The Rape Of Venice

Chapter 11

Death Reaches Out

Although they were within a few degrees of the equator the water had struck chill as it surged over them. But in a moment all sensation was forgotten, except the pain and terror of suffocation. They had been drawn into the whirlpool so swiftly that they had not even had time to gulp in a deep breath. The sea had slapped into their partly open mouths, blinded their eyes and rushed up their nostrils.

The Minerva, plunging to the depths, dragged them after her-​down, down, down. It seemed that, like stones cast into a pond, they would never stop until they reached bottom. With every instant, greater pressure upon their chests and backs threatened to force out the air remaining in their lungs. The blood throbbed madly in their temples and their eyes started from their sockets.

Suddenly the water below them seemed to open. They shot down at still greater speed, were flung head over heels, whirled round, then felt themselves being carried swiftly upwards. Another few awful moments and they were catapulted several feet above the surface of the sea. Then they splashed into and under it. Temporarily, they had been saved from drowning by the final death throe of the Minerva. The increasing pressure on the air caught in her between decks had caused it to burst out in a great bubble; like rocks caught up in a volcanic eruption, they had been hurled by it right out of the water.

Flailing his arms wildly, Roger came to the surface again. He was still tied by the rope's end to the stack of chairs, and it bobbed up beside him. Gasping in breath and dashing the water from his eyes, he looked round for Clarissa, but could not see her. The chairs were riding some three feet out of the water, so the level of the uppermost one was well above his head. The rope by which he was tied to them was too short to allow of his swimming round the chairs, so he grasped the top one and strove to haul himself up onto the top of the stack.

Under his weight the stack tipped sharply but did not turn over, as he feared it would. When he had struggled onto it he saw the reason. To his immense relief Clarissa was on its far side and it was her weight which had kept the stack steady enough for him to get up on it.

An instant later his relief at seeing her was submerged in a wave of fury. The tipping of the stack had brought her up, but as it rolled back her head went under water. At the first glance he had taken in only the fact that Winters was beside and just below her. Now he realised that her husband, not being roped to the stack, had evidently been swept from it as it went down, and had saved himself by clinging to her.

Winter’s upturned face showed that he was half mad from terror. With his right hand he was striving frantically but unsuccessfully to grab the nearest chair strut; his left was clasped firmly on the collar of Clarissa's cape. But for the rope round her waist they would both have gone under. As it was, the rope was taut, and his pull on her had dragged her backwards. Each time he heaved himself up in an attempt to get a hold on the chairs, his weight forced her head below the water. She writhed and struggled, but as he was behind her she could do nothing to free herself.

'Let go!' snarled Roger, his eyes blazing. 'Let go, God damn you!'

'Help!' gasped Winters. 'Help!'

At that moment, by a great effort, Clarissa managed to get her head right round. Baring her teeth she bit savagely into the hand that threatened to drown her. With a yelp of pain Winters let go his hold, but at once he made another grab at her. Kicking out she eluded his clutch, then struck him in the face with her clenched fist. His hands shot up, clawing at the air, then he sank from sight.

Roger, sprawled on the top of the stack of chairs, and encumbered by his heavy saturated clothing, had, in these few brief moments, been unable to aid Clarissa, but he had managed to wriggle his sword out of its sheath. As Winters came struggling back to the surface, he brandished it and cried:

'You miserable coward! Lay hand on her again and I'll kill you!'

'Mercy!' Winters croaked, spluttering out a mouthful of water. 'Give me a hand! I can't swim! I'll drown if you don't help me!'

At that despairing cry Roger's heart softened. There were reasons enough why he would have liked to see Winters drown. His death would free Clarissa from her entanglement; but, more important at the moment, on the surface of the chair-​stack there was barely room for two people to lie down. Three would mean acute discomfort and seriously reduce the chances of any of them surviving. Yet the fact that Winters had clutched at Clarissa was at least palliated by his being unable to swim and. before his mind had become temporarily deranged by fear of death, he had shown himself to be a generous and honourable man.

Seeing that Clarissa was now supporting herself without difficulty, Roger flattened himself again and stretched out a hand to Winters. He grasped it with a grateful sob of thanks and was drawn near enough to the stack to get a hold upon it. Turning back to Clarissa, Roger drew her up onto its narrow surface. With her feet still dangling in the water, she collapsed upon it. She had not fainted, but the ordeal she had just been through had left her near exhaustion. Roger began to chafe her hands and. while doing so, had his first chance to look about him.

Now that the raft of chairs was supporting three people it was very low in the water, and while crouching on it Roger's field of view was confined to an area of a few hundred yards The oily post-​storm swell now rose and fell rhythmically, the wave crests no longer breaking but just flecked with foam. Or: one of them a longboat stood out for a minute or two against the still sullen sky. It was packed with people but the distance was too great for him to identify any of them. Round it in the water there bobbed a cluster of heads, from which came faint cries as the swimmers pleaded to be taken into the already overloaded boat, and struggled for places at which to cling to the cords along its sides.

Within sight there was at least a score of rafts. Some were crowded and some, having been drawn under by the whirlpool and since returned to the surface, were empty. The great air bubble had thrown up from the depths fifty or sixty men. and each of them was now striving to reach the raft nearest to him. A group of four soldiers, two swimming strongly and a third supporting the fourth, were heading for the chairs and only a dozen yards away. Roger pointed to an empty raft some sixty feet distant and shouted:

'Over there! Over there! These chairs can carry no more weight. You'll only sink us.' But, ignoring him, the swimmers continued to come on.

A few more strokes and the two strongest reached Winters. Wrenching him from his hold, they thrust him back and attempted to clamber up on the chairs. Roger, now kneeling, and sword in hand again, cursed and threatened them. Panting, they cursed back at him. Under their combined weight the chairs dipped dangerously. Seeing no alternative but death for Clarissa and himself, Roger slashed swiftly with his blade at the soldiers' clutching hands. Wailing and groaning they snatched their bleeding fingers away, and struck out for the empty raft. Their two struggling companions turned and followed.

Brief as the encounter was, Roger had temporarily lost sight of Winters. Now he realised that the near exhausted merchant, robbed of his support, had again gone under. The patch of sea where he had been remained empty. Roger stared at it and round about for some while, but Winters did not reappear. There could be little doubt that he had gone down for good.

Within the next ten minutes, Fate swiftly dealt out death or a new chance of life for many people. A score of men who endeavoured to get onto already full rafts were thrust off to drown; the others hauled themselves up onto the empty rafts and squatted bemused upon them. After a babble of shouts, prayers, and curses, a brooding silence descended on the scene.

Roger, meanwhile, had lifted Clarissa's legs from the water and laid her down at full length. She smiled up at him, showing that she was still both conscious and in good heart; but it was only with difficulty that he returned her smile, for he felt that their chances of being picked up before they were driven mad by thirst and hunger were extremely slender.

During the long afternoon, governed by their wind-​resistance, or lack of it, some of the rafts dispersed over a wider area while others drew together and, a little before sundown, one with a single occupant drifted to within thirty feet of them. It consisted of a nine-​foot square hatchway, so its surface, strength and buoyancy were all greater than the precariously lashed together float of chairs on which Roger and Clarissa were so uncomfortably perched.

Roger hailed the man on it and he proved to be one of the Minerva's Quartermasters. He said that all his mates had been washed from the raft when it had been sucked under, and that he would welcome company; so Roger slipped into the water and, with the rope still round his waist, towed the chairs alongside the hatchway. As the latter was so much more stable, Roger and Clarissa were able, as soon as they were on it, to dispense with the rope's ends round their waists and, at the suggestion of the occupant of the raft, the rope was used, with his help, to secure one half of the chairs on each side of it to give it still greater buoyancy.

The Quartermaster's name was Bill Bodkin and, after they had talked to him for a while, they felt they were lucky to have chanced on such a companion. He was a big, brown-​bearded man of about forty, with an open face and cheerful disposition. From boyhood all his life had been spent at sea and, while he admitted that their situation was about as bad as it could be, having twice before been wrecked and picked up in the ocean he was optimistic enough to believe that he would escape death a third time.

He backed his opinion that God meant him to live with the facts that, of the dozen men who had been with him on the raft when it went under, he alone had come up still clinging to it; that, although most of the gear they had lashed onto it had been torn away by the force of the whirlpool, the one essential to life-​a six-​gallon keg of water-​had been held fast by its moorings; and that although their box of food had been swept away, Clarissa had brought a good quantity of meat and biscuits in the pockets of her cloak, of which he might now expect a share in return for a share of his water.

While they had been talking, the swift darkness of the tropics had fallen; so, considerably cheered by Bodkin's conviction that the Almighty had them under his special protection, they settled down for the night. It was warm enough for them to use their sodden cloaks as pillows but there was little else they could do for their comfort, and for a good part of the long hours that followed they lay gazing up at the brightly twinkling stars in the dark vault overhead, wondering unhappily if there really was much chance of being rescued within the next few days.

When dawn at last came, although the swell had gone down and so much increased their field of vision none of the other rafts was to be seen. The only trace of the Minerva, other than themselves, was a broken hen-​coop bobbing up and down some dozen yards away. Bill Bodkin was most anxious to secure it but he could not swim; so Roger took off his outer garments, which had dried during the night, went in and brought it alongside.

The coop contained ten chickens. Waves breaking over the stern of the Minerva had drowned all the live-​stock on her poop; so the birds must have been, dead for at least two days and, during their immersion in the sea, small fish, having got between their feathers, had, in places, nibbled their flesh away to the bone; so Roger thought their find useless. But Bodkin said that if the birds were gutted, salt water would preserve their meat for a while, and if it did turn their stomachs it could anyway be used as bait for fish; then he promptly set about dealing with this windfall.

During the day the big, bearded Quartermaster busied himself in a dozen other ways. He counted the chairs a great blessing, as the worst enemy of people adrift on a raft in the tropics was the power of the sun. The wood and canvas of the chairs could be used to make a shelter and, perhaps, even a squat mast with a sail. While he worked away with his sharp jack-​knife, Roger unravelled the strands of the rope and Clarissa unpicked the stitching of some of the canvas chair seats.

By midday they had rigged up a temporary structure that would give them some protection from the searing rays which by then threatened them with severe sunburn, and after lying for two hours sweating under it they again set to work further to improve their situation.

Next day, from the twine binding that Clarissa had unpicked, Bodkin made a fishing line and baited it with the entrails of one of the chickens. The result was most unwelcome. Within a few minutes the bait was taken and the line snapped. Peering over the side of the raft down through the clear water they caught the flash of a white belly. As they watched, it turned over, merging into a long grey shape that shot upwards. A moment later an eight-​foot shark broke the surface within a few feet of the raft.

Roger remarked that he had been surprised that sharks had not arrived on the scene to attack the many men swimming in the sea shortly after the Minerva went down. Bodkin told him that, during rough weather, sharks kept well under water, but he added that, now it was calm and they had attracted one, the brute would never leave them till they were either dead or rescued. And so it proved. A more gentle wind was still wafting them north-​westward towards the distant coast of Africa and hour after hour the triangular fin of the great fish now cut through the water, like a small sail, as it followed in their wake. It was still there when they roused up to face their third day on the raft.

That day they completed and rigged a low sail. With their very limited resources there was then no more that they could do, except try to keep cheerful and prevent their thoughts dwelling on how long they had to wait until they were due for the next meagre ration of water and food, which was all they allowed themselves thrice daily.

As an aid to keeping their minds occupied, they started singsongs, but soon gave up because in the great heat singing parched their throats and made them crave more than ever for a drink. Instead, they took turns to tell stories, and played guessing games; but Bodkin was not much good at either, and having no education except in seamanship, was often at a loss to understand what his companions were talking about.

Yet he fared better than they did physically, for he was much tougher. In spite of every precaution to keep in the shade, it proved impossible to protect more than their heads for any length of time; so from their first full day on the raft both Clarissa and Roger suffered a great deal from sunburn on the backs of their hands, ankles and insteps.

From dawn to dusk each day they took hourly turns at the duty of keeping a constant watch for a ship on the horizon, and from a strip of Clarissa's petticoat they had made a flag to wave as a signal should they see one. But they watched in vain; the weather remained calm, the sky a brassy blue and the ocean empty.

Bill Bodkin remained optimistic about their chances of being picked up, but Roger had all he could do to hide his growing fears from Clarissa. They still had water enough to last them for another week, but they had had to finish the meat up on the third day because the heat was beginning to turn it bad; it was futile to fish because the shark would have snapped up anything they caught before they could pull it in and, although they had been allowing themselves only one thick ship's biscuit each a day, their sixth night on the raft would find them food-​less. Already they were suffering pangs of hunger and conjuring up visions of their favourite dishes, so he dreaded to think of the state to which they would be reduced when they had not even a morsel of stale baked flour and water with which, every few hours, to still their cravings.

By the fifth day they had almost given up talking and lay for long periods silent and unmoving, trying to keep their thoughts off such heavenly delights as fresh juicy fruits, chilled white wine, cold lobsters and iced parfaits. All through the day they sweltered, protected only by the thin canvas of the chairs from the direct rays of the blazing sun. At last it set and with darkness they dropped off into a fitful doze.

It was Clarissa who roused them. A little after midnight she shook Roger by the shoulder, and said in a husky voice: 'Have I been dreaming, or is the air different? It has become… well, balmy describes it; and it smells scented… like apple pie.'

Bodkin had woken on the instant. He sniffed loudly, then exclaimed: 'You're right, Missey! Praise be to God! I believe we're hard by the Isle of Cloves!'

Hurriedly they wriggled out from under the flimsy shelter and stood up. Clearly defined against the starlit sky a jagged frieze of blackness rose from the horizon towards which the raft was drifting. There could be no doubt about its being a coast-​line. It seemed to them an interminable time before they came any closer to it, but actually within an hour they could make out groups of tall palms standing out from a solid mass along a low shore, and the white line of foam as curling waves broke upon it.

There followed twenty minutes of agonised waiting. From fear that their dread companion, the shark, was still lurking somewhere nearby in the darkness, they dared not attempt to swim ashore. They could only pray that the tide would not turn and carry the raft out to sea again before it was cast up on the beach.

At last it was caught in the boiling surf, whirled round and turned over. As they were dashed from it a wave broke over them, but their hands and knees met slithering pebbles. They staggered to their feet. Roger and Bodkin each seized Clarissa by an arm. But they could not advance; the undertow was too strong for them. Another wave hit them and flung them forward. Again they were on their knees, but this time in shallower water. Once more they strove to get a firm foothold on the treacherous shingle. Step by step they fought the backwash. One final effort and the three of them, drenched and breathless but triumphant, lurched clear of the water and threw themselves down on the pebbly strand.

For some minutes they lay where they had fallen, spitting out water and getting back their breath. As soon as they had recovered, they moved farther up the steeply shelving shore to the dark line of trees, and found beneath them thick jungle; so they settled down on its fringe and, wearied out, dozed there for the rest of the night.

When dawn came they saw that they were near one extremity of a long bay. Towards its centre there were sandy stretches, but from end to end jungle, topped by tall palm trees, enclosed it, and it held no habitation or sign of life.

While they were on the raft, anxiety to be saved from death upon it had dominated their minds; now they felt they were in little better case, for they knew only that they had been cast up somewhere upon the immensely long, unexplored coast of East Africa, so must face many perils before they could hope to reach a place of safety.

But their empty stomachs were rumbling with hunger, so their first thought was to find food. The jungle was thick but not impenetrable, and quite near in from its edge they came upon several kinds of trees bearing fruit. All of them were strange so they feared that some might be poisonous, but they were so hungry that they had to take that risk. They minimised it by each eating only of one sort and only enough to still their immediate craving.

Fearing that they might get lost if they went deeper in, they returned to the beach and made their way round the point of the bay, hoping that on its far side they might find a native village, but they were disappointed; another long stretch of desolate shore lay before them.

The scent of cloves was again strong in the balmy air, and Bodkin said he had heard tell that the Portuguese had a settlement on the Isle of Cloves, for collecting the clove crop and shipping it to Europe; so if this was the island, a few hours' walk should bring them to a plantation and the means of getting back to civilisation.

Cheered by this thought, they set off along the shore, but they had not gone far before Clarissa complained of pains in her stomach and there could be little doubt that the particular fruit she had eaten had poisoned her. Halting, they sat her down in the shade of a palm and Roger told her that she must make herself sick. But she could not, so Bodkin fetched sea water in a large leaf and they kept pouring it down her throat until she vomited.

Still racked with pain she rolled from side to side; her skin was hot and large red blotches appeared upon it. Bodkin stood by, murmuring from time to time, 'Poor Missey! Oh, the poor Missey, and she so brave too,' while Roger, distraught with fear that she was about to die, alternatively pressed her hands and soothed her burning forehead.

For over an hour she writhed and groaned; but then her pains gradually eased, and it was clear that having made her sick as soon as possible had saved her. Her ordeal had left her much too exhausted to walk for some time to come; so they decided to stay where they were through the rest of the morning and until the midday heat was well past.

Bodkin suggested that by noon the stones on the beach would be so hot that it should be possible to part-​cook slices of meat with them; so Roger got out his pistols and powder flask with the intention of shooting a bird, or one of the small animals of which they had seen several rooting about in the fringe of the jungle.

Their sadly tattered clothes had dried on them, but the powder was still damp; so Roger spread it out on his handkerchief to dry in the sun. As soon as it was ready he began to prime his pistols, and he was still working on the second when Bodkin gave a sudden joyous shout:

'Sail ahoy! Sail ahoy!'

Unnoticed by them until then, a boat with a single triangular sail had come round the promontory and was now crossing the bay. Bodkin ran down to the edge of the sea, shouting and waving. There were half a dozen men in the boat; they waved back, then altered course and brought their craft close in. As it approached, Roger could see that the men in it were coal-​black, fuzzy-​haired, and naked except for loin-​cloths, and had pieces of bone stuck through their noses.

As he watched he wondered uneasily if it would be wise to trust themselves to these savages. Apart from a few trading centres, mostly separated by many hundreds of miles, Africa, south of its Mediterranean shore, was totally unknown, and tales came back to Europe that its black inhabitants included races of ape-​men, dwarfs and cannibals.

To have escaped drowning, starvation and the shark would be no comfort if they were to be killed with fiendish rites as food for a tribe of man-​eaters. Yet their only hope of ever getting back to civilisation lay in reaching a port and their prospects of doing so, without guides and help, were infinitesimal; so he could only be thankful that, for the moment at least, the natives in the boat showed no signs of hostility. All the same, he felt sure that at best they would not be able to keep their hands off his jewellery; so he swiftly transferred his beautiful, diamond brooch from his cravat, and his ring from his finger, to the fob pocket of his breeches.

With great dexterity the natives manoeuvred the boat in, lowered its sail and, judging the big rollers to a nicety, ran it ashore. Jumping out, they dragged it clear of the surf, then formed an excited, jabbering group about the castaways. By pointing at the jungle, Clarissa, her mouth, and then rubbing his own tummy, Roger indicated that she had eaten some poisonous fruit and their grimaces showed that they understood him. The oldest among them, a tall lean man with a lined face and a fringe of grizzled curls round an otherwise bald pate, made strange clicking noises with his mouth and tongue, upon which two of the others picked up Clarissa as though she weighed no more than a sack of feathers and ran with her down to the boat.

Roger followed promptly on their heels and saw them deposit her upon a pile of newly caught fish. This living, slimy, silver couch was hardly one a European invalid would have chosen, yet it was dictated by common sense, since the boat was a most primitive affair with neither thwarts, stern seats nor bottom boards. Roger and Bodkin climbed in. the old man took the tiller, his crew of brawny negroes ran the boat back into the pounding surf, then like a team of acrobats leapt into her.

For the best part of two hours the boat tacked along the coast, while her crew displayed a mixture of shyness, friendliness and curiosity. The whites of their eyes showing up vividly in their coal-​black faces, they chattered away in their strange clicking language, their gaze riveted on their passengers and. now and then, hesitantly put out a hand to feel the texture of their garments.

At length the boat rounded another promontory and entered the mouth of a small river. Half a mile up it they arrived at a clearing in which stood one great conical roofed hut and half a hundred smaller ones grouped about it. The midday sun was now blazing down from almost immediately overhead and. apart from a few tethered goats and some naked children playing in the dust, the native village appeared deserted. But the old man at the tiller blew loudly on a conch shell and almost immediately the place came to life.

Tall warriors armed with hastily snatched up spears, knob-​kerries and hide shields, women of all ages, with their pierced ear lobes stretched six or eight inches by the insertion of brass ornaments, and innumerable children, came streaming out of the huts. Pushing and jostling they formed an excited, jabbering concourse at the riverside as the boat drew in and her three passengers were landed.

After a few moments the crowd fell back and made a space for an old, old wizened man. He addressed the strangers, but they could not understand him. All Roger could do was to lift his right hand open and with its palm outward, in the knights' gesture from which the salute originated, indicating that it held no weapon and that they came in peace.

Several other elderly men joined the wizened one. They held a swift palaver, then the three Europeans were beckoned forward and led to an empty hut. Presently women brought them bowls of stew, fruit and a fermented liquor that tasted rather like sour beer; but they signed to Clarissa that she should take none of these and, instead, gave her a half-​coconut filled with a strong, but not unpleasant smelling, porridge. In spite of these attentions, Roger noted with some misgivings that a big negro with a tufted spear had been placed on guard outside the hut.

After the meal, in spite of their anxieties, they all fell asleep in the close hot darkness. They were woken by the rhythmic beating of drums, and soon afterwards their guard shouted to them to come out of the hut. Clarissa was now recovered and, as the three of them emerged from the low doorway, they saw that night had come. A group of a dozen warriors, some holding torches and others spears, were waiting for them outside and closed round them immediately they appeared. Emitting high piercing cries and doing a dance-​march of two steps forward, stamp, one back, this formidable escort conducted them to an open space in front of the great hut, where the whole tribe had now assembled and was squatting cross-​legged on the ground.

There, too enthroned upon a pile of bleached skulls, and surrounded by a score of wives, the Chief was sitting. He was a huge man with a broad fleshy face and an enormous stomach. On his head he wore a fan-​shaped crown of ostrich-​feathers, round his neck were half a dozen necklaces of beaten gold,

and his loin-​cloth was of leopard skin. Otherwise he was naked and his ebony stomach, knees and bulging arms glistened from the oil with which they had been massaged.

Beside him was an even more terrifying figure, and Roger had little doubt but that it was the old, old, wizened man who had met them at the landing place, now dressed in his ceremonial trappings. His feet were in shoes each made from the head of a baby alligator, the jaws with their long rows of teeth pointing forward and wide open. His skinny calf’s disappeared under a grass skirt, above which he was girdled by a large living snake that flickered its tongue and slowly waved its head to and fro. His naked chest was painted with white and ochre markings, the most prominent of which were two ovals on his nipples, and with lighter strokes below, obviously intended to represent two huge eyes. His wrists and elbows were tufted with monkey fur and from his shoulders there arose a huge and hideous mask surmounted by a pair of bull's horns.

A hush fell on the assembly; the Witch Doctor sprang forward. With clicking tongue and falsetto voice echoing strangely from inside his great hollow mask, he addressed the Chief, but from time to time swung round towards the people as though appealing for their support. From the way in which he pointed to the three prisoners, stamped his alligator-​shod feet, and frequently waved a short glittering knife threateningly in front of their faces, it was inescapably clear that he was demanding their deaths. And Roger, grimly eyeing two great cauldrons with fires ready lit below them, a little distance away outside the great hut, decided that the tales of cannibalism he had heard must be true and that, if they were slaughtered, they would afterwards be eaten.

While the hideously apparelled priest raved and ranted, the Chief remained impassive. Seated cross-​legged on his throne of skulls he might have been an obese ebony idol, but for the fact that he now and then stretched out a hand to one of his women, who handed him a calabash from which he swilled down a gulp or two of some whitish liquid.

At first the people, too, while watching the proceedings intently, remained silent; but, after a little, appreciative murmurs began to run through them. Soon these increased until each of the Witch Doctor's violent outpourings met with a great shout of endorsement. Suddenly he ceased, stopped dead in front of the Chief and flung wide his arms, clearly asking that the prisoners should be given to him to kill.