Wake of the Perdido Star (26 page)

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Authors: Gene Hackman

BOOK: Wake of the Perdido Star
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Jack pulled the weapon out, drew back the lock, and took two steps toward the enemy's lead canoe. The wild, gap-toothed smile returned to the Papaloan's face as he looped a foot over the side of the canoe and raised his blood-smeared club in Jack's direction. Jack waited with a strange heart-pounding calm until his assailant was almost within striking distance. Just as the warrior raised his club to let it smash down on the young man's head, Jack pulled the trigger. The report was enormous. The metal ball pierced the man's chest and he let out a shattering wail as he fell to his knees.
“Smile at that, you murderin' dog.”
Jack stepped forward in the stunned silence, grabbed the hair bun of the fallen native, and smashed the butt of the pistol into his head again and again.
His white comrades, less startled than the natives by the sound of the gunshot, charged back into the water to Jack's side. They were led by Quince, who wielded his cutlass in his left hand. The second Papaloan canoe had pulled into the fray, but the attackers were still confused by the noise and nature of their opponents. The momentum of the charge had been broken, and a hail of Belauran spears from behind the white men pierced several of the attackers in the second canoe.
For a moment the newcomers backed off to gather their wits. The first arrivals sent to flank the Belaurans on the beach now returned to their canoes, apparently to join their comrades; but as they paddled furiously for open water, Jack saw the real cause of their retreat. The main Belauran force was coming to the attack.
It ended quickly for the men in Jack's party. Quince finally took the pistol from his hand. “It's okay, lad,” he said. “I think you've killed him enough.”
Jack made his way back to the beach with great difficulty. His feet were shredded by the coral, and he couldn't fathom how he had charged to the canoe over the sharp bottom. He sat on the ground, drained of emotion. He was bleeding, but had not a scratch on him from an enemy. And much of the blood and slime covering him, he now realized, was not his own.
He and his mates looked seaward, watching the drama unfold. It was largely anticlimactic; the Papaloans yelled belligerent threats at the Belaurans and came near enough to throw spears, but they clearly were not going to engage Gan Jawa's superior force. Jack's mates asked how he was doing and patted him occasionally on the back, except for Cheatum and Smithers. But things were different for them now regarding wee Jack. He could see it in their faces as he boarded a canoe for the islet.
Jack knew there would be great feasting in the Belauran village the next day over the victory, and their party would be the center of the celebration. After all, they had repelled a surprise attack and, though one Belauran was killed, a Papaloan warrior had been sent to his maker by Jack, and at least two others seriously wounded by Jawa's men. Jack, for his part, felt relieved to be heading back to their sanctuary.
“Paul, I didn't ever think you'd be speechless,” he said when his friend drew alongside, pale, white, and shaking. Jack felt nothing but a numbness and didn't know if that was a good thing or not.
Paul leaned over the side of the canoe and vomited. The paddlers slowed while he gathered himself. Jack leaned forward and
gently laid his hand on Paul's shoulder. But even as he did so, he knew it was he who needed solace.
There were no mosquitoes in the evening breeze, warm off the water. The night wrapped itself about Jack and his lids grew heavy. This is a strange land, a foreign place, he thought. I have never been in a place so foreign. A high cloud must have passed because there stood the Southern Cross, suddenly in bright relief. You know you are in a different world when there are even different stars in the night sky. I killed a man today. Strange. It is a strange thing to kill. In the heat of battle I felt rage, then what? Desperate joy that this man would smile no more at the thought of killing me or my friends? But now why do I feel so empty? No joy, no sorrow. And the warrior I killed, where is that man now, only a memory, a thought? My mother and father, are they just memories? This morning a man breathed the moist air of this land, with that smell I love of the mangrove coals burning in the hearth. Tonight, he nourishes worms. He will never feel his stomach growl, tell a joke, have a woman.... I feel no remorse, but somehow it is sad.
My friends think me fierce now, a great warrior. What would they think if they knew all this great warrior wants right now is to crawl into bed next to his mother? Have her hold him, as she did when he was six years old. “Mi hijo,” she would tell him, “all will be well.” It is a strange thing to kill. But I live to kill, don't I? To do to the count what I did to this man.
I
T WAS LIGHT and Jack was awake, disturbed by a noise. It was Wyalum, rustling about the palm frond pallet. She had a half coconut shell full of a wonderfully soothing ointment that she began applying to his cuts.
Moments before she was in his dreams, caressing him in a way that made it difficult for Jack to now keep from blushing in her presence. She finished with the ointment and began straightening the bed around his midsection, watching curiously and shamelessly the movement in his trousers. Jack reactively pulled his knees up and covered himself clumsily with his hands. There was no reaction from the girl but he knew his face was now crimson.
The girl's eyes were brown, her hair raven black. High cheekbones topped an almost continuous half smile, accentuated by full lips. She placed a hand on his chest. He tried to ignore the stirring in his loins, the tightening in his stomach. He took her hand and gently pushed it aside. “I have to go.” He pointed toward the beach.
Still only the half smile.
Jack rose shakily and backed away from the pallet, leaving her sitting there.
A new arrival had taken in the last of this encounter, but Jack knew who it was before he heard his voice. This would be no islander: the sound of the heavy boots and the fumes from his pipe had already announced his identity.
“Well, lad, yer having a time of it, aren't ye?”
Quince was smiling. Humiliated, Jack realized that, to the mate, he was still wee Jack in one respect. Jack O'Reilly—runaway, sailor, survivor of shipwrecks, warrior, apparent leader of men—had yet to realize his manhood. Quince puffed his pipe thoughtfully and remarked more gently than Jack might ever have thought possible, “No belly-warmers for you, eh, Jack? Never parted a woman's thighs?” He continued his soliloquy without regard to Jack's lack of response. “There's time lad. Take her easy, slow and easy.” He turned and with a jerk of his head motioned Jack toward the beach.
As they made their way, Jack became aware of the sharp sound of lumber, wrenched from iron fittings. The capstan was free from the wreck and being attached to a makeshift raft by the Belaurans, working under Mentor's supervision. Most of the
Star'
s crew were clustered about the water, deep in discussion. Quince and Jack passed close enough to hear their words.
“The aft hold is sixty feet deep. May as well be a thousand,” Dawkins muttered.
“Remember them wogs gettin' the fish? Bet they could get down there,” Red Dog added.
“Maybe,” Quince said as he joined the group. “But they wouldn't have time for more than a quick Hail Mary before they'd have to come back up.”
“Aye, I saw something used in England on a ship salvage that'd do the job,” said Mentor.
“What's 'at?” from Brown.
“A Lethbridge they called it. A kinda barrel a man could get in like his own coffin. They'd lower 'im down to Davy's Locker and he'd grab things or rig lines for liftin'.”
“How'd he grab things if he was in a barrel?” asked Jacob.
“Had armholes, it did.” Mentor ran his hands up and down his own arms to illustrate his answer, obviously enjoying the attention from his fellow sailors. “The bloke'd stick his arms through the holes, and leather sleeves'd keep the water from going in and drownin' his arse. He could see through glass, mind ya, a glass port right in the bottom of the barrel. Yeah, stay down for hours, he could.”
Jack let the image form in his mind. He doubted a man could stay down for hours, but the idea of a diving machine was intriguing. All seamen knew that a host of suicidal contraptions had been used from time immemorial in the attempt to salvage valuables from sunken ships. Few knew anything about them and most thought anybody who would purposely venture beneath the ocean's surface was a lunatic. In fact, very few of Jack's fellows could swim more than a few strokes to save their lives—and saving their lives was the only sufficient motivation to swim at all.
The Lethbridge story captivated Jack. The others moved on to other tales of daring and shipwrecks, but he was fascinated by Mentor's account. He noticed that Quince was also preoccupied; he, too, had heard of the device.
Jack knew it would be impossible to manufacture such diving hardware on a primitive island, but he had a basic idea of how a diving bell worked from illustrations he had seen in a book. There was a cooper among the survivors and there were the makings of hundreds of whale oil barrels as part of the ship's cargo. His mind wandered back to his little experiment with the drinking glass and piece of cloth in Quen-Li's pot.
Jack approached his mates. “We could make a diving bell,” he said matter of factly.
The subsequent silence was complete.
“What's 'at now, lad?” Mentor asked.
“A bell, a diving bell. Maybe we could make a diving bell.” The men were slower to laugh at Jack these days. While some smiled and shook their heads, Cheatum and Smithers outright scoffed; others looked at him expectantly.
Only Smithers had a comment. “Sure, O'Reilly, we'll just open up a factory, make a dozen of 'em, and sell the ones we can't use ourselves.”
Cheatum joined Smithers in laughter. Jack didn't even look up.
Quince also ignored the gibe. He looked at Jack over the top of his pince-nez. “Out with it, lad.”
“All we need is a big cask full of air for a man to breathe down there. The cooper can make it, can't you, Coopie?”
His mouth open at being the new focus of attention, Coopie responded that “a barrel's a barrel I guess.” As he still held the floor, he went on. “Got all sorts of hoops and staves already pulled out of the
Star
. Plenty of makings for oakum. If me barrels can keep water in, I 'spect they could keep water out.”
“How in hell you going to get it to stay down?” asked Quince. “You ever try to sink a barrel of air?” The questions came quickly.
As Jack had suspected, Quince had been following the same train of thought.
“Never had a need to sink a barrel full of air before,” Jack mused. “But I bet we could figure out how if it meant we could keep a man down there for an hour, instead of two minutes,” he went on.
“What if we hung some cannonballs from it with rope mesh and chain links?” The last from Mentor. “We could run it with fairleads over the top—yeah, iron balls is the thing for it. Jesus, a man down there for thirty minutes could do a lot of tyin' and riggin'.”
Jack felt a new exhilaration in his heart.
“He'd take a breath of air from the barrel and do a minute or two of work, then swim a few yards back to the bell,” Mentor
continued. “He'd take a few breaths, then, back at it again. Think about it: he could do an awful fine amount of work, maybe even find the kit bags with gun parts and shoes.”
Quince sighed. “The damn bags and best materials is over ten fathom down. Jack, you think we can talk the damn wogs into breathing from that coffin down there?”
“No, and they wouldn't know what they were lookin' for either. I wasn't thinking of the Indians . . . I was thinking of me. I can swim, you know.”
“Ten fathom is awful deep. You'll drown your fool ass.” A solemn declaration from Coopie.
“They was going that deep in Southport,” announced Mentor. “They was going so deep and it was so piercin' wet and cold they was gettin' the rheumytism down there somethin' fearful.”

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