and let fall fifteen drops of essence of ipecacuanha into the medicine glass, which was three times the recommended dosage for the most powerful emetic known to the medical science. Drink it down, she told Tippoo. 'It will soothe your stomach, and cure the diarrhoea.'
Late that afternoon she repeated the dose, but the wardroom steward had to help her lift Tippoo's head from the bolster and pour the draught down his throat. The effect was enough to alarm even Robyn.
An hour later she sent for Mungo, and the steward came back with the message, 'Captain says as how the ship's safety demands all his attention at the moment, begging your pardon, Doctor.'
When Robyn herself went on deck, Mungo was at the weather rail, sextant in hand, waiting for the sun to appear in a gap in the clouds.
Tippoo is dying, she told him. And this will be my first sight of the day mungo replied without taking his eye from the eyepiece of the instrument. I at last believe that you are a monster with no human feelings, she whispered fiercely, and at that moment blazing sunlight struck the deck, as the sun showed briefly through the ragged hole in the cloud. Stand by the chronometer, ' Mungo called to the signals yeoman, and then 'Mark! as he brought the sun's image down to bounce lightly as a green rubber ball on the dark line of the horizon. Excellent, he murmured with satisfaction, as he lowered the sextant and read off the height of the sun, and called it to the yeoman to mark on his slate. Only then did he turn back to Robyn. I am sure you have misjudged the severity of Tippoo's ailment See for yourself, ' she invited. That is my intention, Doctor.'
Mungo stooped into Tippoo's cabin, and paused. His expression changed, suddenly the light mocking smile was gone. It was evident that Tippoo was indeed dangerously ill. How are you, old friend? ' Mungo asked quietly. It was the first time Robyn had ever heard him use that form of address. He lifted his hand and laid it on the mate's sweat-headed forehead.
Tippoo rolled the bald yellow cannon ball of his head towards Mungo, and he tried to smile. It was a brave effort. Robyn felt a terrible guilty pang, at the suffering she was inflicting and at being the witness to this private, and strangely intimate, moment between these two hard and dangerous men.
Tippoo tried to lift himself, but the effort brought a long dragging groan rattling up his throat, and he clutched at his stomach with both hands, drawing his knees up with agony, and then desperately twisting his head as a fresh bout of heaving and retching racked his body.
Mungo snatched the bucket off the deck and with one arm around Tippoo's shoulders held it for him, but all that Tippoo could bring up was a little splash of blood and brown bile, and when he fell back on the bunk he was gasping unevenly, bathed in fresh sweat and his eyes rolled back in his skull until only a little half moon of the iris still showed.
Mungo stood beside his bunk for a full five minutes, bowed and attentive, swaying slightly to the ship's movement, but otherwise still and silent. His brow was creased with thought and his gaze remote, and watching him, Robyn knew he was making the dire decision, the throw of the dice of life, friendship against the loss of his ship and perhaps even his own liberty, for to go into a British port with slaves in his holds was an awful risk.
Strange, now that he was showing this gentler side of his nature, that her affection came flooding back at full strength, she felt mean and cheap for playing on his deepest emotions, and for torturing the huge yellow Moslem on the narrow bunk.
Mungo swore quietly but decisively, and, still stooped under the low deck, strode from the cabin.
Robyn's affection turned to disgust and disappointment. Disgust that even the LIFE of an old and loyal friend meant nothing to this cruel and merciless man whom she was doomed to love, and intense disappointment that her ruse had failed, that she had inflicted this dangerous suffering on Tippoo to no avail.
She sank down wearily and bitterly beside his bunk, took a cloth soaked in sea water and bathed the sweatbasted yellow head.
During their long voyage down the Atlantic, Robyn had grown sensitive to all Huron's moods, to the feel of the deck underfoot at every point of sailing, and to the sounds that her hull made in different sea and wind conditions, and now abruptly she felt the deck cant sharply beneath her. She heard the stamp of bare feet on the deck above as her yards were trained around and Huron's action became easier, the sounds of her hull and rigging muted as she took the wind in over her stern quarter and rode more easily. He's altered course towards the west, she breathed as she lifted her head to listen. 'It worked. He is going in to Port Natal. Oh thank you Lord, it worked.'
Huron anchored well offshore, out on the thirty-fathom line of the shelving coast, so that she could not benefit from the shelter of the huge whale-backed bluff that protected Port Natal's natural harbour. Even with a powerful telescope, a watcher on the shore would be unable to make out any significant details of Huron's cargo, nor of her true occupation. However, the ship paid for her offshore berth by taking the unfettered scend of the sea and the wind. She pitched and she rolled and she jerked at her anchor chain.
At her peak she flew the stars and stripes of her country, and below that the yellow 'Quebec', the plague flag which warned, 'Stay away from me! I have plague on board! ' Mungo St. John placed an armed watch on both sides of the ship and others at her bow and stern , and, despite Robyn's strident protest, she was confined to her cabin for the duration of the ship's call, with another armed guard outside her door. You are very well aware of the reason, Doctor Ballantyne. ' Mungo answered her protests calmly. 'I do not wish you to have any communication whatsoever with your countrymen ashore.'
The whaler, when it took Tippoo ashore, was rowed by men that Mungo selected personally, and they were instructed to inform the Harbour Master that there was smallpox aboard, and to request that no other vessel be allowed near Huron. I can only wait three days for you. ' Mungo stooped over the litter on which Tippoo was carried on deck.
That is all I can risk. If you are not sufficiently recovered by then, you will have to stay here until my return.
That cannot be more than five months. ' He tucked a leather draw-string purse under Tippoo's blanket. 'And that will pay your expenses in the meanwhile. Get well, Mr. Tippoo, I need you.'
Robyn had administered another dose of the peppermint and ipecacuanha a few minutes previously, and Tippoo could reply only in an agonized whisper.
I will wait for you, Captain Mungo, as long as she takes Mungo's voice was husky as he straightened and spoke to the seamen carrying the litter. Handle him easy, you hear me.'
For three days Robyn sweated and fretted in the stuffy little cabin, trying to occupy her time with writing up her journals but distracted by any loud noise from the deck above, her heart pounding as she both hoped for and dreaded the hail from a British gun-boat, or the rush of a boarding-party coming in over Huron's side.
