Tippoo made no move, his expression never changed and she was still carried along on the pagan mood, in direct defiance to the oath of Hippocrates which she had SWOrn. Must clean the wounds, she told him, and quickly, before her conscience could prevent it, she tipped the raw brandy into the wounds and swabbed them out.
Tippoo sat still as a temple carving of a Hindu devil, making no acknowledgement of the harsh spirit burning open tissue.
Robyn tied off the vessels with silk thread, leaving an end hanging from the wounds, and then she sutured the lips closed, laying precise neat stitches and pulling them up tightly so that the smooth bald scalp came up in a sharp little peak of flesh with each tug. I will pull the thread when the vessels mortify, she told him. 'The stitches will be ready to come out in a week. ' She would not deplete her stock of laudanum, she decided, the man obviously was impervious to pain, and she was still in the throes of unchristian spite.
Tippoo lifted the round head. 'You good doctor, he told her solemnly, and she learned then a lesson that would last her throughout her life, the stronger the purge, the more astringent or foul-tasting the medicine, and the more radical the surgery, then the more impressed with the surgeon's skill was the African patient. Yes, Tippoo nodded gravely, 'you one bloody fine doctor. ' And be opened one huge paw. in his palm lay the scalpel that Robyn had lost in Huron's hold. Without expression he placed it in Robyn's own unresisting hand, and with that eerie swiftness was gone from the saloon, leaving her staring after him.
Huron flew southwards, meeting the long South Atlantic rollers and spurning them carelessly, brushing them aside with her shoulder and letting them cream over her rail and then tumble away astern in a long smooth wake.
There were seabirds in company with them now, beautiful gannets with yellow throats and black diamonds painted around their eyes, coming in from the east and soaring above their wake, shrieking and diving for the galley scraps when they were thrown overboard.
There were seals too, lifting their whiskered heads high above the surface to stare curiously after the towering clipper as she burst the sea open with her sharp bows in her flight into the south.
Smeared across the brilliant blue water were long serpentine trails of sea-bamboo, torn from the rocky shoreline by the gales and storms of this uneasy and troubled sea.
All these were indications of the land which was always just below the eastern horizon, and Robyn spent many hours of each day alone at the port rail staring towards it, longing for another glimpse of it, smelling the dryness and the spiced aroma of its grass and herbs on the wind, seeing its blown dust in the marvelous reds and glowing gold of the sunsets, but denied sight of it by the offing that St. John was making before coming back on to the starboard tack for the final run into Table Bay.
However, as soon as Mungo St. John appeared on his quarterdeck Robyn would hurry below without another glance in his direction and she locked herself in her cabin, brooding there alone so that even her brother sensed that something troubled her. He tried a dozen times to draw her out. She sent him away each time, refusing to open the cabin to him. I'm all right, Zouga. I just want to be alone.'
And when he tried to join her in her solitary vigils at the ship's rail, she was short and unbending, exasperating him so that he stamped away and let her be.
She was afraid to talk to him, afraid that she would blurt out her discovery of slaving equipment in Huron's hold and put him in deadly danger. She knew her brother well enough not to trust his temper and not to doubt his courage. Neither did she doubt Mungo St. John's warning.
He would kill Zouga to protect himself, he could do it himself, she had seen him handle a pistol, or he could send Tippoo to do the work in the night. She had to protect Zouga, until they reached Cape Town, or until she did what she had to do. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. ' She had found the passage in her Bible and studied it carefully, and then she had prayed for guidance which had not been given and she had ended more confused and troubled than she had begun.
She prayed again kneeling on the bare deck beside her bunk until her knees ached, and slowly her duty became clear to her.
Three thousand souls sold into slavery in a single year - that was what the Royal Naval Captain had accused him of. How many thousands before that, how many thousands more in the years to come if Huron and her captain were allowed to continue their depredations, if nobody could prevent them ravaging the east coast of Africa, her land, her people, those peoples whom she was sworn to protect and minister to and to lead into the fold of the Saviour.
Her father, Fuller Ballantyne, was one of the great champions of freedom, the unrelenting adversary of this abominable trade. He had called it 'the running sore on the conscience of the civilized world that must be rooted out with all the means at our disposal'. She was her father's daughter, had made her oath in the sight of God.
This man, this monster, epitomized the sickening evil and monstrous cruelty of the whole filthy business. Please show me my duty, oh Lord, she prayed, and always there was her own guilt and shame. Shame that his eyes had probed her half-naked body, that his hands had touched and fondled her, shame that he had debased her further, by stripping bare his own body. Hastily she thrust the image aside, it was too clear, too over-powering. 'Help me to be strong, she prayed quickly.
There was shame and there was guilt, a terrible corrosive guilt in the fact that his gaze, his touch, his body, had not revolted and disgusted her, but had filled her instead with a sinful delight. He had tempted her to sin.
For the first time in all her twenty-three years she had encountered real sin, and she had not been strong enough. She hated him for that, Show me my duty, oh Lord, she prayed aloud and rose stiffly from her knees to sit on the edge of the bunk.
She held her well-worn leather-bound Bible in her lap and whispered again. Please give unto your faithful servant guidance.
' And she let the book fall open, and with her eyes closed placed her forefinger on the text. When she opened her eyes again she gave a start of surprise, guidance obtained by this little ritual of hers was usually not so unequivocal, for she had chosen Numbers 35: ig. 'The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer: when he meeteth him, he shall slay him.'
Robyn had no illusions as to the difficulty she would have in performing the heavy duty placed upon her by God's direct injunction, or how easily roles might be reversed and she become herself the victim rather than the avenger.
The man was as dangerous as he was wicked and time was against her. The accurate observation of the sun that Zouga had made at noon that day placed the ship within a hundred and fifty miles of Table Bay, and the wind
