Текст книги "Shout at the Devil"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Gradually the cheering of the crew faltered and subsided into an uneasy silence. Magnified by the still, hot air, huge on the velvety gloss of the ocean, lifting a bow wave of pear ling white, the warship came on. No check in her speed, the ensign at her masthead streaming away from them so they could not see the colours.

"What are they going to do?" Sebastian asked aloud, and was answered by Flynn's voice. Sebastian glanced around.

Balancing on his good leg with one arm draped around Mohammed's neck, Flynn was hopping across the deck towards him.

"I'll tell you what they're going to do! They're going to hit us smack-bang up the arse!" Flynn roared. "That's the Blitcher! That's a German ship"

"They can't do that!" Sebastian protested.

"You'd like to bet? She's coming straight from the Rufiji delta and my guess is she's had a chat with Fleischer. He's probably aboard her." Flynn swayed against Mohammed, gasping with the pain of his leg before he went on. "They're going to ram us, and then machine-gun anyone still floating."

"We've got to make a life raft."

"No time, Bassie. Look at her come!"

Less than five miles away, but swiftly narrowing the distance, the Blitcher's tall bows knifed towards them. Wildly Sebastian looked around the crowded deck, and he saw the pile of cork floats they had cut from the fish nets.

Drawing his knife, he ran to one of the sacks of coconuts and cut the twine that closed the mouth. He slipped the knife back into its sheath, stooped, and Up-ended the sack, spilling coconuts on to the deck. Then with the empty sack in his hand he ran to the pile of floats and dropped on his knees. In frantic haste he shovelled them into the sack, half filling it before he looked up again. The Blucher was two miles away, a tall tower of murderous grey steel.

With alength of rope Sebastian tied the sack closed and dragged it to where Flynn stood supported by Mohammed.

"What are you doing?" Flynn demanded.

"Fixing you up! Lift your arms!" Flynn obeyed and Sebastian tied the free end of the rope around his chest at the level of his armpits. He paused to unlace and kick off his boots before speaking again. "Mohammed, you stay with him. Hang on to the sack and don't let go." He left them, trotting on bare feet to find his rifle propped against the poop. Buckling on his cartridge belt, he hurried back to the rail.

Sebastian Oldsmith was about to engage a nine-inch battle cruiser with a double-barrelled Gibbs.500.

She was close now, hanging over them like a high cliff of steel. Even Sebastian could not miss a battle cruiser at two hundred yards, and the heavy bullets clanged against the armoured hull, ringing loudly above the hissing rush of the bow wave.

While he reloaded, Sebastian looked up at the line of heads in the bows of the Blitcher; grinning faces below the white caps with their little swallow-tailed black ribbons.

"You bloody swine," he shouted at them. Hatred stronger than he had ever dreamed possible choked his voice. "You filthy, bloody swine." He lifted the rifle and fired without effect, and the Blitcher hit the dhow.

It struck with a crash and the crackling roar of rending timber. It crushed her side and cut through in the screaming of dying men and the squeal of planking against steel.

It trod the dhow under, breaking her back, forcing her far below the surface. At the initial shock, Sebastian was hurled overboard, the rifle thrown from his hands. He struck the armoured plate of the cruiser a glancing blow and then dropped into the sea beside her. The thrust of the bow wave tumbled him aside, else he would have been dragged along the hull and his body shredded against the steel plate.

He surfaced just in time to suck a lungful of air before the turbulence of the great screws caught him and plucked him under again, driving him deep so the pressure stabbed like red-hot needles in his eardrums. He felt himself swirled end over end, buffeted, shaken vigorously as the water tore at his body.

Colour flashed and zigzagged behind his closed eyelids.

There was a suffocating pain in his chest and his lungs pumped, urgently craving air, but he sealed his lips " and kicked out with his legs, clawing at the water with his hands.

The churning wake of the cruiser released its grip upon him, and he was shot to the surface with such force that he broke clear to the waist before dropping back to drink air greedily. He unbuckled the heavy cartridge belt and let it sink before he looked about him.

The surface of the sea was scattered with floating debris, and a few bobbing human heads. Near him a section of torn planking rose in a burst of trapped air bubbles. Sebastian struck Out for it and clung there, his legs hanging in the clear green water.

"Flynn," he gasped. "Flynn, where are you?"

A quarter of a mile away, the Blucher was circling slowly, long and menacing and shark-like, and he stared at it in hatred and in fear.

"Master!" Mohammed's voice behind him.

Sebastian turned quickly and saw the black face and the red face beside the floating sack of corks a hundred yards away. "Flynn!"

"Good-bye, Bassie," Flynn called. "The old Hun is coming back to finish us off. Look! They've got machine guns set up on the bridge. See you on the other side, boy:

Quickly Sebastian looked back at the cruiser and saw the clusters of white uniforms on the angle of her bridge. Ja, there are still some of them alive." Through borrowed binoculars, Fleischer scanned the littered area of the wreck.

"You will use the Maxims, of course, Captain? It will be quicker than picking them off with rifles."

Captain von Kleine did not answer. He stood tall on his bridge, slightly round-shouldered, staring out at the wreckage with his hands clasped behind him. "There is something sad in the death of a ship," he murmured. "Even such a dirty little one as this." Suddenly he straightened his shoulders and turned to Fleischer. "Your launch is waiting for you at the mouth of the Rufiji. I will take you there, Commissioner."

"But first the business of the survivors."

Von Kleine's expression hardened. "Commissioner, I sank that dhow in what I believed to be my duty. But now I am not sure that my judgement was not clouded by anger. I will not trespass further on my conscience by machine-gunning swimming civilians."

"You will then pick them up. I must arrest them and give them trial."

"am not a policeman," he paused and his expression softened a little. "That one who fired the rifle at us. I think he must be a brave man. He is a criminal, perhaps, but I am not so old in the ways of the world that I do not love courage merely for its own sake. I would not like to know I have saved this man for the noose. Let the sea be the judge and the executioner." He turned to his lieutenant. Kyller, prepare to drop one of the life rafts." The lieutenant stared at him in disbelief "You heard me?"

"Yes, my Captain."

"Then do it." Ignoring Fleischer's squawks of protest, von Kleine crossed to the pilot. "Alter course to pass the survivors at a distance– of fifty metres."

"Here she comes." Flynn grinned tightly, without humour, and watched the cruiser swing ponderously towards them.

The cries of the swimmers around him, pleading mercy, were plaintive as the voices of sea birds tiny on the immensity of the ocean.

"Flynn. Look at the bridge!" Sebastian's voice floated across to him. "See him there. The grey uniform."

Tears from the sting of sea salt in his wound, and the distortion of fever had blurred Flynn's vision, yet he could make out the spot of grey among the speckling of white uniforms on the bridge of the cruiser.

"Who is it?"

"You were right. It's Fleischer," Sebastian shouted back, and Flynn began to curse.

"Hey, you filthy, fat Blucher," he bellowed, trying to drag himself up onto the floating sack of corks. "Hey, you whore's chamber pot." His voice carried above the murmur of the cruiser's engines running at dead-slow. "Come on, you blood-smeared little pig The tall hull of the cruiser was close now, so close he could see the bulky figure in grey turn to the tall white, uniformed officer beside him, gesticulating in what was clearly entreaty.

The officer turned away, and moved to the rail of the bridge. He leaned out and waved to a group of seamen on the deck below him.

"That's right. Tell them to shoot. Let's get it over with.

Tell them..."

A large square object was lifted over the rail by the gang below the bridge. It dropped and fell with a splash alongside.

Flynn's voice dried up, and he watched in disbelief as the white-clad officer lifted his right arm in a gesture that might have been a salute. The beat of the cruiser's engines mounted as it increased speed, and she swung away towards the west.

Flynn O'Flynn began to laugh, the cackling hysteria of relief and delirium. He rolled off the sack of corks and his head dropped forward, so the warm green water smothered his laughter. Mohammed took a handful of the grey hair and lifted his face to prevent him drowning.

Sebastian reached the raft, and grasped the rope that hung in loops around its sides. He paused to regain his breath before hauling himself up to lie gasping, the blood-warm sea-water streaming from his sodden clothing, and watched the shape of the battle cruiser recede into the west.

"Master! Help me!"

The voice roused him and he sat up. Mohammed was struggling, dragging Flynn and the sack through the water.

Among the floating wreckage a dozen others of the crew and the bearers were flapping their way towards the raft; the weaker swimmers were already failing, their cries becoming more pitiful, and their splashing more frenzied.

There were oars roped to the slatted deck of the raft.

Quickly Sebastian cut one loose with his hunting knife and began rowing towards the pair. His progress was slow, for the raft was an ungainly bitch that balked and swung away from the thrust of the oar.

An Arab crewman reached the raft and scrambled aboard, then another, and another. Each of them freed an oar and helped with the rowing. They passed the body of one of the bearers floating just below the surface, both its legs cut off above the knees and the bones sticking out of the ragged meat of the stumps. This was not the only one there was other human flotsam among the scattered wreckage, and the pinky-brown stains that drifted away on the current attracted the sharks.

The Arab beside Sebastian saw the first one and called out, pointing with the oar.

It came hunting, its fin waggling from side to side as it tacked up against the current, so that they could sense its cold, unthinking excitement.

Below the surface, distorted and dark, showed the tapering length of its body. Not a big one. Perhaps nine feet in length and four hundred pounds in weight, but big enough to chop aleg with one bite. No longer guided by the drift of blood-taste, picking up the vibrations of the swimmers, it straightened and came in on its first run.

"Shark!" Sebastian yelled at Flynn and Mohammed where they floundered ten yards away. And both of them panicked;

no longer making for the raft, they tried to clamber on to the sack of corks. Terror has no logic. Their only concern was to lift their dangling legs from the water, but the sack was too small, too unstable and their panic attracted the shark's attention. It veered towards them, showing the full height of its curved triangular fin, each sweep of its tail breaking the surface as it drove in.

"This way," shouted Sebastian. "Come to the raft!" He was hacking at the water with the oar, while beside him the Arabs worked in equal dedication. "This way, Flynn. For God's sake, this way."

His voice penetrated their panic, and once more they struck out for the raft. But the shark was closing fast, long and dappled by sunlight through the surface ripple.

The sac was still tied to Flynn and its resistance to the water slowed them as it dragged behind. The shark swerved and made its first pass; it seemed to hump up out of the water, and its mouth opened. The upper jaw bulged out, the lower jaw gaped, and the multiple rows of teeth came erect like the quills of a porcupine, and it hit the sack.

Locking its jaws into the coarse jute material, worrying it, still humped out of the water, shaking its blunt head clumsily, scattering a spray of water drops that flew like shattered glass in the sun.

"Grab here!" commanded Sebastian, leaning out to offer the blade of the oar to the pair in the water. They clutched at it with the strength of fear, and Sebastian drew them in.

But the sack and the shark were still attached to Flynn, its threshing threatening to break Flynn's hold on the lifeline around the raft.

Dropping to his knees, Sebastian fumbled the knife from its sheath and sawed at the rope. It parted. The shark, still worrying the sack, worked away from the raft and Sebastian helped the Arabs to drag first Flynn, and then Mohammed, over the side.

They were not finished yet. There were still half a dozen men in the water.

Realizing its error at last, the shark relinquished its hold on the sack. It backed away. For a moment it hung motionless, puzzled, then it circled out towards the nearest sound of splashing. One of the gun-boys, clawing at the water in exhausted dog-paddle. The shark hit him in the side, and pulled him under. Moments later he reappeared, his mouth an open pink cave as he screamed, the water about him clouded dark red-brown by his own blood. Again he was pulled under as the shark hit his legs, but again he floated. This time face down, wriggling feebly, and the shark circled him, dashing in to chop off a mouthful of his flesh, backing away to gulp it down before coming in again.

There was suddenly more sharks and so many that Sebastian could not count them, as they circled and dived in ecstatic greed, until the sea around the raft trembled and swirled in agitation.

Sebastian and his Arabs managed to drag two more of the crew into the raft and they had a third half out of the water when a six-foot white-pointer shot up from the depths, and fastened on his thigh with such violence that it almost jerked all of them overboard. But they steadied themselves and held on to the man's arms, frozen in this gruesome tug-of-war, while the shark worried the leg, so dog-like in its determination that Sebastian expected it to growl.

Little Mohammed staggered to his feet, snatched up an oar and swung it against the pointed snout with all his strength. They had dragged the shark's head from the water, and the oar fell on it with a series of rubbery thumps, but the shark held on. Fresh, bright blood squirted and trickled from the leg in its jaws, running down the shark's glistening snake-like head into the open slits of its gill covers.

"Hold him!" gasped Sebastian, and drew his knife. The raft rocking crazily under him, he leaned over the man's outstretched body and drove the knife blade into the shark's expressionless little eye. It popped in a burst of clear fluid, and the shark stiffened and trembled. Sebastian withdrew the blade and stabbed into the other eye. With a convulsive gulp the shark opened its jaws and slid back into the sea to meander blindly away.

There were no more swimmers. The little group on the raft huddled together and watched the shark pack milling hungrily, seeming to sniff at the tainted water as they gathered the last morsels of meat.

The shark victim hosed the deck with his severed femoral artery and died before any of them could rouse themselves to apply a tourniquet.

"Push him oVer," grunted Flynn.

"No," Sebastian shook his head.

"Chrissake, we're crowded enough as it is. Chuck the poor bastard over."

"Later on, not now." Sebastian could not stand to watch the sharks squabble over the corpse.

"Mohammed, get a couple of your lads on the oars. I want to pick up as many of those coconuts as we can."

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.

"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.

"You've got to do it!" 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 slug, 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, cud'

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.

"Wished 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 god damned 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.

"Haul Haul"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 the 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 strips 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. Flynn O'Flynn was slowly, very slowly, revising his estimate of Sebastian Oldsmith.

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 Lip 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 them selves to a standstill," grunted Flynn. "But what does this mean... and he spoke in Swahili.

"It means, Big winds will blow 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 lifelines 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 rush of the wind. The wind was steady now and the warm raft moved uneasily like 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 it" 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 wind flung 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 aleprous 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.