The Cannibal Spirit (13 page)

The man's club fell to the ground and he fell after it, screaming. Harry could see the blood spilling from the wound and the man trying to stem it, and now the whites of the man's eyes were visible in his shock. There was a shout from the shore, then a thud on deck, even as Harry saw the head of the man in the hold emerge. He stood again and kicked out, but the man ducked back inside.

Harry spun round and saw a squat figure coming aft, crazily angled against the slanting deck, holding a short knife before him. The tears of pain in Harry's eyes made the figure blur and double. His balance seemed a thing both vague and complex, but he raised the machete and the figure stopped. Harry made to thrust at him. As he did so, his foot slipped in the blood on the deck. He toppled sideways even as the other man rushed at him. He rolled as he fell, trying to protect his damaged shoulder, and the
machete dropped from his grasp as he struck the deck. He turned over onto his back, his legs coming up protectively before him.

The man was on him immediately. Harry felt the knife slide along his shinbone. He kicked with both feet and one found a target in the darkness. He heard a grunt. The other man was still screaming. Harry flailed his hands around beside him, feeling for the machete, his vision still hazed. He saw the shadow of the third man, bent double from Harry's kick.

The fingers of his right hand touched the damp grain of the war club. They closed around it. He felt by its weight that he held it at its handle grip. The man was nearly on him again. Harry swung the club, clumsy, at the man's legs and felt it smash into flesh. The man shouted, stepped back and waited, wary, a few feet away.

Harry dragged himself backward until his spine rested against the gunnels. The man came down the slope and feinted to Harry's wounded left side. He weaved, though, and seemed unsteady himself. Sitting as he now was, his equilibrium improved, Harry brought the club in an arc around his body. The man dodged away but lost balance on the sloping deck. His leg hit the gunnels. He flipped over the side and Harry heard him go into the water.

He looked toward the hold, but the man inside had not yet reappeared. There was shouting now and uproar on shore. Lamps were moving on the plankway. The injured man had stopped his screaming, and now he was moaning more softly. Harry gasped air. He looked to his own injuries. His shirt was torn off his shoulder, and blood flowed down his arm. He saw that his shoulder was in a position outside of all sensibility. As seasoned in serious injuries as he was from years at sea, still he had to look away. The agony of it brought flashes of lightning across his vision. His lower leg was soaked with blood, though he felt nothing there. He rested his head back on the top of the gunnels. He tried not to scream himself.

Again the deck shuddered as someone, and another, and then more, jumped aboard.

“Fat Harry?” Charley came into his vision, Yagis's eldest son beside him. He heard shouts and curses and Charley's face disappeared again. Yagis was calling out, loud above the clamour from the shore. There was movement
now all around him, voices raised in Kwakwala, Charley's chief among them. He tried to focus. Men were standing on the deck, a couple of them holding lanterns. Some were crouched about the bleeding man. These men were close to violence, it seemed, making angry noises at Charley, who stood in front of Harry with Yagis's son beside him.

In the water behind his head something was splashing. There was laughter then, from those ashore, and jeering. Harry could see that on the plankway now the entire village had turned out. The men aboard stopped their arguing. They moved over and looked out.

The sounds told Harry the man who had gone overboard was thrashing in the thigh-deep water, caught in the deep mud beneath. Even the men on deck were laughing now. Charley knelt beside him.

“Okay, Fat Harry?”

Harry grunted. “Thief,” he managed.

“Them try steal liquor. You fight.”

“Who?”

“Wal'wid brother, him you cut. Wal'wid in water now.” He put his hands to Harry's shoulder. Harry groaned and cursed. “Shoulder come out,” Charley said. “Bad bleed. Big split. Not think broke. Club hit you?”

“Leg too,” Harry whispered. He closed his eyes. Charley took hold of his right foot and turned the shin against the light. “Bleed much here too. Make bandage quick. Not bad same shoulder.”

“Walewid's brother?”

“Him bad. Maybe die.”

“Bandages, disinfectant, sewing needles in the pilothouse. Right top cupboard.”

“First, shoulder go back in.” Charley rested his hands on him. “You ready?” Before Harry could speak, Charley shucked his shoulder back into its joint. He cried out and lost consciousness.

All was nausea and pain. Harry opened his eyes. Blurs of orange flame and shadows. Then movement. Charley squatted before him, doing something to his shin. The old man looked up when he felt Harry shift.

“Not move,” he said.

“How long?” said Harry, his memory returning. Phlegm was thick in the back of his throat, so that he croaked and was almost unintelligible.

Charley seemed to understand. “Sleep maybe five minute only,” he said.

“What happened?”

“Them take Poodlas, Wal'wid brother, in house. Him bad. Take Wal'wid from water. Him great shame. Very funny for people. Not funny for us. Him angry try come back on boat kill you. Yagis and sons stop him, and other people stop him. Now them wait, watch.” He pointed shoreward. Harry saw figures standing silhouetted against the light coming from the open entrance of Walewid's house.

Harry swore softly and tried to prop himself higher against the gunnels. He groaned as his shoulder howled protest. Charley helped him, then said, “Now not move,” and went back to sewing up the long, ragged wound in his shin. Harry hawked, turned his head and spat back into the water. Charley tied the thread and cut it away with the machete, unwieldy in such a delicate operation. He poured iodine down the injury from the bottle beside him. Harry snorted. Then Charley wrapped a bandage about his calf.

A voice raised a question from shore. Charley answered, “Ek.” A man came aboard and in the light of a lantern, which now hung from the mast, Harry saw it was Yagis.

“No good what happen,” the old man said. He sat beside Harry on the sloping deck. “We take you back my house now. Better look after you. More safe from Walewid as well.”

“I'll stay aboard,” said Harry. “I'd not risk my boat by not being here to protect it.”

Charley grunted in agreement. He finished the bandaging on Harry's leg and moved now to his shoulder.

“Right,” said Yagis. “We move boat down by my house better.” He looked overboard. “When tide back in. Maybe half-hour.” Already the
Hesperus
was listing less, trembling in the placid waves.

“Maybe better go leave when tide come back,” said Charley. Harry kept silent as Charley washed his shoulder in iodine, then dipped the needle
in the bottle before threading it once more. “Bruise here very big and big open cut on top. Much pain for sew back.” Then he pushed the needle in through Harry's skin and across and out again and tugged, and the broken edges of the wound were drawn together.

Yagis watched Harry, who just breathed heavily through his nose, knowing he was even now being judged on his strength of character. After a moment, Yagis seemed satisfied and nodded his head. “Better you go,” he said. “You give Walewid much shame. All know he wrong. He try steal from you and you fight and you win. Shame on him and family that he do wrong thing, and white man beat him in fight. And look stupid in water.” Yagis laughed, but with little humour. “Very funny. But if brother die, then more trouble.”

Charley finished his sewing. He took another bandage, tied it into a sling, wrapped it about Harry, and secured his arm tight against his chest. Harry rolled sideways, leaned out over the gunnels and threw up. Then he sent Charley down into the hold to bring up a bottle. He guzzled and passed it to Yagis. Together, they listened to the murmur of the people ashore, each staring at the deck and deep in their thoughts, waiting for what would come with the tide.

On shore there was a larger hubbub then. Harry saw a form in the doorway to Walewid's house that seemed some shapeless, writhing darkness, turning about, blocking sometimes half the firelight inside the house behind, as if it shrunk down to drift low upon the ground, then rearing up until only a sliver of light was visible. It twisted again, and now Harry could see that it had a head, and the profile was that of a wolf. The jaws snapped open and shut, the sound a sharp clack-clack that echoed against the darkness. Then it spoke in the throaty singsong of high Kwakwala. All fell silent to listen. The voice was Walewid's.

“What's he saying?” Harry asked Yagis, but the old man only motioned him to silence.

Charley leaned in and whispered along with the narration. “Talk about clan and ancestor. Make list of he names and dance and crest. Same way chief always start talk.” Now Walewid began to speak with greater passion. Charley was silent listening. Then he said, “Say you attack. Them come
boat fight back. Fat Harry and he family sell whisky, make Indian man poor and crazy. He say Killer Whale, meaning you and me people, soon get dead in belly of Wolf, mean him.”

He was silent again listening, and Harry heard notes of agreement muttered from the people on the shore. Charley shook his head. “Talk about George, he book, and about funeral. Say that not how Indian do. Shame to us.” He listened again. “Say him know old George out in forest somewhere in land of Nakwakto. Say you and George same family. So all same bad and must make punish from Indian. If him brother Poodlas die, then you, me, old George go be skull in Wal'wid house.”

Walewid finished speaking. Now he leapt forward into a crouch, the huge wolf mask shaking from side to side, the jaws snapping at the people nearby. He stood again and made threatening steps toward the
Hesperus
. He jumped back, then leapt forward again, howling out now, his voice almost a shriek at the end of its breath. Then he spun about and disappeared back inside.

“He speak enough true for men think too much now,” said Yagis. “All know he a fool and too much angry. But people also angry about George. Yes,” he said, as Harry, groggy now from pain, looked across to him. “This we all hear. Everyone hear all up and down coast for sure. George do bad things at he son funeral. If white man hear then more shame for us, they think we savages. And there be bad words to speak.” He spoke in Kwakwala to Charley, who shrugged and muttered something terse in reply. “Best you go quick,” Yagis said.

The
Hesperus
was floating now, although Harry could feel its bottom clipping the mud beneath on every ripple of the incoming tide. He reached behind him and tried to pull himself up with his good arm on the gunnels, but he gasped and slumped back to the deck.

“Not move,” said Charley. “I do.”

“Put me forward so I can help see the way at least.”

Yagis and Charley put their arms behind him. He groaned as they lifted him to his feet. He might have lost consciousness if his shoulder was not so shrill inside his head. Instead he was propped against the front of the pilothouse. Yagis raised his voice and one of his sons came aboard. Charley
pointed. The son took a bucket and leaned over the side. He threw several bucketloads of water across the deck, and it carried much of the blood away with it.

Yagis and his son stepped back ashore. They unmoored the
Hesperus
and pushed her back as Charley fired the engine. She chugged away from the village in reverse. Harry breathed as slowly as he was able. He watched the people on the plankway, who all were staring silently their way. He could not make out their expressions, standing with their backs to the shore-light, almost in silhouette. They did not move nor make a sound, and Yagis and his sons there with them, until the boat swung about and Harry could not see them any more.

“Go Alert Bay,” said Charley, when they had travelled a mile or so out into the waters of the inlet. “See doctor.”

Harry lay propped against the pilothouse. Charley had laid some sailcloth behind him and Harry's greatcoat over him. His head rolled with the swell. His mind drifted with blood loss and with whisky. He wanted nothing more than sleep.

He bent his right knee and pushed a little weight down through his leg. The wound on his shin smarted, but he could walk on it. His shoulder was worse, and the damage there would take far longer to repair.

Two things needed consideration. Firstly, his injuries. The one on his leg was near eight inches long, but not deep. The knife had merely slid along his shinbone and the wound should heal in time. The ragged, zigzag gash that ran down across his shoulder, resembling the broken skin of some dropped fruit, was not so good. It was a deep wound, and all around it heavily bruised from the impact of the war club. He'd seen dislocations before. It took many weeks to gain use again, and always discomfort to follow. Yet he had been fortunate: if it had connected directly, rather than just that glancing blow, it would surely have shattered the bones. Well, he'd broken bones before, his body was scarred in numerous places already, and of aches and grumbling joints he was possessed of plenty. A couple more were neither here nor there in the grander scheme.

With his good hand he drew the tattered edges of his shirt together until he felt more confident there were no parts missing that might have been buried in the wound, threatening infection. Still, with such gaping holes in him, the risk of contamination was there. He had sufficient iodine to bathe his injuries for many days as yet, however, and he'd weathered similar or worse before.

The second consideration was how quickly his strength would return. Well, he would eat something now, despite the nausea in his stomach, and he would drink water in quantity. Then sleep and, in the morning, he would know more about his condition.