Mungo shifted his feet, gathering himself and then his face darkened, his jaw clenched and his breath sobbed with effort. Slowly Camacho's wrist gave to the pressure, and his eyes widened as the point of his own knife reversed towards him.
Now he also was wedged against the side of the auction block and could not break away, and infinitely slowly but inexorably, the long blade moved towards his own chest. Both men stared down at it, their hands and arms interlocked, pitting their strength to hold each other, but the point touched Carrincho's chest, a drop of blood welled up at the tiny prick.
On the block beside Robyn, Alphonse Pereira drew the pistol from his belt with a furtive movement, but before she could shout a warning there was a blur of movement and Tippoo the mate towered beside him, his own huge smooth-bore pistol pressed to the side of Alphonse's skull. The little Portuguese rolled his eyes sideways at Tippoo, and then hurriedly returned the weapon to his obyn could watch again with fascinated horror belt, and the contest at her feet.
Mungo St. John's face was congested with dark blood, every muscle in his shoulders and arms raised in knots under the thin shirt, his whole existence concentrated on the knife, and he slid his left foot back until it was anchored against the auction block, and then using it as a pivot hurled all his weight forward on to the knife, the final effort like the matador going over between the horns for the kill.
For a moment longer Camacho resisted him, and then the blade resumed its forward movement entering Camacho's chest as slowly as a python swallows a gazelle.
Camacho's mouth opened in a cawing burst of despair, and suddenly his fingers opened as all resistance and strength went out of them. His own blade with Mungo St. John's full weight behind it shot its length into his chest with such force that the cross piece of the hilt struck against his ribs with a sharp thump.
Mungo St. John released his grip and let him fall, face forward into the mud, while he himself caught at the edge of the auction block for support. Only then did he lift his chin to look up at Robyn. Your servant, ma'am, he murmured, and Tippoo rushed forward to catch him before he fell.
Huron's seamen all of them armed, formed a guard about them, and Tippoo led them holding aloft a bull'seye lantern which he shone into the shadows as they hurried down the path.
Mungo St. John was on his feet, but supported by Nathaniel, his bosun, and Robyn had bound up the wound roughly with a strip of linen torn from a seaman's shirt and had used the rest of the shirt to make a sling for Mungo's right arm.
Through a grove of mangroves they reached the bank of the creek on which the barracoons had been built and in the centre of the stream, her bare masts and yards silhouetted against the starry sky, lay the lovely clipper.
She had lanterns in her rigging and an alert anchor watch, for at Tippoo's first hail the whaler swung away from her side and was rowed swiftly to the bank where they stood.
Mungo climbed the ship's side unaided, but sank down with a grateful sigh on to his bunk in the stern cabin, the bunk that Robyn remembered so vividly.
She tried to force the memory from her mind, and keep her manner brisk and businesslike. They have taken my medical chest she said as she rinsed her hands in the porcelain basin at the head of the bunk. Tippoo. ' Mungo looked up at his mate, and the bald, scarred head bobbed once and then Tippoo ducked out of the cabin. Mungo and Robyn were alone, and she tried to remain remote and professional as she made her first examination of the wound in good lantern light.
It was narrow, but very deep. She did not like the angle of the thrust, just below the collar bone but angled in towards the point of the shoulders. Can you move your fingers? ' she asked. He lifted his hand towards her face and touched her cheek lightly. Yes, he said, as he stroked her. 'Very easily.'
Don't, she said weakly. You are sick, he said. 'So thin and pale.
'It is nothing, lower your arm, please.'
She was terribly conscious of her matted hair and filthy mud-stained clothing, of the yellow tinges of fever on her skin and the dark smudges of fatigue and terror under her eyes. Fever? ' he asked quietly, and she nodded as she went on working on the wound. Strange, he murmured. 'It makes you seem so young, so fragile, he paused, so lovely.'
I forbid you to talk like that. ' She felt flustered, uncertain of herself. I said I would not forget you, ' he ignored the instruction, 'and I did not. 'If you don't stop, I will leave immediately. 'When I saw your face tonight in the light of the fires I could not believe it was you, and at the same time i; was as though all our lives we had a rendezvous to keep here tonight. As though it had been destined from the moment of our births. 'Please, she whispered, 'please stop. 'That's better, please is better. Now I will stop.'
But he watched her face attentively as she worked. In the ship's medical chest which he kept in the locker below his bunk Robyn found most of what she needed.
He neither flinched nor grimaced as she laid the stitches in the wound, but went on watching her. You must rest now, she said as she finished, and he lay back on the bunk. At last he looked tired and drained, and she felt a rush of gratitude, of -pity, and of that other emotion which she had believed that she had long ago subdued. You saved me. ' She dropped her eyes, no longer able to look at him and busied herself with repacking the ship's chest. 'I will always be grateful for that, just as I will always hate you for what you are doing here.'
What am I doing here? ' he challenged her lightly. Buying slaves, ' she accused. 'Buying human lives, just as you bought me on the slaving block. 'But for a much lower price, ' he agreed as he closed his eyes. 'At twenty dollars gold a head there is not much profit in it, I assure you.'
She awoke in the small cabin, the same cabin in which she had sailed the length of the Atlantic Ocean and in the same narrow uncomfortable bunk.
It was like homecoming, and the first thing she saw after her eyes had adjusted to the harsh beam of sunlight through the skylight were the chests of her medical instruments, her remaining medicines and her few personar possessions.
She remembered the unspoken command that Mungo had given to the mate the previous evening. Tippoo must have gone back ashore during the night, and she wondered what price he had paid or what threat he had made to get them back for her.
She rose swiftly from her bunk, ashamed of her sloth; whoever had left the chests, had also filled the enamel jug with fresh water. With relief she washed away the mud and filth and combed the tangles of her hair before
