pushed the hideous images aside and crawled on over the heaving cargo, flashing her lantern into each corner, searching for more solid evidence than the narrow ledges.
if there was planking on board it would be laid flat upon the deck, below this cargo, and there was no way in which Robyn could reach it.
Ahead of her she saw a dozen huge casks bolted to the forward bulkhead. They could be water barrels, or they could be filled with trade rum, or the rum could be replaced with water when the slaves were taken on board. There was no means of checking the contents, but she knocked on the oak with the hilt of her scalpel and the dull tone assured her that the casks contained something.
She squatted down on one of the bales and slit the stitching with the scalpel, thrusting her hand into the opening she grasped a handful and pulled it out to examine it in the lamp light.
Trade beads, ropes of them strung on cotton threads, a bitil of beads was as long as the interval between fingertip and wrist, four bitil made a khete. These beads were made of scarlet porcelain, they were the most valued variety called sam sam. An African of the more primitive tribes would sell his sister for a khete of these, his brother for two khete.
Robyn crawled on, examining crates and bales, bolts of cotton cloth from the mills of Salem, called merkani in Africa, a corruption of the word 'American' and the chequered cloth from Manchester known as kaniki.
Then there were long wooden crates marked simply 'Five Pieces', and she could guess that they contained muskets. However, firearms were common trade goods to the coast, and no proof of the intention to buy slaves, they could just as readily be used to purchase ivory or gumcopal.
She was tired now with the effort of climbing and blundering around over the heaving slopes and peaks of cargo, and with the nervous tension of the search.
She paused to rest a moment, leaning back against one of the bales of merkani cloth, and as she did so something dug painfully into her back, forcing her to change her position. Then she realized that cloth should not have hard lumps in it. She shuffled around and once again slit the sacking cover of the bale.
Protruding from between the folded layers of cloth, there was something black and cold to the touch. She pulled it out and it was heavy iron, looped and linked, and she recognized it instantly. In Africa they were called 'the bracelets of death'. Here, at last, was proof, positive and irrefutable, for these steel slave cuffs with the light marching chains were the unmistakable stigmata of the trade.
Robyn tore the bale wider open, there were hundreds of the iron cuffs concealed between layers of cloth. Even if it had been possible, a perfunctory search by a naval boarding party was highly unlikely to have uncovered this sinister hoard.
She selected one set of cuffs with which to confront her brother and she started aft towards the lazaretto, filled suddenly with desire to be out of this dark cavern with its menacing shadows, and back once more in the safety of her own cabin.
She had almost reached the entrance to the lazaretto when suddenly there was a loud scraping sound from the deck above, and she froze with alarm. When the sound was repeated, she had enough of her wits still about her to douse the snuffer of her lantern, and then immediately regretted having done so for the darkness seemed to crush down upon her with a suffocating weight and she felt panic rising up to take possession of her.
With a crash like a cannon shot the main hatch flew open, and as she swung back towards it she saw the white pin-pricks of the stars outlined by the square opening. Then a huge, dark shape dropped through, landing lightly on the piled bales beneath, and at almost the same instant the hatch thudded closed again, blotting out the starlight.
Now Robyn's terror came bubbling to the surface.
There was somebody locked in the hold with her, and the knowledge held her riveted for long, precious seconds, before she plunged back towards the lazaretto hatch, suppressing the scream that choked up into her throat.
The shape she had glimpsed for a moment was unmistakable. She knew that it was Tippoo in the hold with her, and it spurred her terror. She could imagine the great hairless toadlike figure, moving towards her in the darkness, with repulsive reptilian swiftness, could almost see the pink tongue flickering out over thick cruel lips, and her haste became uncontrolled. She lost her footing in the darkness and fell heavily, tumbling backwards into one of the deep gullies between banks of cargo, cracking the back of her skull on a wooden case, half stunning herself so that she lost her grip on the extinguished lantern and could not find it when she groped for it. When she scrambled to her knees again, she had lost all sense of direction in the total blackness of the hold.
She knew that her best defence was to remain still and silent until she could place the man who was hunting her, and she crouched down in a crack between two crates. Her pulse beat in her ears like a drum, deafening her, and her heart seemed to have crammed up into her throat so that she must fight for each breath.
It took many minutes and all her determination to bring herself under control, to be able to think again.
She tried to decide in which direction lay the lazaretto hatch, her only means of escape, but she knew that the only way she would be able to find it would be to grope her way to the ship's wooden side and follow it around.
The prospect of doing this, with that grotesque creature hunting her in the darkness, was appalling. She shrank down as far as she could into the narrow space and listened.
The hold was filled with small sounds that she had not noticed before, the heave and creak of the ship's timbers, the shifts of the cargo against its retaining ropes and netting, but then she heard the movement of a living thing close behind her and she caught the shriek of terror before it reached her lips, as she lifted her arm to protect her head. Frozen like that, she waited for a blow which never came.
Instead she heard another movement pass behind her turned shoulder, a whisper of sound, yet so chilling that she felt all power of movement drained from her legs.
He was here, very close in the blackness, toying with her, cruel as a cat. He had smelt her out. With some sort of animal sense, Tippoo had found her unerringly in the darkness, and now he crouched over her ready to strike and she could only wait.
Something touched her shoulder, and before she could jerk away it swarmed up over her neck, brushed her face.
She flung herself backwards and screamed, striking out wildly with the steel chain and handcuffs which she still
