poppy.'
Hal sprang to his feet and bounded across the cabin. 'Aboli, where are you?' he bellowed. 'Bring the bag, and Swiftly!'
Ned Tyler stood upon the threshold of the door. He held something in his hand and there was a strange expression on his face. 'Captain, there is something I must show you.'
'Not now, man, not now.' Hal raised his voice again. 'Aboli, come quickly.'
Aboli came down the companionway in a rush, carrying the saddle-bags. 'What is it, Gundwane?'
'Sukeena! There is something happening to her. She needs the medicine-' 'Captain!' Ned Tyler forced his way past Aboli's bulk into the cabin and seized Hal's arm urgently. 'This cannot wait. Look at the dagger. Look at the poi nd He held up the stiletto, and the others stared at it.
'In God's name!' Hal whispered. 'Let it not be so.'
A narrow groove down the length of the blade was filled with a black, tarry paste that had dried hard and shiny.
'It is an assassin's blade,' Ned said quietly. 'The groove is filled with poison.'
Hal felt the deck sway under his feet as though the Golden Bough had been struck by a tall wave. His vision went dark. 'It cannot be,' he said. 'Aboli, tell me it cannot be.'
'Be strong,' Aboli muttered. 'Be strong for her, Gundwane.' He gripped Hal's arm.
The hand steadied Hal and his vision brightened, but when he tried to draw breath the leaden hand of dread crushed in his ribs. 'I cannot live without her,' he said, like a confused child.
'Do not let her know,' Aboli said. 'Do not make the parting harder for her than it need be.'
Hal stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then he began to understand the finality, the significance of that tiny groove in the steel blade, and of the fatal threats that Sam Bowles had shouted at him with the hangman's noose around his neck.
'Sukeena is going to die,' he said, in a tone of bewilderment.
'This will be harder for you than any fight you have ever fought before, Gundwane.'
With an enormous effort Hal fought to regain control of himself. 'Do not show her the dagger,' he said to Ned Tyler. 'Go! Hurl the cursed thing overboard.'
When he got back to Sukeena he tried to conceal the black despair in his heart. 'Aboli has brought your bags.' He knelt beside her again. 'Tell me how to prepare the potion.'
'Oh, do it swiftly,' she pleaded as another spasm gripped her. 'The blue flask. Two measures in a mug of hot water. No more than that, for it is powerful.'
Her hand shook violently as she tried to take the mug from him. She had only the use of the one hand now. her wounded arm was swollen and purpled, the once dainty fingers so bloated that the skin threatened to burst open. She had difficulty holding the mug and Hal lifted it to her lips while she gulped down the potion with pathetic urgency.
She fell back with the effort and writhed on the bunk, drenching the bedclothes with the sweat of agony. Hal lay beside her and held her to his chest, trying to comfort her but knowing too well how futile were his efforts.
After a while the poppy flower seemed to have its effect. She clung to him and pressed her face into his neck. 'I am dying, Gundwane.'
'Do not say so,' he begged her.
'I have known it these many months. I saw it in the stars. That was why I could not answer your question.' 'Sukeena, my love, I will die with you.'
'No.' Her voice was a little stronger. 'You will go on. I have travelled with you as far as I am. permitted. But for you the Fates have reserved a special destiny.' She rested a while, and he thought that she had fallen into a coma, but then she spoke again. 'You will live on. You will have many strong sons and their descendants will flourish in this land of Africa, and make it their own.'
'I want no son but yours,' he said. 'You promised me a son.
'Hush, my love, for the son I give you will break your heart.' Another terrible convulsion took her, and she screamed in the agony of it. At last, when it seemed she could bear no more, she fell back trembling and wept. He held her and could find no words to tell her of his grief.
The hours passed, and twice he heard the ship's bell announce the watch changes. He felt her grow weaker and sink away from him. Then a series of powerful convulsions racked her body. When she fell back in his arms, she whispered, 'Your son, the son I promised you, has been born.' Her eyes were tightly closed, tears squeezing out between the lids.
For a long minute he did not understand her words. Then, fearfully, he drew back the blanket.
Between her bloody thighs lay a tiny pink mannikin, glistening wet and bound to her still by a tangle of fleshy cord. The little head was only half formed, the eyes would never open and the mouth would never take suck, nor cry, nor laugh. But he saw that it was, indeed, a boy.
He took her again in his arms and she opened her eyes and smiled softly. 'I am sorry, my love. I have to go now. If you forget all else, remember only this, that I loved you as no other woman will ever be able to love you.'
She closed her eyes and he felt the life go out of her, the great stillness descend.
He waited with them, his woman and his son, until midnight. Then Althuda brought down a bolt of canvas and sail maker needle, thread and palm. Hal placed the stillborn child in Sukeena's arms and bound him there with a linen winding sheet. Then he and Althuda sewed them into a shroud of bright new canvas, a cannonball at Sukeena's feet.
At midnight Hal carried the woman and child in his arms up onto the open deck. Under the bright African moon he gave them both up to the sea. They went below the dark surface and left barely a ripple in the ship's wake at their passing.
'Goodbye, my love,' he whispered. 'Goodbye, my two darlings.'
Then he went down to the cabin in the stern. He opened Llewellyn's Bible and looked for comfort and solace between its black-leather covers, but found none. or six long days he sat alone by his cabin window. He ate none of the food that Aboli -&-Fbrought him. Sometimes he read from the Bible, but mostly he stared back along the ship's wake. He came up on deck at noon each day, gaunt and haggard, and sighted the sun. He made his calculations of the ship's position and gave his orders to the helm. Then he went back to be alone with his grief.
At dawn on the seventh day Aboli came to him. 'Grief is natural, Gundwane, but this is indulgence. You forsake your duty and those of us who have placed our trust in you. It is enough.'
'It will never be enough.' Hal looked at him. 'I will mourn her all the days of my life.' He stood up and the cabin swam around him, for he was weak with grief and lack of food. He waited for his head to steady and clear. 'You are right, Aboli. Bring me a bowl of food and a mug of small beer.'
After he had eaten, he felt stronger. He washed and shaved, changed his shirt and combed his hair back into a thick plait down his back. He saw that there were strands of pure white in the sable locks.
When he looked in the mirror, he barely recognized the darkly tanned face that stared back at him, the nose as beaky as that of an eagle, and there was no spare flesh to cover the high-ridged cheek-bones or the unforgiving line of the jaw. His eyes were green as emeralds, and with that stone's adamantine glitter.
I am barely twenty years of age, he thought, with amazement, and yet I look twice that already.
He picked up his sword from the desk top and slipped it into the scabbard. 'Very well, Aboli. I am ready to take up my duty again,' he said, and Aboli followed him up onto the deck.
The boatswain at the helm knuckled his forehead, and the watch on deck nudged each other. Every man was intensely aware of his presence, but none looked in his direction. Hal stood for a while at the rail, his eyes darting keenly about the deck and rigging.
'Boatswain, hold your luff, damn your eyes!' he snapped at the helmsman.
The leech of the main sail was barely trembling as it spilled the wind, but Hal had noticed it and the watch, squatting at the foot of the mainmast, grinned at each other surreptitiously. The captain was in command again.
At first they did not understand what this presaged. However, they were soon to team the breadth and extent of it. Hal started by speaking to every man of the crew alone in his cabin. After he had asked their names and the village or town of their birth, he questioned them shrewdly as to their service. Meanwhile he was studying each and assessing his worth.
Three stood out above the others, they had all been watch keepers under Llewellyn's command. The boatswain, John Lovell, was the man who had served under Hal's father.
'You'll keep your old rating, boatswain,' Hal told him, and John grinned.
'It will be a pleasure to serve under you, Captain.'
'I hope you feel the same way in a month from now,' Hal replied grimly.
The other two were William Stanley and Robert Moone, both coxswains. Hal liked the look of them. Llewellyn had a good eye for judging men, he thought, and shook their hands.
Big Daniel was his other boatswain, and Ned Tyler, who could both read and write, was
