Джеймс Филип - Remember Brave Achilles

Not that giving in was in his nature.

“God, Abe,” Ted Forest muttered feebly, “I know I’m pretty knocked about but I hope I don’t look as bad as you do!”

Abe chuckled: “That’s pretty much the way I feel about you, too, old man,” he retorted, collapsing onto the ground beside him. He knew he was going to have to get up and find that rain pool-puddle again. Soon, while he was still strong enough.

“I thought I heard braying in the night,” Ted gasped.

“There are donkeys and goats on the island, and all sorts of birds…”

“Oh, right.”

The two men lay panting, utterly spent for some minutes.

“Have you ever eaten goat?” Ted Forest asked.

“Yes, once or twice. Not as tender as deer or Elk…”

“Oh, right…” Then. “Where are we again?”

Although Abe had retrieved Ted’s charts from the aircraft, he had not attempted to unfurl any of them, let alone decipher what they could tell him about their situation.

“I think we’re on Little Inagua Island.”

“Little?”

“Yeah…”

“Big island on the southern horizon, yes?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

A bullet had grazed Ted Forest’s skull, another had passed through his abdomen, and his lower left leg had been broken in the crash. Abe had tidied him up as best he could, staunched the bleeding from his belly and reset his leg, which was now encased in an ad hoc splint made from bits and pieces of wreckage. The morphine Abe had administered to his friend before he went in search of water was beginning to wear off, sharpening the injured man’s wits albeit at the cost of all his ills coming home to roost again.

Abe forced himself to sit up.

Last night he had immersed himself in the surf, it was the only way he could clean out his shoulder wound.

At the time those German sea planes had barrelled past with all their guns blazing he had felt a plucking, punching sensation high in his left shoulder, and not realised he had been shot until much later. After the crash, in fact. The bullet had gone straight through muscle and flesh, mercifully missing his left clavicle, or anything really important. Nevertheless, like his friend he ought to be in hospital.

Not going to happen any time soon…

Which meant they simply had to get on with it, make the best of a very bad deal.

“The bad news is that the island is probably uninhabited,” Ted Forest mused out aloud. “The good news is that we’re closer to the Turks and Caicos than we are to Cuba. There are salt works on Great Inagua, and hundreds of people. Unfortunately,” the effort of talking was fast emptying his dwindling reserves of energy, “they’re all at the other end of the island at a place called Matthew Town…”

“I found two more doses of morphine in the kite.”

“Good show…”

“Thought I’d save them for later.”

“Just the ticket…”

Abe saw that his friend had passed out.

He made an effort to think straight.

I am supposed to be the son of the Hunter; I have a gun – two service revolvers, his and Ted’s – and the island is teeming with prey…

Lighting a fire was not going to be a problem. There was plenty of foliage, dry wood just lying around. They had dry matches, and the small hatchet recovered from the wreck…

Also, a signal pistol and three cartridges in the unlikely event somebody came looking for them.

Abe shook his head.

The hatchet was supposedly standard kit on the wheeled version of the Sea Fox; if one crashed on land the thinking was one might have to hack one’s way out if the kite caught fire. Obviously, that was not such a pressing issue at sea, so, no axe as standard on the float plane variant!

The axe probably was not sharp enough for clean butchery but then if he killed a donkey or a goat nobody was going to be talking about cordon blue cuisine!

Turtles…

He thought he remembered seeing big turtles on the beach last night. How did one hunt a turtle? Would a bullet go through its shell?

What about ‘feeling’ for fish in the shallow water?

The possibilities were endless. Or rather, they would be if he seriously believed he could actually get back to his feet…

What happened to the signal gun?

Abe panicked momentarily before he remembered it was perched on a rock nearby, just in case a ship or a plane came close to the island.

His thoughts were racing, shooting off in a dozen directions.

He had to get a grip!

Thirst would kill them first.

Getting too hot or too cold would do for them second.

Hunger might be the death of them further down the road, except if they did not start eating soon, they would be too weak to help themselves inside say, three or four days, given their injuries, loss of blood, shock, et cetera…

REFILL THE BLOODY CANTEEN, MAN!

First things first, and all that rot.

Abe rolled onto his knees, crawled away from Ted Forest, not wanting to risk falling across him if he stumbled getting to his feet. Upright, he swayed for several seconds before reaching back for the canteen, and as an afterthought, snatching up the service revolver, a Webley, which he had discarded on the sand next to his friend yesterday evening.

Like a drunk man, he turned unsteadily and began to retrace his steps in the general direction of the rain hole he had found earlier that morning. As he walked, slowly, having to think about lifting his legs, and planting every footstep he started to worry about whether the remaining morphine ampoules were sufficiently shaded, or if the flimsy, makeshift windbreak – which he had no recollection of fabricating or positioning – would keep the sun off his friend until he got back.

The early morning breeze had died.

Flies began to swarm over his head.

How long would it be before the Navy told Kate that he was missing?

A day or two more?

He tried to put Kate’s face in the centre of his mind’s eye.

Only days ago, he had bounced their son on his knee.

He had made an absolute pig of himself with Kate; she had laughed and giggled and incited him to carry on…

Abe did not remember stumbling, or falling.

He regained consciousness staring at the hooves of two donkeys, both of which were standing over him viewing him as if they did not quite know what to make of the strange, bipedal creature who lay on the boggy ground next to a long, shallow rain pool.

Abe tried to piece things together.

I squatted down to refill the canteen?

No, he remembered nothing.

This rain pool looked different from the other one.

Bigger, a lot longer and perhaps, deeper, clearer. He was still holding on to the soaked strap of the canteen, which was half-submerged. Something unyielding was pressing into his stomach. He rolled onto his right side, discovering he was lying on his gun.

The two donkeys were not alone. He saw one, then another goat, scrawny beasts foraging five or six paces away. Feral, as good as tame.

No fear of humans…

Abe’s hand closed around the but of the revolver, he aimed and fired, twice. Around him there was loud squealing, panicky braying and a rush of hooves. He had no idea if he had hit anything.

He rolled onto his back and stared at the sky.

Waited for his strength to return.

Presently, sitting up he looked around. There was nothing to be seen from his low vantage point except scrubby bushes and a few stunted trees. In the distance birds circled, riding the updrafts as the heat of the day built up.

Fill the bloody canteen, man!

On his hands and knees, half in the water he tried to take the cleanest water closest to the surface, relieved that his thoughts were, at last, clearing, clarifying. Unlike the puddle around him.