The Monsoon (53 page)

“Hold him!” Aboli stepped forward, and Reynolds said, “Yes, you too. We need strong arms here.”

He selected a scalpel, which looked to Tom more like a butcher’s knife than a surgical instrument, and tested the edge on his own thumb.

Tom saw the specks of rust on the blade where old blood had not been properly scrubbed away.

“Master Tom, you will hold his head.”

Reynolds handed him a wooden wedge “Keep that between his teeth.

He must have something to bite on when the pain hits him, or his teeth will crack.” He dipped a sponge into the bowl of hot water that his mate held, and swabbed away some of the blood and dirt from Hal’s left leg so that he could see where to make the first cut. Then he gave another twist to the strap of the tourniquet and ran the edge of the blade across the tightly drawn skin. The flesh parted and Tom, who was holding the wooden wedge between his father’s jaws, felt his body convulse and his back arch, every muscle and sinew drawn tight as though by a capstan.

A terrible cry issued from Hal’s throat, and then he clamped down on the wedge, locking his jaws so that the wood was crushed between his teeth. Tom tried to hold his head as it thrashed from side to side, but his father had the strength of a madman.

“Hold him!” Reynolds grunted, as he cut down, and Aboli and the men holding Hal were thrown about by the strength of his convulsions. Tom heard the steel of the blade strike the femur deep in his father’s thigh. Quickly Reynolds laid the knife aside and took up the hank of black catgut. He tied off the open ends of the blood vessels,
BLOOD
were running freely despite the tourniquet. The blood cascaded into the bucket beneath the grating. Tom could not believe that there was so much of it.

Reynolds picked a saw out of the canvas roll, and inspected the fine teeth. Then he seized the shattered leg in his left hand and, like a carpenter dividing a plank, he placed the blade in the deep scalpel wound and made the first stroke.

The steel teeth grated shrilly against the bone, and despite the weight of four men trying to hold him down Hal doubled AT the middle and came up into a sitting position. His head was thrown back and ropes of muscle and ligaments stood proud in his throat and shoulders.

Another tortured scream tore out of his gaping mouth and rang THrough the ship. Then his body went slack and he fell back limply on the grating.

“Thank the Lord for that,” Reynolds whispered.

“We must work swiftly now, before he comes around again.” With three more long strokes, the bone parted. The leg sagged and the surgeon laid aside the saw, and picked up the knife again.

“I will leave him a good thick pad on the stump, so that the end of -the bone is Well covered.” He shaped the flesh with a few rapid slices, and Tom gagged as the shattered leg came free and flopped on the grating. One of the surgeon’s mates picked it up and dropped it on the deck. It lay there like a fresh-caught cod thrown on the floorboards of a fishing skiff, twitching softly as the nerve ends died.

Reynolds threaded a length of catgut through the eye of a sail-maker’s needle, then folded the flap of flesh over the exposed bone that protruded from the stump. He hummed in his throat as he probed the point of the needle through the tough skin and began to lay his neat little stitches along the seam. The loose ends of the sutures with which he had tied off the blood vessels dangled out of the closed wound.

Within minutes Reynolds stood back and held his head to one side, like a seamstress judging a piece of embroidery.

“Nice,” he said.

“Very nice, even if I say it myself.” He made a little clucking sound of self-approval.

To Tom the stump looked like the head of a newborn baby, round and bald and bloody.

“Now, let’s have a look at his other pin.” Reynolds nodded at his mate. The man seized Hal’s remaining ankle in his big hairy hands and pulled the mangled leg straight.

The agony roused Hal from the dark fogs of unconsciousness. He uttered another shuddering groan, and struggled weakly, but they held him down.

Reynolds examined the leg, starting high on the thigh, just below the tourniquet, then working down over the knee, probing his powerful stubby fingers deep into the flesh to feel for broken bone.

“Good!” he encouraged himself.

“Excellent! I think I can risk cutting much lower here. I will save the knee.

That’s important. We will be able to articulate a wooden leg, He may even learn to walk again.” The thought that his father, who had been the vigorous centre of his existence for as long as he could remember, might never be able to walk again was suddenly thrust upon Tom’s dazed mind. It was almost as unbearable as the horrors he was forced to witness now as Reynolds picked up the bloody scalpel and laid the first incision on the remaining leg. Hal bucked and screamed in his sweat slippery hands, and chewed the wooden wedge to splinters.

Tom was panting and grunting with the effort of holding the squirming body, and fighting back the waves of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him as the second leg fell away and dropped to the blood-slick deck under their feet. This time Hal had not been granted the release of coma. He had endured every exquisite agony of the knife and the hacksaw. Tom was filled with awe and a strange sense of pride as he watched the way his father fought back against the agony and only succumbed when it soared to another pinnacle. Even then he tried to choke back his cries.

At last Tom could bend over him and place his lips an inch from Hal’s ear and whisper, “It’s over, Father. It’s all over.”

Unbelievably his father heard him and understood.

He tried to smile, and that smile was a terrible thing to see.

“Thank you.” Hal’s lips formed the words, but no sound issued from his tortured throat. Tom’s vision swam as tears threatened to overwhelm him, but he forced them back, and then he kissed his father on the lips, something he could not remember doing in all his life.

Hal made no effort to roll his head aside to avoid the embrace.

ned Tyler hurried to meet Tom as he stepped out onto the deck.

“How is he?” he asked.

“He is alive,” Tom replied, and then, when he saw how real was Ned’s concern, he took pity on him.

“As well as we can expect. We will not know for some days yet. Dr. Reynolds says that he must rest.”

“Thank God for that at least.” Ned said, then looked at Tom expectantly.

For a moment Tom did not know what he was waiting for. Suddenly he realized: Ned needed orders. He shied away from it. He felt too tired and uncertain of himself to take on the responsibility that was being thrust upon him.

Then, with an effort, he rallied his resources.

“Our first concern now is to get all our wounded back on board where Dr. Reynolds can attend them properly.”

“Aye, Mr. Courtney.” Ned looked relieved and turned away to pass on the orders. Tom was astonished at how easily it had happened. He was no longer Master Tom, but Mr. Courtney.

As Hal’s son, the mantle of command had passed naturally to him. He was only seventeen and he bore no official rank, but this was not a naval vessel, and Tom had proved time and again that he had a level head on his shoulders, that he could hold his own in any fight.

The officers and men liked him. It did not have to be debated.

If Ned Tyler accepted his right to command, then so would every man aboard the Seraph.

He tried to think what his father would want him to do even though his instinct was to hurry back to Hal’s bedside, and stay there until he was strong enough to care for himself. But he knew that Dr. Reynolds and his mate were better equipped for the business of nursing him bact to health.

Thinking quickly, he told Ned to secure the ship and.

see to the routine details of management, then he went on, “I leave the ship in your hands, Mr. Tyler.” The words he had heard his father utter so often came easily to his lips.

“I’m going ashore to take command there.”

“Aye, sir,” Ned replied.

With Aboli close behind him, Tom strode back to the fort. Some sort of order had been restored, but he found Anderson and every one of the men still engrossed in ransacking the storerooms of the fortress. A mountain of plunder was piled in the centre of the courtyard, and a wild confusion of men milled about it, adding more bales and boxes to the pile.

“Captain Anderson,” Tom hailed him, “there are three or four hundred of the enemy escaped into the forest.

Many of them are still armed. I want the ramparts manned against a counter-attack.” Anderson stared at him incredulously, but Tom went on resolutely, “Please put your best officer in command, and have the enemy cannon reloaded with grape and trained round to cover the edge of the forest.” Anderson’s face started to swell and turn a brighter crimson. Every sailor within earshot had stopped whatever he was doing and now stood idle and gaping, following the exchange avidly.

“Then please have the open gateway barricaded to repel an attack,” Tom went on. He was as tall as Anderson, and he held his eye without blinking.

For a long minute Anderson looked at him, and it seemed that he was on the point of challenging the order, but then he wavered, and looked away at the open gateway, at the unprepared rabble of his men.

The sense of what Tom had ordered was irrefutable.

“Mr. McNaughton,” he roared, unnecessarily loudly, for his mate was only five paces from where he stood, “fifty men to barricade the gates, and a hundred to man the captured guns. Load with grape and cover the approaches to the fort.” He turned back to Tom.

“There is only an hour or two of daylight left to us,” Tom went on.

“We will clear the fugitives out of the forest at first light tomorrow.” He looked across at the ranks of naked prisoners, who still knelt in the dust.

“As a matter of common humanity I want those people clothed and given water, then they can be confined in the cells of the fort.

How many of our men are wounded?”

“I’m not certain.” Anderson looked guilty, and the red faded slowly from his complexion.

“Have your writer draw up the butcher’s bill,” Tom ordered.

“The casualties must be sent on board the ships where they can be attended by the surgeons.” Tom looked around quickly and saw that Ben Abram, the Arab surgeon, was still at work attending to the enemy wounded.

Someone had had the sense to give him four of the prisoners to assist him.

“We will bury the dead tomorrow before they start to poison the air. The Mussulmen have certain strict rituals for the disposal of their dead. Pirates that they are, we must honour their traditions.”

Tom worked with Anderson until long after the sun had set. By the light of burning torches they restored order, had the fort secured and the booty placed under strict guard. By then Tom was weaving on his feet with fatigue.

The shallow sword wound across his thigh, which al-Auf had inflicted, burned and every muscle in his body ached brutally.

“It is safe now, Klebe. All is taken care of until tomorrow. You must rest.” Aboli was suddenly at his shoulder.

“There is still one thing that cannot wait until tomorrow.” Tom led the way out through the gates to where Big Daniel still lay.

Between them they wrapped the great body in a sheet of canvas and one of the stretcher parties carried it down to the beach.

It was after midnight when Tom staggered down the passage to the Seraph’s stern cabin. A surgeon’s mate sat beside the bunk on which Hal lay. Tom told him, “I will take over,” sent him away and threw himself down on the hard deck. Twice during the night his father’s groans woke him. Once he gave him the water he pleaded for, and later he held the pewter bowl for him to urinate. It troubled him deeply to see Hal brought so low, to the level of an infant, but the pleasure of being able to serve him outweighed his exhaustion and his pity.

Tom woke again before dawn, and thought for a dreadful moment that his father had died during the night, but when he touched Hal’s cheek the flesh was warm. He held the steel shaving mirror to his mouth and, with relief, watched the shining surface cloud. Hal’s breath was still tainted with the odour of stale rum, but he was alive.

Tom wanted to stay with him, but he knew that that would not be what his father expected of him. He left him in the care of the surgeon’s mate, and before the sun rose went ashore with Aboli.

There was still so much to be done. He placed Master Walsh and the writer from the Yeoman of York in charge of tallying the booty ihey had captured. Anderson took command of packing the treasure and sealing the chests, which were carried down to the beach and placed in the charge of a trusted officer and an armed guard.

Then Tom sent for Ben Abram. The old man looked exhausted, and Tom wondered if he had slept.

“I know it is your custom to bury your dead before sunset on the second day.” Ben Abram nodded.

“You know our customs as well as our language.”

“How many are there?” Ben Abram looked grave.

“Three hundred and forty-three, that I have been able to count.”

“If you give me your parole for their good behaviour, I will release fifty of your men from the stockade to dig the graves Ben Abram selected a burial site at the far end of the ancient Islamic cemetery and put his men to work. It went quickly in the soft sandy soil.

Before noon they had carried the bodies, each wrapped in a sheet of clean white trade cotton down from the fort. Al-Auf’s headless corpse was in the centre of the long row laid along the bottom of the shallow pit and covered with earth. Ben Abram recited the Islamic prayers for the dead, and afterwards came to find Tom on the beach.

“I call down the blessings of Allah upon you for your compassion. Without your mercy none of the dead could have entered the garden of Paradise.

One day, may the man who kills you extend to you the same consideration.”

“Thank you, old father, said Tom grimly.

“But my mercy will end with the dead. The living must face the consequences of their crimes.” He left the old man and went to where All Wilson and Aboli were waiting at the head of three hundred fully armed men, who included the prisoners of al-Auf whom he had released.