physical activity alone would have been enough to exhaust him. The concerns over preserving the lives of the people aboard had pushed him well beyond his limit.
“I thank you, Madshaka. If anything happens, change in wind or weather, a light is seen, you get me.”
“Of course, of course. Never to worry.”
James made his way below and aft. The great cabin looked as if it had once been a fine affair. The smashed furniture was polished walnut, the cushions, now shredded and pulled apart, were a rich red damask. Among the many empty bottles scattered about and rattling across the deck with each roll of the ship James recognized labels he had seen in Marlowe’s well-stocked cellar.
The condition of the great cabin did not matter. The torn settee cushions looked as inviting as any feather bed. He sat heavily, felt the motion of the ship under him, the hypnotic rhythm of the vessel’s rise and fall, the gentle side-to-side motion that set everything swinging in little arcs.
He swung his legs up on the settee, letting the sleep come over him, warm and seductive. He felt his whole body pulled down into the torn cushion like it was wrapped around him and then he was asleep.
In his dreams James was floating above the ship, looking down on it, on the people on the deck, swooping ahead to make certain the way was clear, flying over the jungles that ran down to the pounding surf of the African coast, then back to the ship.
And then someone on the deck saw him and screamed, ran in panic, and then another and another and all of the people were terrified to see him flying over them.
His eyes fluttered and opened. The screaming was still there, the rushing of feet, but overhead now.
The screaming was real, not a dream. Something was happening on deck. James’s head felt thick, he had no notion of how long he had slept.
He launched off the settee, tripped on the broken carcass of a chair on the deck, kicked it aside and raced out the door, bouncing off the cabin doors along the alleyway as the roll of the ship tossed him side to side in his race for the quarterdeck.
Up and out the scuttle, the sliver of moon and the stars giving his eyes all the light they needed to see the chaos on deck, men running here and there, lines cast off, people tripping in their rush. His eyes moved automatically aloft but the sails were still set, still drawing perfectly, the wind still on the same quarter.
“Madshaka! Madshaka!” He grabbed the big man’s arm as he rushed past, turned him around. “What? What is it?”
“Man go overboard!” Madshaka shouted.
“Heave to!” James shouted. “We must heave to! Get the men to the foremast braces!” Shouts flying around the deck, orders in half a dozen languages. “Go! Get them ready on the foremast! Where the hell is Kusi?” They needed order. They needed to talk to one another, to all hear the same commands.
Madshaka ran forward, James aft. The helmsman, confused and terrified, was staring at the compass, keeping the ship exactly on its prescribed course, not knowing what else he might do. James wanted to tell him to round up when the fore braces were cast off, but he had no way of telling him that, so instead he took the tiller in his own hand and pushed the helmsman aside.
He eased the helm to weather, looked down the deck, waiting for the foreyards to brace around. He had no idea how long the poor bastard had been in the water, how much distance they had put between themselves and him. With the steady wind, they had to have traveled a good cable or two just since he had come on deck.
“Brace the foreyards! Come on, man!” James shouted down the deck. It was total confusion. All of their carefully practiced drills seemed to be coming apart. Madshaka, for all his calm efficiency during their earlier maneuvers, seemed to be in a frenzy, shouting this and that, waving his arms. Men ran in all directions, responding to his orders. Where in damnation was Kusi? He was half of the team, it was all going to hell without him.
“Brace the-,” James yelled again. It was pointless. Madshaka was the only one who could understand him and he was too busy bellowing orders to even hear.
He put the helm down, began to swing the ship up into the wind.
The weather leeches on the square sails curled and then collapsed and the sails began to flog as they turned edge to weather. The ship continued to turn, carried by her momentum, up, up into the wind. The sails came aback, fell silent, and then the ship stopped.
She was not hove to. Her sails were in disarray, her rig threatening to come down around their ears, but at least the ship was stopped. She was no longer moving away from the man in the water.
“Madshaka!” James shouted with all his considerable voice, and finally Madshaka looked aft. “Get the boat over! The boat!” He pointed to the jolly boat perched on the booms amidships. Madshaka followed his finger, nodded, and began to yell orders in one language, then another and another. Men left off what they were doing, cast off stay tackles and boat falls, hooked them to the jolly boat.
James handed the tiller back to the helmsman and raced forward. Madshaka was a grumete, a boat handler. He should go with the jolly boat.
James arrived in the waist just as the boat was lifting off under Madshaka’s directions. Up and over the side it sailed, and then down into the water and the boat crew scrambled down after it.
“Madshaka, you go!” James said.
“Yes, you stay with ship!”
“Where the hell is Kusi?”
“We find him, you don’t worry. He grumete, good swimmer.”
James felt his eyes go wide, his stomach convulse. He spun around, looked aft, realized how ridiculous that was.
“Kusi! It is Kusi gone over?”
“Don’t you worry,” Madshaka said, and there was genuine reassurance in his voice. He trotted to the rail, swung down onto the ladder. “I get Kusi, don’t worry.”
Chapter 9
King James stood at the rail, watched Madshaka drop easily into the jolly boat’s stern sheets, watched the bowman push off. With a word from the grumete the oars came down, pulled together, up again, pulled again. The men of the boat crew were from those coastal tribes that bred boat handlers, and they worked as a unit as well as any unpracticed crew could.
James watched the boat claw swiftly past the ship. It was just disappearing from his sight under the counter when Madshaka opened the shutter of the lantern he had brought, held it low over the water. James heard his big voice ring out, “Kusi! Kusi!” and then he called something in Kusi’s native tongue. James cocked his head aft, listened, strained to hear some reply from beyond the taffrail, but there was only the slap of water, the bang of gear aloft, and then Madshaka’s loud voice again.
Cato and Joshua, Good Boy and Quash were hovering around, as they did when James was not too distant to approach. He turned to them. “How did Kusi fall overboard?” he demanded.
The four young men exchanged glances, shrugs. “I didn’t see it,” said Good Boy, and that was followed by murmured concurrence from the others.
“We was up for’rd,” offered Cato. “Kusi was all the way aft, I reckon. I didn’t see him. Didn’t even hear nothing. We was just talking and then that Madshaka started in yelling something to them others. We couldn’t understand none of it. Didn’t even know what was acting, at first.”
More nods from the others. “Right,” said James. From overhead came a whap whap whap as a fluke of the breeze caught an edge of sail and flogged it against the mast. He leaned over the rail. From out over the dark water he could see the bobbing light, could hear Madshaka’s voice, distant now, still calling out Kusi’s name.
“We best get this rig sorted out,” James said at last. “You men, get with your watches and we’ll see what we can do.”
They moved forward, the five of them, calling out in English and waving and gesturing, and by that means got the sail trimmers to their stations. James stood on the main hatch, looked aloft, looked at the men lining the pinrails, the women keeping out of the way and holding their children back from being trampled in the mysterious goings-on of the men’s work.
