The Rape of Venice (24 page)

Already, although no panic showed, it was a seething mass of people, many of whom were working on rafts with desperate haste, while others, whose faces showed them to be half-stunned with fear, stood staring in horrified silence at the fo'c's'le, which was now awash with water.

A boat towards the stern on the port side was being lowered. Lady Beaumont was in it. Catching sight of Clarissa she shouted and beckoned, but her voice was drowned by the din; next moment the falls were let go and the boatload of people disappeared from view.

Another boat on the starboard side was being manned. A midshipman ran up to Clarissa, seized her by the arm and tried to drag her towards it. She shook him off and refused to go. It was as well. A few minutes later, as the boat, now
crammed with people, was lowered, the after fall jammed; its bows went down with a rush, precipitating everyone in it into the heaving sea.

Some rafts, heavily loaded, mostly with soldiers, were already floating off from the half-submerged fo'c's'le. Groups of men, odd passengers and officers, either squatted on, or stood near, all the others. Desperately Roger looked round for something buoyant which would support Clarissa and himself. Suddenly his eye lit on a stack of deck chairs which had already been firmly lashed together to prevent their being swept overboard.

Pieces of torn sail and lengths of severed rope littered the deck about them. Snatching up one of the pieces of rope, Roger set frantically to work. With Clarissa's help he threaded it twice through the chairs and twice right round the stack. Next he tied one end of the rope round Clarissa's waist and the other end round his own. Then he cut the cords that held the stack of chairs to the deck.

They had hardly done, and climbed on to the stack, when the squat figure of Winters came blundering through the crowd towards them.

‘Clarissa!' he cried. ‘Clarissa! I have been searching for you everywhere! Why did you not seek a place in one of the boats?'

‘Because they are too heavy laden,' Roger replied tersely for her. ‘If the wind gets up again the water will wash over their gunwales; they'll be swamped and everyone in them drowned.'

‘Then … then …' Winters stammered, ‘you'll be safer using these chairs as a raft. Make room for me, I implore you.'

In this crisis, which might so soon lead to their deaths, the last thing that either Roger or Clarissa wanted was to have Winters with them; yet they could hardly refuse. The whole of the front half of the ship was now under water. A wavelet lapped at the chairs on which they were sitting. Although there was barely room Winters, without waiting for a reply, scrambled up beside Clarissa.

A moment later the deck suddenly tilted, launching the stack of chairs onto the water. Above them the tip of the mainmast seemed to sweep forward. The stern of the ship rose up against the sky. There were shrieks, cries and imprecations. As the sea surged across the deck, the rafts were thrown one against another; many of the occupants were pitched into the water Shouts, prayers and a great roar of rushing waters filled the air.

Through the babbling water, Roger caught a glimpse of the deck, now sliding swiftly away twelve feet below them. A wave swept several of the rafts, and the stack of chairs, just clear of the bulwark. The
Minerva
, only a few feet from them, was now standing on end, her bowsprit ten fathoms down, her poop reared up towards the sky. A cluster of men dived from it; without a sound it slid swiftly downwards. With the rush of waters, the windows of the stern cabin shattered and through them fountains of foam spurted into the air. In a matter of moments, it was all over. The fine ship had totally disappeared.

Some of the crowded rafts had already overturned and the men from them were fighting in the water. The men on the others were awed into silence. Suddenly there was a shout:

‘The whirlpool! The whirlpool!'

The cluster of rafts began to circle. A hideous conical pit had formed at the spot where the
Minerva
had gone down. Raft after raft was drawn into it and sucked under. The chairs, in turn, raced round it for a moment then the stack tilted and was engulfed. Roger threw an arm round Clarissa. Next second they were plunged beneath the surface; blinded, their mouths full of water, they felt themselves rushing downwards to die with the ship from which they thought they had escaped.

Although they were within a few degrees of the equator the water had struck chill as it surged-over them. But in a moment all sensation was forgotten, except the pain and terror of suffocation. They had been drawn into the whirlpool so swiftly that they had not even had time to gulp in a deep breath. The sea had slapped into their partly open mouths, blinded their eyes and rushed up their nostrils.

The
Minerva
, plunging to the depths, dragged them after her—down, down, down. It seemed that, like stones cast into a pond, they would never stop until they reached bottom. With every intant, greater pressure upon their chests and backs threatened to force out the air remaining in their lungs. The blood throbbed madly in their temples and their eyes started from their sockets.

Suddenly the water below them seemed to open. They shot down at still greater speed, were flung head over heels, whirled round, then felt themselves being carried swiftly upwards. Another few awful moments and they were catapulted several feet above the surface of the sea. Then they splashed into and under it. Temporarily, they had been saved from drowning by the final death throe of the
Minerva
. The increasing pressure on the air caught in her between decks had caused it to burst out in a great bubble; like rocks caught up in a volcanic eruption, they had been hurled by it right out of the water.

Flailing his arms wildly, Roger came to the surface again. He was still tied by the rope's end to the stack of chairs, and it bobbed up beside him. Gasping in breath and dashing the water from his eyes, he looked round for Clarissa, but could not see her. The chairs were riding some three feet out of the
water, so the level of the uppermost one was well above his head. The rope by which he was tied to them was too short to allow of his swimming round the chairs, so he grasped the top one and strove to haul himself up onto the top of the stack.

Under his weight the stack tipped sharply but did not turn over, as he feared it would. When he had struggled onto it he saw the reason. To his immense relief Clarissa was on its far side and it was her weight which had kept the stack steady enough for him to get up on it.

An instant later his relief at seeing her was submerged in a wave of fury. The tipping of the stack had brought her up, but as it rolled back her head went under water. At the first glance he had taken in only the fact that Winters was beside and just below her. Now he realised that her husband, not being roped to the stack, had evidently been swept from it as it went down, and had saved himself by clinging to her.

Winters's upturned face showed that he was half mad from terror. With his right hand he was striving frantically but unsuccessfully to grab the nearest chair strut; his left was clasped firmly on the collar of Clarissa's cape. But for the rope round her waist they would both have gone under. As it was, the rope was taut, and his pull on her had dragged her backwards. Each time he heaved himself up in an attempt to get a hold on the chairs, his weight forced her head below the water. She writhed and struggled, but as he was behind her she could do nothing to free herself.

‘Let go!' snarled Roger, his eyes blazing. ‘Let go, God damn you!'

‘Help!' gasped Winters. ‘Help!'

At that moment, by a great effort, Clarissa managed to get her head right round. Baring her teeth she bit savagely into the hand that threatened to drown her. With a yelp of pain Winters let go his hold, but at once he made another grab at her. Kicking out she eluded his clutch, then struck him in the face with her clenched fist. His hands shot up, clawing at the air, then he sank from sight.

Roger, sprawled on the top of the stack of chairs, and encumbered by his heavy saturated clothing, had, in these few brief moments, been unable to aid Clarissa, but he had managed to wriggle his sword out of its sheath. As Winters came struggling back to the surface, he brandished it and cried:

‘You miserable coward! Lay hand on her again and I'll kill you!'

‘Mercy!' Winters croaked, spluttering out a mouthful of water. ‘Give me a hand! I can't swim! I'll drown if you don't help me!'

At that despairing cry Roger's heart softened. There were reasons enough why he would have liked to see Winters drown. His death would free Clarissa from her entanglement; but, more important at the moment, on the surface of the chair-stack there was barely room for two people to lie down. Three would mean acute discomfort and seriously reduce the chances of any of them-surviving. Yet the fact that Winters had clutched at Clarissa was at least palliated by his being unable to swim and, before his mind had become temporarily deranged by fear of death, he had shown himself to be a generous and honourable man.

Seeing that Clarissa was now supporting herself without difficulty, Roger flattened himself again and stretched out a hand to Winters. He grasped it with a grateful sob of thanks and was drawn near enough to the stack to get a hold upon it. Turning back to Clarissa, Roger drew her up onto its narrow surface. With her feet still dangling in the water, she collapsed upon it. She had not fainted, but the ordeal she had just been through had left her near exhaustion. Roger began to chafe her hands and, while doing so, had his first chance to look about him.

Now that the raft of chairs was supporting three people it was very low in the water, and while crouching on it Roger's field of view was confined to an area of a few hundred yards. The oily post-storm swell now rose and fell rhythmically, the wave crests no longer breaking but just flecked with foam. On one of them a longboat stood out for a minute or two against the still sullen sky. It was packed with people but the distance was too great for him to identify any of them. Round it in the water there bobbed a cluster of heads, from which came faint cries as the swimmers pleaded to be taken into the already overloaded boat, and struggled for places at which to cling to the cords along its sides.

Within sight there was at least a score of rafts. Some were crowded and some, having been drawn under by the whirlpool and since returned to the surface, were empty. The great air bubble had thrown up from the depths fifty or sixty men, and each of them was now striving to reach the raft nearest to him. A group of four soldiers, two swimming strongly and a third supporting the fourth, were heading for the chairs and only a
dozen yards away. Roger pointed to an empty raft some sixty feet distant and shouted:

‘Over there! Over there! These chairs can carry no more weight. You'll only sink us.' But, ignoring him, the swimmers continued to come on.

A few more strokes and the two strongest reached Winters. Wrenching him from his hold, they thrust him back and attempted to clamber up on the chairs. Roger, now kneeling, and sword in hand again, cursed and threatened them. Panting, they cursed back at him. Under their combined weight the chairs dipped dangerously. Seeing no alternative but death for Clarissa and himself, Roger slashed swiftly with his blade at the soldiers' clutching hands. Wailing and groaning they snatched their bleeding fingers away, and struck out for the empty raft. Their two struggling companions turned and followed.

Brief as the encounter was, Roger had temporarily lost sight of Winters. Now he realised that the near exhausted merchant, robbed of his support, had again gone under. The patch of sea where he had been remained empty. Roger stared at it and round about for some while, but Winters did not reappear. There could be little doubt that he had gone down for good.

Within the next ten minutes, Fate swiftly dealt out death or a new chance of life for many people. A score of men who endeavoured to get onto already full rafts were thrust off to drown; the others hauled themselves up onto the empty rafts and squatted bemused upon them. After a babble of shouts, prayers, and curses, a brooding silence descended on the scene.

Roger, meanwhile, had lifted Clarissa's legs from the water and laid her down at full length. She smiled up at him, showing that she was still both conscious and in good heart; but it was only with difficulty that he returned her smile, for he felt that their chances of being picked up before they were driven mad by thirst and hunger were extremely slender.

During the long afternoon, governed by their wind-resistance, or lack of it, some of the rafts dispersed over a wider area while others drew together and, a little before sundown, one with a single occupant drifted to within thirty feet of them. It consisted of a nine-foot square hatchway, so its surface, strength and buoyancy were all greater than the precariously lashed together float of chairs on which Roger and Clarissa were so uncomfortably perched.

Roger hailed the man on it and he proved to be one of the
Minerva's
Quartermasters. He said that all his mates had been washed from the raft when it had been sucked under, and that he would welcome company; so Roger slipped into the water and, with the rope still round his waist, towed the chairs alongside the hatchway. As the latter was so much more stable, Roger and Clarissa were able, as soon as they were on it, to dispense with the rope's ends round their waists and, at the suggestion of the occupant of the raft, the rope was used, with his help, to secure one half of the chairs on each side of it to give it still greater buoyancy.

The Quartermaster's name was Bill Bodkin and, after they had talked to him for a while, they felt they were lucky to have chanced on such a companion. He was a big, brown-bearded man of about forty, with an open face and cheerful disposition. From boyhood all his life had been spent at sea and, while he admitted that their situation was about as bad as it could be, having twice before been wrecked and picked up in the ocean he was optimistic enough to believe that he would escape death a third time.