Gai-Jin (156 page)

Tinker nodded, unconvinced, and thought, There’s a body inside, must be with all that weight. But, ’nuff said, don’t go asking nobs questions you might not like answered, less you know the better, and let’s hope to Christ the weather stays friendly and not shitty as she smells. “Thank you, sorr.”

Jamie looked back at the bay that now was far behind. “Just go out of sight of land, Bosun.” A last look at all compass points, then he went back to the cabin. “Not long now.”

Angelique leaned closer. “What will that soldier do?”

“Report us, bound to. It doesn’t matter.”

“They can’t do anything to us, can they, Mr. Skye?”

“I really can’t forecast what … what Sir William might or might not do,” Skye said, his stomach sickly conscious of the rise and fall of the deck.

Jamie reached into one of the lockers and brought out the large British flag he had put there, and the Lion and Dragon. Helped by Hoag, he secured them both around the coffin. The cutter was rising and dipping more severely than before and they had to hold on to steady themselves. Angelique sat near the open door. The sea air was wet and cold. She felt the tears beginning so she let the dark veil fall and pretended to look back at the land. “Not long now,” Jamie said.

By the time land was just a thread on the horizon, the light was still fair, the sea heavier, waves white-flecked, wind stronger, but everything within limits. No rain. Jamie called out, “Bosun, slow ahead, just enough to give us way.”

“Idle it is, sorr!”

Cutting the high-powered thrust of the engines created a sudden pool of near silence, pleasant to their spirits, a welcome relief to the grinding noise and apprehension at being so far out—both Hoag and Skye increasingly queasy. Only the whine of the wind now, and lapping sea, the comforting ticking over of the engine, felt through the decks more than heard, just enough to keep her bow into wind. The wind was firm, easterly, from the ocean, stronger than before. Jamie took a deep breath. “We’d best begin.”

“Yes. What shall we do?” Angelique asked.

“Come on deck, here on the poop, but hold on. Bosun, lay aft, stoker too.”

“Best I stay here on the conn, with yor permission, sorr.” He bellowed down the voice pipe, “Percy, lay aft.”

It was colder now. They grouped themselves as best they could, holding on to steady themselves. Jamie positioned himself near the stern, the
others facing him. “Hats off,” he ordered, removing his own. Skye, Hoag, the stoker and Bosun Tinker obeyed. He opened Naval Regs at the marked appendix.

Reading, and improvising he said, “We are gathered here in the sight of God to cast the remains of our friend Malcolm Struan, husband of Angelique Struan, tai-pan of the Noble House, into the deep, granting him the sea burial he wished and she wishes, acting as friends should act…. ”

At the mention of the name the stoker’s eyes had widened and he glanced back at the Bosun who shook his head, cautioning him to keep quiet. Muttering to himself, hating funerals, he pulled his jacket closer against the chill of the wind, wanting to be below in his warm engine room. The wind picked up a knot. They all felt the change. Jamie hesitated, then continued, “Now we say the Lord’s Prayer. Our Father …”

Each in his own way prayed and said the words, the increased surge of the deck dominating most of their minds. When the prayer was finished Jamie squinted down at the book for a moment, not that he needed to for he had read the service in the wheelhouse coming here, needing time to slow his heart and gather his own thoughts away from the sea. While the others had had their eyes closed, he had not. With the Bosun he had seen the approaching squall line behind them, the waves beneath churning and ugly.

“As Captain of the Struan cutter
Cloudette,”
he said, a little louder than before to carry over the wind, “it is my duty and privilege to commend this man’s spirit to the Keeping of Almighty God, asking Almighty God to forgive him his sins, not that we knew he had any, not real sins, casting him into the deep from whence … from whence we came here from England, from home across the seas. He was a good, fine man. Malcolm Struan was a good, fine man and we miss him, we miss him now and we’ll miss him in the future…. ” He glanced at Angelique, who was holding on to a gunnel stanchion with both hands, her knuckles white. A gust hit her, pressing her veil against her face. “Do you want to say anything, Ma’am?”

She shook her head, the silent tears streaming. Spray came aboard to starboard, slightly lower in the water because of their weight and that of the coffin.

Bleakly he motioned to the stoker and Skye. Awkwardly, their footing precarious, they loosed the ropes binding the coffin to the bench and eased it laboriously towards the starboard gunnel to project out over the sea. With one hand, Jamie helped them. And when the coffin teetered on the brink, he said loudly, his own unhappiness cresting, “Dust will go to dust, and the sea and the sky will claim its own, and the wild winds will whisper one to another that this good, fine young man has gone to join his Maker too soon, too soon …” With the other two men, he gave the coffin a last shove and it tipped over and went into the ocean.

The cutter heeled, correcting for the loss of weight, a waiting gust caught the exposed hull and heeled her more. The port gunnel went into the sea. They all grabbed for handholds except the Bosun and stoker, who rode with it. Angelique, weak from tears, lost her grip and skidded away. She was almost overboard when Jamie lunged and caught her, frantically dragged her back, holding on with his other hand. Wind tore her hat and veil away and sent them swirling, then the stoker, with strong sea legs, slid down to her and lifted her and scrambled back into the safety of the cabin, tumbling after her.

Temperature dropped. Rain began. The squall fell on them. Jamie shouted, “Bosun, go home!”

“Best stay below, sorr!” Tinker shouted back, already decided what to do and how to do it. He waited until the stoker, mouthing violent curses, had scuttled to the engine room hatch and closed it after him and Jamie, Hoag and Skye were safe in the cabin. Rain became slashing. The sea violent.

Tinker signalled “Slow Ahead,” swung the wheel to port and eased off the wind. Her bow dug into a comber. She broke free bravely, water cascading along her deck to smash into the glass of cabin and wheelhouse, and continued to turn. “Easy now,” he said, pipe firm in his mouth, “we’re friends, for God’s sake, we just give you old Green-eyed Devil’s grandson.”

Coming around was foul. Waves pushed by the wind heeled the cutter over, retchingly, and as she tried to correct herself they allowed almost no respite and dragged her over further. In the cabin the four of them hung on as best they could, anything loose cascading. Again Angelique lost her balance but the others held her, for the moment none of them thinking about much else than the storm. Hoag had gone dirty grey. With a bile-filled groan he lay down.

“It’s just the turn,” Jamie shouted over the noise and wind, the boat corkscrewing, and Angelique buried her head in his shoulder, frightened. “It’ll ease off in a moment.” He saw that the sea was bad but not revolting. Yet. Added to that he had complete confidence in the Bosun and craft—so long as the engine continued to provide power. “Not to worry!”

Bosun Tinker had decided that, too, and to scurry for a lee shore, plenty of time, if need be, to swerve back into wind, put out a storm anchor—a bucket on the end of a rope to keep her head firmly into the wind—and ride it out. “If she’ll bloody ride out wot she weren’t never to bloody be in,” he said, fighting the wheel against the press of the waves.

The cutter came around and righted. Her bow dipped as the following wave went past, pushed faster by the wind, then the craft climbed sickeningly, crested and slammed down into the trough. All aboard winced. Again the same, and again the crash with plenty of water aboard this time. Down
down down then up up up ever higher, then
crashhhhh
and foaming water swirled past the windows, decks awash. Angelique let out a little moan. Jamie had one arm around her, the other locked to a handhold. Rain slashed into the stern windows and door. Over in one corner now Skye had his head down and was retching, Hoag, prone and equally helpless.

Aloft in the wheelhouse the Bosun swayed from side to side, riding the pitching deck easily. He had his craft under control. Rain and spray were heavy on the windows but he could see well enough and he did not allow the waves to take her directly stern-on but gave them a little way so that the up and down did not have the full force of the sea but muted it, the craft sliding a little—vile for the passengers but “They’re safe, ain’t they?” He beamed, enjoying himself, too many storms conquered, time enough for fear over three or four hot toddies ashore in front of a toasty fire in an hour or two. Happily he resumed his rollicking chanty.

Then his heart skipped a beat. “Christ Almighty!” he burst out. The coffin was alongside to starboard, still afloat, level in the water, dipping and climbing with them, the two flags still around it. From the cabin Jamie had seen it too and knew, equally shocked, if a big wave varied course it could easily wash the coffin back aboard, or worse, use it as a battering ram against the fragile superstructure, or, worst of all, punch a hole in their unprotected hull.

The more Tinker eased away, the closer it came. Once it bashed against the side, then swirled off, spinning like a top in a vortex, but staying parallel and Jamie cursed that he had not had the foresight to weight it with an anchor chain—air or the buoyancy of the wood was keeping it afloat.

It was difficult for Jamie to watch it, holding Angelique as he did. But he was glad her head was deep in his shoulder. Again he craned around and caught sight of it, slightly aft and lying flat in the water, now seeming to him like the ghoulish craft of a sick mind. The wind or a current turned it and now, parallel to the waves, it began to tumble but righted itself and was stable for three or four waves and then another comber came that overturned it and to his joy it went under. He breathed again, seeing it had gone for good, then it surfaced, the next whitecap surrounded it, lifted it and hurled it directly at them. Involuntarily he ducked. It did not come aboard, just smashed broadside against the hull, sounding as though they had hit a reef.

Momentarily, Hoag lifted his head. His brain was reeling in his skull worse than the boat, so he saw nothing and fell back groaning into his seasick miasma. Angelique too looked up but Jamie held her close, caressing her hair to take the fear away. “Just some flotsam, nothing to worry about …”

His eyes were on the coffin, a few yards away, parallel to them, its lines
clean and deadly, torpedo-like, both flags still intact. He flinched as a frothing comber approached but it went by and over it and when the wave had gone the coffin had vanished.

Breathlessly he waited, searching the sea. Nothing. More waiting. Still nothing. The squall lessened slightly and no longer howled around the cabin. The waves were still high and bullying but Tinker was doing a masterly job, using every piece of seamanship to lessen the threat, the engine shrieking as the propeller shaft came clear of the water from time to time. “Come on,” Jamie murmured, “keep going, nice and easy.”

Then his eyes focused. The coffin was fifty yards away, a little aft, the nose pointed directly at them. It was keeping station with them, rising and falling as though attached by some invisible hawser. Ugly and deadly. He counted six waves and never a change. Then the seventh appeared.

The seventh wave was bigger than the rest. It took the coffin, made it into a missile and hurled it at them. Jamie knew the impact point would be dead center amidships on their starboard side and their roll would expose the hull for maximum damage. His breathing stopped.

Tinker must have seen it too for at the last moment the cutter veered crazily into its path, dipping slightly to starboard, the gunnel awash now, and the violent coffin-missile reared up the wave and over the prow to tangle itself in the bowsprit hawsers, hanging there half in, half out of the water, pulling the craft against the rudder.

The Bosun was hauling on the wheel with all his strength but the waves and wind had seized on the coffin and used it to make the craft unstable. In minutes the Bosun knew they would founder. There was nothing he could do to stop it. The voice whistle shrieked. With difficulty he answered it, “Yes, Percy …” but he was drowned out by the stoker’s curses and saying what the bleeding hell was he doing up there, so he slammed it back into its holder, redoubled his effort on the wheel as the bow was inexorably being forced to disaster.

Then he saw the cabin door open. Jamie shoved his way on deck. Hanging on for his life, he groped forward. At once the Bosun stuck his head out of the nearest window bellowing and pointing: “The fire axe, fire axe …”

As though in a dream, Jamie heard him and saw the axe in its red holders on the cabin roof. The deck was heaving and shivering, the soul of the boat knowing she was in a death spasm. One foot skated away from under him but he collided with the gunnel and found he had the axe in one hand and was for the moment safe. Water came over the bow and swallowed him. Again he survived, but in its wake was a nauseating premonition. Involuntarily his stomach heaved and the foulness passed out of him. He lay there in the scuppers, cold and frightened, his fingers dug into holds, then more water swamped him. When he could breathe, he coughed and
spat the salt water from his mouth and nostrils and this helped shock him into action.

Up ahead the nose of the coffin was held tight by the mess of hawsers and twisted stanchions, the bulk of it shoved this way and that as the waves roared past or sucked at it. He squinted up at the Bosun against the wind and rain and saw him motion to hack it away, “… for the love of God, watch out …”

No axe will cut that bastard away, he thought helplessly, and hugged a stanchion as a violent wave came over the side at him, slammed him against the coffin then sucked him back to the gunnel again, choking and half drowned. When it subsided he was astonished to find himself still aboard. Don’t waste time, his brain was shrieking at him, the next one or the one following will take you and drown you.