Black joke's whaler pulled swiftly into the first line of breakers, the Ensign in the stern peering over his shoulder to judge the surf, and then catching his wave taking her in with a rush, swinging sharply into the lee of the dhow's stranded hull where there was calmer water.
They watched the Ensign and four of his men go up over the side, pistols and cutlasses drawn, but by this time the last of the Arab crew were staggering up the beach and into the sanctuary of the palm grove a quarter of a mile away across the lagoon.
The Ensign led his men below decks, and they waited on Black Joke's quarterdeck, watching the abandoned dbow through the telescope. A minute passed before the Ensign appeared on deck again. He crossed quickly to the dhow's rail and leaned against it to vomit over the side, then straightened up and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, before shouting an order down to the oarsmen in the whaler.
Immediately the whaler shot out from the lee of the hull, and pulled lustily back through the surf towards Black joke.
The boatswain came in through the entry port, and knuckled his forehead to his captain. Mr. Ferris's compliments, sir, and he needs a carpenter to get the slave decks open, and two good men with bolt cutters for the chains. ' He had gabbled this out on a single breath, and he paused to refill his lungs. 'Mr. Ferris says as how it's fierce bad below decks, and some of them is trapped, and he needs the doctor-', I'm ready to go, Robyn cut in. Wait, Clinton snapped, but Robyn had gathered her skirts and run. If my sister goes, I'm going too. 'Very well, then, Ballantyne, I'm obliged for your assistance, Clinton nodded. 'Tell Ferris we have an incoming tide, full moon tonight, so it will make springs. There is a twenty-two foot tidal fall on this coast. He will have less than an hour in which to work.'
Robyn appeared on deck again, lugging her black leather valise, and she had exchanged skirts for breeches once more. The seamen on deck gawked at her legs curiously, but she ignored them and hurried to the ship's side. The boatswain gave her a hand and she scrambled down into the whaler with Zouga carrying her valise behind her.
The ride in through the surf was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time; the whaler tilted forward at an alarming angle, the water hissing and creaming alongside, with a belly-swooping rush that ended alongside the dhow's heavily canted side.
The deck was running with water and listed so steeply that Robyn had to crawl up it on her hands and knees, and each time a wave struck the hull, it quivered and shook and more water came streaming down over the deck.
The Ensign and his boarding party had ripped the hatches off the main hold and as she reached them, Robyn gagged and choked with the solid stench that came out of that square opening. She had believed herself hardened to the smell of death and corruption, but never had she experienced anything like this. Did you bring the bolt cutters? ' the Ensign demanded, white-faced with nausea and horror.
The bolt cutters were heavy duty shears, used for cutting the shrouds and halyards from a dismasted vessel.
Two men wielded them now, as they lifted a bunch of small black bodies through the hatch, all of them fastened together at wrist and ankle by the clanking black steel links. It reminded Robyn of the cut-out paper dolls she had amused herself with as a child, fashioning with scissors a single figure from the folded sheet, and then pulling out a chain of identical dolls. The cutters crunched through the light chain and the limp little bodies fell apart. They are children, she cried out aloud, and the men around her worked in grim silence, dragging them out of the hatch, cutting them free and dropping them on to the tilted wet deck.
Robyn seized the first of them, a skeletal stick figure, crusted and streaked with dried filth, vomit and faeces, head lolling as she lifted it into her lap.
No. 'There was no life. The eyeballs had dried already.
She let the head drop and a seaman dragged it away. No, and 'No, and 'No again. ' Some of them were already in an advanced state of putrification; at a word from the Ensign, the seamen began dropping the wasted corpses over the side, to make room for those still coming up from below.
Robyn found her first live one, there was feeble pulse and fluttering breath, but it did not need a physician's instinct to tell that the hold on life was tenuous. She worked swiftly, apportioning her time to where the chance of life seemed greater.
Another taller wave struck the dhow, and it tilted sharply, the timbers crackled and snapped deep inside her. Tides flooding. Work faster, shouted the Ensign. They were into the hull now. Robyn could hear the thud of sledge hammers and the rip of irons as they began to tear the slave decks out of her.
Zouga was in there, stripped to the waist, leading the attack on the wooden barricades. He was an officer, with the easy way of command and his natural leadership was swiftly acknowledged by the seamen around him.
The hubbub reminded Robyn of a rookery at sundown, the shrieks of the returning birds and the answering cries from the chicks in the nests. The mass of black girls were aroused from the lethargy of approaching death by the dhow's wild antics, the crash of breaking timbers and the flood of cold salt water into the hold.
Some of those lying in the bilges were already drowning as the hold flooded, and some of them had realized that there was a rescue team aboard, and cried aloud with the last strength of waning hope.
Alongside the slaver, the whaler was moored, and she was almost filled with the wasted bodies in which some life still burned, while on the surface of the lagoon bobbed a hundred ox more corpses with gas-swollen bellies like the corks on a fishing-net. Take them to the ship the Ensign shouted down to his oarsmen in the whaler, 'and come back for more. ' As he spoke, another white-crested wave struck the dhow solidly and she heeled, but she was pinned down by the spikes of coral driven through her bottom timbers, otherwise she would have turned turtle. Robyn! ' Zouga shouted at her from the hatch. 'We need you! ' For a moment she did not even glance at him, but shook her head at the sailor beside her. No, she's gone.'
Expressionlessly the sailor picked up the frail body and dumped it over the side.
Then Robyn scrambled up to the hatch and dropped through it.
It was a descent into the pit, dark after the brilliant noontide, so that she paused for a moment to let her vision adjust.
The tilting deck beneath her feet was slippery with human waste, so that she had to cling for a handhold.
The air was so thick that for a minute she nearly panicked, as though she were being smothered by a stinking
