with cruder shapes, sometimes human, other times obscure and all the more frightening.
Bolitho wanted to get to his feet, to cry out, to escape the surging movement and encirclement. Once, against the molten banks of fire he saw a woman, deathly white, her arms beckoning him, her mouth calling silent words. When
he had tried to reach her he realised that both his legs had gone, and a ship's surgeon was laughing at his rising terror.
All at once it was gone. Silence, and a darkness too unreal to accept, so that Bolitho felt himself drawing in his muscles and limbs to resist another terrible nightmare.
It was then that he realised he could feel his legs, his anus and the sweat which ran across his neck and thighs. Slowly, fearfully, like a man climbing back from the dead, he tried to assemble his thoughts, to separate reality from that which he had been enduring since… he struggled on to his elbows, staring at the darkness. Since when?
As his senses returned he noticed a sluggish movement beneath him, the shudder and tilt of a vessel under way. Block-s and rigging creaked, and he felt a new sensation, that of dread. He remembered the return of the fever, the Signs he had known were there but had refused to recognise. Allday's face above him, lined and anxious, hands carrying him, the enfolding darkness.
He groped up to his eyes and winced as his fingers touched them. He had gone completely blind.
A great slackness came over his limbs, so that he fell back on the bunk exhausted. Better to have died. To have sunk deeper into the haunting nightmares of fever until it had ended completely. He thought of the naked woman. Catherine Pareja. Trying to sustain him as she had done before when he had all but lost his life.
With a gasp he struggled up in a sitting position as a thin yellow line opened the opposite darkness like thread. Wider still, and then a face, unfamiliar against a lantern in the passageway beyond the door..
The face vanished and he heard someone yell, 'He's awake! He's going to be all right!'
The next few minutes were the worst in some ways. Allday cradling him against the vessel's motion, Lieutenant Veitch peering down at him, his face split into a wider grin than he had ever seen. Midshipman Breen's carrot head bobbing about in a sort of jig, and others crowding into the small cabin and giving vent to what sounded like a dozen different tongues.
Veitch ordered, 'Clear the cabin, lads.'
Allday made Bolitho lie back, and said, 'Good to have you back with us, sir. God, you’ve had a bad time, and that's no error. '
Bolitho tried to speak but his tongue felt twice its proper Size. He managed to croak, 'H-how long?' He saw Veitch and Allday exchange quick glances and added, 'Must know!' Veitch said quietly, 'All but three weeks, sir, since you-'
Bolitho tried to push Allday aside but was helpless. No wonder he felt weak and empty. Three weeks.
He whispered, 'What happened?'
Veitch said, 'After we got you back aboard we thought it better to stay at anchor in Valletta. It seemed safe enough, and I was troubled, fearful, if you like, of taking you to sea as you were.'
Allday stood up slowly, his head bowed between the beams. 'I’ve never seen you so bad, sir.' He sounded exhausted. 'We was at our wits' ends as to what to do.'
Bolitho looked from one to the other, some of his anxiety giving way to warmth. For three weeks, while he had been helpless and confined in his own private torment, these others had fended as best they could. Had nursed him, without caring for themselves, or what delay might cost them. As his eyes grew accustomed to the yellow light he saw the deep shadows around Allday's face, the stubble on his chin. Veitch, too, looked worn out, like a prisoner from the hulks.
He said, 'I was thinking only of myself.' He reached out. 'Take my hands, Both of you.'
Allday's teeth were white in his tanned face. 'Bless him, Mr. Veitch, he must be feeling a mite better.' But he had to look away, at a rare loss for words.
Bolitho said, 'Tell me again. I will try to be patient and not interrupt.' It was a strange tale which Veitch and Allday shared.
Strange because it represented part of his life which he had missed. Which now he could never regain.
Within a day of. his return aboard an official had come alongside and ordered them to remain at anchor until all risk of fever had gone. Veitch had been worried at Bolitho's desperate condition, but had not missed the fact that two of his seamen had deserted. A coincidence? He could not be sure. But from that moment he had made plans for leaving harbour before some unbreakable restriction was placed upon them. For several days the Segura had remained apparently unheeded, a warning yellow flag at her masthead, while the morale of her small company had crumbled and stores had run lower and lower.
As he listened to their story, Bolitho wondered if the French agent, Yves Gorse, had received some word that Segura's crew were imposters. By having them held at anchor he may have done his best to delay them while he sent word elsewhere that the enemies of France were no longer at Gibraltar or off Toulon, but inside Malta. He could, after all, do little else without revealing his own role as a foreign spy.
. Allday took up the story. 'Two sentries came aboard next.
Mr. Plowman suggested that it was the best time to leave. Others on shore would drop their guard once responsibility was shifted.'
Bolitho managed to smile. Plowman, if he was an ex-slaver, would certainly know about such matters.
'There was a squall one night. Sharp and fierce, an' not too much in our favour. But it was then or not at all, Mr. Plowman said, so we cuts the cable and makes sail.'
'The sentries?'
Allday grinned. 'We met with a Genoese trader two days later and we put 'em aboard her.' He became serious again. 'It was a good thing. By speaking with the trader we heard that a French man 0' war was nearby. A
