“La. Be shushed, Resolute,” Patey said. “No use. There is a thief’s heart amongst us and it is colder than stone already.”
The ship moved, and I had gotten so used to its sounds, that I knew we made way with great speed. I believed they never struck sail but kept at it day and night. I could not imagine how far north we had come, though the sun no longer climbed straight overhead but rose off the stern and set off the stern. It felt to me as if we were bound to sail off the top of the world and into an abyss the likes of which God alone would fathom. Patience continued to go above about every three or four days, but in all those nights she had not found a way to scavenge us another loaf or even a small egg. Even the sailors were going hungry, and naught to drink but poor rum. I was thankful she had not come back with so many bruises. No one returned her shoes.
After a few more days’ hard sailing we lay at anchor two nights, not moving until the third day. During those days they sent the canoe ashore to bring back food. I wondered if August, the ship’s venerable new coxswain, had rowed it.
They brought back water and dried beef, casks of oranges for the sailors. For the prisoners, though, they put hardtack in the pot and added water and fish heads. Sometimes our stew was naught but fish heads. Often it had vegetables I knew nothing of, nor would I have sought those save that my stomach was so unaccustomed to being full by then that I would have eaten a bedpost had it been well steamed. Once in a while Hallcroft took a look at the captives’ cooking pot, wrinkled his nose, and walked on.
On a day like all the others, I hauled my bucket of water to the deck and sat upon a coil of rope. I began to shake and stared for some moments at my feet, missing both slippers and stockings, covered with a scum of dull black. The nails had grown some and the bottoms had become callused. I feared I had taken ill, but felt no pain, nor did I faint or have any vagary other than a swimming in my brain. It was the scurvy, I feared. I sat for several moments and had just found my feet when I heard a cry from across the deck and rose on tiptoe to see.
One of the Saracen sailors joined another captive in argument with one of the English and without warning he bolted for the side of the ship. He lunged fast and sailed forward in a jump overboard but his foot snagged part of a net. Like a great bass they pulled him aboard, fighting and straining. They clapped hands upon him and dragged him to a post where they made his hands fast with knots. The sailors brought Dinmitty there and the captain came, too. Men gathered around so I could not see, but I heard the men make charges against the Saracen. Dinmitty ordered the man who’d caught him to deliver forty lashes with a cat. A voice I knew as well as my own came through the din, and August’s voice said, “Sir, you can hardly blame them,” though it stopped short. I thought that August had been murdered, and began to cry over my saltwater bucket, turning my face to the wind.
I was glad I could not see then, for I heard enough. Each fall of the cat snagged through the air like a wind-whipped thorn bush, making me shudder, the sound pricking my skin as if I felt each blow. I could not know who was being lashed but a man roared in agony. Was that the prisoner or my brother’s newfound deep voice? After twenty-eight lashes he ceased crying out. At thirty-nine lashes, Dinmitty’s voice called a halt and someone said, “Dead, Cap’n.”
Naught but silence followed. A few mumbled words I could not make out flitted across the deck like so many dead birds blown to the boards. I gave full way to my tears then, staring hard toward the crowd of sailors. When the men moved away at long last, there was August, standing at attention next to the gory body of the beaten man. He stared over the waves across the beastly remains, glancing neither left nor right, as if pinioned in place. August was not dead, that I knew. I dipped the rag into the bucket. Little by little, keeping my eyes away from the dead man hanging from his pillar, I found brass bits all the way across the deck and rubbed middlingly until I reached his side. “What are you doing, August?” I whispered.
“Toeing a line.” He tapped his toe against the deck, and I saw August’s boots were on the line of pitch between the beams. He hissed out the words through stiff lips, “Have mercy. Do not speak to me.”