William Napier: Blood Red Sea

‘We’ve survived worse,’ said Nicholas, still ignoring his own rule about not speaking. The desolate silence sapped the spirit. ‘Remember when we stood at arms at Elmo. Our comrades, Lanfreducci, Luigi Broglia, the Chevalier Bridier de Gordcamp — those gallant souls. Remember the nights at Birgu, when the Turkish cannon roared. The basilisks spat flames that lit up the sky.’

‘Remember?’ said Hodge. ‘I will never forget.’

It was a comfort to talk, despite the thirst. Every little trick helped in survival. Nicholas looked around at the barren plain of the sea. There were no men coming to help, no comrades. It was a saltwater wilderness that cared nothing, for no one. Where was God?

Yet they prayed. Dying men always prayed.

‘What current are we in?’ said Hodge. ‘The Atlantic rushes in past Gibraltar and heads north, does it not?’

‘Aye. And we know we’re near the African shore. The yellow sky to the south tells us so. The current here heads back west. A great wheel. We live long enough, we may paddle into harbour at Cadiz or Tangier. Should only take some three months or so.’

‘I wonder about all the blood,’ said Hodge. ‘From the corpses. What fish and monsters it will bring.’

‘We have hardship enough already, friend Hodge. Don’t add sea monsters to it.’

For the rest of that day, they watched men flounder and die. Some simply fell silent on their timbers, their faces dropping into the water. The sea gradually pulled the other survivors farther apart and cast them wide over the ocean. Towards dusk one still living came kicking past them very slowly. He wore a white turban.

‘Salaam,’ he croaked. He tried to smile but his cracked lips made it impossible.

‘Die, you maggot,’ said Nicholas, his voice a hoarse rasp. His throat was so parched, his lips so burned, he hallucinated wildly that his words were being spoken by a ghost. He had a mouthful of cobwebs. The sun made a malevolent humming noise in the sky as it went down in the west. ‘Die, or I will kill you.’

The corsair rested, exhausted, his head on his arm. His voice too was like the wind through dry grass, only just audible. ‘We are equal now. No longer slave and master. . equal before the gates of death.’

‘Die,’ whispered Nicholas.

Then night came on, and the corsair died. The loneliness began to unhinge their minds. There was nothing but silence under the starlight, an empty world, the lapping of small waves at their timber of pine. Exhaustion and fragmentary dreams. Nicholas saw a Maltese girl called Maddalena. Hodge saw the woods and green fields of Shropshire. The constellations wheeled overhead, the moon came up and blinded them. Each of them had a horror he would close his eyes, and open them again to find the other one dead. They talked in slurred words with swollen tongues, hallucinating, lips splitting and bleeding, dreading the rising sun. For tomorrow would kill them.

Nicholas tilted his head back to the sky because it was raining. But no, it was not raining. He was dreaming. He wondered whether there was dewfall at night on the sea. He opened his red mouth wider, wider. The moon burned his black tongue.

Then he looked round and Hodge had gone. Slipped below without a word. His childhood friend, his manservant, his comrade-in-arms through the atrocity of Malta. Hodge was gone below and he was alone. Now he would surely die.

‘Hodge!’ he tried to cry out across the starlit sea. ‘Hodge!’

But no sound came from his throat. Not even a whisper.

Some time later Hodge reappeared, but Nicholas knew he was just seeing visions. It was the Devil’s torment of a dying Christian. Hodge, he thought, came back very slowly through the sea, dragging a set of three timbers tied together. He pulled them up against their own, and tied them loosely to it with his waistcloth. It made a very crude, narrow, unstable kind of raft.

‘And look,’ said Hodge, producing something else. ‘Two more oranges were still afloat. Breakfast.’

He hauled himself on to the four lashed timbers, which sank a little but held. Nicholas stared up at him.

‘By day we stay under water or we’ll cook,’ said Hodge. ‘But by night we can crawl out like turtles and lie on deck. Aboard the Fair Maid of Shrewsbury , as she’s called.’

Nicholas smiled. It was a comical vision. There was the Devil for you. Gentleman, liar, joker.

He was cold in the night and towards dawn he stirred. Water lapped shallowly round his chest and legs where he lay. But he lay flat across four timbers. A light wind blew.

‘Master?’ came a strained whisper. ‘I thought you’d never come round.’

Nicholas raised his head. His neck ached abominably, his head throbbed with merciless pain, and the thirst was agony. But then Hodge waved an orange before his nose and he could smell it.

‘Hodge?’ he whispered. ‘I thought you were dead.’

‘Not yet. Eat.’

Hodge helped him roll on to his side. Everything was hurting — his joints, his legs, his feet, his hammering skull, his pulsing, bloodshot eyeballs. Every bare inch of his flesh felt as if it had been rubbed raw with sharkskin.

He sucked on the orange, and after a few minutes he felt a small trickle of strength in him. Enough to say, ‘This is our last day isn’t it?’

Hodge lay beside him, his eyes closed. Both of them were half in the water. ‘I think it will prove so, master. Aye. And soon the sun will be up and we must drop back in the sea.’

‘I cannot, Hodge. I cannot.’

Hodge turned his face towards him. ‘Master. To get this paltry raft, knotted with old clouts, I had to drown two Moors.’

Nicholas heaved himself round. ‘I have a dagger.’

Hodge look at him. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Hold out a little longer.’

‘For what?’

‘For a last hope.’

The sunrise was beautiful and terrible, a few trails of cloud in the east scattering the burnished light. God’s blessed daylight come to kill them. Every minute that the sun climbed to the zenith brought their death closer. They rolled back off the raft into the water with barely the strength in their arms to hold on to the spars. Their feet were bloated and white, legs blistered and weeping. Little fish came and nibbled at their sores but they could do nothing. They rested their throbbing heads on their forearms and made their last confused peace with God.

Nicholas thought he heard a splash near by and raised his head again. Twenty yards off there was a corsair corpse lashed to a spar, half submerged. His face was turned upwards, and the sun had burned his eyes dry in their sockets. But he seemed to move strangely, to twitch and bob. Like a dead dancer.

Then he understood. Something was tugging on the corpse from below, making it jerk spasmodically. Teeth were taking chunks out of his stomach.

To the dumb animals, flesh was flesh, alive or dead. Sailors’ tales told of rats biting into sleeping men’s faces. Meat was meat. He did not even know whether he would feel it when they in turn began to be eaten. His head drummed in hot agony, but the rest of his body below felt bloated and numb.

He could not speak but touched Hodge on the shoulder.

They watched a dark triangular fin passing back and forth through the water near the corpse. No, two fins. Three. Another splash. It was the fish fighting over the meat.

Hodge spread his hand wide, very calm. The old signal from their boyhood deer hunts. Keep still. Make no noise.

One of the dark fins, driven from the corpse by the others, was coming towards them.

‘On to the raft,’ whispered Hodge. He tried to pull himself up, but had no strength left.

Nicholas reached out across the raft to the next spar and strained with all his might. His skinny forearms nothing but bone and sinew. Feebly his legs kicked in the water. The dark fin veered a little and made towards the movement. He pulled and pulled, desperate to drag his emaciated body from the sea to safety. But he might as well have tried to lift a hundredweight sack of grain.