Uncharted Seas (22 page)

Others came roaring at De Brissac, brandishing their knives and clubs; two pitched forward shot down from the bridge, another checked hit through the shoulder. Next second the Frenchman had his arm round the girl and was lugging her, stilts and all, up the ladder to the bridge. Basil fired over De Brissac’s shoulder and dropped another attacker, who was grabbing at the girl’s legs.

Fortunately the savages had no firearms, so the
Gafelborg’s
company suffered no casualties at all whereas, in the couple of minutes since the island horde had reached the ship, the execution among them had been appalling. The rearmost ranks of the attackers, seeing the fate that was overtaking their comrades, refrained from boarding the ship and, jumping up and down in the weed some twenty feet away, shouted abuse in their strange tongue, hideous and threatening, but fearful of following their fellows on deck.

Those who had boarded the
Gafelborg
in their frenzied pursuit of the young girl had either been shot down or were hurriedly lashing on their stilts again, in such cover as they could find, and slipping over the side into the weed to escape the devastating fire from the rifles and revolvers of the crew.

A further horror now overtook the attackers and demoralised them entirely. Several of those whose balloons had been shot through could no longer support themselves; with others who had been killed, they lost their balance and fell headlong in the weed. The disturbance of its surface attracted a giant squid. Its grey-white, leathery tentacles shot up, waving and flickering in the air, searching for victims among the fallen.

Having no wish to massacre the wretched savages now that they had been driven off, De Brissac gave the order to cease fire, and the little company on the bridge stood staring at a horrifying spectacle. Half a dozen of the unfortunate men were in the grip of the octopus’s giant tentacles, some seized by a leg, others by the neck, others again round the waist; while a score more were attacking the creature with great courage.

They were at a big disadvantage as they could not stand still but they seemed to have had considerable practice in managing their stilts and ski-sticks since they leapt from place to place with great agility, each man grasping both ski-sticks in his left hand and in his right brandishing a spear, knife or cutlass, with which he made sudden swoops at the snake-like tentacles.

The octopus began to thresh the weed, tossing it in all directions; one of its tentacles was severed completely about three feet from the tip and several others were cut and slashed with jagged wounds in a dozen places. The great brute suddenly leapt half out of the weed, then dived; disappearing under the surface and dragging four of its victims with it.

The stiltsmen rescued their fallen comrades, and others that had been hit but succeeded in getting away from the ship. Two or three unwounded men supported each of the casualties and with a few last howls of hate and defiance at the people on board they made off towards their island.

Eight or ten of their number were left killed or badly wounded on the
Gafelborg
; great splodges of red blood stained the white decks where they lay, but the interest of her passengers and crew was now centred in the young girl they had rescued.

After De Brissac had dragged her up on the bridge she had fainted, so, without any rudeness, they were able to stare their fill at her. She was a slim little creature, less than five feet in height, but with well-developed breasts which made them guess her to be a girl of nineteen or twenty. She was nearly naked, being dressed only in a short, kilted skirt of some homespun material and a vest of lighter stuff which had been neatly darned. Her hair was dark, parted in the centre and floated down to her shoulders in long curls. Her face had something of a Spanish look with its small aquiline nose and pointed chin. She was undoubtedly a white woman, although her skin had been tanned to a rich golden brown, and a small crucifix dangling from her neck on a thin gold chain showed her to be a Christian.

What strange story of shipwreck or life in the weed-surrounded island would she tell them when she came out of her swoon? That was the thought that filled their minds as they carried her down to the lounge.

They made a careful examination of the girl directly they got her along to the lounge and found that she was only slightly bruised from her fall. With Synolda’s help Unity set about reviving her, while the men went off to clear the decks of the casualties in the recent battle.

Altogether nine stiltsmen were found in various parts of the ship; five were dead, two more had been shot through the stomach and were obviously in a dying condition, while of the remaining two one had been stunned by a bullet passing under the skin of his scalp and the other was moaning from the pain of a smashed thigh-bone. The rest of the victims of the guns had either escaped or disappeared under the weed.

The dead were thrown overboard, the four wounded carried to a deck-house on the poop which had previously served as part of the officers’ quarters. Their wounds were bandaged, drugs administered to them from the medical store, and Hansie was told off to watch by them.

Luvia had the decks swabbed down to clean up, as far as possible, the horrible patches of gore which stained them, and when the arms had been collected and returned to a locker of which he had the key, with De Brissac, Vicente and Basil he went back to the lounge to hear the rescued girl’s story.

She had been badly shaken by her fall and was only just recovering from her terrible experience, but as soon as she had opened her eyes, which were brown lit with golden lights, she began to speak in English to the joy of the other girls who were able to comfort and reassure her.

As the men filed into the lounge, she gave them an enchanting smile and said at once: ‘Gentlemen, you and your ladies must be wondering who I am that I should seek refuge in your ship. Permit me to present myself and, if you have leisure to hear it, recount something of my history.’

The gallant De Brissac caressed his little dark moustache with one brown hand and bowed courteously. ‘We are dying to hear all about you, Mademoiselle, if it will not fatigue you.’

She shrugged and spread out her hands with a little foreign gesture. ‘To you I owe special thanks, Monsieur, for saving me on the deck there. I am a little bruised and shall be stiff tomorrow, but am quite enough recovered to tell you my strange story.’

The Frenchman bowed again and sat down beside her while the others settled themselves in a semicircle near by.

‘My name is Yonita Van der Veldt.’ She began and continued with considerable vivacity but often using old-fashioned phrases. ‘I am half of Dutch and half of Spanish extraction, although I have English blood in my veins also and speak English as my natural language. Most of my forbears have lived on the smaller of these two islands during the last two hundred and fifty years. As you may surmise, we are a colony made up of the survivors of several shipwrecks, and we number now one hundred and twenty-seven men, women and children. All of us are the prisoners of the weed sea which holds many horrors.’

‘Doesn’t it ever break up when there’s a storm?’ Juhani interrupted.

Yonita shook her head. ‘For some strange reason we are never plagued with violent storms here. Now and again in winter inclement weather churns the weed up into a long, rolling swell for a few days, but there is such a vast extent of it that the great waves of the ocean are smothered in its weight long before they can reach our shores. The weed is not even agitated by a swell for more than perhaps ten days in any year and for the rest of the time it is just atrocious, still and silent, as you see it now.’

Basil grimaced. ‘That doesn’t sound as though we have much chance of getting out of it again.’

‘I fear me, sir, you have no chance at all,’ she told him solemnly. ‘Through the centuries many ships have been caught in this pernicious web of weed but none that have been driven past the fringe have ever come free to set their sails again. There is a current under the weed which passes through the channel separating the two islands, and the ships that are caught are carried by it until they beach upon the one or the other. ’Tis impossible to see them from here, but round the corner of Satan’s Island there are a half-dozen ships which have gone aground in
the shallow water, and the remains of several more which beached themselves there in long-past generations.’

‘Satan’s Island, Mademoiselle?’ De Brissac asked interrogatively.

‘Thus we have named the one nearest to you which is inhabited by these devilish men. Farther along the coast of our own island there is yet another shallow beach where you will find more ships aground in a wide bay. ’Twould be an even wager to which of those strange graveyards of shipping your vessel will go.’

‘I knew we were drifting south,’ Luvia remarked. ‘It was misty yesterday so we couldn’t have seen the islands anyway, but I’m dead sure we’ve drifted farther in during the night. How long d’you reckon it’ll take us to make one of these beaches?’

‘My opinion is scarce worth the having, but the denseness of the weed slows up the progress of vessels as they get nearer to the land. It looks no great distance, but methinks not less than ten days or at most a month. How long is it since your ship was snared in the weed?’

‘It’s four days since we first struck it.’

Yonita nodded. ‘You have been very speedy then to get so far in so short a time. Most ships drift for weeks in the weed before they come so close in as this. That is why very few of the crews ever survive to land. Often they die of starvation, if their supplies are short when they first enter the weed, or go mad through the terrors of living week after week imprisoned in it. The few who do survive tell always that they have lost many men snatched from their decks by the giant devil-fish that live under the weed.’

‘Bremer!’ exclaimed Basil.

De Brissac shrugged, ‘
Oui
, Luvia and I guessed that, although we did not like to tell you. Please proceed, Mademoiselle, and tell us more of your strange life in these uncharted seas.’

‘The weed sea is a thing of dread,’ she went on slowly, ‘yet our island is by no means unpleasant. In winter it is very cold but we have abundance of wood for fires to warm us and for the building of comfortable houses. In summer it is most agreeable here, and with the stores salvaged from ships we have been able to raise crops of Indian corn, wheat, potatoes, tomatoes and other vegetables. Also we have planted orchards of apples, pears, plums and cherries. Our livestock is confined to pigs and chickens, those being the only animals we have been able to salvage in
sufficient numbers to breed from. I claim to be of Spanish and Dutch descent but actually our population is a very mixed one; although the predominant strain of our blood is English.

‘The first people to be cast away on our island were Sir Deveril Barthorne, the Royalist buccaneer, and his crew, in 1680. They had with them at the time two Spanish ladies whom they had recently captured, together with their Negress waiting-women, from the Spanish Main. The first Sir Deveril married the lovelier of these Spaniards, and they established what might be termed a Royal Line. There has been a Sir Deveril in the island ever since, and I am betrothed to the present holder of the title.’

‘How many other ships have arrived with living people on board since the first lot?’ Unity asked.

‘Eight altogether, madam. A Dutch officer named Van der Veldt, who was my ancestor, and two Dutch sailors were cast up as the sole survivors on a wrecked Dutch warship in 1703. It is from this officer and the daughter of the other Spanish lady that I am descended.

‘In 1726 a French merchant ship arrived. There was one officer on it, who died, the Doctor, the Captain’s wife, and the daughter of the Governor of one of the French islands in the West Indies; also two loyal seamen. There had been a mutiny on board and the mutineers had gone ashore in the boats. ’Twas for that reason the ship became unmanageable and drifted down into the weed sea. The Governor’s daughter married the grandson of the original Sir Deveril. Then in 1744 there was almost an invasion.’ Yonita paused.

‘A famous pirate of that time called the “Red Barracuda” reached the island in a dismasted ship after a terrific sea-fight with an English man-of-war. Thirty-three men of the crew survived, also the Barracuda’s Portuguese mistress and a dozen other women who, like the pirates, were of a mixed nationality, some of them being mulatto and two of them South American Indians. After that two Spanish sailors reached us in a small sloop which had been badly battered in a hurricane; all the rest of the crew had been swept overboard or taken by the octopuses. That was in 1810. In 1828 another small barque arrived with three Portuguese, a mulatto and a Chinaman. 1862 brought us a Norwegian officer and five Scandinavian sailors, and 1879 the crew of an American whaler, consisting of seventeen men. Our last arrivals came in the first steamship that we had ever seen. It was a small German gunboat which was snared for three months
in the weed and could not get free owing to some trouble with its machinery. Only two of the Germans were alive when it reached us, so you see, with all the intermarriage which has been going on, we are a very mixed community.’

‘It certainly sounds so,’ Luvia agreed, ‘but what about all these stilted men who were chasing you this morning?’

Yonita gave a little shudder. ‘They come from the other island, and are the descendants of a cargo of slaves in a ship that was on its way from Africa to the American plantations in the eighteenth century. As we have never been able to cross the weed we did not even know of their existence until 1854 when one night without the least warning they appeared among us, set fire to several of our houses, and carried off some of our women. Our men could not go in pursuit because, alas, we do not have any of the natural gas in our island with which they fill the balloons that enable them to cross the weed.

‘Since 1854 there have been repetitions of that raid from time to time. Sometimes they happen twice in one year, but often three or four years go by without any raid at all. They are governed, methinks, by the Negroes’ desire to secure fresh women getting to a pitch when it overrules their fear of casualties, because, of course, we have firearms. Although they are much more numerous than we are, we generally succeed in killing a number of them before they can get away to the beach—where they leave their balloons under guard—with prisoners.’