Artemis k-2

by Julian Stockwin

  Muttering began among the men, but Powlett smiled grimly. ‘Those who wish to linger I have no doubt will be right royally entertained by the savages.’ He glanced up at the sun. ‘We’ll not complete today. Get as much of the stores back aboard before sunset as you can, Mr Fairfax, the scientificals can remain until first light if they wish, the ship’s company will take a two-watch guard. I want to be at sea at dawn.’

  More shaken than he cared to admit, Kydd took his place at the stockade, but his mind was on Renzi, lost somewhere in the interior. Not having any real means of communication with anyone he would be alone at a time of appalling danger — and tomorrow was his last chance at escape.

  Kydd felt tears prick, whether selfishly because he had lost a true sea companion, or for helplessness at Renzi’s dire plight, it didn’t matter. A thought began to force itself on his consciousness, a growing, pressing thought. He shuffled along the stockade until he found the end where it met the sea in an untidy pile of logs. ‘That you, Toby?’ he called.

  Stirk was there and grunted a reply. Dark was rapidly falling, and if Kydd was going to do anything it would have to be in the blackness of night before moonrise. ‘I know where Renzi is,’ he said, in a low voice. Stirk’s eyes gleamed in the dying light of the day but he didn’t reply. ‘I’m goin’ after him.’

  ‘Yer want help, mate?’ Stirk said. Kydd felt a surge of feeling: here was what it meant to be shipmates.

  ‘No, Toby, I need y’ here so when we gets back, you c’n let us back in,’ Kydd said. He had no plan, simply an urge to get to Renzi. He hesitated. A musket would impede his progress considerably, and a cutlass didn’t have the reach compared to spears and clubs. He would go unarmed.

  He splashed around the end of the stockade. ‘Luck, matey!’ Stirk called quietly. Kydd stepped out nervously, imagining unseen eyes on him, with capture and a hideous death to follow. His skin crawled, but he went on towards the trail leading to the clearing where Haynes had held his trade and which connected with the small path leading inland.

  Every bush and broad leaf that brushed his face and every root that grabbed at his ankles made his heart thump. The sky was splashed with stars, but die earth was in inky blackness. The foliage fell away — he had reached the far side of the plateau, and would be able to follow along its fringe until he reached the forest path he sought. If anyone could see him from the stockade, which was doubtful in the gloom, they would believe him to be a savage.

  Here — was this the place where he and Renzi had begun their final ascent to the peak? For a minute of panic he could not recognise the area, but remembered the casuarina with its feathery leaves overshadowing the track. He plunged forward. The moist cool of the night was laced with odours of decaying vegetation and night blooms.

  Things rustled and snapped. Panting loudly in the quiet of the woodland he wound his way up to where the escarpment bulked large and black against the stars. He paused, trying to remember the topography. Up here — they had seen the other side of the island from this place. Cautiously Kydd drew near.

  There - the other side of the island was already under the full radiance of a splendid moon, but what chilled Kydd was the distant sight of not one but four fires below. He could see some figures moving, others still, and his heightened imagination told him that frightened souls were still tied to the trees. There would be fresh meat in the morning.

  He pulled away. Where would Renzi have gone from here? Only one way: along the base of the escarpment to the opposite end. Kydd struck out and after only a few hundred yards came to its end. He stepped warily, then stopped dead. Two figures appeared out of the dark, stark against the moonlight.

  ‘Nicholas? Is that you?’ he hissed. The figures stood rigid, before one broke away and approached Kydd.

  ‘It is,’ said Renzi. There was a bare tremor in his voice.

  ‘Artemis sails t’morrow, we can lose no time.’

  A plaintive voice came from the other figure, the import of the unknown words impossible to miss. Renzi murmured something over his shoulder, but then he addressed Kydd directly: ‘If by this you mean to persuade me to give up my decision and return to your world of hurts and unreason, then you should stand disabused. I will remain.’

  ‘This afternoon with m’ own eyes I saw the savages kill ‘n’ eat their own kind - Nicholas, to devour a living human, an’ they’re here still!’

  There was a hesitation, then Renzi spoke: ‘No doubt there will be those even of this world who will respond to Nature by profaning in the worst possible way, but that does not alter the premise by one whit that, left to himself, Man will gracefully revert to his true self, and attain the perfectibility of the spirit.’

  ‘And if y’r premise is wrong? You will tell y’r warriors they should mend their ways, that—’

  ‘Enough!’ Renzi’s voice was defensive. ‘Logic itself will tell you that both possible sides of the human condition cannot exist at the same time, the same body. One must prevail.’

  ‘A pox on y’r logic!’

  ‘And on rank unreason!’

  Both were breathing raggedly. ‘Then y’ will not come?’ ‘I — will not come!’

  Kydd’s anger swelled to blind rage. His muscles tensed in fury. His fist slammed out, connecting with Renzi’s jaw, and he crumpled soundlessly. Whimpering, the woman scrabbled at his body, but Kydd pushed her away; she fell back to the bluff rocks, staring at him.

  There was almost no time left; the savages would be waiting for moonlight on the lee side of the island before they started picking their way across the island to be in position for dawn. It might be too late now. Kydd thrust away the thoughts. Seizing Renzi’s arm, he hoisted him on to his back, grateful for his slight build. He hefted him into the most comfortable position and turned round for the long trip back. The woman cried out once, but didn’t try to stop him. He trudged along the track, aware that she was following blindly. Finding the path downward he hurried along it. Renzi’s body was a dead weight that had him panting and straining. He wondered what to do about the woman. If she got hysterical she would certainly attract attention, and of the worst possible kind. He would have to silence her — but how?

  The moon burst above the line of the escarpment. The whole island now lay still, bathed in silver. Kydd cursed and redoubled his effort. The clearing, then the beach. His muscles blazed intolerably with the strain, he would have to rest. He swung Renzi down, the body flopping untidily on the sand. He looked up and the woman froze. Panting in burning gasps he confronted her. With stabbing gestures he signed that he was taking Renzi to the ship. She nodded in mute understanding. He then signed that she could go also. She gazed at him, her face frozen - and shook her head slowly. Kydd repeated the gesture angrily. Seconds now could decide whether they lived or died. She shook her head more emphatically, then dropped to her knees beside Renzi, anguished cries racking her frame as she stroked his face tenderly.

  For a mad moment Kydd considered leaving Renzi to her, but recovered, and tore him from her grasp, triggering a hopeless paroxysm of sobbing. He pulled at Renzi’s arm to hoist him up, but his strength was spent. Nearly weeping with frustration and weariness, he tried again. He fell to his knees panting uncontrollably. There was a scurry of movement. He looked up and saw the woman back away in fear, and then run. He swung round, but it was too late. Dark shapes lunged across the beach towards him. He stumbled to his feet.

  ‘Get ‘is feet, then, y’ ugly bastard,’ Stirk growled to another, elbowing Kydd aside. They staggered and lurched along the limpid stillness of the beach and finally, gloriously, reached the stockade.

  Splashing round its end, Kydd felt overwhelming relief. Exhausted, he staggered after Stirk and the others who laid Renzi down on the scrubby grass. The moonlight had transformed the landscape, now dappled and lovely; it also revealed officers striding down to investigate.

  Renzi twitched and groaned. The remains of his headdress still decorated his head, but the native skirt was sadly bedragg
led. No one bent to see to him to avoid being associated by any implication in his criminality.

  ‘There he is,’ said Fairfax severely. ‘The deserter Renzi! Well done, you men.’ Powlett frowned but said nothing.

  Stirk turned his back deliberately on Fairfax and touched his forehead to Powlett. ‘Renzi were taken b’ the savages earlier, sir, as yez can see. Seems ‘e made ‘is escape while they was a-rollickin’ an’ eatin’ of each other.’ Stirk shifted on his feet and thumbed at Kydd. ‘Kydd went out ter bring ‘im in, but he bein’ so near knackered …’

  Powlett looked down on the groaning Renzi. ‘Poor devil,’ he said. ‘Who can guess what it is he’s suffered?’ He stared accusingly at Fairfax. ‘But God be praised, he’s with his shipmates now, his suffering is over.’

  Renzi rolled to one side, uttering something incomprehensible. ‘Th’ experience has affected him, sir,’ Kydd hastened to say, ‘makes him say crazy things - lost his mind a bit, I’d guess.’

  ‘Get him to the ship as soon as you can, Mr Fairfax, and tie him in his hammock. Poor wretch is not responsible for his actions.’ Powlett straightened. ‘And see that these fine men get a double tot of rum.’

  At dawn the woodland edge opposite the stockade was alive with movement. But at last it was possible to run boats to the ship - coral reefs made it far too dangerous at night. ‘Too damned smart to come round our rear by canoe,’ Parry said grimly. ‘They know we’ll blast ‘em to flinders from the ship if they do.’

  The living quarters and other temporary works were to remain; only sea stores would be retrieved. Hobbes beat a dignified retreat to the ship, but Evelyn insisted on completing his observations, the sailors marvelling at his coolness at the eyepiece as yells and warlike sounds came faint but ever louder over the open ground.

  ‘We will retire by threes, Mr Fairfax,’ Powlett ordered. ‘The first party led by you to the ship, the second led by Mr Party to lie off in the boats to cover the third, which I will lead, and which will be the last to leave.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ Fairfax and Parry acknowledged.

  ‘And you,’ said Powlett to Kydd, ‘have my authority to remove Mr Evelyn and his gear by force if necessary. He is to retire as of this moment.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’ Kydd hastened to the observation platform. He mounted the platform to speak to Evelyn, and could see over the stockade to the gathering warriors. They were eddying out from the woodland edge, prancing ferociously and moving forward to strike their clubs on the ground with a battle-cry before retreating.

  ‘Sir - I have t’ tell you …’

  ‘They are indignant that their plunder is sailing away from them,’ Evelyn said, not even raising his eyes from his work. ‘No matter, I am nearly done. You may remove all but this.’

  Kydd called across a party of men to carry the instruments to the boats; Fairfax had his men embarked and pulled back to Artemis in good order. The savages became more bold, covering half the distance to the stockade now to perform their displays. Muskets banged away despite Powlett’s orders to conserve fire for a rush, and more and more bodies lay still in the grass.

  The boats returned. ‘Sir, the Captain …’ Kydd tried to say.

  ‘Yes, yes — my last reading, he will not grudge me that?’

  Evelyn replied testily. The sound of the war-cries filled with bloody-minded hatred tore at Kydd’s courage.

  ‘Sir, my authority…‘he said earnestly, but was interrupted by a disturbance. A group of warriors had run along the length of the stockade outside and, shielded by its timbers, had gathered sufficient numbers for an assault. They massed around one or two of the posts and heaved and pulled until they had loosened and fallen away. They had breached the stockade.

  ‘Fall back to the boats!’ roared Powlett, as the savages poured through. There would be no second chance, and the defenders made haste towards the shore.

  Kydd swung to the ground, and looked back to Evelyn, to see him take a spear in his side. The astronomer slumped back in his canvas chair. ‘Damn,’ he said faintly, plucking at the vicious barbed weapon. Kydd grabbed a musket and fired at the thrower. The musket missed fire with a fizz of priming. The warrior grinned and swung a bone club. Kydd swung the musket up with two hands; the club splintered against it. The musket bent uselessly, but with it Kydd crushed the warrior’s skull.

  In their lust to stop the ship from escaping, the savages streamed past each side of the platform, leaving the two men untouched. Kydd bent to Evelyn who was now white with shock. ‘Th’ - the observa-tions,’ he whispered in shallow gasps, clutching the chair in great pain. Kydd looked down and saw the polished box, open, papers neatly inside. He grabbed it and slammed the lid, and looked up to meet Evelyn’s wild stare. ‘Leave!’ Kydd hesitated in an agony of indecision. ‘Leave! Go! That is worth more than any man’s life. Go, damn you!’ Kydd nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and fled, the box under his arm.

  The last men were throwing themselves into the boats, and Kydd tossed the box into the pinnace. He looked back, but Evelyn had disappeared under a swarm of enraged savages, like ants over prey. Their barbarous weapons rose and fell, hacking and chopping. At last the bow swivel gun mounted in the cutter had a clear field of fire. It blasted out, and a storm of canister swept the scene, changing the full-throated war-cries to screams.

  One by one the boats from Artemis retired in good order, and headed back to their rightful place.

  Chapter 13

  Kydd’s nose wrinkled. The hog’s lard was giving out, and on the foreshroud deadeyes he was having to work with a nauseating mixture of fat and rancid butter. It was essential activity, for any slackness in the rigging would result in the destruction of a spar as it worked to and fro. Each separate shroud ended in a deadeye, with lanniards running down to the channel outboard to give tension adjustment, but Kydd and his party found that such was the stretched state of the rope that now, in addition, they had to take up the racking on the shrouds themselves. Finally, with gear well taut, Kydd was satisfied and allowed his three men to secure from work.

  Left alone, he gave a final tug at the lines, and became aware that he was no longer on his own. He looked up and saw Renzi standing with a set face, looking out over the tumble of blue-grey seas.

  Kydd hesitated. His sociable advances before had been repelled with a cold intensity and he was not sure how he would be received now. He fiddled with the loose end of a downhaul and waited. His decisive action on the island

  had not been forgiven by Renzi, who had retreated into himself, but ironically, in the week or so since, this had been generously misinterpreted by his shipmates who were convinced that he was recovering from a mind-scarring experience. They gave him every possible sympathy.

  Kydd watched Renzi covertly, the face in profile appearing even more solitary and inaccessible. A larger sea surged from astern, faster than they could sail. It overtook them with a swelling and falling accompanied by a marked lurch that sent them both staggering and reaching for a steadying rope. This simple human impulse seemed to bring a fluidity to the situation: Kydd caught a flicker in Renzi’s eye. He wandered over beside him.

  ‘Hearty sailin’ weather,’ Kydd said. He tested the tautness of the nearest rope. Renzi did not move away. He still faced outwards, his expression set — but his lips moved slightly as though speaking to himself. Encouraged, Kydd looked at him directly. ‘Mullion says as how we’ll be stayin’ on this same tack f’r all of three thousan’ miles.’

  ‘That would be a logical assumption,’ Renzi replied coolly, his gaze still on the heaving seascape.

  ‘Our gear had better be sound, I believe,’ Kydd added, anxious to keep momentum in the conversation.

  Renzi looked sideways. ‘If it is not then no one will ever know — but us,’ he said, and Kydd could swear a smile hovered.

  ‘A hard end t’ our island adventure,’ he dared.

  There was just a moment’s hesitancy, then, ‘I have been considering the whole experience.’ K
ydd waited. ‘It would appear that my expectations were over-sanguine in the matter of Man and Nature. The essence of Rousseau’s thesis remains unaltered; timeless in its perception, sublime in its penetration - but it is subverted. We are too late.’

  Clearing his throat Kydd began, ‘But why …’

  ‘It is now very clear. If even in so distant an island as this “civilisation” has come, then it must have spread its canker over the entire inhabited globe. Is there anywhere left at all on this terraqueous sphere that a true self may go to attain perfectibility? I think not/ A pensive expression replaced his forbidding look. ‘Perhaps Rousseau would have achieved a higher immortality were he to have demonstrated a modus of perfectibility within the mundus vulgaris. In short, my friend, I accept that there is no longer any possibility for me to achieve a state of natural grace, and thus I bow to the ineluctability of my fate.’

  The smile surfaced, and Kydd responded, barely able to restrain himself from clapping Renzi on the back. ‘Never fear, we have a long haul ahead before we reach our own civilisation, an’ that at war,’ he said.

  Renzi’s face cleared. The blue Pacific rollers were now behind them, the grey of the Southern Ocean was the predominant theme, and he gazed intensely at the clouds obscuring the wan sun.

  ‘Fierce and more fierce the gathering tempest grew, South, and by West, the threatening demon blew; Auster’s resistless force all air invades, And every rolling wave more ample spreads.’

  ‘Y’r Wordsworth, then?’ Kydd guessed. He would have been just as happy at the fine words if it had been the village blacksmith.

  ‘I believe it might have been the peerless Falconer, talking about the mighty ocean in his Shipwreck, but I may be mistaken.’