In Search of Spice (23 page)

“You forbid it! Who do you think you are? You are not my boss.” Without waiting for an answer Pat turned and opened the infirmary door, fuming with anger.

Sara glared, and her eyes narrowed. “Who am I? I’ll tell you who I am, I’m your fucking Princess, that’s who I am!” She bit her tongue, even more angry that she had said that.

“Only at night!” Pat threw back over his shoulder and went out.

“Pat!” Sara called out urgently, and when he stopped and turned back, she went to him. “Please, darling, I don’t want you getting hurt again, I couldn’t bear it, and I love you.” She whispered this to him.

His eyes softened and he reached out and touched her face. “It’ll be all right. This is nothing - Mikkel rode three days with a broken leg once. I’ve had much worse injuries and carried on working. I have to do this.”

“Pat, on Fearaigh you know what you are doing. This is different, it’s a ship, and you are right up in the sky where you need your hands working properly to hang on, let alone work. Don’t go.” She stroked the back of his hand.

“Honey, I can’t let Nils go alone and there is nobody else who can do this.”

Sara frowned. She wasn’t used to being baulked, and her patience snapped. She slapped him, not hard but enough to rock his head. “I said you were not to go. I am concerned about your safety. If you go off and work now, that’s it, over between us! Understand?”

Pat’s eyes filled with anger. His mouth worked a couple of times, as he started to speak, “Fine.” He turned and stalked off, bristling with fury.

Sara’s eyes blazed then filled with tears. “He doesn’t understand,” she whispered.

Else put her arms round her. “It’s OK, honey, he’ll be fine. We can’t stop them when they want to be stupid.” She wiped Sara’s eyes and motioned Nils to leave with her head. He left hurriedly.

Nils called from the top of the mast. “Easy now! Bring her up!” Pat was just below him, Sara and Else off to the side. Pat hadn’t said a word to Sara since the argument, and was ignoring her. He still seethed inside at her words, not having been spoken to like that for years. He kept replaying her words and worked up his anger more and more. Recalling how she called him a stupid little idiot again and again, getting angrier every time. Deliberately, he put it out of his mind to concentrate on the work in hand, not wanting to slip now and prove her right.

The Bosun had a team pulling on a rope, which went up the mast from the new topmast, attached to the thin end of the mast and through a large ring near the top of the main mast, from there to a pulley, then back down to the deck where it went through a block and tackle, an arrangement of pulleys that increased the strength of the pull while increasing the distance the rope had to be pulled.

The team hauled the rope back six feet and the mast went up a foot. This continued till the new topmast reached the top of the mast, where Nils and Pat manoeuvred it to rest on the topgallant spar, the penultimate one. Here they removed the rope from the top of the mast and attached at the bottom, while attaching four other ropes to the top of the mast, which also went up through the metal ring, one going back to the top of the mizzen mast, one to the top of the fore mast and the other two went sideways to the ends of the royal spar. These kept the topmast straight, and all went down to the deck where four teams kept them taut, overseen by boatswain’s mates.

Nils waved, and the teams took up the strain again, slowly raising the topmast up the last short length of mast. As it came up through the ring, it became a tight fit and Nils and Pat were carefully easing it through, attending to the rope. Nils was sharp with Pat, careful he didn’t lose a finger as the ship rolled and the foremast pinched the side of the ring. The wind was steady and applied more and more pressure on the topmast as it rose, requiring a careful balancing act of tension on the top four ropes, which Else co-ordinated down to the Bosun in a phenomenal exhibition of skill. As it came higher, the stub end inched past its support block and Nils pushed it into place, waved, the main rope relaxed and the topmast sank onto the block. Pat started lashing it in place while Nils tightened the ring. For two feet the rope was lashed around both masts in coils that butted up to each other.

Pat held off while Nils went over it checking, then he waved to the deck. The main rope was untied and drawn back to the deck while the four support ropes were tied off. Nils and Pat went wearily down the rigging while Else and Sara did the finishing touches of waxing the lashings and getting the topsail up and set.

When Sara came down, she found Pat asleep in his hammock, which he had moved to a spare spot some way down the fo’c’sle.

The next day he ignored her, and Sara seethed inwardly. She saw him take a mug to the starboard rail, lean on it and look out to sea while Mot leaned against his legs. She went to the rail a few yards away, knowing he would sense her, and waited. She glanced at him a few times, and finally caught his eye. She smiled tentatively. He stared at her levelly and her smile petered out. Sighing, he moved closer.

“Sara. Are you going to strike me again?”

She dimpled. “I’ll try not to. Pat, I’m sorry.” She frowned. “But you took a fearful risk. I was so scared for you, every time you grabbed a rope I thought you’d fall.”

Pat shrugged. “You don’t need nails to hold a rope. I thought we were finished.”

Sara moved closer. “I was angry, darling. I didn’t want you hurt. Forgive me? Please?”

“Well,” Pat hesitated, unsure what to say. Sara leaned over and kissed him.

Lovers

O
n the thirty third day of the cruise, Pat jumped up from where he was brushing Mot and scurried up the mast to the crow’s nest. He came down after a few minutes, fast down the sails, and settled back down again, winking at Grey Fox.

“Needed some exercise!”

Shortly afterwards, a cry came from the masthead.

“Smoke, fine on the starboard bow! Smoke!”

The Captain rushed to the poop deck, bringing his telescope with him. The officers joined him, Grey Fox, Little and Pat taking up their archer stations surreptitiously, Perryn close by.

“What do you think, sir?” Brian asked. “Pirate action? Burning a merchantman?”

“If so, it’s the biggest bloody merchantman I’ve ever seen. Would dwarf the Queen Rose.”

Taufik spoke as he scanned the horizon. “It is a Fire Mountain, sir. They make the islands.”

“You recognise it?

“Oh, no sir, there are many of them. They make a long chain along here. The eastern men, they say it is a window on the jail of a dragon, captured by the gods. It melts the rock trying to escape. “

“Hummph” the Captain noticed Walters nodding thoughtfully and wondered a priest would believe in dragons.

“These islands, Sir, they are made of molten rock that has cooled and become hard.”

Walters nodded, “Lava islands. There are a few in the north, Captain, it is a known phenomenon.”

Taufik spoke again. “There will be coral reefs, sir, spiky rocks in the shallow water. They can kill a ship, and sometimes they are near the surface with nothing around to indicate them. Only the water colour.”

“You are the Sailing Master. Take us to this island.”

The island was huge, with the smoking volcano at the south westerly end, and a couple of dead ones making up a range of hills stretching away to the north east. Taufik did not know the island, and had not heard of it, but he said there were many in the chain.

As they came around a rocky promontory, there was a gust of wind from onshore, and it brought with it new and different smell. It was damp, rotting, briny. Strange trees covered the beach, right out into the sea. They weren’t tall and had a multitude of trunks, most thin but the odd one towered higher with a thick trunk. Multi-coloured birds, squawking raucously, wheeled over the sea and the forest. One huge bird, with a deeply forked tail and a scarlet throat, soared around the masts crying excitedly. A river slowly flowed out from the middle of the forest, bits of grass and branches floating in it. The trees moved out into another promontory and ended in what appeared to be a number of small, thin stumps. Taufik called them mangroves and they seemed to be full of life. As the tide went out, thin roots appeared, arcing out from the trunk and into mud which seemed to be moving. Little fish skipping, according to Taufik, and loads of crabs. At one point the mud emitted a constant flashing of orangey white light. Taufik said it was crabs waving their claws and wasn’t much interested, but Pat and Perryn borrowed the telescope and spent an hour watching them, discussing what the crabs were doing. Rounding the forest at last, the trees gave way to a blinding white beach that curved into a natural harbour with a river running out over the sand, crystal clear water with coloured rocks visible on the bottom. And a large village of huts made apparently of grass at its edge.

The water was flat and calm. But several hundred yards out from the beach the waves broke on rocks.

“Coral reef,” said Taufik. “Protects the village and the harbour, but kills any ship blown onto it. The gap near the swamp is because the mud from the other river kills the coral.”

“Kills it? How can you kill rock?” asked Walters.

“I do not know,” he replied, “but the rock grows and is coloured. When it dies, it turns white. Always it is getting bigger, never is it the same. It is alive, this rock.”

The harbour was full of canoes, mainly small ones with a single outrigger, no sails. There appeared to be traffic with another village further up the bay, and fishing canoes as well. As the ship came into view and sailed slowly and majestically into the harbour, all the canoes turned and started to race towards her, with more people rushing down to the sea from the huts. More canoes were launched, but some people just started swimming.

“Taufik! Are we being attacked?”

“I don’t know sir, some of these villagers are cannibals.”

“They are not carrying any weapons beyond the odd fish spear, sir,” said Pat.

“Confirmed,” said Grey Fox, “and most of them seem to be laughing.” To the half-Elf this seemed an extraordinary observation.

“Anchor her well out to sea, Taufik, in a good 6 fathoms. About 500 paces from the beach. Bed seems to be sand so use a hook. Lieutenant Mactravis, prepare to repel boarders. Brian, reef the sails.”

The first canoes were getting closer and they could make out the nearest native. A girl with white flowers in her long black hair. She had dark brown skin, which caused a murmur to go round the crew, and was completely naked. She was also beautiful.

She paddled her canoe with sure, powerful strokes, straight at the ship which was still going at a good clip. She waved happily at the ship, a laughing smile on her face, grabbed a basket and leapt with sure agility from her canoe to grasp one of the trailing ropes that came down the side of the ship. Quick as a squirrel she was up and over the side, chattering away constantly in her own language. She pulled a strange fruit out of her basket and which she thrust into the hands of the sailor, Dan, moving to stop her, smiled at him and jiggled her breasts with studied deliberation.

Dan stared at her and clutched the fruit, his mouth falling open. As soon as his eyes dropped to her jiggling little breasts, she squealed with pleasure, leant forward and started to kiss him. Dan knew his orders, not to let them on board, but couldn’t hurt a girl. He wondered at the strange brown skin, marvelled at her nakedness. Her lips against his burnt like fire and he was conscious of her breasts pressing hard against his chest.

Desire raged through him, and an erection blossomed under his trousers, hard and excited further by the constriction of his clothes. The girl felt it, and ground her hips into him, giggling with pleasure. She ran her hands under his shirt, pulling at the unfamiliar garment. Unthinking, Dan helped her, baring his hairy chest which distracted her. She started cooing and stroking the hair. Dan’s mind seemed to explode; one hand clasped the girl firmly towards him, the other ripping at his trousers till they fell to the deck. The girl laughed, rubbed herself against his nakedness and fell back to the deck, spreading her legs and smiling. Dan plunged into her, his mind afire and with no thought but the girl and the sensation of her body against his.

On the poop, Captain Larroche stared in astonishment as a swarm of brown people poured onto his ship and immediately started kissing his crew. Unsure what to do, he turned to a hand pulling at his sleeve and found himself falling into a pair of beautiful brown eyes.

Pat didn’t understand what was happening. He was kissing a girl, urgently, and felt himself getting hard as her hands fumbled with his clothes. He was vaguely aware of Suzanne swearing.

Suzanne was thoroughly alarmed. All over the ship, beautiful brown girls were climbing aboard, uncaring of their canoes, grabbing the nearest sailor and the sailor would grab back, all discipline forgotten. They would fall to the deck and start to make love. She could sense, feel, the magics crackling in the air. She felt herself getting aroused, and when an arm came around her to cradle her breast, she relaxed back into a strong body, her buttocks detecting his readiness, which caused her lower belly to tighten and a liquid rush started deep inside as her thoughts fled under the pressure of erotic emotions escalating to lust. Turning in the strong arms, she found it was Mactravis and she responded to his urgent kisses.