Starlight & Promises (37 page)

With a groan, he turned his head to the left and came face-to-face with a pair of dusty brown feet and the pointed end of a spear. He panned his gaze up the long, sturdy body, naked except for a loincloth, and covered from waist to knees in fantastic designs, swirls, circles, lines, and dots, tattooed into the skin with blackish blue ink. He reached the man’s face, a harsh countenance, bare of whiskers. His dark, golden brown complexion appeared even in color. Blue black hair hung straight to his shoulders. A pair of arrogant obsidian eyes glittered under heavy, prominent brow ridges.

He recognized the tattoos as Samoan, but surely the wave couldn’t have pushed them all the way to Samoa.

The spear prodded Christian in the side. He grunted and struggled to sit up again. When he failed, falling back once more, the man motioned to two others standing behind him. One was a veritable giant. He pulled Christian up by his arms and slung him over one massive shoulder, carrying him like a sack of grain. Christian passed out from the pain.

Christian awakened for the second time in a dusky space. Moaning came from the surrounding dimness. He stretched out a weak arm, and his hand brushed up against a body that stirred when he touched it. When his eyes adjusted to the low light, he made out shadowy figures next to him. Instead of bare ground this time, he lay on a reed pallet. Gradually, walls with tiny, silvery lines of light leaking through cracks, indicating a reed construction, became visible.

Gazing up, he gained an impression of clouds that parted at times and allowed starlight to filter down. When he flexed his limbs, pain filled every inch. It was an aching pain rather than a sharp one that would indicate broken limbs or internal damage. Lifting his hand to his forehead, which seemed particularly sore, he found a wound, smeared with a poultice, above his eye. He brought his fingers to his nose and sniffed. Vile-smelling stuff, but that someone was tending to his injury indicated his captors, should they fall into that category, had some humanitarian values.

He would have to wait until morning to determine his circumstances. Then he could count the survivors. He closed his eyes, and his thoughts turned to Samantha, as they had every night since his departure. Despite his pain and fatigue, his groin tightened. He managed a weak smile. At least
that
part of him still worked properly!

Early morning sun threw stripes of light through the slats in the reed walls. When the sunlight hit his eyes, needles jabbed Christian’s brain. He lowered his eyelids and moaned. A hand slipped beneath his nape, cradling his head and raising it a few inches off the mat. A bowl of sweet liquid touched his lips. He sipped the moisture into his dry throat. When he inched open his eyes, a woman was leaning over him with the bowl balanced in her hand. Sun seared his retinas. He glimpsed only a blurry impression of long, dark hair and a rounded brown face.

She laid his head back on the mat, and he tested his voice. “Who are you? Where am I? How many survived?” The words emerged in a mere whisper from his scratchy, dry throat.

The woman remained silent and moved away from him.

He turned his head, searching for familiar faces among the men on the pallets scattered across the floor. His heartbeat accelerated when he recognized Garrett lying against a wall on the other side of the room. There were others, all seamen from the
Maiden Anne
. Captain Lindstrom was not among them. He counted seven men, plus Garrett and himself. Unless another room similar to this existed, only nine from a complement of twenty-seven survived the wave. His breath shortened, and he strained for air, inhaling slowly, deeply.

By the look of the natives, they hadn’t landed on the coast of New Zealand or Australia, so he assumed the ship had fetched up on an island. They were fortunate to be alive. Even nine of twenty-seven was a miracle. Nonetheless, he would hold off celebrating until he learned where they were and who held them. They could have fallen, quite literally, from the sea into a cooking pot, if their hosts turned out to be cannibals.

He took another look around the corral. No other word accurately described it. Closely woven reed walls rose about eight feet high. No windows and only one door. A bumpy reed floor beneath him. The structure appeared flimsy, although he suspected it was sturdier than it looked. Small brownish geckos no larger than his finger scurried about, on and between the reeds.

Christian gazed up through the open ceiling. Their room, or prison, hovered above the ground. Treetops soared not far above him. Colorful emerald doves, parakeets, and lorikeets, with shining feathers of green, blue, orange, and yellow, fluttered back and forth, chattering in competing voices. Large bats, their leathery wings folded about them like capes—flying foxes, his scientific mind told him—clung upside down to the uppermost branches of the trees in massive brown colonies.

The woman returned and knelt beside him. The sun had risen higher and shined through the enclosure’s open top. Her features were clearer. Fortyish with a plump figure encased like a sausage in a leaf-printed sarong that wrapped around her ample waist and fell to her calves. A string of shells draped around her neck, hanging to her bare breasts. Heavy black hair rippled to below her bottom, and a pink flower with multiple tubelike florets, a species of
psychotria
, peeked out from behind her right ear. The flower, birds, and bats gave Christian additional clues to his location—somewhere near New Caledonia. Though the people appeared to have a Samoan source, they could easily have come from Polynesia at some point in their history. The woman’s black eyes were kind in her unlined, expressionless face as she fed him a tasteless paste with her fingers.

C
hristian recovered rapidly on a diet of fruit, bland paste, stringy meat that tasted like pork, fish, and a fortifying drink with an alcoholic content and a beneficial effect on his constitution. Garrett recouped his strength more quickly, having received only cuts and bruises from the ropes binding him to the wheel and a glancing blow from the spar.

While Christian lay on his pallet, Garrett related what he recalled. “I came to my senses soon after the ship hit the reef. After cutting your bonds, I managed to pull you from the wreckage before waves swept the carcass beneath the sea. I then dragged your limp body across the reef and through the lagoon. I apologize for the cuts from the coral. Our nurse has been tutting over them.”

Christian knew of the dangers from coral, a living animal, though it appeared to be inert rock. Coral embedded in flesh could grow and cause a fatal infection. The daily poultices of a smelly concoction that burned like carbolic acid seemed to be keeping serious damage at bay.

“Captain Lindstrom died,” Garrett went on, “I suspect from the impact of the falling timber. The other survivors have cuts, bruises, broken limbs, and internal injuries, but all seem to be on the mend.”

Garrett also relayed his impressions of their captors. For indeed they were captors. “Our hut sits in a tree about twenty feet off the ground. It’s the dry season. I suppose that explains the lack of a roof. I would hope they apply thatching when the winter rains come, not that I believe we’ll be here that long. I’ve found only one way down. By ladder. They remove it when they have no need for it.”

“What are their intentions?” Christian asked.

Garrett shrugged. “The only native I’ve seen close-up is the woman who tends us. I don’t believe she understands English, that or she’s mute. She hasn’t uttered a word. From what I can see through the cracks in the walls, we’re in a large camp situated on a mountainside. I counted over a hundred men and more arriving every day. Less than twenty huts at ground level, proper roofed ones but with open sides. They look hastily thrown together, and many of the new arrivals appear displaced. I assume the tsunami flooded their homes. The village looks to be a temporary gathering place. I still cannot get a sense of whether we’re on an island or on the coast of a larger landmass.”

With much groaning and hissing through his teeth, Christian pushed himself to his feet.

“Hey! You shouldn’t be standing yet.”

Christian held up a staying hand and limped around the small corral. “If I remain idle much longer, I’ll be crippled for life.” He stopped and panted, bracing himself against the wall, and talked softly with another invalid. Then he turned back to Garrett. “I gather this is the only prison, and we’re the only survivors.”

“As far as I can determine. Some may have been taken to another location. However, I believe what you see here are all who remain of the crew.”

Christian grunted and eased back down the wall until his bottom rested on the reeds. “The one warrior I recall seeing appeared less than friendly. Any sign they’re cannibals or headhunters?”

“From up here,” Garrett said, “I can see little of significance. They haven’t removed anyone yet, are feeding us, and have seen to our injuries. Surely that’s an encouraging sign.”

Christian gave him a crooked smile. “Perhaps their purpose is to fatten us for a feast in which we’re the featured guests.”

Garrett returned the smile. “I must admit that’s a possibility I hadn’t wished to consider. Now that you mention it …”

“Assuming we come up with a plan, how many men are well enough to attempt an escape?”

“If I’m to count you, whom I’m sure you mean to include, five, maybe six. We have no weapons. They stripped us of our knives and guns before they carted us up here. We even eat with our fingers. If we’re to have any hope of arming ourselves, we’ll have to take weapons from the men below.”

“Who’s our best climber?”

“Cullen.” Garrett grinned. “Unfortunately, you failed to foretell our predicament and left him in Hobart.”

Christian scowled at Garrett’s attempt at humor.

“Among the ambulatory men, I suppose I am,” Garrett said with a sigh. “I have the least severe injuries, and I’m pretty agile.”

Christian arched a brow. “I would imagine from climbing out windows when husbands return unexpectedly.”

“Actually, I was thinking about my second-story work with the gang in Frisco. Though I haven’t had the occasion to use my skills for some time, I still remember the fundamentals.”

“Neither are you twelve years old any longer.”

“But I’m younger than you, old man.”

Christian threw a glance at the tree branches overhanging the open hut. “Think you can climb up there and swing over to another tree? I’ve watched the parakeets climbing about. Surely you’re as nimble as they are.”

Garrett directed his gaze upward. “Perhaps. I’d have to attempt it in the dark, find the ladder, steal weapons, and break down the door. And, of course, I’d have to complete these tasks in utter silence amongst a hundred natives, thirsting for my blood and breathing down my neck.”

“You have a problem with that?”

“God, you’re a hard man to please, aren’t you?”

“The dark of the moon comes in two weeks,” Christian said with a sharp nod. “If we should manage to hold on to our heads that long, up and out you go.”

“By all means,” Garrett replied with a sickly smile. “Up and out and into the stewpot.”

The night was moonless. Once the sun’s light vanished and the sky was at its darkest, Christian hoisted Garrett onto his shoulders and boosted him high enough to grab a branch above the hut. Garrett swung his legs until he gathered momentum. Releasing the branch, he flew across the dark space to a lower branch on a neighboring tree.

His position allowed Garrett to view the entire encampment. Though the night lay as black as the lava sands, cook fires burned below. Men reclined on pallets around the fires. Silence, broken only by the rusty screeches of nightjars, reigned over the village. A suggestion of movement in the forest ringing the open space caught his attention. As he scrutinized the area, shadows crept out of the trees toward the sleeping men.

“Chris, something’s happening,” Garrett whispered from his perch among the foliage.

“What?” Christian called out in a low voice.

“Shhh, I believe we’re in for some excitement. Men have surrounded the village. It doesn’t look as if it’s a friendly visit.”