The Rape of Venice (25 page)

He backed his opinion that God meant him to live with the facts that, of the dozen men who had been with him on the raft when it went under, he alone had come up still clinging to it; that, although most of the gear they had lashed onto it had been torn away by the force of the whirlpool, the one essential to life—a six-gallon keg of water—had been held fast by its moorings; and that although their box of food had been swept away, Clarissa had brought a good quantity of meat and biscuits in the pockets of her cloak, of which he might now expect a share in return for a share of his water.

While they had been talking, the swift darkness of the tropics had fallen; so, considerably cheered by Bodkin's conviction that the Almighty had them under his special protection, they settled down for the night. It was warm enough for them to use their sodden cloaks as pillows but there was little else they could do for their comfort, and for a good part of the long hours that followed they lay gazing up at the brightly twinkling stars in the dark vault overhead, wondering unhappily if there really was much chance of being rescued within the next few days.

When dawn at last came, although the swell had gone down and so much increased their field of vision none of the other rafts was to be seen. The only trace of the
Minerva
, other than themselves, was a broken hen-coop bobbing up and down some
dozen yards away. Bill Bodkin was most anxious to secure it, but he could not swim; so Roger took off his outer garments, which had dried during the night, went in and brought it alongside.

The coop contained ten chickens. Waves breaking over the stern of the
Minerva
had drowned all the live-stock on her poop; so the birds must have been dead for at least two days and, during their immersion in the sea, small fish, having got between their feathers, had, in places, nibbled their flesh away to the bone; so Roger thought their find useless. But Bodkin said that if the birds were gutted, salt water would preserve their meat for a while, and if it did turn their stomachs it could anyway be used as bait for fish; then he promptly set about dealing with this windfall.

During the day the big, bearded Quartermaster busied himself in a dozen other ways. He counted the chairs a great blessing, as the worst enemy of people adrift on a raft in the tropics was the power of the sun. The wood and canvas of the chairs could be used to make a shelter and, perhaps, even a squat mast with a sail. While he worked away with his sharp jack-knife, Roger unravelled the strands of the rope and Clarissa unpicked the stitching of some of the canvas chair seats.

By midday they had rigged up a temporary structure that would give them some protection from the searing rays which by then threatened them with severe sunburn, and after lying for two hours sweating under it they again set to work further to improve their situation.

Next day, from the twine binding that Clarissa had unpicked, Bodkin made a fishing line and baited it with the entrails of one of the chickens. The result was most unwelcome. Within a few minutes the bait was taken and the line snapped. Peering over the side of the raft down through the clear water they caught the flash of a white belly. As they watched, it turned over, merging into a long grey shape that shot upwards. A moment later an eight-foot shark broke the surface within a few feet of the raft.

Roger remarked that he had been surprised that sharks had not arrived on the scene to attack the many men swimming in the sea shortly after the
Minerva
went down. Bodkin told him that, during rough weather, sharks kept well under water, but he added that, now it was calm and they had attracted one, the brute would never leave them till they were either dead or rescued. And so it proved. A more gentle wind was still wafting
them north-westward towards the distant coast of Africa and hour after hour the triangular fin of the great fish now cut through the water, like a small sail, as it followed in their wake. It was still there when they roused up to face their third day on the raft.

That day they completed and rigged a low sail. With their very limited resources there was then no more that they could do, except try to keep cheerful and prevent their thoughts dwelling on how long they had to wait until they were due for the next meagre ration of water and food, which was all they allowed themselves thrice daily.

As an aid to keeping their minds occupied, they started singsongs, but soon gave up because in the great heat singing parched their throats and made them crave more than ever for a drink. Instead, they took turns to tell stories, and played guessing games; but Bodkin was not much good at either, and having no education except in seamanship, was often at a loss to understand what his companions were talking about.

Yet he fared better than they did physically, for he was much tougher. In spite of every precaution to keep in the shade, it proved impossible to protect more than their heads for any length of time; so from their first full day on the raft both Clarissa and Roger suffered a great deal from sunburn on the backs of their hands, ankles and insteps.

From dawn to dusk each day they took hourly turns at the duty of keeping a constant watch for a ship on the horizon, and from a strip of Clarissa's petticoat they had made a flag to wave as a signal should they see one. But they watched in vain; the weather remained calm, the sky a brassy blue and the ocean empty.

Bill Bodkin remained optimistic about their chances of being picked up, but Roger had all he could do to hide his growing fears from Clarissa. They still had water enough to last them for another week, but they had had to finish the meat up on the third day because the heat was beginning to turn it bad; it was futile to fish because the shark would have snapped up anything they caught before they could pull it in and, although they had been allowing themselves only one thick ship's biscuit each a day, their sixth night on the raft would find them food-less. Already they were suffering pangs of hunger and conjuring up visions of their favourite dishes, so he dreaded to think of the state to which they would be reduced when they
had not even a morsel of stale baked flour and water with which, every few hours, to still their cravings.

By the fifth day they had almost given up talking and lay for long periods silent and unmoving, trying to keep their thoughts off such heavenly delights as fresh juicy fruits, chilled white wine, cold lobsters and iced
parfaits
. All through the day they sweltered, protected only by the thin canvas of the chairs from the direct rays of the blazing sun. At last it set and with darkness they dropped off into a fitful doze.

It was Clarissa who roused them. A little after midnight she shook Roger by the shoulder, and said in a husky voice: ‘Have I been dreaming, or is the air different? It has become … well, balmy describes it; and it smells scented … like apple pie.'

Bodkin had woken on the instant. He sniffed loudly, then exclaimed: ‘You're right, Missey! Praise be to God! I believe we're hard by the Isle of Cloves!'

Hurriedly they wriggled out from under the flimsy shelter and stood up. Clearly defined against the starlit sky a jagged frieze of blackness rose from the horizon towards which the raft was drifting. There could be no doubt about its being a coast-line. It seemed to them an interminable time before they came any closer to it, but actually within an hour they could make out groups of tall palms standing out from a solid mass along a low shore, and the white line of foam as curling waves broke upon it.

There followed twenty minutes of agonised waiting. From fear that their dread companion, the shark, was still lurking somewhere nearby in the darkness, they dared not attempt to swim ashore. They could only pray that the tide would not turn and carry the raft out to sea again before it was cast up on the beach.

At last it was caught in the boiling surf, whirled round and turned over. As they were dashed from it a wave broke over them, but their hands and knees met slithering pebbles. They staggered to their feet. Roger and Bodkin each seized Clarissa by an arm. But they could not advance; the undertow was too strong for them. Another wave hit them and flung them forward. Again they were on their knees, but this time in shallower water. Once more they strove to get a firm foothold on the treacherous shingle. Step by step they fought the backwash. One final effort and the three of them, drenched and breathless but triumphant, lurched clear of the water and threw themselves down on the pebbly strand.

For some minutes they lay where they had fallen, spitting out water and getting back their breath. As soon as they had recovered, they moved farther up the steeply shelving shore to the dark line of trees, and found beneath them thick jungle; so they settled down on its fringe and, wearied out, dozed there for the rest of the night.

When dawn came they saw that they were near one extremity of a long bay. Towards its centre there were sandy stretches, but from end to end jungle, topped by tall palm trees, enclosed it, and it held no habitation or sign of life.

While they were on the raft, anxiety to be saved from death upon it had dominated their minds; now they felt they were in little better case, for they knew only that they had been cast up somewhere upon the immensely long, unexplored coast of East Africa, so must face many perils before they could hope to reach a place of safety.

But their empty stomachs were rumbling with hunger, so their first thought was to find food. The jungle was thick but not impenetrable, and quite near in from its edge they came upon several kinds of trees bearing fruit. All of them were strange so they feared that some might be poisonous, but they were so hungry that they had to take that risk. They minimised it by each eating only of one sort and only enough to still their immediate craving.

Fearing that they might get lost if they went deeper in, they returned to the beach and made their way round the point of the bay, hoping that on its far side they might find a native village, but they were disappointed; another long stretch of desolate shore lay before them.

The scent of cloves was again strong in the balmy air, and Bodkin said he had heard tell that the Portuguese had a settlement on the Isle of Cloves, for collecting the clove crop and shipping it to Europe; so if this was the island, a few hours walk should bring them to a plantation and the means of getting back to civilisation.

Cheered by this thought, they set off along the shore, but they had not gone far before Clarissa complained of pains in her stomach and there could be little doubt that the particular fruit she had eaten had poisoned her. Halting, they sat her down in the shade of a palm and Roger told her that she must make herelf sick. But she could not, so Bodkin fetched sea-water in a large leaf and they kept pouring it down her throat until she vomited.

Still racked with pain she rolled from side to side; her skin was hot and large red blotches appeared upon it. Bodkin stood by, murmuring from time to time, ‘Poor Missey! Oh, the poor Missey, and she so brave too,' while Roger, distraught with fear that she was about to die, alternatively pressed her hands and soothed her burning forehead.

For over an hour she writhed and groaned; but then her pains gradually eased, and it was clear that having made her sick as soon as possible had saved her. Her ordeal had left her much too exhausted to walk for some time to come; so they decided to stay where they were through the rest of the morning and until the midday heat was well past.

Bodkin suggested that by noon the stones on the beach would be so hot that it should be possible to part-cook slices of meat with them; so Roger got out his pistols and powder flask with the intention of shooting a bird, or one of the small animals of which they had seen several rooting about in the fringe of the jungle.

Their sadly tattered clothes had dried on them, but the powder was still damp; so Roger spread it out on his handkerchief to dry in the sun. As soon as it was ready he began to prime his pistols, and he was still working on the second when Bodkin gave a sudden joyous shout:

‘Sail ahoy! Sail ahoy!'

Unnoticed by them until then, a boat with a single triangular sail had come round the promontory and was now crossing the bay. Bodkin ran down to the edge of the sea, shouting and waving. There were half a dozen men in the boat; they waved back, then altered course and brought their craft close in. As it approached, Roger could see that the men in it were coal-black, fuzzy-haired, and naked except for loin-cloths, and had pieces of bone stuck through their noses.

As he watched he wondered uneasily if it would be wise to trust themselves to these savages. Apart from a few trading centres, mostly separated by many hundreds of miles, Africa, south of its Mediterranean shore, was totally unknown, and tales came back to Europe that its black inhabitants included races of ape-men, dwarfs and cannibals.

To have escaped drowning, starvation and the shark would be no comfort if they were to be killed with fiendish rites as food for a tribe of man-eaters. Yet their only hope of ever getting back to civilisation lay in reaching a port and their prospects of doing so, without guides and help, were infinitesimal;
so he could only be thankful that, for the moment at least, the natives in the boat showed no signs of hostility. All the same, he felt sure that at best they would not be able to keep their hands off his jewellery; so he swiftly transferred his beautiful diamond brooch from his cravat, and his ring from his finger, to the fob pocket of his breeches.

With great dexterity the natives manoeuvred the boat in lowered its sail and, judging the big rollers to a nicety, ran it ashore. Jumping out, they dragged it clear of the surf, then formed an excited, jabbering group about the castaways. By pointing at the jungle, Clarissa, her mouth, and then rubbing his own tummy, Roger indicated that she had eaten some poisonous fruit and their grimaces showed that they understood him. The oldest among them, a tall lean man with a lined face and a fringe of grizzled curls round an otherwise bald pate, made strange clicking noises with his mouth and tongue, upon which two of the others picked up Clarissa as though she weighed no more than a sack of feathers and ran with her down to the boat.