Authors: Alexander Kent
Viola was lying in the shade beside him, the hat across her face.
“Call it Evans's Isle, Richard.”
He smiled. “Yes. After all, he's the only one who will be staying here.”
Keen's voice came from the rocks where the boat was being watched and guarded. “Just sighted some more canoes, sir!”
Bolitho thrust the little book inside his shirt. “Very well. Douse the fire and collect the men. We're safer in the boat than up here.”
In grim silence they pulled away from the only place which had made them welcome. Sustained for a while by their meal and a brief rest, they turned the stem towards the north once more, leaving Evans alone with his last and only possession.
Like a dying water-beetle the cutter, her oars partly withdrawn and unmoving, rolled across an unbroken swell which stretched as far as an eye could reach.
Bolitho sat with his arm on the tiller bar, breathing very slowly and trying not to look at the sky. The heat was so fierce that the sea had no colour, and merged into the sky like blinding silver.
He thought of writing something in his little book, and knew it was getting harder every time to concentrate on the useless, empty words.
The oarsmen lay across the looms, faces pressed on their arms, the others either crouched against the side of the hull to try and find some shade or slept where they sat, like dead men.
Viola Raymond was beside and a little below him. She was wearing his uniform coat, having removed her torn and stained gown to wash it in salt water. As he looked down at her, seeing the autumn-coloured hair tied back across the collar, he thought she could have been a captain.
She seemed to feel him looking at her and reached out to touch his hand. But she did not look up. Like her companions, she found the glare too painful, too demanding on whatever energy she still had.
“How much rest will you give them?” Her voice was low, but it no longer mattered. No eyes watched them together, and when they touched or held hands it was accepted. Part of their total strength, as it was part of his.
He slitted his eyes, measuring the sun's angle. “Not much longer, Viola. We are making less headway every day.”
He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, the movement making the sweat pour down his chest and thighs. It had been four agonizing days since they had left the little island where they had buried Evans. Days and nights of unrelenting, sapping work. Pulling and bailing. Trying to snatch a few moments for sleep and then starting all over again. He considered their present circumstances. They had left the pier eight days ago. It was incredible even to think of the slow, wretched miles which marked their progress. The water was down to a gallon, if that. The salt pork was merely a fistful of rock-hard fragments. He had issued most of the wine in small cupfuls, and they had been lucky enough to hit and kill a noddy two days back. The bird had been divided as before and the blood given to the worst-off. The latter now included a seaman called Robinson who was suffering severely from both sun and thirst, and Penneck, whose spear wound showed signs of poisoning. The ship's caulker was the only one who was rarely silent. Day or night he moaned and sobbed, feeling his dressing around his throat and occasionally falling into semi-consciousness, still groaning.
Bolitho tightened the grip on her fingers, his eyes smarting as he thought of her husband and his callous indifference, his refusal to think of anything but himself.
“How do you feel?” He waited, knowing she was preparing her reply, then added, “The truth now.”
She returned the pressure on his hand. “Well enough,
Captain.
” She looked up at him, shading her eyes. “Do not fret so. We
will
get there. You'll see.”
Allday stirred and shook himself like a dog. “Ready, lads?”
Penneck started to groan again, and Blissett said savagely, “Stow it, matey, in the name of pity!”
Quare removed his red coat and folded it carefully before taking over an oar. “Easy now, Blissett! The poor devil can't help himself!”
“Out oars!”
Bolitho watched them, seeing their despair as they struggled with the long oars. Even thrusting them out through the rowlocks seemed as much as they could manage now.
“Give way all!”
Bolitho peered down at the compass.
North.
Maybe they would all die, and Tuke would fall upon the settlement just as he had always intended. Bolitho had once found a drifting boat full of dead sailors. He often wondered who was the last to die, what it must have been like to drift helplessly with men you had known, and having seen them go one by one, wait for your own summons.
He tried to shake himself out of his depression and concentrated on Miller's makeshift sail. It did little to add to their speed, but by helping to steady the hull it made the oarsmen's work a bit easier.
Bolitho took out his glass and trained it across the starboard beam. Just over the sea's edge he saw a hint of purple. A long, flat island. He felt his heart quicken. They were not lost. He remembered it from the description on his chart.
She stirred against him. “What is it?”
He kept his voice level. “Another island. Many miles away, and too far to use what strength we have to visit it. But it means we are making progress. Once or twice I thought . . .” He looked down at her and smiled. “I should have trusted
your
judgement.”
He turned his attention to his men again. Pyper was doing his best not to show it, but he was in a bad way. Blistered by the sun, his shoulder like raw meat through a rent in his shirt, he looked near to collapse. None of them had any moisture in their bodies. Perhaps Evans was the lucky one after all.
Quietly he said, “We must have water. I can't ask these men to go on until they drop.”
She nodded slowly. “I will pray.”
He watched her bowed head, the hot breeze ruffling her hair across the blue coat, and almost broke down. He had brought all of them to this. She especially would suffer because of her love. The remainder would die because he had decreed it.
“There.” She looked up at him. “It is done. Now I will see to the dressings.” She touched her gown as it lay drying on the thwart. “I will use some of this after today. Poor Penneck has used almost the last of the bandages.” She stood up, swaying with the boat until Keen put up his hand to steady her.
She smiled at him. “Thank you, Val.”
It was her special name for him, and Bolitho saw her receive the same grateful look. Next to himself, Keen had better cause than anyone to remember her kindness.
Sergeant Quare had to clear his parched throat twice before he could speak. “Will I start to divide the rations, sir?” Even he looked dejected. Almost beaten.
Bolitho felt suddenly desperate. “Yes. One cup per man. Half water, half wine.” He nodded heavily. “I
know,
Sergeant. It is the last of it.”
As Viola reached the sick and injured men Penneck seized her borrowed coat and babbled wildly, “Don't let me die! Please don't let me die!” He was pleading, his voice rising to a thin shriek.
Colter, the wounded seaman, snarled, “I wish to God 'e
would
die! 'E'll drive us all mad, that 'e will!”
“That will do!” Bolitho stood up, his mind aching and throbbing. “Orlando, hold that man's arms while his dressing is changed!”
He watched her above the slow-moving oars. In her captain's coat, her legs as bare as any sailor's, she looked even more beautiful. She paused with her work while Orlando pushed Penneck against the gunwale, and thrust some loose hair from her face. Again their eyes met, and she smiled at him.
Blissett pulled his oar across the boat and snatched up a musket. “'Nother bird, sir!” He fired, but the bird continued as before.
Quare flung another musket to him, and with barely a pause Blissett fired again. The sea-bird dropped close abeam, and within ten minutes had been divided and eaten.
As they sipped their watered wine and tried not to swallow it in one gulp, Pyper said brokenly, “When I get back to the ship I'll never complain again!”
Bolitho watched him, seeing how close he was to breaking.
Almost gently he said, “You will be all right, Mr Pyper. You said when, not if. Hold on to it with all your strength, and that applies to the rest of us. Thank you, Mr Pyper. I feel somewhat better now.”
Allday looked up from his oar and smiled sadly. Inwardly he felt he could weep. For the lady in his captain's coat, for young Pyper, for Billy-boy who was trying so desperately not to show his distress from his wounded leg. But most of all for the captain. He had watched him, day after rotten day, using every trick, everything he had learned and experienced since first going to sea at the age of twelve, just to hold them all together.
In the line of battle it was terrible, but the suffering and hardship made some sort of sense to the survivors. But this was a side of the Navy which landsmen never knew of and cared about even less. And yet the rules were the same, and the burden to each commander just as definite.
Bolitho looked at him, perhaps feeling his thoughts.
“Ready for another pull, Allday?”
Allday smiled, sharing the game.
“Aye, Captain, if you'd care to join us poor sailormen.”
Jenner managed to give a croaking laugh, and Miller said, “Anyway, sir, you don't wear a captain's coat no longer, eh?”
Bolitho seated himself on the thwart beside Allday, while Pyper took over the tiller.
He had to ask. “What d'you think, Allday?”
The broad shoulders gave a slight shrug. “They say the devil looks after his own. I reckon we stand a chance, and that's no error.”
Bolitho laid back on the oar, shutting his eyes to the pitiless sun. No more water, and just a few coconuts and some biscuits. And yet they still trusted him. It did not make any sense.
He thought of Pyper's pathetic courage and made himself say, when, not if.
His oar blade collided with another, and he realized he had almost fallen asleep or into a daze. The realization helped to sharpen his thoughts again, and he heaved on the oar with unexpected vigour.
When next he glanced outboard he saw there was quite a sharp wash coming back from the stem to mark their efforts. He closed his eyes tightly and thrust down on his loom.
When,
not
if.
15 A POWER OF
S
TRENGTH
T
WO NIGHTS
after Bolitho had issued the last of the wine and water a storm broke over them with such ferocity he thought that everything was finished. It hit the cutter shortly after nightfall and transformed the sea into a crazy torment of bursting waves with crests large enough to swamp almost anything.
Hour after hour, stumbling and failing in swirling water, they fought to keep the boat from broaching to. Miller's sail, complete with its spar, was torn away into the spray-filled darkness within minutes, while loose gear, clothing and one of the oars followed soon after.
It was a frantic, unyielding struggle for survival. No orders were given, and none expected. The weary, battered men bailed or stood to their oars, blinded by spray, almost deafened by the thunder of bursting crests and the jubilant wail of the wind.
And then, as Bolitho sensed a slight easing in the wind's force, the rain came. Slowly at first, the heavy drops striking their heads and bodies like pellets, and then with a hissing roar, the very weight of which seemed to beat the waves into submission.
He yelled hoarsely, “Quick, lads!
The rain!
”
It was pitiful to watch as they floundered in the waterlogged boat, groping for canvas, pannikins, anything which would catch the precious rain. The sick and injured, and the handful of men on the oars, kept their faces turned into the downpour, eyes tightly shut, mouths wide to receive what must seem like a miracle.
Bolitho dashed water from his face and hair and said, “Viola! Your prayer was answered!”
They reached out blindly, their hands meeting and slipping in an onslaught of rain and sea.
If only it had come sooner and had spared them the last agonizing day. They had drained the last of the coconuts and then broken the shells to try and suck moisture from the fruit itself.
In the afternoon, while the boat had drifted beam-on to the sea, their torpor had been broken by an insane yell from Penneck.
He had cried,
“Water! In the name of Jesus!”
And before anyone could move he had dragged himself up and over the gunwale, floundering wildly, yelling and weeping, while the boat had drifted away from him.
Where he had gathered the strength, Bolitho had been unable to imagine, but as he had swung the tiller and the blistered oars-men had come back to life, Orlando had risen in the bows and had dived cleanly overboard.
Penneck had been hauled roughly over the stemhead with little pity for his injury. His thirst-maddened action had cost far more than a loss of strength and progress, for even as Orlando had paddled towards the boat, supporting the raving Penneck, the shark had struck with the speed of a battering-ram.
Helpless, the rest of them had watched the water frothing bright red, and had seen Orlando's upturned features contorted in agony, his poor mouth open in a silent scream. Then mercifully he had been dragged down even as Blissett had fired a ball at the tell-tale dorsal fin.
Allday called, “Th' wind's dropping, Captain!” Like the rest, he was wringing wet, hair plastered across his forehead, his shirt moulded to him like another skin.
“Yes.”
Bolitho came out of his thoughts slowly. Penneck now lay in the bottom of the boat, his arms tied, but his legs jerking in irregular convulsions as he gaped at the clouds and giggled while he let the rain sluice over him.
Orlando was gone. Rather as he had first come amongst them. From the sea and back to it. Nobody knew any more about him than when he had been rescued, only that he was grateful to remain with them.
As his friend Jenner had said brokenly, “At least the poor devil was happy while he was with us, sir. When he was given the job of being your servant he was fair bustin' with pride, bless him!”
Unconsciously, Bolitho spoke aloud, “Aye, bless him.”
Allday stared at him. “Captain?”
“I was thinking. Adding another name to my list.”
When dawn came up with its breathtaking haste it was as if little had changed during the night. The clouds were gone, and the sea's face was as before in regular, undulating swells. As the sun rose and felt its way into the boat the woodwork and the dazed occupants steamed as if about to burst into flames. They peered around at their tiny world, examining each other, looking for signs of hope or the opposite.
They had collected over ten gallons of water, and there was still a little rum for those who needed it most. The food was gone, and unless Blissett was able to shoot another bird things would quickly deteriorate.
The only noticeable change from yesterday was that the shark no longer followed them. That too was strange, and to some, chilling. It was as if it had been waiting. To collect Orlando for the ocean he had cheated for just a short while.
Keen joined him during one of the short rests. He looked fitter than most of them, although his arms were burned by the sun and blotchy from salt sores.
He said, “We saved the compass, sir.”
Bolitho kept his voice down. “Have you noticed the drift-wood?”
He watched Keen as he shaded his eyes towards the glittering horizon. Little pieces of flotsam floated towards the boat, black in the harsh light. There were birds too, but too far off for even a lucky shot.
Keen looked at him, his face incredulous. “Land, sir?”
Bolitho wanted to contain it, in case he was wrong. But he looked along the boat and knew they could not last another day. With good news they might be able to hang on.
He nodded. “Close. Yes, I believe so.”
Viola stood up and laid her hand on his shoulder, the other on Keen. She did not speak, but looked steadily towards the horizon, her hair lifting and falling over the coat.
Bolitho watched her, loving her, fascinated by her inner strength. Despite the sun, and what she must have endured, she looked pale compared with Keen and the others. He had only seen her break down once since leaving the islands, and that had been when Orlando had been killed.
She had said, “He could not speak. He could not even cry out. And yet I seem to remember his voice.”
She said nothing more until the storm had burst over them.
They were all looking at him now, and even Penneck had fallen silent. He saw that the marine called Billy-boy was sharing an oar with Pyper, his injured leg propped on a musket. The other wounded seaman, Colter, had drawn enough strength from his ration of water to help look after Penneck and the one named Robinson who was in a very low state. But they were not so ill they could not sense something was happening.
Bolitho said, “I believe we are near land. Whether we are close to Rutara Island, I am uncertain, for with storm and drift, and denied even a sextant, it is like groping in the dark. But whatever island we sight, we will land and secure food. After what we have seen and suffered together, I think it will take more than hostility to prevent us.”
Big Tom Frazer, his eyes red with strain, stood up and bellowed, “A cheer for the cap'n, lads!
Huzza!”
Bolitho could only stare at them. It was terrible to witness. These gaunt, blistered, unshaven men trying to stand at their oars and cheer.
He raised his voice. “Enough! Save your strength!” He had to turn away. “But I thank you.”
Keen cleared his throat and said, “Out oars!” He met Viola's gaze and smiled like a conspirator. “Give way all!”
By late afternoon Blissett and then Sergeant Quare were luckier with their marksmanship. One noddy and then a booby fell to their muskets, and although it took longer this time to reach them, they were retrieved and eaten with a full ration of water.
Then, as the sun touched the horizon, Miller shouted, “
Land,
sir! Fine on th' starboard bow!”
All thought of order and discipline broke down as they stood in the swaying boat, as if by so doing they might see it more clearly.
Bolitho held her arm and watched with the others. Land it was.
“We will reach it tomorrow.” He nodded firmly. “Then we shall see.”
She answered simply, “I never doubted you could do it.”
While Keen restored the stroke to the oars and the cutter started to move ahead again, Bolitho sat beside her in the stern-sheets, as they had done every day since their journey had begun.
She leaned against him, Bolitho's coat tightly drawn around her. Her own clothing, like most of the articles in the boat, had gone outboard in the storm.
“Hold me. I feel cold, Richard.”
He put his arm round her. It would get even colder during the night, and protest or not, he would force her to take some rum. But when he cradled her against him he could feel the heat from her body like fire.
He said, “Soon now. We'll build a fire. Then we will find the ship.”
“I know.” She moved closer and rested her head on his chest. “A big fire.”
The boat settled down for another night. Quare and Blissett examined the muskets and powder. Keen made certain Penneck was still secured, in case he should throw himself overboard again.
But there was a different air in the boat. Not the fear and dread of another dawn, but a strange confidence in what it would bring for them.
Lieutenant Thomas Herrick moved restlessly about
Tempest'
s quarterdeck. At anchor, and despite the spread awnings and wind-sails, the ship was like a furnace, and only deep below on the orlop deck or in the holds could you find relief.
He had been in charge of the frigate for fifteen days, and should have been satisfied with the way he had handled her, and the fact that nothing untoward had occurred. But being Herrick, he felt like half a man, and even now, whenever he heard a footfall on the companionway, he almost expected to see Bolitho emerge on deck, his grey eyes moving automatically from one end of his ship to the other.
He walked to the nettings and looked at the island with something like hatred. To most people it would appear much as any other small point of land in the Great South Sea. To him it was a mocking challenge. A millstone which held him helpless.
He saw
Tempest'
s launch pulling lethargically between ship and shore, the sunlight glinting on weapons. For although they had found no sign of the French frigate or Tuke's schooners, they had company just the same. Large war canoes, crammed with dark figures, had moved as near as they dared. Watching or waiting for
Tempest'
s men to break the sanctity of their island by stepping ashore.
His mind returned frequently to the settlement and he wondered what was happening. No sign of the fever had appeared on board, so it seemed likely it was of a local nature and could bring down only those closely exposed to it and who lacked the toughness of the average sailor.
He had discussed it with the surgeon several times, but he had been unhelpful. He had explained to an impatient Herrick that a “sniff of a cold” which would do no harm to a country parson in England could kill every man, woman and child on one of the islands if the conditions were right for it. On the other hand, no European could withstand the terrible torture of some initiation ceremonies which were performed and accepted without a murmur. Gwyther had said, “It is all a question of
balance,
you see.”
Herrick mopped his face. Question of balance indeed.
Borlase appeared on deck and watched him guardedly. “Have you made a decision, Mr Herrick?”
“Not yet.”
Herrick tried to turn it aside in his mind. It was fifteen days since he had left the Levu Islands and had watched Bolitho being pulled ashore. He ought to have heard something by now. He wondered what Bolitho would say when he discovered about the letter. In his own round handwriting Herrick had written a private report for Commodore Sayer at Sydney and had sent it across to the brig
Pigeon
before she had weighed anchor.
Herrick knew about courts martial and boards of enquiry. He understood that something in writing, put down at the time of the events under examination, carried far more weight than a carefully worded document written much later when the man concerned knew which way the cat would jump. Although what notice anyone would take of the view of a lowly lieutenant was harder to understand. But the thought of that pig Raymond using his influence and guile to destroy Bolitho was something he would not stand by and watch.
He looked at Borlase, waiting with his childlike smile.
“I have carried out the captain's orders. But there has been not even a smell of
Narval
or the pirates. If there had been a sea fight, we'd have discovered something surely? Driftwood, corpses,
something.
”
Herrick forced himself to think back. He had found Hardacre's small schooner off North Island, but her master had nothing to report. He had been very glad to see Herrick, happier still to be ordered to the settlement. There were too many war canoes in the vicinity for his liking. It was more than probable Bolitho would send the schooner back again, here to Rutara, with fresh instructions. He shook his head angrily. No, he was doing it again. Shutting his eyes. Turning from responsibility.