James Forrester - The Roots of Betrayal

He felt his way beyond the stem of the main mast and started crawling toward the opening down to the orlop deck when another mighty wave smashed against the side of the vessel. She heeled over perilously, sending people, belongings, flagons, swords, platters, stools, lanterns, musical instruments, chests, and everything else on the main deck crashing to the port side. A demi-culverin broke away from its fastening and slid back, crushing a man against the side, breaking his pelvis and leg so that he started screaming in agony and fear. This time the ship did not right herself. She was listing, at about twenty degrees to port.

Carew cursed and pressed on to find the hatch down to the orlop deck. Pulling it open, he shouted down into the darkness. “Anyone down here?” No one answered. He could still hear the wind from above but there was another, more ominous sound-oak timbers grinding against one another and the rushing and splashing of the sea. Reaching out and feeling the ladder, and gripping it to make sure it was still firm, he started to descend. Five steps down his foot plunged into cold water.

The ship took another battering, sending her further over so that she was now listing at about thirty degrees. Nothing could save her now. “Is anyone down here?” yelled Carew. “If there is, call out.” Another wave shook the ship. Carew wiped his soaked face and started to climb back up into the main deck. “Gather above,” he called to everyone there. “We are abandoning this ship. Take nothing with you that you are not already holding. The ship is sinking. Gather on”-a wave crashed through the hatch, soaking him and filling his mouth with salt water-“on deck.”

“Captain, I can’t move,” yelled the man whose leg had been smashed by the cannon. “Don’t let me drown, please don’t let me drown, for the love of God, please, Mr. Carew! Don’t leave me here!”

Supporting himself by holding on to the side of the ship, Carew shouted back, “I have no love for God, Stephen, but I do for you, as I do for all my men.” He hoped the man would not see him draw the knife in the dim light. He bent forward and, holding the man’s cheek close to his own, he kissed him-then cut his throat.

Another wave broke over the ship and Carew was flung across the man’s dying body and the frame of the demi-culverin. He pushed himself back and got to his feet, still holding the knife. He sheathed it and steadied himself against the wall of the ship as he watched men climb the ladder up onto the deck for what they knew would be the last time. He waited for the last to go. And waited too long.

The fear crept up on him faster than the water as he leaned against the mast. The dark sea swamped his eyes and sank through his mouth and nostrils, filling every crevice of his body and stopping him breathing: a sea of pure fear. The next moment he was drowning in that same fear, his body neither at the surface nor at the depths of the sea, lashing out, struggling against his father’s fate, which had washed over him ever since he was four years of age.

Another wave broke through and struck his face, bringing him to his senses. It washed around his feet-but then he realized it was not the wave. The water had risen through the orlop deck and was sucking the ship down. “Are all gone, all from down here?” He waited a moment longer and then jumped for the ladder as the eddies of water swept around the mast, sending the chests and wooden things floating up behind him.

The ship lurched suddenly as another wave broke over the deck. It was listing now at sixty degrees. Carew could see men in the water. Hugh Dean had taken one of the skiffs and was hauling them aboard. But each skiff held only ten men-twelve at the most. And the ship was fast disappearing beneath the waves. Carew looked across the deck and saw the main mast floating now, with half the ship submerged. Men were clinging on to it, waves crashing over them.

Carew could swim. Most seamen regarded it as bad luck to learn, and few non-mariners even thought about it, but Carew was different. He loved the water and had learned as a boy, delighting in showing off his swimming skills. Now he plunged toward the main mast and, reaching below the water, he unsheathed his knife and cut the stays and ropes that fastened it, allowing it to float free. Then he swam further and reached the foremast, where the ship’s ax was fastened. Carew yanked it free and, sitting astride the mast, started to chop at the wood. Being Norwegian pine, the wood chipped easily, but the high waves crashing down threatened to sweep him away. The half-submerged vessel rose and wallowed ten or fifteen feet every time. Still Carew chopped and cut, reaching a frenzy of cutting and hacking as he watched the Nightingale descend further beneath the water. Lower she went, sinking and then higher on a wave-only to plummet down with groans of timbers as the futtocks splintered. Several planks had already come away from the half deck of the sterncastle. Still Carew chopped, hearing the cries of his men around him in the water, clinging to the rigging, in constant danger of being washed away.

The ship was almost gone; most of the deck was below the waterline, the foremast lifting out of the sea and the hull breaking up with every wave. Carew continued to chop at the deep scar in the mast. As he did so he saw a shape move to his left: Kahlu was swimming back to him. “Grab the rope!” Carew yelled, pointing to the trailing rope of the foremast topsail. Another wave surged and crashed over them but still Carew brought down the ax as hard as he could. The forecastle disappeared beneath the next wave. Carew tumbled forward into the water as more planks split from the sinking ship. He swam as hard as he could away from it, fearful of being dragged down. As he swam he thought of Kahlu still holding the rope-Kahlu, who came from another continent, who could not speak but had so much to say. He knew that Kahlu would keep on holding that rope even if it dragged him down to the seabed. At that moment his hand struck flesh and his head broke the surface. Kahlu was indeed still holding the rope. The mast had cracked under his weight at the last instant, as the ship had heaved and gone down.

Treading water, Carew put his arm around Kahlu and shouted in his ear, “Thank you, my friend.” They looked at the place of the sinking. The heavy guns, the ballast, and the brick ovens in the galley had dragged down the water-filled hull, but much wood remained afloat. Planks were everywhere. A stool bobbed to the surface as a wave crashed over them. Then a small pipe appeared. Carew grabbed it and stuck it in his mouth, clenching it between his teeth as he swam to the nearest skiff, which was already heavily overloaded. Reaching it, he looked around again.

The amount of wood and the number of corpses that floated before his eyes was shocking and saddening. It seemed that twenty dead men and women were rising and falling with the waves. Already the sea had scattered the bodies of those who had been so close to him in life. Time and the sea were washing them all to their separate oblivions. Another huge wave swept down. But as it descended he caught sight of the other skiff, with just six or seven men aboard. And the main mast about fifty yards to his right.

Another great wave splashed over them. Carew knew that if he did not bring them all together now, they would be washed away. He took the pipe from his teeth and blew it. Water poured out and just a squeak of sound. He shouted instead. “Hugh! Take this boat and lash the foremast to it. I’m going to the other boat to gather in the main mast. We must build from whatever is left floating.” As Dean nodded to show he had understood, Carew started to swim through the cold waves toward the other skiff, which was drifting farther and farther away.