Voyage of the Basilisk : A Memoir by Lady Trent (9781429956369) (21 page)

Undoubtedly he had already been told about our troubles, but Suhail repeated them now for his benefit. I could not follow half of what he said; not only was he endeavouring to describe the situation of the
Basilisk,
which involved a great deal of technical terminology I did not recognize even before Suhail found a way to express it in the Atau pidgin, but my exhausted brain simply lacked the will to struggle with a foreign language in the first place. My wandering gaze took in the battered state of the village, then studied the green slopes of the volcano above us, in which I could begin to pick out the signs of farms and the occasional hut.

And, in the air above the trees, a flock of shapes whose recognizable outlines immediately woke me from my stupor.

I did not realize I had made a little exclamation of pleasure until everyone turned to stare at me. Then I flushed hot and stammered out an apology. “I did not mean to interrupt. It is only that I saw a flight of fire-lizards up there.”

I said this in Scirling, which meant of course that it had to be translated for the islanders. Then someone else spoke up, in a clear enough tone that I could understand. “What is your interest in them?”

The speaker was a large, deep-voiced woman in the king’s entourage. She seemed to be about my age, perhaps a little older, and she was looking at me with a sharp expression. I surmised that she had some special position in his court, for her appearance was odd: the tattoos on her face exaggerated her eyes and her mouth, the barkcloth draped over one shoulder was thick and bulky, and the skirt wrapped about her lower half was extravagantly padded at the hips.

I attempted an explanation, but soon foundered on my tiredness and lack of fluency. Suhail raised his eyebrows, and when I nodded in gratitude, he explained on my behalf. To them he said, “She seeks to know all there is to be known about creatures like the fire-lizards.”

The woman’s dark brows rose at his words. Much too late, I found myself wishing I had held my tongue. Our experiences in the Puian regions of the Broken Sea had introduced me to the word
tapu,
which indicates the restrictions and prohibitions that mark a thing off as sacred. I had not yet encountered any
tapu
which interfered with my studies, but such things vary from place to place, and it was entirely possible that my interest violated one here. I hastened to say, “Please, do not let that stand in the way of our negotiations. I do not wish to give offense. What matters is that we repair the ship.”

I do not think the Keongans would have ever refused us outright. Their archipelago is rather isolated—a fact which served us well during the storm, for it meant the
Basilisk
could run freely before the wind. That isolation causes them to be an insular folk indeed (if I may be forgiven the etymological pun). But they are not so xenophobic as to kill outsiders who are careful to offer them no violence. Indeed, like many people in societies without cities, they place a great deal of importance on hospitality. But Puians are also a trading people, and they recognized that in this instance, they held all the advantage—for we could not leave without their help.

We might have done without the mizzenmast. Alert readers may recall that it was a later addition to the vessel’s structure anyway; she could sail without it. But she could not sail as well: the captain and crew knew her as a bark, not as a brig sloop, and would need to change their arrangements of sail and ballast and all the rest if they wished to do anything more than limp clumsily along.

With a mizzenmast or without, however, we could go nowhere while the
Basilisk
was pinned atop that reef; and likely not for some time after, as the coral had assuredly done sufficient damage to her structure as to warrant repair. We would at a minimum require the hospitality of the Keongans while those repairs were done, and likely some assistance besides. It was for this that Suhail had to bargain, translating the demands of Pa’oarakiki for Aekinitos, and the captain’s counteroffers in return.

The barriers of language and exhaustion meant I followed very little of this. I can only marvel at both Suhail’s linguistic agility and Aekinitos’ strength of focus, for I doubted the captain had slept more than two winks at a stretch through the storm; and yet he sat there on his bundle with his broken leg before him and haggled like a Monnashire housewife on market day. The result was a payment of cargo and various other oddments in exchange for a beach to live on, some assistance with the ship—and a promise.

“They are insisting that we remain on Keonga until the repairs are done,” Suhail said to the captain. “Neither you nor anyone else from the ship may travel to the other islands, without his express permission. As soon as the
Basilisk
is seaworthy once more, we are to sail away and not return.”

It was an oddly cold demand, for a people who seemed otherwise friendly. (I had the impression Pa’oarakiki could have mulcted us for a good deal more than he did.) Aekinitos said, “What if we need timber or such that cannot be found on this island?”

“I inquired about that. He said it could be fetched for us, but we may not seek it ourselves.”

Aekinitos grunted and shifted his injured leg. With so many eyes upon him, he did not permit himself the luxury of a wince. “As restrictions go, that one is easy enough, I suppose. I will make certain my men know.”

He did not ask after the reason then, nor any time later—at least not directly. I know Pa’oarakiki’s demand roused his curiosity, though, as it did mine. The prohibition might have been a matter of
tapu,
and in any event we had no desire to pry into the private affairs of the islanders. But it did raise questions, even if we kept them to ourselves.

*   *   *

Although it will put my narrative somewhat out of order, I must first relate what transpired with the
Basilisk,
for it is the framework that shapes everything else which happened during our stay. We could not leave until the ship was repaired; we could not go anywhere else in the islands while the repairs were conducted; and so we found ways to fill the time. Had we been able to leave sooner, a great deal of what follows would never have occurred.

The receding flood of the storm had left the
Basilisk
stranded atop the reef, in a kind of saddle between two higher bits of rock. This was a dangerous position to be in, for every wave that came in shifted her on her perch, and coral is not forgiving. Given sufficient time, the sea would have pounded our ship to pieces.

Unfortunately, she could not be retrieved at once. Discussion with the Keongans established that the next high tide would not be at all sufficient to float the
Basilisk
free. Aekinitos would have to wait for the “spring tide,” a higher surge which comes on the new and full moons; and the new moon was not for more than a week.

For the men still on board the ship, this was dreadful news. By working the pumps they could keep the hold from filling with water—but to man them for a week and more could not be borne. Fortunately, they were able to devise a “fother,” a patch of sail filled with oakum and tar, which is sucked into the breaches by the inrushing water and thus seals them, at least partially, against their doom. Inspired by this, Aekinitos had more such patches made, buying barkcloth and fiber in great quantities from the islanders, which his men then lashed in place where the coral ground worst against the hull. These had to be replaced on a frequent basis, but they preserved the ship against some of the damage she might otherwise have taken.

Dragging her free of the reef required tremendous effort from not only the sailors but also the Keongans, who tied cables to their canoes and paddled mightily to haul the
Basilisk
clear. At that point we faced new problems, for deprived of that support, however destructive it may have been, the
Basilisk
promptly began to sink in earnest. It was a race between the sea on one side and the rowers on the other (not to mention the fellows manning the pumps belowdecks) as to whether they could get the ship to safety before she foundered irretrievably. This meant bringing her along the fore reef until there was a gap through which she could enter the lagoon, and then drawing her as far onto shore as Aekinitos dared, without beaching her so thoroughly she could never be removed again. This is called careening, and in the absence of a dry-dock, it was the best we could do.

His carpenter and other skilled men dove into the water to investigate the damage; the rest of us had to wait until the tide went out to see it. When the ship’s hull was exposed, I shuddered at the sight. I had not known before that the
Basilisk,
like many ships, bears a “false keel” and a sheathing of thin boards over the keel and hull proper; these protect the structural fabric of the vessel from shipworms and other troubles, collisions with the seafloor included. The reef had torn away much of the false keel and a good deal of the sheathing, cracking the planks beneath. Aekinitos swore for a full ten minutes after he heard the report, in a medley of languages that impressed even Suhail. Even for a linguistically inept landlubber such as myself, the message was clear: we would not be going anywhere any time soon.

O
N
THE
B
EACH

That simple fact dominated our thoughts throughout our enforced stay on Keonga. It could hardly do otherwise; the immense hull and tilted masts of the
Basilisk
towered over our encampment, heaved first to one side, then to the other, while the men worked to make her seaworthy once more. It was an inescapable reminder of our misfortune, and our hope of returning home.

*   *   *

We knew that we were in the Keongan Islands; we knew very little more.

That part of the Broken Sea was but very poorly charted by Anthiopean sailors; indeed, few other than Puians knew the secret of reaching it, for doing so required a vessel to thread a maze of shoals and reefs and underwater mounts whose treacherous currents could easily sink the unwary—unless the unwary happened to be riding the surge of a storm. Aekinitos’ charts, rescued from his cabin, showed the type of vague markings that said the draughtsman had no idea how many islands were in the chain, much less their size and individual coastlines.

The Scirling Geographical Association would have given several left arms for accurate charts of the archipelago and its surrounding waters; alas, Pa’oarakiki’s interdiction meant we could not oblige them. Judicious questioning of the islanders taught us there were eleven islands that merited settlement, and several more that were barren volcanic rocks, waterless atolls, or otherwise unfit for human habitation. The largest of these was the neighbouring Aluko’o, which lies to the northeast of Keonga, and is the direct domain of the archipelago’s king.

The island upon which we had wrecked ourselves is the one known properly as Keonga. It gives its name to the chain courtesy of a mythology that attributes great religious significance to the two volcanoes that make up its bulk. These stand a little distance apart, and must originally have been two separate islands, but their ejecta have run together in the middle, leaving a saddle of lower-lying terrain in between. Owing to the orientation of this saddle, which lies parallel to the prevailing winds, the area receives a great deal of rain and wind, and is the breadbasket of the archipelago (so to speak—Keongans cultivate no grains, but only tubers, fruit, sugarcane, and some vegetables).

In ancient times the island chain was divided between a number of chieftains who amounted to petty kings, but for the last few generations they have been under the rule of a single man. We had no direct dealings with the king until shortly before our departure; we could not go to Aluko’o to present ourselves, and we were not important enough for so august a personage to greet. “Bigger fish to fry,” Tom said to me, during the days before the
Basilisk
was freed and then careened. “Do you remember that Raengaui pirate-king Aekinitos mentioned? Waikango? It seems he’s been captured by the Yelangese.”

“He does not rule here, does he?” I asked. I knew he had been extending his reach, but I did not think it had yet encompassed this outlying archipelago.

“No,” Tom said, “but the king’s wife is a cousin of Waikango.”

Then it was easy to guess why the people here did not like the Yelangese. But what had my countrymen done to offend them? I thought of Princess Miriam’s embassy, which ought to have arrived in Yelang some time after I was deported. The news-sheets had blown a lot of hot air about how her visit was to “deepen the bonds of amity between our two great nations,” but everyone knew that was a polite way of saying she was there to see if Scirland and Yelang could be induced to get along. If they had, perhaps the Puians of the Broken Sea had taken it as a hostile sign. But I could hardly imagine the princess had worked so quickly in establishing rapport; was it merely the fact of her visit that had offended them?

I could not ask. The people we dealt with had no reason to follow such matters, and the chief and his close retainers avoided us as much as they could. In the meanwhile, of course, we had our own affairs to address.