up, damn you. Let me hear you!'
'Here!' It was Mansur's voice, and Jim looked for him. His cousin was clinging to the swamped skiff, his long red curls slicked down over his face like a seal's pelt. Just then another head popped through the surface between them.
'Zama.' With two overarm strokes he reached him, and lifted his face out of the water. Zama coughed and brought up an explosive jet of water and vomit. He tried to throw both arms around Jim's neck, but Tim ducked him until he released his grip, then dragged him to the side of the wallowing skiff.
'Here! Take hold of this.' He guided his hand to the gunwale. The three hung there, struggling for breath.
Jim was the first to recover sufficiently to find his anger again. 'Bitchborn bastard!' he gasped, as he stared after the departing ship. She was sailing on sedately. 'Doesn't even know he almost killed us.'
'She stinks worse than the seal colony.' Mansur's voice was still rough, and the effort of speech brought on a coughing fit.
Jim sniffed the air and caught the odour that fouled it. 'Slaver. Bloody slaver,' he spat. 'No mistaking that smell.'
'Or a convict ship,' Mansur said hoarsely. 'Probably transporting prisoners from Amsterdam to Batavia.' They watched the ship alter course, her sails changing shape in the moonlight as she rounded up to enter the bay and join the other shipping anchored there.
'I'd like to find her captain in one of the gin hells at the docks,' Jim said darkly.
'Forget it!' Mansur advised him. 'He'd stick a knife between your ribs, or in some other painful place. Let's get the skiff bailed out.' There was only a few fingers of free board so Jim had to slide in over the transom. He groped under the thwart and found the wooden bucket still lashed under the seat. They had tied down all the gear and equipment securely for the hazardous launch through the surf. He began bailing out the hull, sending a steady stream of water over the side. By the time it was half cleared, Zama had recovered sufficiently to climb aboard and take a spell with the bucket. Jim hauled in the oars, which were still floating alongside, then checked the other equipment. 'All the fishing tackle's still here.' He opened the mouth of a sack and peered inside. 'Even the bait.'
'Are we going on?' Mansur asked.
'Of course we are! Why not, in the name of the Devil.'
'Well...' Mansur looked dubious. 'We were nearly drowned.'
'But we weren't,' Jim pointed out briskly. 'Zama has got her dry, and the Cauldron is less than a cable's length away. Big Julie is waiting for her breakfast. Let's go and feed it to her.' Once again they took their positions on the thwarts, and plied the long oars. 'Bastard cheese head cost us an hour's fishing time,' Jim complained bitterly.
'Could have cost you a lot more, Somoya,' Zama laughed, 'if I hadn't been there to pull you out--' Jim picked up a dead fish from the bait bag and threw it at his head. They were swiftly recovering their high spirits and camaraderie.
'Hold the stroke, we're coming up on the marks now,' Jim warned, and they began the delicate business of maneuvering the skiff into position over the rocky hole in the green depths below them. They had to drop the anchor on to the ledge to the south of the Cauldron, then let the current drift them back over the deep subterranean canyon. The swirling current that gave the place its name complicated their work, and twice they missed the marks. With much sweat and swearing they had to retrieve the fifty-pound boulder that was their anchor and try again. The dawn was sneaking in from the east, stealthily as a thief, before Jim plumbed the depth with an unbaited cod line to make certain they were in the perfect position. He measured the line between the span of his open arms as it streamed over the side.
Thirty-three fathoms!' he exclaimed, as he felt the lead sinker bump the bottom. 'Nearly two hundred feet. We're right over Big Julie's dining room.' He brought up the sinker swiftly with a swinging double-handed action. 'Bait up, boys!' There was a scramble for the bait bag. Jim reached in and, from under Mansur's fingers, he snatched the choicest bait of all, a grey mullet as long as his forearm. He had netted it the previous day in the lagoon below the company go down 'That's too good for you,' he explained reasonably. 'Needs a real fisherman to handle Julie.' He threaded the point of the steel shark hook through the mullet's eye sockets. The bight of the hook was two hand spans across. Jim shook out the leader. It was ten feet of steel chain, light but strong. Alf, his father's blacksmith, had hand-forged it especially for him. Jim was certain it would resist the efforts of even a great king steenbras to sheer it against the reef. He swung the bait round his head, letting the heavy cod line pay out with each swing, until at last he released it and sent it with the chain leader to streak far out across the green surface. As the bait sank into the depths he let the line stream after it. 'Right down Big Julie's throat,' he gloated. 'This time she isn't going to get away. This time she's mine.' When he felt the lead sinker hit the bottom, he laid out a coil of the line on the deck and stood firmly on it with his bare right foot. He needed both hands on the oar to counter the current and keep the skiff on station above the Cauldron with the heavy line running straight up and down.
Zama and Mansur were fishing with lighter hooks and lines, using small chunks of mackerel as bait. Almost immediately they were hauling in fish rosy red stump nose wriggling silvery bream, spotted tigers that grunted like piglets as the boys twisted out the hook and threw them into the bilges.
'Baby fish for little boys!' Jim mocked them. Diligently he tended his own heavy line, rowing quietly to hold the skiff steady across the rrent. The sun rose clear of the horizon and took the chill out of their The three stripped off their outer clothing until they were clad only in breech clouts.
Close at hand the seals swarmed over the rocks of the island, dived and roiled close around the anchored skiff. Suddenly a big dog seal dived under the boat and seized the fish Mansur was bringing up, tore it from the hook and surfaced yards away with it in its jaws.
'Abomination, cursed of God!' Mansur shouted in outrage as the seal held the plundered fish on its chest and tore off hunks of flesh with gleaming fangs. Jim dropped the oar and reached into his tackle bag. He brought out his slingshot, and fitted a water-worn pebble into the pouch. He had selected his ammunition from the bed of the stream at the north end of the estate, and each stone was round, smooth and perfectly weighted. Jim had practised with the slingshot until he could bring down a high-flying goose with four throws out of five. He wound up for the throw, swinging the slingshot overhead until it hummed with power. Then he released it and the pebble blurred from the pouch. It caught the dog seal in the centre of its rounded black skull and they heard the fragile bone shatter. The animal died instantly, and its carcass drifted away on the current, twitching convulsively.
'He won't be stealing any more fish.' Jim stuffed the slingshot back in the bag. 'And the others will have learned a lesson in manners.' The rest of the seal pack sheered away from the skiff. Jim took up the oar again, and they resumed their interrupted conversation.
Only the previous week Mansur had returned on one of the Courtney ships from a trading voyage up the east coast of Africa as far as the Horn of Hormuz. He was describing to them the wonders he had seen and the marvelous adventures he had shared with his father, who had captained the Gift of Allah.
Mansur's father, Dorian Courtney, was the other partner in the company. In his extreme youth he had been captured by Arabian pirates and sold to a prince of Oman, who had adopted him and converted him to Islam. His half-brother Tom Courtney was Christian, while Dorian was Muslim. When Tom had found and rescued his younger brother they had made a happy partnership. Between them they had entry to both religious worlds, and their enterprise had flourished. Over the last twenty years they had traded in India, Arabia and Africa, and sold their exotic goods in Europe.
As Mansur spoke Jim watched his cousin's face, and once again he envied his beauty and his charm. Mansur had inherited it from his father, along with the red-gold hair that hung thickly down his back. Like Dorian he was lithe and quick, while Jim took after his own father,
broad and strong. Zama's father, Aboli, had compared them to the bull and the gazelle.
'Come on, coz!' Mansur broke off his tale to tease Jim. 'Zama and I will have the boat filled to the gunwales before you have even woken up. Catch us a fish!'
'I have always prized quality above mere quantity,' Jim retorted, in a pitying tone.
'Well, you have nothing better to do, so you can tell us about your journey to the land of the Hottentots.' Mansur swung another gleaming flapping fish over the side of the skiff.
Jim's plain, honest face lit up with pleasure at the memory of his own adventure. Instinctively he looked northwards across the bay at the rugged mountains, which the morning sun was painting with brightest gold. 'We travelled for thirty-eight days,' he boasted, 'north across the mountains and the great desert, far beyond the frontiers of this colony, which the Governor and the Council of the VOC in Amsterdam have forbidden any man to cross. We trekked into lands where no white man has been before us.' He did not have the fluency or the poetic descriptive powers of his cousin, but his enthusiasm was contagious. Mansur and Zama laughed with him, as he described the barbaric tribes they had encountered and the endless herds of wild game spread across the-plains. At intervals he appealed to Zama, 'It's true what I say, isn't it, Zama? You were with me. Tell Mansur it's true.'
Zama nodded solemnly. 'It is
