Back away from the latrine area he tried to stand, but the chains would not allow it, so he sat upright as much as he could. He tried to concentrate, but soon his mind began to wander, and so he let it, and when it tended toward dark thoughts, he steered it toward pleasant reverie.
He was picturing himself riding the fields at Marlowe House under a blue sky when he heard activity above, feet running, the muted shouting of orders, the creak of the rudder communicated through the timbers of the ship. He listened hard, tried to separate the sounds.
After some time he felt the ship heel over-not the wallow of the ship in the swells but the heel of a vessel under a press of canvas. He heard the gurgling note of water running down their sides.
They were under way. To where, he did not know, nor did he know with what ships they were sailing in company. He did not know if his own men were still alive, what had become of Elizabeth. All he knew was the blackness and what little he could divine from the sounds, three decks up, and that was very little indeed.
It was a full day at least before someone brought him food and water, and by then his every lucid thought was concentrated on his hunger and thirst, though the lucid ones were getting further and further between. In his croaking, parched voice he asked the man where they were, what time was it, what of his crew. But the man just set down the weevily biscuit and the half-cooked salt pork and the pewter pint cup of water and left with never a word.
And so it went every day, once a day, when some dimly seen figure appeared with the barest scraps of food and just enough water to keep him alive. After a few days Marlowe did not bother to ask.
He guessed that they were bringing his meals at inconsistent times, just to throw him off regarding day or night. He did not think it would matter. Darkness or sunlight made no difference in the cable tier. He slept, woke whenever. Prayed for the hours to pass.
But as day dragged into weary day, he found himself becoming desperate to know the hour beyond his black pit. It was a need he did not understand, but it was as powerful as his hunger or thirst. What time was it? What watch? Was it daytime or night? Something, anything beyond the darkness and the rats, but he could not find out. There was nothing, only the shadowy figure with the food and water. Once a day, he guessed. He could never predict when.
He thought of the one voyage he had made as an ordinary seaman aboard a slaver, thought of those poor people chained down as he was now. Was it better for them, to have others there? The slavers tried to mix up the tribes so that there could be little communication. Was it worse, being jammed in with others with whom you could not speak?
The slaves at least were given some time on deck, which he was not. On the other hand, the Africans had no notion of what was happening to them or where they were bound, whereas Marlowe knew exactly. Was his lot better or worse? He did not know. He knew only that he now shared with those people the bond of suffering, when before he had felt only sympathy.
After some time-a week, perhaps, perhaps more or less-he found he could not maintain a rational line of thought. He tried, concentrated on some problem or other: how to get a ship off her beam ends without cutting her masts away, where the best spot would be to clear woods for new tobacco plants at Marlowe House; what would be the ideal layout, rig, and armament for a privateer.
But trying to maintain this train of thought was like grabbing an armful of smoke, and his mind wandered off into crazy and unconnected images. He was going mad, and it frightened him more than anything ever had.
And the thing that saved him from madness, as it turned out, was also the thing that nearly killed him.
He was lying on his side, not asleep, not awake, but in that half-conscious state in which he spent more and more of his black hours. The vessel was rising and falling as it plowed close-hauled through a short chop: up, pause, down, thump as the bow hit the wave; up, pause, down, thump.
It was a rhythm that had become ingrained in him years before, through countless hours of walking the decks of vessels on that point of sail. He might not know the time of day, but he could generally guess from the motion of the ship the sea state and the Queen’s Venture’s point of sail. In his nightmare world he sometimes thought he was on the quarterdeck, sometimes thought he was sleeping in his great cabin or wounded and dying on the deck, and sometimes he recalled he was chained in the cable tier.
He lay there, eyes sometimes closed, sometimes open-it made no difference-and smelled the stink of the bilges and his own waste, which he hardly noticed, heard the scurry of the ubiquitous rats, which seemed to be even more active that night. Or day. Whatever it was.
Thomas Marlowe drifted in and out of consciousness and only slowly became aware of the cold inching over him. He felt it creeping over his legs that were sprawled down the sloping deck, a numbing chill, reckoned it was death come for him at last. It was not the sensation he would have expected.
He reached slowly down with his hand, wondering if he could still feel his legs, and his hand came down in water, and suddenly he was alert, sitting bolt upright, his eyes open, all the cobwebs of nightmare washed clean away.
“Dear God,” he said, and his voice sounded odd, and he realized he had not spoken in days, perhaps weeks. He reached out with his hands in the darkness, and everywhere around him swirled cold ocean water, rushing unimpeded. The Queen’s Venture was sinking.
“Dear God,” he said again. He could tell from the ship’s motion that they were not in any severe weather. She must have sprung a plank. Some rotten wood in her hull, undetected, waiting like a weak spot in a dam to go, and when it did, in came the water, fast.
The water was over the lower edge of the cable tier and creeping higher, gushing in from whatever breach had been knocked in the hull. He strained to listen for the sounds of panic topside: rushing feet, shouted orders, hatches torn back to give all possible light to the carpenter and his mates as they searched for the leak and tried to drive a plug into it. But there was nothing. They did not know.
For a moment he considered keeping his mouth shut. Let the water rise up around him, drown him, deny Roger Press the pleasure. How long would it take them to discover the leak? If he kept quiet, perhaps the Queen’s Venture would sink, and Press would be made to endure the agony of watching both Marlowe and the treasure of a lifetime sink beyond his reach.
But he would not do that. The cold seawater had washed him clean of his ennui, had woken him from his dream stupor. The feel and smell of the ocean invigorated him, and he was ready once again to fight.
“Hoa! On deck!” he shouted, and his voice cracked and his hail was unimpressive. He swallowed, coughed, and tried again. “Hoa! On deck! Deck there! You’ve sprung a bloody plank! Hoa!” He shouted until he felt his throat begin to ache, but there was no response. He wondered if they thought it was a ruse, if they thought he had gone mad, if they were all gathered around the hatch, listening and laughing.
“Hoa! On deck!” he shouted again, and finally he heard the sound of bare feet on the ladder, coming down to the cable tier.
“You there, you’ve sprung a bloody plank, and you may want to see to it,” Marlowe shouted, not so loud. There was no response. He was certain Press had told the men not to communicate with him. But the footfalls grew closer, and he could see the vague shape of a man in the dark.
He heard feet come down in the water, an intake of breath, and the man said, “Goddamn it!” then turned and raced topside again.
Another moment’s quiet, and then the panic that Marlowe expected broke loose. Over the groaning of the ship and the sloshing of water inside and outside the hull, he could hear orders shouted, men racing in a hundred directions, hatches pulled off. The ship came more upright, and the water that was filling the hold, and which had been confined to the low side of the heeling vessel, washed over Marlowe, almost up to his waist in his sitting position. He knew they had hove to. They had to take the pressure off the leak until they found it.
He saw the loom of lanterns above him as the carpenter and his mates raced down from above, and then he saw the lights as the gang clambered down into the hold. He had to turn his eyes from them, the brightest he had seen in weeks.
The carpenter ignored him as he plunged into the knee-high water and made his difficult way forward. In his wake came three men carrying hammers, crowbars, and wooden plugs. They disappeared forward, and soon Marlowe could see only the glow of their lanterns, illuminating stacks of barrels and the bundles of loot that he himself had inspected.
At the same time he heard the sound of the pumps. It was another sound that was familiar to him, his having heard it on a daily basis, generally for an hour or so a day, which was not a lot. But now the sound was different,
