By the time darkness stopped them, they had retrieved fifty-two of the floating coconuts, sufficient to keep the seven of them thirst-free for a week.
It was cold that night. They crowded together for warmth and watched the underwater pyrotechnics, as the shark pack circled the raft in phosphorescent splendour.
– 15 –
‘You’ve got to cut for it,’ Flynn whispered, and he shivered with cold in the burning heat of the midday sun.
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ Sebastian protested, yet he could see that Flynn was dying.
‘No more do I. But this is certain – you’ve got to do it soon …’ Flynn’s eyes had sunk into plum-coloured cavities and the smell of his breath was that of something long dead.
Staring at the leg, Sebastian had difficulty controlling his nausea. It was swollen fat and purple. The bullet hole was covered with a crusty black scab, but Sebastian caught a whiff of the putrefaction under it – and this time his nausea came up acid-sweet into the back of his throat. He swallowed it.
‘You’ve got to do it, Bassie boy.’
Sebastian nodded, and tentatively laid his hand on the leg. Immediately he jerked his fingers away, surprised by the heat of the skin.
‘You’ve got to do it,’ urged Flynn. ‘Feel for the slug. It’s not deep. Just under the skin.’
He felt the lump. It moved under his fingers, the size of a green acorn in the taut hot flesh.
‘It’s going to hurt like Billy-o.’ Sebastian’s voice was hoarse.
The rowers were resting on their oars, watching with frank curiosity, while the raft eddied and swung in the drift of the Mozambique current. Above them the sail that Sebastian had rigged from salvaged planking and canvas flapped wearily, throwing a shadow across the leg.
‘Mohammed, you and one other to hold the master’s shoulders. Two others to keep his legs still.’
Flynn lay quiescent, pinioned beneath them on the slats of the deck.
Sebastian knelt over him, gathering his resolve. The knife he had sharpened against the metal edge of the raft, and then scrubbed clean with coconut fibre and seawater. He had sluiced the leg also, and washed his hands until the skin tingled. Beside him on the deck stood half a coconut shell containing perhaps an ounce of evaporated salt scraped from the deck and the sail, ready to pack into the open wound. ‘Ready?’ he whispered.
‘Ready,’ grunted Flynn, and Sebastian located the lump of the bullet and drew the edge of the blade across it timidly. Flynn gasped, but human skin was tougher than Sebastian allowed. It did not part.
‘Goddamn you!’ Flynn was sweating already. ‘Don’t play with it. Cut, man, cut!’
This time Sebastian slashed, and the flesh split open under the blade. He dropped the knife and drew back in horror as the infection bubbled up through the lips of the knife wound. It looked like yellow custard mixed with prune juice – and the smell of it filled his nostrils and his throat.
‘Go for the slug. Go for it with your fingers.’ Flynn writhed beneath the men who held him. ‘Hurry. Hurry. I can’t take much more.’
Steeling himself, closing his throat against the vomit that threatened to vent at any moment, Sebastian slipped his little finger into the slit. Hooking with it for the bullet, finding it, easing it up although tissue clung to it reluctantly, until it popped from the wound and dropped on to the deck. A fresh gush of warm poison followed it out, flowing over Sebastian’s hand, and he crawled to the edge of the raft, choking and gagging.
– 16 –
‘If only we had some red cloth.’ Flynn sat against the rickety mast. He was still very weak but four days ago the fever had broken with the release of the poison.
‘What would you do with it?’ Sebastian asked
‘Catch me one of those dolphins. Man, I’m so goddamned hungry I’d eat it raw.’
A four-day diet of coconut pulp and milk had left all their bellies grumbling.
‘Why red?’
‘They go for red. Make a lure.’
‘You haven’t any hooks or line.’
Tie it to a bit of twine from the sack and tease them up to the surface – then harpoon one with your knife tied to an oar.’
Sebastian was silent, peering thoughtfully over the side at the deep flashes of gold where the shoal of dolphin played under the raft. ‘It’s got to be red, hey?’ he asked, and Flynn looked at him sharply.
‘Yeah. It’s got to be red.’
‘Well …’ Sebastian hesitated, and then flushed with embarrassment under his tropical sunburn.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
Still blushing, Sebastian stood up and loosened his belt – then, shyly as a bride on her wedding night, he drew down his pants.
‘My God,’ breathed Flynn in shock, as he held up his hand to shield his eyes.
‘Hau! Hau!’ was the chorus of admiration from the crew.
‘Got them at Harrods,’ said Sebastian with becoming modesty.
Red, Flynn had asked for – but Sebastian’s underpants were the brightest, most beautiful red; the most vivid sunset and roses red, he could have imagined. They hung in oriental splendour to Sebastian’s knees.
‘Pure silk,’ said Sebastian, fingering the cloth. Ten shillings a pair.’
‘Whoa now! Come on, little fishy. Come on there,’ Flynn whispered as he lay on his belly, head and shoulders over the edge of the raft. On its thread of twine, the scrap of red danced deep in the green water. A long, slithering flash of gold shot towards it, and Flynn jerked the twine away at the last instant. The dolphin swirled and darted back. Again Flynn jerked the twine. Chameleon lines and dots of excitement showed against the gold of the dolphin’s body. ‘That’s it, fishy. Chase it.’ The other fish of the shoal joined hunt, forming a sparkling planetary system of movement around the lure. ‘Get ready!’
‘I’m ready.’ Sebastian stood over him, poised like a javelin thrower. In the excitement he had forgotten to don his pants and his shirt-tails flapped around his thighs in a most undignified manner. But his legs were long and finely muscled, the legs of an athlete. ‘Get back!’ he snapped at the crew who were crowded around him so that the raft was listing dangerously. ‘Get back – give me room,’ and he hefted the oar with the long hunting knife lashed to the tip.
‘Here they come.’ Flynn’s voice trembled with excitement as he worked the scrap of red cloth upwards, and the shoal followed it. ‘Now!’ he shouted as a single fish broke the surface – four feet of flashing gold, and Sebastian lunged. The steady hand and eye that had once clean-bowled the great Frank Woolley directed the oar. Sebastian hit the dolphin an inch behind the eye, and the blade slipped through to lacerate the gills.
For a few seconds the oar came alive in his hands as the dolphin twitched and fought on the blade, but there were no barbs to hold in the flesh, and the fish slipped from the knife.
‘God damn it to hell!’ bellowed Flynn.
‘Dash it all!’ echoed Sebastian.
But ten feet down the dolphin was mortally wounded; it jigged and whipped like a golden kite in a high wind while the rest of the shoal scattered.
Sebastian dropped the oar and began stripping his shirt.
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Flynn.
‘Going after it.’
‘You’re mad. Sharks!’
‘I’m so hungry, I’ll eat a shark also,’ and he dived over the side. Thirty seconds later he surfaced, blowing like a grampus but grinning triumphantly, with the dead dolphin clasped lovingly to his bosom.
They ate stripes of raw fish seasoned with evaporated salt, squatting around the mutilated carcass of the dolphin.
‘Well, I’ve paid a guinea for worse meals than this,’ said Sebastian, and belched softly. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon.’
‘Granted,’ Flynn grunted with his mouth full of fish; and then eyeing Sebastian’s nudity with a world-weary eye, ‘Stop boasting and put your pants on before you trip over it.’
Flynn O’Flynn was slowly,
very slowly, revising his estimate of Sebastian Oldsmith.
– 17 –
The rowers had long since lost any enthusiasm they might have had for the task. They kept at it only in response to offers of bodily violence by Flynn – and the example set by Sebastian, who worked tirelessly. The thin layer of fat that had sheathed Sebastian’s muscles was long since consumed, and his sun-baked body was a Michelangelo sculpture as he leaned and dug and pulled the oar.
Six days they had dragged the raft across the southward push of the current. Six days of sun-blazing calm, with the sea flattening, until now in the late afternoon, it looked like an endless sheet of smooth green velvet.
‘No,’ said Mohammed. That means, The two porcupines make love under the blanket.’
‘Oh!’ Sebastian repeated the phrase without interrupting the rhythm of his rowing. Sebastian was a dogged pupil of Swahili, making up in determination what he lacked in brilliance. Mohammed was proud of him, and opposed any attempt by the other members of the crew to usurp his position as chief tutor.
‘That’s all right about the porcupines shagging themselves to a standstill,’ grunted Flynn. ‘But what does this mean … ?’ and he spoke in Swahili.
‘It means, Big winds will Now across the sea,’ interpreted Sebastian, and glowed with achievement.
‘And I’m not joking either.’ Flynn stood up, crouching to favour his bad leg, and shaded his eyes to peer into the east. ‘You see that line of cloud?’
Laying aside the oar, Sebastian stood beside him and flexed the aching muscles of his back and shoulders. Immediately all activity ceased among the other rowers.
‘Keep going, me beauties!’ growled Flynn, and reluctantly they obeyed. Flynn turned back to Sebastian. ‘You see it?’
‘Yes.’ It was drawn like a kohl line across the eyelid of a Hindu woman, smeared black along the horizon.
‘Well, Bassie, there’s the wind you’ve been griping about. But, my friend, I think it’s a little more than you bargained for.’
In the darkness they heard it coming from far away, a muted sibilance in the night. One by one, the fat stars were blotted out in the east as dark cloud spread out to fill half the midnight sky.
A single gust hit the raft and flogged the makeshift sail with a clap like a shotgun. and the sleepers woke and sat up.
‘Hang on to those fancy underpants,’ muttered Flynn, ‘or you’ll get them blown right up Your backside.’
Another gust, another lull, but already there was the boisterous slapping of small waves against the sides of the raft.
‘I’d better get that sail down.’
‘You had, and all,’ agreed Flynn, ‘and while you’re at it, use the rope to fix life-lines for us.’ In haste, spurred on by the rising hiss of the wind, they lashed themselves to the slats of the deck.
The main force of the wind spun the raft like a top, splattering them with spray; the spray was icy cold in the warm rush of the wind. The wind was steady now and the raft moved uneasily – the jerky motion of an animal restless at the prick of spurs.
‘At least it will push us towards the land,’ Sebastian shouted across at Flynn.
‘Bassie, boy, you think of the cutest things,’ and the first wave came aboard. smothering Flynn’s voice, breaking over their prostrate bodies, and then streaming out through the slatted deck. The raft wallowed in dismay, then gathered itself to meet the next rush of the sea.
Under the steady fury of the wind, the sea came up more swiftly than Sebastian believed was possible. Within minutes the waves were breaking over the raft with such weight as to squeeze the breath from their lungs, submerging them completely, driving the raft under before its buoyancy reasserted itself and lifted it, canting crazily, and they could gasp for air in the smother of spray.
Waiting for the lulls, Sebastian inched his way across the deck until he reached Flynn. ‘How are you bearing up?’ he bellowed.
‘Great, just great,’ and another wave drove them under.
‘Your leg?’ spluttered Sebastian as they came up.
‘For Chrissake, stop yapping,’ and they went under again.
It was completely dark, no star, no sliver of moon, but each line of breaking water glowed in dull, phosphorescent malevolence as it dashed down upon them, warning them to suck air and cling with cramped fingers hooked into the slats.
For all eternity Sebastian lived in darkness, battered by the wind and the wild, flying water. The aching chill of his body dulled out into numbness. Slowly his mind emptied of conscious thought, so when a bigger wave scoured them, he heard the tearing sound of deck slats pulling loose, and the lost wail as one of the Arabs was washed away into the night sea – but the sound had no meaning to him.
Twice he vomited sea water that he had swallowed, but it had no taste in his mouth, and he let it run heedlessly down his chin and warm on to his chest, to be washed away by the next torrential wave.
His eyes burned without pain from the harsh rake of windflung spray, and he blinked them owlishly at each advancing wave. It seemed, in time, that he could see more clearly, and he turned his head slowly. Beside him, Flynn’s face was a leprous blotch in the darkness. This puzzled him, and he lay and thought about it but no solution came, until he looked beyond the next wave, and saw the faint promise of a new day show pale through the black massed cloud-banks.
He tried to speak, but no sound came for his throat was swollen closed with the salt, and his tongue was tingling numb. Again, he tried. ‘Dawn coming,’ he croaked, but beside him Flynn lay like a corpse frozen in rigor mortis.
Slowly the light grew over that mad, grey sea but the scudding black cloud-banks tried desperately to oppose its coming.
Now the seas were more awesome in their raging insanity. Each mountain of glassy grey rose high above the raft, shielding it for a few seconds from the whip of the wind, its crest blowing off like the plume of an Etruscan helmet, before it slid down, collapsing upon itself in the tumbling roar of breaking water.
Each time, the men on the raft shrank flat on the deck, and waited in bovine acceptance to be smothered again beneath the white deluge.
Once, the raft rode high and clear in a freak flat of the storm, and Sebastian looked about him. The canvas and rope, the coconuts and the other pathetic accumulation of their possessions were all gone. The sea had ripped away many of the deck slats so that the metal floats of the raft were exposed; it had torn the very clothing from them so they were clad in sodden tatters. Of the seven men who had ridden the raft the previous day, only he and Flynn, Mohammed and one more, were left – the other three were gone, gobbled up by the hungry sea.
Then the storm struck again, so that the raft reeled and reared to the point of capsizing.
Sebastian sensed it first in the altered action of the waves; they were steeper, marching closer together. Then, through the clamour of the storm, a new sound, like that of a cannon fired at irregular intervals with varying charges of gunpowder. He realized suddenly that he had been hearing this sound for some time, but only now had it penetrated the stupor of his fatigue.
He lifted his head, and every nerve of his being shrieked in protest at the effort. He looked about, but the sea stood up around him like a series of grey walls that limited his vision to a circle of fifty yards. Yet that discordant boom, boom, boom, was louder now and more insistent.
In the short, choppy waves, a side-break caught the raft and tossed it high – lifting him so he could see the land; so close that the palm trees showed sharply, bending their stems to the wind and threshing their long fronds in panic. He saw the beach, grey-white in the gloom and, beyond it, far beyond it, rose the watery blue of the high ground.
These things had small comfort for him when he saw the reef. It bared its black teeth at him, snarling through the white water that burst like cannon-fire upon it before cascading on into the comparative quiet of the lagoon. The raft was riding down towards it.
‘Flynn,’ he croaked. ‘Flynn, listen to me!??
? but the older man did not move, His eyes were fixed open and only the movement of his chest, as he breathed, proved him still alive. ‘Flynn.’ Sebastian released one of his clawed hands from its grip on the wooden slatting. ‘Flynn!’ he said, and struck him across the cheek.
‘Flynn!’ The head turned towards Sebastian, the eyes blinked, the mouth opened, but no voice spoke.
Another wave broke over the raft. This time the cold, malicious rush of it stirred Sebastian, roused a little of his failing strength. He shook the water from his head. ‘Land,’ he whispered. ‘Land,’ and Flynn stared at him dully.
Two lines of surf away, the reef showed its ragged back again. Clinging with only one hand to the slatting, Sebastian fumbled the knife from its sheath and hacked clumsily at the life-line that bound him to the deck. It parted. He reached over and cut Flynn’s line, sawing frantically at the wet hemp. That done, he slid back on his belly until he reached Mohammed and freed him also. The little African stared at him with bloodshot eyes from his wrinkled monkey face.
‘Swim,’ whispered Sebastian. ‘Must swim,’ and resheathing the knife, he tried to crawl over Mohammed to reach the Arab but the next wave caught the raft, rearing up under it as it felt the push of the land, rearing so steeply that this time the raft was overturned and they were thrown from it into the seething turmoil of the reef.
Sebastian hit the water flat, and was hardly under before he had surfaced again. Beside him, close enough to touch, Flynn emerged. In the strength born of the fear of death, Flynn caught at Sebastian, locking both arms around his chest. The same wave that had capsized them had poured over the reef and covered it completely, so that where the coral fangs had been was now only a frothy area of disturbed water. In it bobbed the debris of the raft, shattered into pieces against the reef. The mutilated corpse of the Arab was still roped to a piece of the wreckage. Flynn and Sebastian were locked like lovers in each other’s arms and the next wave, following close upon the first, lifted them, and shot them forward over the submerged reef.