and the downpours it brings. But a North stays steady as long as that black cloud is there, and without any rain. But it can be just as fatal if you are on a lee shore.’

By mid afternoon the wind had risen to gale force and was threatening to pluck Hector from his perch. He felt the great dead tree vibrating in the blasts, and wondered if its dead roots would hold. If the tree were toppled, he could not see how they would survive.

‘What about the others?’ he shouted above the clamour of the wind.

‘They’ll do the same as us, if they can find a refuge high enough,’ Jezreel called back. ‘But it’s the end of my stay here.’