Call of the Raven

by Smith, Wilbur

  Chester balled up the paper and threw it over the side. It flew down to the water and disappeared into the river.

  ‘I will return to Bannerfield at once. When Mungo comes, I must be ready.’

  Once again, the Cape of Good Hope was true to its name; the Raven passed it in benign weather, re-provisioned in Cape Town and made for home. The fastest route would have taken them straight across the South Atlantic, but storm season was near. The alternative was to beat up the west coast of Africa into higher latitudes, and then turn west towards America.

  That brought the risk of another encounter with Fairchild. But in thousands of miles of coastline, Mungo was willing to take the risk. Probably, he thought, his old adversary had returned to England by now anyway.

  As they entered the tropics, the sultry heat reminded Mungo of the last time he had sailed these waters. One night, he dreamed he was in Isabel’s cabin on board the Blackhawk. He felt her warmth as she fell against him, the press of her body on his. He watched as she pulled the nightgown over her head and leaned back, allowing his eyes to feast on her nakedness. Her hand slid down his chest and into his breeches; he saw her lean over him on the bed, an angel bathed in candlelight, and draw him into her. He buried his head in her breasts.

  Then he looked up, and it was not Isabel but Camilla. He put his arm around her and hugged her to him; he felt himself begin to climax. But before he did, she melted away in his arms like mist in sunshine, and he was left alone in the cabin.

  He woke feeling soiled and uneasy. Isabel had been a distraction, a way to amuse himself on the Blackhawk’s long voyage. Why was she even in his thoughts now?

  A knock on his cabin door brought his attention back to the ship. Belatedly, he realised the ship was rolling much more heavily than when he had gone to sleep. The wind had risen; so had the sea. He could feel the forces shivering through the Raven’s timbers.

  Virgil Henderson, the bosun, put his head around the door. A Georgia native, he was used to Atlantic weather and the hurricanes that sometimes battered his home state, but now even he looked troubled.

  ‘It’s going to be bad.’

  Mungo was already out of bed and pulling on his trousers. In the short time it took him to get on deck, he felt the wind strengthen.

  ‘Why did no one wake me earlier?’ he shouted furiously.

  The sea was high; clouds as black as tar rolled in from the west, covering the dawn. A high wind thrashed the Raven with spindrift and spray.

  ‘Furl the mainsail and the foresail. Double reef the topsails!’

  The men raced to obey, clinging to the yards for their lives as the ship tossed them this way and that. The storm clouds rose and the gale-force winds set upon them like a pack of howling wolves. The waves were already like mountains rolling across the surface of the ocean. They tried to ride out the storm under topsails, but the battering sea nearly capsized the ship, forcing Mungo to strip her down to bare poles and run before the wind.

  There was something elemental about the terror inspired by a gale. As Mungo clung to the binnacle stand, bracing his feet against the bucking of the rain-slick deck, he saw the ocean beyond the rail as a force of supernatural malevolence, as if the Angel of Death had taken up air and water as weapons against them. There was nothing to do but pray for mercy, though it had no effect. The storm’s violence increased until the rain came at them sideways, the waves rose up like monsters from the deep, and the wind filled the sky with the sound of its rage. It dragged on for a night and a day, pummelling the Raven so relentlessly that the cook gave up trying to feed the crew, for none of them, including Mungo, could hold anything down. The only rations issued by the kitchen in the midst of the maelstrom were water and rum.

  Some time in the small hours of the second night – what time Mungo didn’t know, for the watch officers had stopped ringing the bell – the ship lurched upwards with such violence that everything not fixed to a bulkhead crashed to the deck. For a terrifying moment, the ship hung suspended as if the sea had tossed it into the air. Then it rolled over like a felled tree until the ocean greeted the hull with a fearsome slap. Mungo heard the mizzen mast give way. The sudden splintering of hardened wood rent the air like an explosion, drowning out the screams of the crew. The Raven floundered on its side, until another wave gave counterbalance to the keel and turned the ship upright.

  Bracing himself against the heaving sea, Mungo scaled the ladder and crawled onto the spar deck, holding fast to the safety tether Tippoo had lashed to the port-side rail. The night was so dark and the air so thick with rain that the deck was almost invisible. By some miracle, the knockdown had not doused the binnacle lamp. In the dim halo of light cast by the flame, Mungo saw Virgil Henderson lying on the quarterdeck, a rope binding his waist to the base of the helm. The wheel was now untended, turning aimlessly with the random motions of the rudder.

  Mungo followed the tether to the rail and the rail back to the helm. He cast a glance at the broken mizzen mast, which was hanging over the starboard rail, its parted lines writhing like snakes in the currents of water on the deck. Henderson lay still, but as another wave broke over him Mungo saw him cough reflexively to get the water out of his lungs. He was alive.

  But he could not get up. With so much water pouring over the deck, he would drown, or else be dashed to pieces if he stayed there.

  ‘Somebody take the helm!’ Mungo shouted. ‘We need to get him below!’

  The seamen behind Mungo were wiry and slight, useful on the yards, but no good when it came to lifting at least two hundred and twenty pounds of dead weight. Mungo untied the rope from Henderson’s waist and threw the bosun’s arm over his neck, heaving with all his strength. He managed less than three feet. He called for help, as rain whipped his back and his face. The load on his shoulders lightened. He saw Tippoo beside him.

  ‘One, two, three . . . pull!’ he cried.

  The bosun moved. Two more sailors crowded around, grabbing Henderson’s belt and legs, while another wrestled with the helm. They trundled the bosun to the aft hatch and down the ladder to the berth deck, where they somehow managed to hoist him into a hammock. Mungo collapsed, exhausted. He wiped his eyes and tried to clear his mind.

  With every pitch of the deck, the ship groaned. The wind had sheared away the topgallant and royal yards on the main mast. Half of the netting on the bowsprit was gone, and twice a breaking wave had knocked the Raven down, driving her masthead into the turbulent sea, parting braces and stays from stem to stern, and sending unwary seamen over the side. Somehow the main mast had absorbed the beating, but unless the gale relented there was no way that luck would hold.

  It was pointless to attempt repairs in the storm, but the crew managed to cut the broken mizzen mast free and restore order to the tangle of lines around it. Henderson emerged from the sick bay, bandaged but unbowed, to supervise the work. By the time they had finished, the wind had begun to taper off, softening from a shriek to a howl. Mungo watched as a sliver of purple sky appeared, turning slowly pink. The appearance of the sun was so dazzling that he had to shield his eyes against it. After over forty-eight hours of night, the world turned into a sudden kaleidoscope of colour. The ship was flaxen and brass, the sea a greenish blue, the clouds flecked with gold.

  A cry rose upon the lips of the sailors.

  ‘Land ho!’

  Mungo thought he had misheard. There should have been no land within a hundred miles. But when he looked forward, he saw a line of white foam emerging from the purple clouds of dawn, and the forested coast of Africa beyond. The storm had driven them further east than he had ever imagined.

  And now they were in even greater danger.

  ‘That is a reef!’ Henderson hollered into his ear. ‘It will smash us to pieces!’

  Mungo looked for a gap in the boiling surf but there was nothing. It stretched unbroken as far as he could see. Even if there had been a way in, the Raven was so damaged they could never have steered her through it. Nor could they beat aw
ay. The wind and current were dead behind them, driving the Raven towards the reef at terrifying speed.

  ‘We have to lighten the ship!’ Henderson shouted.

  Mungo wasn’t sure he had heard right.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Put the cargo overboard!’

  ‘The ivory?’

  Mungo stared at him wildly. It was an impossible suggestion. Without the cargo, he had nothing. No profit, no money, no revenge.

  ‘There must be another way. We cannot lose that cargo.’

  Tippoo pointed to the reef. ‘Lose the cargo, or lose the ship.’

  He was right. Resist it as Mungo might, he could not deny the sickening truth. The current was carrying them straight on to the reef. If the Raven was caught there, she would be smashed to pieces. They would lose the ship, the cargo, and most probably their lives. Their only hope was to reduce their draught and pray the waves lifted them above the rocks.

  There would be no revenge if he was dead.

  Still he could not give the order.

  Suddenly he was swept off his feet into the air. His first thought was that a wave had seized him, or that they had struck the reef already. Then he realised that Tippoo had lifted him off the deck, gripping his arms like a parent trying to shake sense into a child. For the first time in his life, Mungo saw real fear in the giant’s face.

  That, more than anything else, made him realise he had no choice.

  ‘Do it!’

  He stood by the wheel, hardly able to watch as Henderson organised the crew to bring the bundles of ivory up from the hold. One by one, they went over the side. Each one seemed to take a part of Mungo’s soul with it. He had poured everything he had into the hunt – the whole fortune he had inherited from Rutherford. Every tusk was a battle he had fought with the mighty animals, a wager he had made with his life and won. For nothing.

  The waves rose. They were nearly at the reef. Still the ship seemed too low in the water. Tippoo’s men untied the cannons from their mountings and heaved them overboard. The furniture from Mungo’s cabin followed it, a trail of flotsam bobbing in their wake.

  Mungo gripped the wheel, though it was only an illusion of power. He was in God’s hands now.

  Sterling’s words came back to him, dripping with sarcasm. God has no interest in our business. Was that how he would die, sucked down into the depths like Sterling? Was that justice?

  ‘Here we go,’ said Henderson.

  The men grabbed onto whatever fragments of the ship they could hold. The deck bucked; the waves surged around them. The roar of the surf drowned out everything. White water foamed around the Raven’s bow; something scraped her keel.

  ‘We are not light enough!’ Henderson yelled.

  Mungo looked back. The day seemed to have gone dark again. Then he saw why. A giant wave, some last remnant of the storm, was racing in behind them. It reared up beneath them, lifting the Raven high on its crest. For a moment, Mungo could look down and see the naked reef exposed below, a forest of razor-sharp rocks.

  The wave broke in a torrent of foam. There was no way they could survive this. The Raven was thrown forward, and Mungo braced himself for the impact that would destroy his ship.

  It did not come. The Raven scudded across the surface of the sea, still afloat and unbroken. When Mungo looked back, he saw the line of foaming water receding behind them. The wave had carried them clean over the reef, into the calm waters beyond. In the shelter of the lagoon, the waves eased. The wind dropped. The Raven slowed, then came to rest in a few feet of water. A little distance ahead, golden sands stretched up towards a thick forest.

  ‘Allah is merciful,’ said Tippoo.

  ‘Is he?’

  Mungo’s voice was desolate as he gestured to the Raven’s broken decks. The beautiful vessel he had fallen in love with in Baltimore was no more. Her graceful lines had been smashed in, her masts broken off and her canvas wings snapped.

  And that was not the worst of it. When he went below, the hold was four feet deep in water. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but that did not make it any better. There was nothing to see. The hoard of ivory that had been packed so carefully was gone. All that remained were strands of the dried grass that had been used to pack them, floating on the bilge-water.

  ‘Did none of the cargo survive? None of it?’

  Henderson licked his lips nervously. ‘We’d never have got over the reef otherwise. We’d have been smashed to pieces and drowned.’

  ‘None of it?’ Mungo repeated, as if he had not heard. ‘There was half a million dollars in that hold.’

  He had been on deck for three days straight. He had not eaten or slept. He felt dizzy and nauseous; his body had become a clumsy thing he could barely control.

  Without warning, Mungo spun around and unleashed his fist at Henderson’s head. The bosun had no time to protect himself. Mungo’s punch hit Henderson’s jaw so hard it almost broke the bone. The bosun was thrown back, stunned, into the bilge-water.

  ‘That ivory was everything I had in the world. Everything!’

  Henderson picked himself up out of the water, looking at Mungo like a puppy that has felt the first kick of its owner’s boot.

  Mungo barely saw him through the curtain of rage that had descended. This was the third time in his life he had lost everything. Chester had robbed him of Windemere, Camilla, his family. The share he should have had of the Blackhawk’s profits had been snatched away, when all he had done was try to stop a girl being raped. And now the storm had destroyed his last chance of revenge. He could almost hear fate laughing at him, grinding him under its heel.

  ‘The things I have done . . .’ He thought of the slaves screaming in the Blackhawk’s hold; Rutherford’s staring eyes as Mungo choked the life out of him; Sterling’s body sinking into the depths of the ocean. ‘And this is my reward?’

  Camilla was dead. The Raven was lost. Chester had won. Mungo’s body could not contain his rage. He balled his fist to lash out again; Henderson cowered. But before Mungo could strike, an enormous pair of hands grabbed him from behind. That only drove him to new heights of fury. He tried to rip himself free, twisting and pulling like a caged animal. But Tippoo’s hands were stronger.

  ‘Let me go, damn you! This is mutiny!’

  ‘This is not his fault,’ said Tippoo calmly. ‘What we do, it is the only way to save the ship.’

  ‘Save the ship?’ Mungo gave a wild laugh. ‘What is the point of saving the ship if we have nothing left? The food is spoiled and the water casks are breached. Our cargo is gone and we are bankrupt. The Raven is a cursed ship, a ghost ship, and we are all dead men.’

  Many of the sailors crossed themselves and spat into the water when they heard that. As desperate as their situation was, they did not want their captain making it worse by calling down evil forces. But Tippoo remained impassive.

  ‘We find water. Hunt food.’

  ‘And the cargo?’

  Tippoo shrugged. ‘Still in Africa. Still have guns.’

  ‘The elephants are three thousand miles from here.’

  Few elephants were left on the west coast of Africa, and the ivory they produced was hard and brittle, not suited for carving and worth a fraction of the price of what they had jettisoned. It would take years to replenish what they had lost here. Mungo could not wait so long for such meagre returns. Nor could he risk his ship going back around the Cape in this condition. She needed a complete refit that would cost thousands of dollars. How could he afford that?

  Another wave of despair broke over him. He tried to wrestle free of Tippoo’s grip. He needed to hit something, someone – anything – to release the fury that boiled in his heart. But Tippoo was stronger and would not let him go.

  And as he felt Tippoo’s giant hands locked around his wrists, as strong as iron, a door seemed to crack open in his mind. A sliver of light – another possibility.

  A terrible possibility. A door he knew he should not open. A
cargo that would fetch almost as much as the ivory, but could be had in a fraction of the time.

  He would not go down that path. He slammed the door in his mind shut.

  The choice calmed him. Tippoo felt Mungo’s arms go slack as the rage left his body. The giant let go of Mungo, though keeping a wary watch on his captain. Mungo offered his hand to Henderson.

  ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘I was not myself before. You saved the ship, and I am grateful for it.’

  Henderson shook his hand and mumbled something.

  ‘What now?’ said Tippoo.

  Mungo looked around. ‘We do what we can.’

  They lowered the boats and towed the Raven to the water’s edge. When she was as shallow as she could go, they fastened thick hawsers to her bow, wrapped the lines around tree stumps, and hauled her out of the water up onto the beach.

  They felled trees and planed them smooth to replace the masts. They found termite nests in the ground, where the earth was so thin and brittle you could step through up to your knee, and dug them out to make saw-pits. They built a makeshift forge where the carpenter’s mate could melt down iron and forge nails. Hunting parties were sent out into the bush, and they came back with fresh venison, which they cured over the fires. Mungo drove the men like a demon, working them from dawn to dusk. At night he barely slept, but prowled the beach with a gun in case any natives found them.

  Henderson examined the repairs they had made.

  ‘Should do for getting us back to Baltimore.’ He sounded doubtful.

  ‘We are not going to Baltimore,’ said Mungo. ‘We are going back to the hunting grounds in East Africa.’

  Henderson stared at him. ‘But that’ll be another year. Maybe two. The men didn’t sign on for that.’

  ‘Any man who doesn’t like it can stay here.’ Almost the only items that hadn’t gone overboard were the rifles. They had been locked in the weapons store, and in the chaos of the storm no one had been able to find the key. ‘I will not return to Baltimore empty-handed.’

  Tippoo slapped the ship’s hull with the palm of his hand.