And a sound ship. A banging on the hatch informed them that the carpenter was on his way out. They banged back to tell him to wait, chose their moment themselves, and released one of the battens. The three men collapsed into their midst. 'There's five feet down there,' gasped one.
'And gaining,' said another.
'She's just opening up,' said the third. 'She weren't made to take this pounding.'
'There ain't no ship made to take this pounding,' muttered the boatswain.
The Cormorant agreed with a gigantic shudder, and speech was lost in another foaming maelstrom of water.
They looked at the captain, clinging to the rail of the poop, gazing down at them. Even through the noise and his own preoccupations, Gibson had noticed that the pumps had ceased.
'Ahoy there,' he bawled. 'What's amiss?'
The carpenter raised himself to his feet, holding on to a stay. 'She's making water too fast, captain,' he shouted. 'She's sinking.'
The men around Dick stirred. The fact they had known for some time had at last been put into words.
Gibson stared at them for a moment, rocking with his ship. But the Cormorant had no life left. Even Dick, who knew little enough about the sea, could tell that. She was a dead creature, in the water, and every blow struck by the sea killed her a little more.
'Prepare the boat,' Gibson called. 'Careful now.' 'Careful,' grumbled the boatswain. 'You'd best help me, lads.'
Dick rose with them. He felt as if he had known them all his life, as if he and they were intimates of a thousand bottles, a thousand adventures, perhaps a thousand storms. Shoulder to shoulder with them, he tore at the canvas cover for the longboat—amazingly still in place—and helped them secure the slings. And like them, he looked back at the poop for the orders to launch. And thought that they were a good and faithful crew, who stood no chance at all, so far as he could see. So what chance did any crew stand?
'Now,' Gibson shouted. The wheel had been lashed, to keep the ship as much as possible before the wind, and the captain and his helmsmen came swarming down the ladders to assist them. The boat was raised on the slings, several men hauling on each rope, and pushed by the remainder towards the gunwale. And as if intent to assist them, the Cormorant listed to port as well, causing the boat to swing ever faster. The six men pushing slid across the deck, the boat hung clear of the gunwale . . . but instead of the order to release the falls, Gibson gave a strangled scream.
'Get her back.'
Dick's head jerked, and he looked over the boat at another towering wall of green, rearing like a striking snake, its top curling white, hovering some thirty feet above them.
'Get her back.' Gibson's words trailed away into nothing as the sea broke. Dick heard the snap of the parting falls. He realized that, water apart, he was liable to be crushed beneath the falling longboat. But the thought was an abstract. All thoughts were abstract. He was aware only of being in the middle of the water; of striking something solid with his left leg, a jarring blow which left him paralysed; of aching pain and breathless lungs; of water filling his nose, his eyes, his ears, his mouth; of sudden air, which had him choking and gasping; of putting his good leg down to the deck and finding nothing; of rolling over and flailing his arms in desperation; of a sudden, tremendous fear spreading outwards from his belly.
And of anger. He could think of no reason to die. His crimes had been inadvertent, crimes of weakness rather than determined vice. So then, no doubt, God abhorred weakness. He would sooner settle for a man of determination, even if that determination was wholly evil, rather than a man who drifted with the tide, unable ever to do good because he could not make up his mind where the ultimate goodness lay.
Something struck him on the face. The abstract thoughts which kept booming around the back of his mind suggested that he was being rescued. Oh, how he wanted to be rescued. How, on a sudden, he loved Captain Gibson and all his crew. So, then, a rope? Thrown to regain him from the water?
Another surge of pure terror. It was the first time his mind had accepted the fact that he was in the water, that he had lost contact with the ship. Or had he? His arms closed on something solid. They threatened to slip, but by reaching even farther he found he could grasp his own wrist. He thrust feet down to find the deck, find anything, and still could not. So, he was hanging on to the side of the ship, no doubt. He must stay here until someone pulled him back on board.
Why? Did he have the courage to go back? He had begged, implored, and finally bribed Gibson to take him back. Then he had been suffering from the after-effects of drink. But that had only been yesterday afternoon. Had it been yesterday afternoon? Oh, horrible thought, had it only been this afternoon? But surely it was past midnight.
The thought made him raise his head; it had been resting on the wood he was clutching, with water breaking over him. But he had his breathing trained, by now. Breathe, submerge, breathe, submerge, breathe, submerge. He could do that forever, if his strength would last forever. The lightning was gone. Never had he known such darkness. Only the loom of the whitecaps as they surged around him, plucked at his legs, slapped him in the face, dropped on his head. And the whine of the wind. Still the wind. Always the wind.
His head banged the wood, and he realized that his fingers were sliding free of his wrist. He had fallen asleep. How remarkable. And how dangerous. He seized himself again, clutched the rounded wood harder against his chest.
Think, or die. There was a simple choice. Think, or die. Supposing one wanted to live.
But oh, how he wanted to live. There was so much he wanted to do with his life, so much he thought he could do with his life. Then this was the time. It occurred to him that always in the past he had been waiting for something to happen, for his brain to make a decision of its own, when it would assume command, not only of him, but of his entire situation, of all those around him. It would be a cool, a calculated decision, not one taken in anger, as nearly all his decisions had been in the past. That was the only way to rise above the pitfalls which Uttered life, the only way to survive people like Ellen Taggart, Harriet Gale, James Hardy, Harriet's companion . . . even Tony. The only way. Think, and survive. Always.
But for the moment, only think. Of something which would hold his brain. Of a woman. There was the answer. Of... he found himself thinking of Ellen. There was a surprise. But she remained his betrothed. And she possessed the strength he now sought. Had that been the impulse behind that so secret, so confident laugh of hers? Had she known that she was one of the few capable of thought as he now wished to be? Ellen, tall and strong and determined.
He thought of Ellen. He remembered everything he and Harriet had ever done together, throughout the past four years, and replaced Harriet's squirming heat in his arms with Ellen's cool strength. There was a dream to sustain a man.
Then what of Judith? The very thought of her name left an ache in his heart. What of Judith? Oh, my God, what of Judith?
The jar took all his wind away, and was followed by another before he could catch his breath. That had been his belly, pounding on the wood he held. But now his knees jarred as well, and the next wave contained less water than liquid sand, which clogged his nostrils even more thoroughly. He rose to his knees. His knees? He stared up the beach, at the trees, fell forward again as the next gust of wind battered on his shoulders, rose again, holding himself clear of the surf, and stared at the men who came from the trees towards him. Black men.
Dick made another effort, once again reached his feet, was once again knocked over by the surf which pounded into his back. The water rolled him farther up the beach, and he dug his fingers into the sand to stop himself being dragged back by the undertow.
The men remained standing, before the trees, watching him, but making no effort to help him. It was almost light now, and he could see that they were armed with machetes and rusty muskets, while one had a pistol stuck into his belt. They wore drawers, once white, perhaps, now stained a dirty brown, but no other clothes that he could
see, and were barefoot.
He tried to speak, but found his jaws so tightly clamped together he could make no sound. The next wave broke over him with less force, and he was able to regain his knees, and sit down, half turning to look back at the sea. Had he survived that? It was nearly impossible to see the blue, so constant were the whitecaps, racing across the morning. He appeared to have entered some sort of a bay, for the trees curved round to his right. The water in the bay was not quite so tormented, but beyond the sea raged, and there was no sign of the Cormorant, or of any other life. Only the spar to which he had clung for so many hours continued to surge in the surf a few feet away.
And the wind still whined, bending the trees, snatching at what breath he retained, drying his face and hair.
Feet, crunching on the sand. He rose to his knees, gazed at them. 'Water.' It was no more than a whisper, but he had spoken.
One of the men grinned at him, he could see the flash of his teeth.
Another spoke, but Dick could not understand what they said, although it sounded vaguely familiar.
Another replied, and this time Dick caught the word eau although pronounced, 'yo'. French, after a fashion. Therefore he was on Haiti, the French colony known as St Domingue before the Negro revolt.
'L'eau,' he begged. 'S'il vous plait. L'eau.'
They laughed, and one of them spat.
Dick moaned again, 'Eau’
The man who grinned came closer, put his bare foot in the centre of Dick's face, and pushed. He rolled over, into the shallow water, his belly twisting. Oh, my God, he thought. Oh, my God. Every tale he had ever heard of Haiti, of the hatred felt by every black man for every white man, clouded his memory. Of the hideous practice of obeah, the black witchcraft, of the Voodoo religion, of blood sacrifices and unspeakable rites. He had been to Haiti before. He had visited the Corbeau Plantation, with Mama, to see Aunt Georgiana after she had married Louis Corbeau. And while he had been here the Negroes had risen in revolt, led by Toussaint, and Des-salines, and the young giant of a military genius, the English slave, Henry Christophe. And Aunt Georgiana had been torn to pieces before his eyes. They had gouged out her eyes and cut off her breasts while she had yet lived, and screamed. He could hear her scream now, echoing across the morning, riding the wind.
Mama they had spared, with her two sons. She had supposed for rape and torture, but it had been because her name had been Hilton, and with the blacks had marched the priestess, who in England had been known as Gislane Nicholson, who had loved Matt Hilton, and for the sake of that love had been returned to the slavery from which she had escaped. Gislane Nicholson had personally directed the mutilation of Georgiana, but Suzanne, the sister who had married her lover, she had saved, out of some quirk of humanity, perhaps. Out of delight at being able to play the deity, perhaps, where a god-like omnipotence had been practised so often upon her.
Did these men know anything of that? They looked hardly older than himself, so could have taken no part in those events, a quarter of a century in the past. Except that they might have tugged at Aunt Georgiana's naked body, and screamed their childish delight, and added to the horror of her death.
The men were kneeling. One fingered the material of his coat. Miraculous, that he should still be wearing a coat. Another looked at his pants. His feet were bare; his boots had come off during the night, and his stockings were in ruins.
'He has nothing,' said one of them, as near as Dick could understand.
'He is from the sea,' said the man who smiled. 'There will be a wreck. Other men, perhaps. We will follow the bay.'
'And this one?' asked the third man.
'He has nothing,' said the first one. 'Leave him. He will soon die.'
'He will not die,' said the man who smiled. 'He is plump, and healthy. This cloth is that of a massa. I remember such cloth. I will drink his blood. It will give me strength.'
Oh, God, Dick thought. Oh, God. I am about to be murdered. To have survived so much. To have survived a hurricane. And now to be murdered.
'Perhaps he will scream when we cut his flesh,' said the third man.
'He will scream,' said the smiling man, and Dick saw the flash of his machete blade in the morning sunlight.
So lie here, he thought, and it will be over. Soon. You will even make them happy, by screaming. But I wish to live, he protested. I did not find the strength to last the hurricane, and survive the waves, to be murdered like a pig.
Then find the energy again, and quickly. His fingers were still dug into the sand. He raised both hands, threw the first fistful at the man with the drawn machete, the second at the man by his feet. They gave shouts, of alarm, and pain and anger, and fell backwards. Dick rolled on his side, and the man kneeling on his left drew his machete. But Dick was moving his arms again, clasping them together, sweeping them over the sand like a flail, catching the black man at the ankles as he attempted to rise, and when his balance was already insecure. The man gave a gasp of exasperation and fell over, scattering across the beach, and Dick was on his feet.
Why had he not reacted like that to the man who had felled him, Harriet's friend? Had he done so, he would not be here. None of this nightmare would be happening. But he had been drunk, and had supposed himself the guilty one. Before he had even committed a crime.
The man who smiled was scraping sand from his eyes, and he still held his machete. There could be no opposing three men while he was alone and unarmed. Dick jumped over the man whom he had knocked down, and ran up the beach. As he left the water's edge the sand dried, and became soft; his feet sank to their ankles and he almost fell, as much out of despair as from loss of balance. But as his knees touched the ground he reflected that they could travel no faster; he could see their own footprints in front of him, deep, slowly filling with subsiding sand.
He regained his feet and ran, lungs bursting, nostrils and mouth gasping for breath. He heard shouts behind him, but did not look back. He reached crab grass, growing through the sand crystals, and his feet began to grip. He stumbled into the trees, trod on a thorny branch, and screamed in pain. But kept on running, the thorns driving deeper into his instep with every movement, the pain seeping up from his legs and into his calves and thighs, into his very belly. He sobbed, and moaned, and ran, and tripped, and fell through some bushes, down an incline, to land in a hollow, half sand and half earth and half bush. He lay there, panting and trying to control his panting, as he heard the crackle of bushes behind him, the sound of voices. The noise was very close. They were stopped, and arguing about where he might have gone. They were deciding to divide, to fan out, to be sure of finding him. They would not be robbed of their sport. They wanted him to scream. He held his breath, for several seconds, as the feet crackled above and to either side, as the pain seethed upwards from his own feet, and then the noise receded, and he allowed breath to explode from his lungs, and sat up to pant, and stared once again at the smiling black man.
For a moment they looked at each other. Then the black man smiled, and the machete came up, and he slowly began to descend the side of the pit.
Dick rose to his hands and knees, his chest still heaving. With fear? He had been frightened, just now. And tins time there was going to be no more surprising them and running away. This time he was going to die. Unless the black man died first.
But the black man held the machete. It darted forward now, in front of the grin. This was sport. He knew the white man was unarmed, and he could see the fear.
Dick fell backwards, stumbled and sat down. The black man's grin widened, and he thrust again. Dick rolled to one side, reached his knees, and then his feet, kicking sand to make some sort of a cloud. And feeling, strangely, an anger bubbling through his veins. He had felt it before and mistrusted it. But now, if he did not trust it, he would be killed.
Sand scattered across the black man's face, and he brushed it away with his right hand. But the smile had gone. Perhaps the white man was not sufficiently afraid. The knife came again, snaking o
ut at the end of the long right arm. Desperately Dick swayed to one side, and the arm brushed him as the black man came close, left hand now seeking to close on Dick's body. But that had to be ignored. Dick grasped the arm holding the knife with both hands, one at wrist and one at shoulder, fingers digging into the taut flesh, forced the arm down, with all his strength, brought his own knee up, with all his strength, heard the gasp of pain, saw the knife drop to the sand, and in the same instant felt a surge of pain himself as teeth closed on his shoulder.
HF - 04 - Black Dawn Page 22
