on each side of it and spread the skin even tighter.
He took a deep breath, and placed the tip of the scalpel against the swelling. He steeled himself, counting silently to three, then pressed down with the strength of a trained sword arm. He felt the blade slide deep into Daniel's back, and then strike something hard and unyielding, metal on metal.
Daniel shrieked and then went slack in Aboli's enfolding arms. A spurt of purple and yellow pus erupted from the deep scalpel cut. Hot and thick as carpenter's glue, it struck Hal in the mouth and splattered across his chin. The smell was worse than all the other odours of the slave deck, and Hal's gorge rose to scald the back of his throat. He swallowed back his own vomits and wiped the pus from his face with the back of his arm, before he could bring himself to peer gingerly once more at the wound.
Black pus still bubbled from it, but he saw extraneous matter caught in the mouth of the fresh cut. He dug at it with the tip of the scalpel, and freed a plug of dark and fibrous material, in which bone chips from the shattered scapula were mingled with jellied blood and pus.
'It's a piece of Danny's jacket,' he gasped. 'The ball must have pulled it into the wound.'
'Have you found the ball?' Sir Francis demanded. 'No, it must still be in there.'
He probed deeper into the wound. 'Yes. There it is.' 'Can you get it out?'
For a few minutes Hal worked in silence, thankful that Daniel was unconscious and did not have to suffer during this crude exploration. The flow of pus dwindled and now fresh clean blood oozed from the dark wound.
'I can't get it with the knife. It keeps slipping away,' he whispered. He put aside the blade and pushed his finger into Daniel's hot, living flesh. Breath rasping with horror, he worked in deeper and still deeper, until he could get his fingertip behind the lump of lead.
'There!' he exclaimed suddenly, as the musket ball popped out of the wound and dropped onto the planks with a thump. It was deformed by its violent contact with bone, and there was a mirror-bright smear in the soft lead.
He stared at it in vast relief, then snatched his finger from the wound.
It was followed by another soft rush of pus and lumpy foreign matter. 'There is the musket wad.' He gagged. 'I think everything is out now.' He looked down at his besmeared hands. The stench from them struck him like a blow in the face.
For a while they were all silent. Then Sir Francis whispered, 'Well done, Hal!' 'I think he is dead,' Hal answered, in a small voice. 'He is so still.'
Aboli released Daniel from his grip, then groped down his naked chest. 'No, he is alive. I can feel his heart. Now, Gundwane, you must wash out the wound for him.'
Between them they dragged Daniel's inert body to the limit of his fetters and Hal half knelt above him. He opened his filthy breeches and dehydrated by the limited ration of water, strained to squirt a weak stream of urine into the wound. It was enough to wash out the last rotting shreds of wadding and corruption. Hal used the last few drops of his own water to cleanse some of the filth from his hands and then fell back, spent by the effort.
'Done like a man, Gundwane,' Aboli told him, and offered Hal the red head cloth black and crackling with dried blood and pus. 'Use this to staunch the wound. It is all we have.'
While Hal bandaged the wound, Daniel lay like a corpse. He no longer groaned or fought against his chains. Three days later, as Hal leaned over to give him water, Daniel suddenly reached up, pushed away his head and took the mug from Hal's hands. He drained it in three long swallows. Then he belched thunderously and said, in a weak but lucid voice, 'By God, that was good. I'll have a drop more of that.'
Hal was so delighted and relieved that he handed him his own ration and watched him drink it. By the following day, Daniel was able to sit up as much as his chains would allow.
'Your surgery would have killed a dozen ordinary mortals, Sir Francis murmured, as he watched Big Daniel's recovery with amazement, 'but Daniel Fisher thrives upon it.'
The ninth day of their voyage Sam Bowles opened the hatch and sang out cheerily, to 'Good news for you, gentlemen. Wind has played us false these last fifty leagues. His lordship reckons it will be another five days before we round the Cape. So your pleasure cruise will last a little longer.'
Few had the strength or interest to rail at this dread news, but they reached up for the pewter water mug with frantic hands. When the daily ceremony of watering was done, this time Sam Bowles altered the routine. Instead of slamming the hatch closed for another day, he stuck his head down and called, 'Captain Courtney, sir, his lordship's compliments, and if you have no previous engagement, he would be obliged if you would take dinner with him.' He scrambled down into the slave deck and, with two of his mates to help him, unscrewed Sir Francis's shackles from his wrists and ankles, and withdrew them from the ring bolts in the bulkhead.
Even once Sir Francis was free, it took all three men to lift him to his feet. He was so weak and cramped that he swayed and staggered like a drunkard as they helped him climb painfully through the hatch. 'Begging your pardon, Captain,' Sam laughed in his face, 'you ain't exactly no bed of roses, you ain't. I've smelt pig-sties and cesspools a sight sweeter than you, that I have, Franky me lad.'
They dragged him up on deck, and stripped the stinking rags from his shrunken body. Then four seamen worked the handles of the deck pump while Sam turned the stream from the canvas hose full on him. The Gull had entered the tail end of the cold green Benguela current that sweeps down the west coast of the continent. The jet of icy seawater from the hose almost knocked Sir Francis from his feet, and he had to cling to the shrouds to keep his balance. Shivering and choking when Sam directed the hose full into his face, he was able yet to scrub most of the crusted filth from his hair and body. It was of no concern to him that Katinka van de Velde leaned on the rail of the poop deck and scrutinized his nudity without the least indication of modesty.
Only when the hose was turned off and he was left to stand in the wind to dry off did Sir Francis have a chance to look about him and form some estimate of the Gull's position and condition. Although his emaciated body was blue with cold, he felt refreshed and strengthened by the dousing. His teeth chattered and his whole frame shuddered with involuntary spasms of cold as he looked over side and he folded his arms over his chest to try to warm himself. The African mainland lay ten leagues or so to the north, and he recognized the cliffs and crags of the point that guarded the entrance to False Bay. They would have to weather that savage point before they could enter Table Bay on the far side of the peninsula.
The wind was almost dead calm, and the surface of the sea as slick as oil, with long, low swells rising and falling like the breathing of a sleeping monster. Sam Bowles was telling the truth. unless the wind picked up it would be many more days before they rounded the Cape and dropped anchor in Table Bay. He wondered how many more of his men would follow Timothy before they were released from the confines of the slave deck.
Sam Bowles threw a few pieces of threadbare but clean clothing on the deck at his feet. 'His lordship is expecting you. Don't keep him waiting now.'
'Franky!' Cumbrae rose to greet him as he stooped through the doorway into the Gull's stern cabin. 'I am so pleased to see that you look none the worse for your little sojourn below decks.' Before Sir Francis could avoid it, Cumbrae seized him in a bear-hug. 'I must apologize deeply for your treatment but it was at the insistence of the Dutch Governor and his wife. I would never have treated a brother Knight in such a scurvy fashion.'
While he spoke the Buzzard ran his great hands quickly down Sir Francis's body, checking for a concealed knife or other weapon, then pushed him into the largest and most comfortable chair in the cabin.
'A glass of wine, my dear old friend?' He poured it with his own hand, then gestured for his steward to place a bowl of stew in front of Sir Francis. Though saliva flooded into his mouth at the aroma of the first hot food he had been offered in almost two weeks, Sir Francis made no move to touch the glass or the spoon beside the bowl of stew.
Cumbrae noticed his refusal and, although he raised one bushy ginger eyebrow, he did not urge him but seized his own spoon and slurped up a mouthful from his own bowl. He chewed with all the sounds of appetite and approval, then washed it down with a hearty swallow from his wine glass, and wiped his red whiskers with the back of his hand. 'No, Franky, left to my own choice I would never have treated you so shabbily. You and I have had our differences in the past, but it has always been in the spirit of gentlemanly sport and competition, has it not?'
'Such sport as firing your broadside into my camp without warning?' Sir Francis asked.
'Now, let us not waste time in idle recrimination.' The Buzzard waved away the remark. 'That would never have been necessary if only you had agreed to share the booty from the galleon with me. What I really mean was that you and I understand each other. At heart we are brothers.'
'I think that I understand you.' Sir Francis nodded. 'Then you will know that what gives you pain, pains me even more. I have suffered every minute of your incarceration with you.'
'I hate to see you suffer, my lord, so why not release me and my men?'
'That is my fervent wish and intention, I assure you. However, there remains one small impediment that prevents me doing so. I need from you a sign that my warm feelings towards you are reciprocated. I am still deeply hurt that you would not share with me, your old
