The Sugar Islands (11 page)

Roger flicked with the tip of his finger at the long blade of his knife.

‘I shall stand beside you,' he said. ‘There is no one else on this ship qualified. I shall see that you steer her right.'

The captain made no reply, but the first mate, sprawled there on the floor, knew from the way the lips set over the ragged and blackened teeth that the last word had not yet been spoken.

That night Roger moved into the captain's cabin. The crew, trained in subservience, accepted his leadership with the same
meekness that they had their captain's. They knew that they were powerless of themselves. They yielded to those who could control them. There were no prayers next morning. Roger spoke to them instead.

‘We are bound,' he said, ‘for an island where men are free; where they share equally the profits of their work. In a few weeks' time we shall be there. We shall join the brethren on such terms as their brotherhood ordains. Till then, however, so that the ship's running may be smooth, it is best that the former discipline of the ship be maintained.'

As far as the actual seamen were concerned, the mutiny involved little change. If anything, there was rather more work for them to do. Three men were required to guard the captain; and the officers who had been transferred below decks were indifferent substitutes. Roger saw to it, however, that the ration of rum was increased to a tumbler and a half a day.

And so the ship swung south into the Antarctic tempests. And for days, with the sails screaming and the ship plunging, the mutineers fought their way round the Horn, till at last their head turned northwards. And it was on their right that the sun rose, lilac and lavender out of a morning sky, and on their left that it drowned in a foam-churned, tawny-red horizon. And the wind became gentle gradually, and the seas less fierce. The days lengthened and grew warm. Over the pale water the white flying-fish would quiver. And at night the sailors would sit out under the stars singing the songs of their own country.

They were happy. The supply of fruit was nearly finished. Scurvy would soon be once more on them. There was only a barrel of rum left. They knew that. But they were happy. They were bound for an island where men were free, where men could make riches quickly and return with them to their parents, their wives, their sweethearts; to the friends that awaited them. The songs that they sang by starlight were the songs of yearning: of a homesickness for the white houses and the grey-green terraces of the south; for the long bare cliffs of Brittany; the thatched cottages, and the fields, green-brown in the mild spring light.

Roger, at the captain's side, listened to their singing with a mind detached. He was not yet twenty. He had been less than a year at sea. Yet already the familiar faces and the familiar scenes
of his boyhood had grown unreal. He imagined that he would see them again one day. But he did not dream, as these others did, of returning one day rich to the village that had despised him in his youth. He did not think about the village much. He did not look ahead. The present sufficed for him. He felt complete. And as the days passed he became aware, as primitive people are aware, of a kinship of loneliness between himself and the hard, weather-beaten sailor he had enslaved, who had not in any port in the world a human tie; who existed for himself, within himself, in his love for the sea and for his ship.

They rarely spoke during the long weeks of their journey northwards. Taciturn as ever the captain buried himself over his charts; walking from time to time on the bridge to sweep the horizon with his spy-glass; the beaker of grog unceasingly replenished was at his side. He might have been captain still except that he never cast a look towards the crew. He made no reference to the mutiny. He gave instructions to Roger as though Roger had been his officer. He did not ask whether or not those orders had been carried out. He made no attempt to speak with his former officers or with any of the men. He accepted his position. Occasionally he would fix a slow searching glance on Roger. Once he asked him a question.

‘When and how did you join this ship?' he asked.

When Roger told him he nodded his head.

‘I seem to remember them telling me,' he said. ‘I didn't hear till we had left Marseilles. They should have told me. I don't suppose if I had seen you I should have let you sail.'

That was the only reference he ever made in Roger's presence to the mutiny. With the quiet efficiency that had won him the respect of merchant owners he steered the ship along the Brazilian coast, rounded the outposts of Venezuela, passed between the narrow straits that separate Trinidad and Tobago, sailed into the calm waters of the Caribbean that had held for a century past, and was for two centuries yet to hold, the West in fee; was to be the symbol of romance; the Eldorado of beglamoured youth; the background against which the courage and skill of British seamen, Drake, Nelson, Rodney, Howe, were to flame through history; that had sent, first gold and silver from its mines; and later from its fertile soil was to pour sugar, rum, coffee, cocoa into Europe, till the phrase, ‘rich as Croesus', should be displaced
by ‘rich as a Creole'. Green and high and fecund they circled jewelwise this tropical Mediterranean, the islands for whose sake so much blood and money should be spilt; Trinidad, Jamaica, Cuba, San Domingo.

As the
Bordelais
swung through Trinidad's northern channel, Roger standing upon the bridge had a sense of entering a kingdom.

‘How many days away is Tortuga now?' he asked.

‘Seven or eight maybe.'

‘Have you ever been there before?'

‘I've been there.'

And the old man turned his eyes back to the shimmering white-blue horizon. In silence they sailed on across that unruffled lane. There is no land between Trinidad and San Domingo.

High and green the mountains of San Domingo rose out of the sea. As the ship cruised along its southern coast, turning northwards round Dame Marie, then eastwards from the Mole St. Nicholas by the same route Columbus took, the crew laughed and sang about their work, happy in the knowledge that in a few hours' time there would be fresh food for them and wine. They had asked no questions as to what would happen when they arrived. Had they done so Roger would have been uncertain how to answer. He had himself the haziest idea of what would happen. But he lacked the imagination that would have caused such haziness to worry him. His heart was restless with excitement.

At his side the captain was more taciturn, more withdrawn than ever. His lips were set tight upon his ragged teeth. His eye shone brightly. He answered abruptly with his face fixed on the horizon such questions as Roger asked.

‘Harbours,' he said. ‘There is only one harbour.'

‘Is the coast rocky?'

‘Very.'

‘I suppose that's why the buccaneers chose it. They thought it would make them safe against invasion.'

‘I suppose so.'

And indeed it would have been hard to picture anything more barren and bleak and inaccessible than the high-humped island that grew clearer hour by hour. Along its dark-green coast there was no sign of life; roots and trees grew on its rocky face, like ivy against a wall.

Through the spy-glass Roger gazed closely at the approaching beach. ‘This is where my life starts,' he thought.

Though the sun was shining fiercely out of a blue sky there was a keen wind blowing. The water in the narrow channel was churned and choppy. The ship, as each wave hit against it, pitched to such an extent that Roger at first took for no more than the impact of a larger wave the sudden jolt that flung him off his feet and sent the ship heeling over to a twenty degree angle. It was not till the ship, as he struggled to his feet, did not right herself, that he realized that it was not water that had caused that jolt.

‘What's that?' he cried.

The captain fixed on him a look of triumph and cunning. The old man's eyes were bright. There was a glow of colour in his lined, rum-roughened cheeks. He spoke slowly and proudly, on a note of self-vindication.

‘You thought,' he said, ‘that you could frighten me into steering my ship into an enemy harbour, and making a present of her to pirates at the bidding of mutineers.'

‘What's happened?'

The old man took no notice of the interruption. ‘You could force me to bring my ship into the Caribbean. But you couldn't make me surrender my ship to pirates. You can kill me now. But no pirate's hand is ever going to touch this wheel. My ship is hit hard upon a reef of rock. If she's afloat in an hour's time I'll be surprised.'

Roger made no answer. There was none to be made. There were other matters to be seen to. Already the crew had begun to gather on the lower deck, terrified and complaining, waiting for instructions. As Roger stood looking down on them from the quarter-deck he had a comforting feeling of superiority to them all. He was responsible for their lives. He had led them to mutiny. He had brought them to this pass. Yet he could feel no particular sense of guilt, nor any particular pity for them. They were poor sheep. They should be grateful to him for having shepherded them so long.

In the shortest possible words he told them what had happened.

‘We've gone aground. In half an hour in all human probability we shall be five fathoms deep in the Caribbean. The land's
a league and a half off. We're sixty. The pinnace will hold twelve. You had best draw lots for it.'

Had he made a long speech the men might have had time to recover from their astonishment and start protesting. He did not give them time for that. With pieces of string he set them to the task of drawing lots.

In a few moments it had been decided which ones were to be granted places in the pinnace. Twelve men had stepped forward from the rest.

‘Very well,' said Roger, ‘lower the pinnace. You twelve get into it. The rest of you must take such chances as you can.'

The men hesitated.

‘Come on now,' said Roger. ‘What are you waiting for?'

The men still hesitated. There were the supplies, they said, the muskets, the ammunition, and the cargo they had brought to trade with.

Roger smiled.

‘If you can save yourselves you may consider yourselves lucky. Get busy and away with you.'

Then turning to the rest.

‘It's every man for himself now,' he said.

The crew made no reply. Quickly and neatly the pinnace was lowered into the angry waters. No attempt was made by any of those who had been left behind to force a place for themselves. The moment the pinnace had been lowered they turned to the preparation of a raft, breaking up chests, destroying doors, pulling planks up in the deck.

From the bridge Roger watched their efforts. For nine months now these men and he had faced and shared the various hardships and recompenses of the sea. Now in as many minutes these bonds were to be broken. Already the pinnace was plunging its way towards the shore. The sea was angry, the current strong, the harbour was set with rocks, there were sharks as likely as not in the lagoon; the betting was against their reaching the palm-fringed stretch of beach. The other sailors with their raft were on the whole the likelier to get there. With a shrug of the shoulders he turned back towards the bridge. The captain, his chin rested on his hands, was leaning forward, looking out at the struggling pinnace.

Side by side they stood there watching the small boat pitch
and toss in the trough of the short angry waves; at times buried beneath a wall of water, then rising on the high crest of foam, plunging like a frightened horse. For half a league it struggled. Then as a grey-green wall of water sank, there rose on the crested foam not the narrow boat but a medley of oars threshing feebly in a wake of white.

The other sailors, minute by minute, as the settling ship listed over, lowered themselves over the side in groups and couples, trusting to hastily strung rafts and spars. The sea was soon full of dark objects tossing on the mounting waves. In a little while the ship was empty, save for the two upon the bridge.

Roger turned towards the captain.

‘Well?' he said.

‘Well?'

‘Are you going to stay here?'

‘The captain goes down with his ship.'

The emotion that, an hour earlier, had lit that hard, lined face had vanished. Impassive and indifferent, he leaned forward, his chin rested on his hands.

‘Two can play that game,' thought Roger. He was not going to be outdone in composure by the man he had deposed. And so they stood side by side together, while the waves beat against the high, red-painted poop, and the ship settled deeper, till the water had risen over the lower deck, lapping against the quarter-deck from whose stairway Roger had addressed the crew.

‘We'll be down in a minute or two now,' the captain said.

Already the level of the water had begun to mount the bridge; the slant had become so great that it was scarcely possible to stand upright.

‘She'll go down in a rush, when she does,' the captain said. ‘ We'll be sucked right under.'

He spoke in the detached informative manner of a schoolmaster instructing a class.

‘We'll be sucked down, then thrown up wide. The great thing is to hold your breath.'

Roger listened calmly. Of certain things he was afraid, of being made to look ridiculous, of being unable to look any man between the eyes. Of those things he was afraid. Those were of the things that shamed a man, that diminished a man's stature. But death could be a gallant episode. Unmoved he stood there,
with the wind cold and spasmodic on his cheeks and the sun warm upon his neck, waiting for the sudden lurch that should spill him into that grey-green coldness.

It came, as the captain had told him that it would, without warning. A lurch, and the water from the lower deck had risen, and the great carved mermaid upon the poop had curved above him and down, down, down he was plunging into the grey water, with his ears singing and his eyes a mist, with a stinging pain in his wrist and a numb throbbing at his knee; with his lungs strained, and only the captain's warning to stay him from the gasp for breath that would have sent him down, down and beyond recall into the grey forest.