Battle Fleet (2007) (7 page)

Now the lower mast rolled to and fro on the deck, threatening to crush any man who got in its way. William Bedlington came to join us. Never was I more pleased to see this hulking brute of a man. As we pushed our backs against the mast, a huge wave rolled before us across the deck. The water swept the mast and us along to the side of the ship, snatching our breath away. Soaked and spluttering out seawater I may have been, but I was grateful not to have been crushed against the rail or washed overboard. We heaved the remains of the mast over the strakes with a final, almighty effort. If we could safely ride out the rest of the storm, the worst of our troubles were over.

As we watched the mast drift away, Garrick said, ‘That’ll put another two months on our return. I hope we don’t have to outrun any more pirates.’

Navy ships carried spare masts, but not the
Orion
.

Evison spoke to him. ‘We shall go ashore at the first opportunity and fashion ourselves a new mast. Plenty of trees close to the shore. You can choose one and we’ll plane it down.’

When the storm had blown itself out, we sighted land on the starboard horizon. As we drew nearer, I looked over the dense green shoreline and wondered what lurked within. I was curious and I was apprehensive. Evison gathered us round to announce we would be looking for food and water as well as a new mast. ‘There’s plenty to do, so we’ll be here a few days. We’ll come back to the ship every night, though. I’m not leaving anyone on land after dark.’

What might we find ashore? Evison volunteered no information. Did he just not know, or was there something he didn’t want us to know? I would ask at a suitable moment.

Close to the shore it did not take long to find a favourable spot and Evison launched the ship’s cutter. With him were ten of the crew including myself and Bel, whose campaign to persuade the Captain to go ashore had finally succeeded. Lizzie wanted to go too, but here Evison absolutely refused. Bel was obviously of less concern, and the Captain made it clear I was responsible for her safekeeping. Richard had not volunteered to
come. ‘I had enough of the jungle in New South Wales,’ he said.

The boat put down on a long narrow crescent of beach bordered by thick vegetation. Above us loomed the smoking summit of a tall volcano. A sharp, acrid smell pierced the air. There was another smell too – rotting human flesh. We found the bodies soon enough. There was a trail of them down to the shore. It looked as if they had been fleeing for their lives. The corpses were hideously burned and blistered. Evison shook his head. ‘The volcanoes – they give off hot vapours, hot enough to kill anyone caught up in them. You can see them coming down the mountain, a big misty blob shimmering in the trees, which burst into flame as they pass.’

We buried the natives quickly in the sand. Bel joined in with the rest of us. I liked her for that. ‘Every one deserves a burial,’ said Evison. ‘Even these savages.’ Digging the graves wearied us all – the heat sucked the strength from our muscles.

While Evison and Garrick supervised the others in the finding and felling of suitable timber, Bel and me were sent into the jungle to look for fruit and fresh water with our shipmate Thomas Bagley.

‘I should be good at this,’ I boasted. ‘After all that time in the bush in New South Wales.’

But this wasn’t like the bush at all. It was dank and
dripping – a stultifying wet-dishcloth heat that had us all drenched in sweat in minutes. Still, it was a magnificent place, with tall trees reaching a hundred or more feet before their canopies opened to the sky. The flowers were big and their colours garishly bright. Here and there shafts of sunlight poured down like glowing waterfalls, illuminating the dead leaves and moss of the forest floor in dense pools of light.

My sense of wonder mixed with unease. Everything was too big. We were ants in a land of giants. Another foul smell caught my nostrils.

We followed our noses. In a forest clearing was the most grotesque plant I had ever seen. It had a flower wider than I could stretch my arms. The five petals had red and white stripes across them, like fat in meat. It stank like a rotting corpse.

‘A place like this should be teeming with animal life,’ I thought. It was here, all right, but we could barely see it. Once in a while, a flutter of wings would alert us to a bird flitting from one perch to another. Occasionally we would be distracted by a rustling in the bush, but other than the took-toka-tok call of the birds, all we could hear was the swish of our feet ploughing through the dead leaves on the forest floor.

I felt something slimy crawl up my leg – a slug-like creature, which I swiftly brushed off. ‘Looked like a leech,’ said Bel.

‘Bet you wished you’d stayed on the
Orion
,’ I said to her.

She laughed. ‘Crikey no. It’s nice to have a change of scenery. This is such a great adventure for me. We both kept pleadin’ to be let off the boat. We could see the Captain weakenin’ … It’s Mrs Evison that wouldn’t hear of it. ’Specially not Lizzie.’ Bel started to mimic her. ‘“Much too dangerous for a young lady.” I said to Evison, I’ve gone all the way to New South Wales and what have I seen? The inside of some of the posher houses of Sydney and the wooden sides of a ruddy ship. I want to have something more to tell about when I get home –’

An unearthly roar stopped Bel in her tracks. ‘What the devil was that?’ she said and gripped my arm.

Her fear was infectious. ‘It sounded quite a distance away,’ I said. ‘But if it gets any nearer we’ll climb a tree.’

Peering through the branches, I caught my breath and a shiver ran from the back of my neck to the base of my spine. Not twenty yards away was a tiger stooping down on its front paws to drink from a shallow river. Bel had seen him too.

Watching silently, I felt a growing sense of awe. I had never seen such a magnificent beast. He was about the same length as a cow, but much sleeker, stronger and lower on the ground. Having drunk his fill, he lifted his
great head and sniffed the air. Everything he did seemed to be carefully calculated. He turned that head towards us, furry chops and whiskers still dripping with water. I wondered with growing terror if it was our scent he had picked up.

Further upriver, a flock of waterfowl made a noisy landing. The beast looked over at its leisure. Then it sauntered off at a lordly pace, muscles bulging on the shoulders and haunches of its sleek black and orange fur. It slipped slowly into the river with barely a ripple and began to swim towards its quarry.

We started to breathe again. ‘It’s a great big cat,’ said Bel. ‘I like cats, but you wouldn’t want to stroke that.’

I had heard tigers ate people if they could catch them, but now wasn’t the time to mention it. ‘Let’s get back to the shore,’ I said, ‘before it makes its way over here.’

We quickly gathered up our fruit and picked our way through the forest. I heard another terrifying roar and much squawking and flapping of wings. A goose or a duck wouldn’t keep a hungry tiger happy for long.

‘They say it roars before it pounces, to terrify its victims into paralysis,’ I said.

‘Shut up, Sam,’ said Bel. ‘The less I know about those things, the more I’ll be able to keep putting one foot in front of the other.’

Going alone and unarmed into the jungle, we had
bitten off more than we could chew – something I suspected the tiger rarely did.

We heard a rustle in the bushes behind us and Thomas Bagley turned white as a sheet. ‘It’s coming back this way!’ We stumbled through the undergrowth expecting the thing to pounce on us at any moment. I had seen its paws, and claws, and the thought of those sharp spikes digging into my back kept me running. Bel kept up as best as she could in her skirts. She was a good runner. Bagley lagged behind. He was a large rounded man and the heat was killing him. ‘Wait for me!’ he begged between gasping lungfuls of air.

Bel shook her head. ‘Let’s get up one of these trees. Something that big isn’t goin’ to climb trees, is it?’

We began to haul ourselves up the trunk of a tree with low branches, stopping when we reached a stout one about fifteen feet above the ground. Bagley was struggling for breath. ‘This should be high enough,’ he panted between great gulps of air. We sat down on the branch, legs dangling beneath us.

‘Do we call for help?’ I said. ‘Will that bring the tiger to us? Or will it bring one of our shipmates who’ll get eaten instead?’

‘Let’s just stay here for now,’ said Bagley, ‘and keep quiet. Maybe the thing will go away.’

I felt very thirsty. Bel passed me some of the berries
she had gathered and gave a few to Bagley. They felt sweet and juicy in my mouth – and balm to my swollen tongue. We calmed down a little. ‘When we get back to the beach, I’m going to drink a gallon of water,’ said Bel. Beads of sweat were dripping down her face and strands of dark hair were plastered to her forehead. ‘And then I’m going for a nice long swim.’

Bagley shouted ‘Here he iiiissssss …’ In an instant the tiger had stretched out his body against the tree trunk and reached up with a paw to swat us. We all tried desperately to stand on that branch – none of us had expected the beast to have such a reach. In our fumbling haste, Bagley lost his footing and slipped. He grabbed urgently for the branch and for a brief moment he hung underneath. The tiger saw its chance and plucked him from the tree.

Bagley collapsed into a limp bundle. The creature grabbed the scruff of his neck and pulled him away. Whether Bagley had fainted in terror or had been stunned by his fall I didn’t know. The tiger released its grip and sat on its haunches before him, as if wondering what to do next. Then it looked up at us. ‘What are YOU going to do about it?’ it seemed to be saying.

Bagley came to, sat up, then shrieked in horror. The tiger merely batted him down with a magisterial swipe and he lay there with the beast’s paw on his back. ‘This is MINE.’ The tiger had its back to us, but I could see
Bagley breathing, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He was too terrified to utter a sound.

‘What can we do?’ said Bel.

I filled my lungs and yelled, ‘HEEELLPP!!!’ She joined me. Our cries echoed around the forest but there was no reply.

I searched around frantically, looking for something to use as a weapon.

‘Sam, that creature will kill us both if we come down from this tree.’

Bagley tried to get to his feet again. The tiger pressed down harder on his back and gave out a tree-rattling growl. That seemed to drain the will from Bagley’s limbs and he lay still.

I made up my mind. I stood on the branch and squeezed past Bel. There was a stripling branch above my head, and I began to wrench it back and forth in an effort to break it off.

‘Are you mad?’ said Bel in disbelief.

‘I’m not going to watch him being eaten alive,’ I said. I felt desperately at odds with myself. Was I being stupid?

‘But Sam,’ said Bel, ‘what the hell are you going to do with that? Tickle him?’

Close by was a palm tree, its slender trunk arching up to a pinnacle of dense foliage. Skittering up the trunk, we saw a monkey wearing a little necklace. It was such a
bizarre sight we both stared, mouths agape, almost forgetting the horror of the moment.

The creature returned an instant later with a coconut clasped firmly in one hand. ‘Quick Bel, give me some of your fruit, let’s see if we can trade.’ She looked perplexed. ‘Would
you
like to get hit on the head with a coconut?’ I said.

We both shouted over to the monkey and held out a couple of cherries. A monkey wearing a necklace would be used to humankind. Sure enough the animal stopped in its tracks and slowly ventured towards us. The closer it got, the stranger it looked.

The creature was a brownish colour and the size of a small pig. Its expressive face was almost human and large eyes looked at us quizzically. Round its neck, twinkling in the light, was a beautiful string of precious stones. We held out some cherries and it edged towards us.

‘How do we get it to hand over the coconut?’ said Bel under her breath. ‘And not drop it neither.’

We needn’t have worried. It simply held out the nut for us to take, then sat palm open, expecting our fruit in return.

‘He’s been trained to do this,’ whispered Bel.

We gave him the fruit and he sat with us on the branch to eat it. I began to slowly make my way down to the forest floor. ‘Sam, don’t,’ said Bel. ‘Try and get him from
up here.’ I shook my head. There was only one way to do this, and that was right up close.

Bel sounded desperate. ‘He’ll kill you,’ she whispered hoarsely, trying not to draw the tiger’s attention. ‘You’ll never get close enough. DON’T do it.’ She was getting angry now.

The further down the tree I crept, the closer I was to mortal danger. Between me and the tiger lay maybe fifteen feet of forest floor. If I could make it over without breaking a twig or stumbling, then maybe the tiger would not hear me. I crept and crept, keenly aware of Bagley’s pleading eyes watching my every move. Soon I was close enough to smell the catty stench of the beast. I felt some ancient terror in my bones, a fear quite different from that of battle. This was an enemy that would not understand ‘I surrender’. Yet even now, as I crept towards it, watching its lean muscular back rise and fall with each slow breath, I could not help but admire its power and beauty.

I had taken every care not to step on a dry branch, and had moved as silently as I could, but the tiger had powers of detection way beyond human senses. Languorously, he turned his head round to look at me, showing no surprise when our eyes met. My heart was beating so hard in my chest I imagined it was its thumping that had given me away. I froze in both motion and body. I had never felt so terrified, even with a noose
around my neck on HMS
Elephant
.

The tiger’s steady gaze was mesmerising. The eyes were both beautiful and petrifying. A yellow band around the orb, then a wide jade-green swathe before the black dots of the pupils. When I looked into Sydney’s eyes, or the cats’ and dogs’ I had known, I sensed an understanding, even an affection. Here there was no empathy at all. Just teeth and flesh, predator and prey.