Bolitho 19 - Beyond the Reef (23 page)

Bolitho thought suddenly of England, but not the one he had just described to Catherine. He wondered what they would be thinking and saying. The spiteful would hide their cruel glee as they had over brave Nelson, and there would be others already competing to replace him.

But on the waterfronts, and in the fields of the West Country there would be many more who would remember. Poor Adam, he would soon learn to extend his hand to those, as well as recognising the unworthy.

He began, “Mister Bezant is suffering badly.” He saw Yovell swallow hard and guessed he had realised that the intruding, vile smell was gangrene. “I need one volunteer. Captain Keen and my cox’n know what to do.” He looked round as Ozzard appeared as if by magic at his elbow. “Are you certain?”

Ozzard met his gaze calmly. “I cannot pull an oar, nor can I reef or steer.” He gave a small shrug. “This I understand.”

Bolitho glanced at Allday’s grim features above the little man’s back, and guessed that he more than any knew something about Ozzard which he would share with no one.

Keen said quietly to Owen and Tojohns, “Run out your oars—pull or back water to hold her as steady as you can.” He glanced at the small medical kit Catherine had found in the cabin and tried not to shudder; he had never forgotten Allday’s strength and gentleness that day aboard the frigate Undine. Keen had been a seventeen-year-old midshipman then, and the great splinter had lanced up into his groin. Ignoring the drunken surgeon, Allday had stripped him naked and had cut the splinter out with his own knife. Mercifully he had fainted after that. The terrible scar was still there. And so was he, because of Allday’s courage and care.

He felt a sudden stab of despair. Zenoria had never seen or caressed the ugly, bunched scar. Now, she never would.

Bolitho understood his expression. “Together, Val. Always remember that.” He saw Sophie huddled in the bows, her face hidden in Catherine’s breast.

Ozzard asked, “Ready, Sir Richard?”

They forced open the master’s jaws, and Ozzard poured a large measure of brandy into his mouth before putting a leather strap between his teeth.

Allday took the knife and looked along the bright blade as he might check the edge of a boarding cutlass before an engagement. It had to be swiftly done: knife, then saw. He would likely die anyway, at least before the rest of them. What would happen when only the last one was still alive? A boat full of scarecrows … He dashed the sweat from his eyes and thought of the master’s mate named Jonas Polin, and his trim little widow with the inn at Fallowfield. When the news reached her, what would she think? Might she not even remember him?

He said harshly, “Hold him!” He pointed the knife, his stomach rebelling against the foul stench.

As the knife came down Bezant opened his eyes and stared at the blade. His choking scream seemed to hang over the boat, rendering them all helpless, under a curse.

Once again it was the man called Owen who broke the spell.

“Here comes the wind, lads!” His voice almost broke. “Oh, thank God, the wind!”

Allday was right after all, just as he had known about Bezant. The master died with an obscenity on his lips even as dusk closed in, when the oars were cutting across the lively whitecaps and the wet sail drummed to the wind.

In between baling and comforting the distraught Sophie, Catherine saw and heard it all. Her man’s voice raised above the din of wind and canvas as he spoke a few words from a prayer he must have used many times. She covered the girl’s ears as the body went over the side, for even in the depths there could be no peace for the Golden Plover’s master. The shark denied him even that.

Captain Valentine Keen looked up at the flapping sail and swung the tiller sharply. To see the canvas momentarily out of control came as a shock, for he knew he must have slipped into a doze. And worse, nobody in this overcrowded boat had noticed it.

The ocean was moving in a deep swell, but the wind was not strong enough to break it into crests. The sun was almost on the horizon; soon it would be cooler, and the nightly business of using oars and sail combined to carry them to the east would begin.

He glanced at the others, some curled up on the bottom boards, others resting on the oars, which were propped in their rowlocks across the boat.

Lady Catherine was sitting in the sternsheets, her shoulders covered with some canvas while Bolitho leaned against her as if asleep.

Ozzard was on his knees, examining his rations and checking the water in the remaining barricoe. It could not last much longer. One more day, then the despair would sap any remaining resistance like some creeping fever.

Over a week now since the barquentine had thundered across the reef. It felt ten times that long. The meagre rations had finally gone except for a bag of biscuits. Brandy for the sick, rum for when the water ran out. Tomorrow; the next day?

Catherine stirred and gave a quiet sob. Bolitho was instantly roused, his arm cradling her body away from the lurch and pitch of the sun-blistered hull.

Keen tried not to think back over the years, twenty to be exact, to when they had served together in the Great South Sea. Bolitho had been his young captain in the frigate Tempest, and he a junior lieutenant. There had been another escape in an open boat. Bolitho would be remembering it now, how the woman he had loved had died in his arms.

A larger longboat, but the same hopelessness and danger. Allday had been there too, had called on the others to restrain Bolitho when he had wrapped her body in a length of chain and lowered her gently over the side.

How could Bolitho ever forget, especially now that he had found the love which had always been denied him?

Allday was down on the boards, lolling against the side, his shaggy, greying hair rippling in the breeze.

Keen felt his eyes prick with emotion at the memory of two nights ago. They had all been close to collapse when a freak rain squall had come out of the dusk and advanced on the boat like a curtain, tearing the sea into a mass of spray and bubbles. They had come to life, clutching at buckets and pieces of canvas, even mugs in readiness to catch a little of the fresh rainwater.

Then, as if a giant’s hand were deflecting the rain, it had seemed to veer away within half a cable of the boat.

The young sailor named Tucker from Portsmouth had broken completely, sobbing out his heart until fatigue wore him down into silence.

It had been then that Catherine had said, “Now, John Allday! I’ve heard you singing about the gardens at Falmouth—you have a fair voice indeed!” She had looked at Yovell, suddenly pleading, desperate for support. “You will vouch for that, Mr Yovell?”

And so it had been. As the first stars had appeared and they had tried to gauge the course to steer, Allday had sat by the tiller and had sung a song much beloved by sailors, and written by the mariner’s friend, Charles Dibdin, who, it was said, had composed the song How Hyperion Cleared the Way to commemorate her last valiant fight.

It was claimed by even the hardest man who served at sea and braved all its dangers and cruelties, that no matter what might happen there was always an angel at the masthead to care for his safety.

“Clear the wreck, stow the yards, and bounce everything tight,

And under reefed foresail we’ll scud:

Avast! nor don’t think me a milksop so soft

To be taken for trifles aback,

For they say there’s a Providence sits up aloft,

To keep watch for the life of Poor Jack.”

Exhausted, blistered and tortured by thirst, they had listened, and it seemed that for just a few minutes their perils had been held at bay.

There had been tears, too, and Keen had seen Jenour with his head in his hands, the girl Sophie staring at Allday as if he were some kind of wizard.

Bolitho cleared his throat. “How is it, Val?”

Keen glanced at the stars. “Due east as far as I can tell, although I’ve no idea how far we’ve drifted.”

“No matter.” Bolitho cupped her shoulder in his hand and felt its smoothness through the stained shirt. The skin was hot, burning. He brushed some of her hair from her eyes and saw that she was watching him; caring and fearing for him, her spirits beginning to desert even her.

“How long, dearest of men?”

He pressed his cheek against her hair. “A day. Maybe two.” He kept his voice low, but the others probably knew as well as anyone.

The seaman Tucker gave a wild laugh, cut short by the sore dryness of his throat.

Bolitho gestured to the oars. “Time to begin, watch by watch!”

Keen exclaimed, “What is the matter with Tucker?”

Owen said heavily, “He took some water, sir.” He gestured towards the sea as it lifted almost to the gunwale before sliding down again.

Allday muttered, “That’s him done for.” He said it without emotion one way or the other. “Bloody fool.”

Tucker pushed his oar away and tried to reach the side before Jenour and Cuppage seized him and dragged him to the foot of the small mast. Cuppage pulled out some codline and tied the babbling man’s wrists behind him. “Shut your trap, you stupid bugger!”

Bolitho clambered into Tucker’s place and thrust the oar out over the water. It seemed to weigh twice as much as before. He shut his ears to Tucker’s cracked, rambling voice. The beginning of the end.

Catherine sat with Keen while Ozzard poured some water one cup at a time, across the barricoe’s leather lip.

Keen raised it to her mouth. “Hold it there as long as you can. A sip at a time.”

She shivered, and almost dropped the cup as Tucker screamed, “Water! Give me water, you poxy bitch!”

In the deep shadows there was the sound of a fist on bone, and Tucker fell silent.

Catherine whispered, “There was no need. I’ve heard far worse.”

Keen tried to smile. It had not been merely out of regard for her feelings that Allday had laid him low. One more outbreak from Tucker, and it might consume the boat in fighting madness.

Keen felt the pistol in his belt and tried to remember who else was armed.

She saw his hand on the pistol and said softly, “You’ve done this before, Val … I guessed as much.” She turned away as something fell heavily in the sea astern. The shark or its victim, it was too dark to tell.

She said, “He must not see me suffer.” She tried to control her voice, but her body was shaking too badly. “He has given enough because of me.”

“Give way all!”

The oars rose and fell once more while the water was passed carefully from hand to hand.

Then they changed around yet again, and Bolitho slumped down beside her in the sternsheets.

“How is your eye?”

Bolitho forced a smile. “Better than I thought possible.” He had sensed rather than seen her despair when she had been speaking with Keen.

“You lie.” She leaned against him and felt him stiffen. “Stop worrying about me, Richard … I am the cause of all this. You should have left me in that prison. You might never have known …”

Great white shapes flapped out of the darkness and circled the jolly-boat before continuing on their way.

He said, “Tonight, those birds will nest in Africa.”

She pushed her wet hair away as spray drifted over the gunwale.

“I would like to be in some secret place, Richard. Our beach perhaps … To run naked in the sea, to love on the sand.” She began to cry very quietly, the sound muffled by his shoulder. “Just to live with you.”

She had fallen into a deep sleep when the young seaman named Tucker choked and died. The oarsmen rested on their looms like souls beyond care or caring. Only Yovell crossed himself in the darkness as the body went over the side and drifted away.

Bolitho held her shoulder, ready to shield her from the frenzy of a shark’s attack. But there was nothing. The shark had patience enough for all of them.

When the first hint of dawn opened up the sea around them, Catherine saw that Tucker was missing. It was too draining even to think what it must have been like for him in his dying moments of madness. It was over now. A release.

She saw Ozzard sounding the barricoe, his quick shake of the head to Bolitho beside him.

“Half a cup, then?” Bolitho was almost pleading.

Ozzard shrugged. “Less.”

Sophie stepped carefully across the outflung legs and the sprawled bodies of the ones off watch.

Catherine held out her arms. “What is it, Sophie? Come here to me.”

The girl gripped her hand and hesitated. “Is that land? Over there?” She seemed afraid that she might be going mad like Tucker.

Keen stood up from his oar and shaded his eyes.

“Oh, dear God! Land it is!”

Allday peered up at the boat’s masthead and tried to grin. “See? He keeps watch for the life of Poor Jack!”

As the light strengthened it became more and more obvious that the land Sophie had sighted was little more than an island. But just the nearness of it seemed to put new life into the jolly-boat, and when the oars were manned and the sail reset, Bolitho could see no disappointment in their sunburned faces.

Keen said between strokes on his oar, “Do you know it, sir?”