Regardless, Seward credited the man’s steel for rarely did he lag and force the rope between them to tighten.
The masked men stopped at regular intervals to rest, chew up strips of jerky and share around flasks containing a tarry liquor that stung the lips and tongue so bad it had to be chased down with water.
Both Seward and Jacob relished the dried meat, and though the drink was a challenge to swallow, they found it invigorated their bodies, bringing them back a step or two from the grave and energizing them enough to make the next few miles at a stagger.
There were only ten savages left in the group that separated into even numbers ahead of and behind the captives who jogged between them. All of the masked men took turns on the pole in back from which the wretched ape’s head dangled in a cloud of flies.
Well before they’d lost the light, and Seward drifted into a hazy, timeless place of constant movement and pain, he had a chance to study his captors.
They wore leather loincloths over crudely fashioned woven britches that came down to the knee. While all had chest protectors of sticks and bones, and others grassy capes—the leader had a coat that was cut at the waist in front, but hung down to his knees in the back—a fashion that reminded the ranger of the tailcoats worn by soldiers of rank and favored by some of the high-born he’d seen at play in London.
The savages wore wooden masks carved and made to resemble oversized grinning skulls with a pair of crossed long bones cut into the wood beneath the chin. Long bunches of grass and hair hung down to hide the back of their heads like a wig.
At the first rest stop, the warriors had lifted their masks to eat, and both Seward and Jacob had seen the disfigured faces hidden beneath. For the youngest it was little more than a purplish scar or rotten wound on cheek or forehead; while the older savages showed missing lips, dripping blisters and lifeless eyes.
Seward did not know if the injuries had come from war or sickness, but he was relieved when the masks were set back over the wild men’s faces.
For weapons, they all carried clubs or axes and most had bows and arrows. About half of them had tall leaf-shaped shields.
The rest of the night was a torment to Seward as he jogged with thoughts coming like dreams, and in them he saw old friends from his rangering days who talked about action on the southern border.
“Saddle up,” they’d say but he’d suddenly remember that his friends were dead.
Which left, Seward waking up to find himself on his face in the mud on a riverbank, mumbling to the ghosts of his compadres as his captors whipped and beat him to his feet again.
Then after a quick, thick gulp of their foul tonic, he’d push on.
At sunup he had a moment’s clarity to look back and see Jacob there, face ashen, stumbling after him.
“Sorry to see you ain’t dead,” the ranger had drawled. “I reckon that’s the best we can hope for.”
It was mid-morning when the group struggled through a shallow, foggy stream and came to a halt on the pale clay slope of the opposite shore. There the early light and mist played eerily across their captors’ savage masks.
With a glance at these, and a look at the village where the fog rose around a fence of poles, Seward shouted through his exhaustion.
“Well, I didn’t get the joke, but there it is! Skull and crossbones!” he cackled, mad with exhaustion. A puzzle had preyed upon his mind. Black flags similarly decorated had once flown from the masts of pirate ships along the Gulf Coast. “These ain’t savages, they’re sailors—and that’s their boat!”
With his bound hands he pointed at the “village” that was protected by a palisade of tightly spaced and rounded timbers of 20 feet and more in height. They were lashed together up to their pointed ends to form a wall that from Seward’s vantage point rose to left and right in the distinct outline of a ship.
Behind the palisade, three-masts were evenly spaced along the construction’s length and towered over the surroundings, rising up to almost touch the leafy jungle canopy that closed at intervals overhead.
To Seward’s left, the stern stood some 30 feet tall in defense of a solid structure on stilts that resembled a poop deck, while on his right the prow was raised skyward and held aloft a great elephant’s skull with curved tusks.
“Dear Lord, I’m crazy or I’ve gone to Hell,” the old ranger muttered, and then laughed dangerously as he rolled his eyes at Jacob. “It’s anchors aweigh!”
“But...but—how can this be?” the manservant gasped, wincing.
Seward staggered in place glancing at Jacob who stood wide eyed, and back again to the unbelievable ship in the misty jungle. He imagined the uncanny thing rising and falling on frothy green waves.
Voices rang within, and men scurried down from the center mast while others of these fellows shinnied up ropes, and climbed upon a spider web of rigging that was slung between the three uprights, in place for doing all manner of business.
The knotted lines on the foremast looked to be used by the butcher for large string bags of meat were hanging there, while over the stern, reams of colored cloth fluttered in odd shapes and sheets—freshly dyed perhaps, or new-washed.
The leader of their captors shouted something in his sing-song gab, and there was sudden movement behind the wall before a gate swung open, hung from pillars center to the ship’s starboard side.
“It is a boat, Captain,” Jacob whispered, as the large door was
