Hawkwood's Voyage

anything else; all the crew had been well briefed, and Velasca knew his duty.

The lines were flung clear of the gunwales and the oars were lowered. The men began to row steadily, the exertion squeezing sweat out of their pores despite the youth of the morning. The ship grew smaller behind them.

There was a long gap in the breakers which would have accommodated the Osprey the night before, had there been the light to see it. The two boats powered through, lifted and tossed by the breaking waves. Within the reefs the water was calmer and they could see a ribbon of white sand fringing the unbroken curtain of jungle ahead.

“Captain!” one of the men cried. “Captain, look aft, on the landward side of the reef!”

Hawkwood and Murad turned as one to squint into the morning sun.

“I can’t—” Murad began, and then was silent.

There on the westward side of the reef was the fragment of a ship. It was a beakhead part of a keel and a few other skeletal timbers. It looked as though the ship had run full tilt upon the reef, the fore part of the hull riding over it, the rest smashed away and sunk.

It was the Grace of God.

Men made the Sign of the Saint at their breasts, murmuring. Hawkwood’s eyes were stinging as though in sympathy with his aching shoulder. To have come so far only to fail. So many good men.

“God have mercy on them,” he murmured.

“Could any have survived?” Murad asked.

He shook his head slowly, studying the fragmented wreck and the booming surf, the jagged reef. It was sheer fluke that a portion of the ship had remained caught on the reef; it had been wedged there by the explosive force of the breakers. Only a miracle could have preserved those aboard.

“We are alone then,” Murad said.

“We are alone,” Hawkwood agreed.

The water shallowed. They could feel the heat of the land like a wall. The men raised their oars and a few seconds later the bottom of the boats kissed the sand.

Richard Hawkwood splashed out of the first boat, closely followed by Murad. Through the noise of the breakers out on the reef a glimmer of strange birdsong could be heard from the wall of jungle ahead.

They walked up out of the shallows and stood in hot white sand with the early sun heating their backs. The crews hauled the boats out of the water and stood panting. Soldiers held their arquebuses at the ready.

Murad turned to look at Hawkwood, and without a word they both began walking up the blazing beach, to where the jungle of the Western Continent gleamed dark and impenetrable before them.