William Napier: Blood Red Sea

Hodge said, ‘There’s a ship’s mast. I saw one.’

He was hallucinating.

Then the dark fin cut through the water right beside them, and Nicholas saw the horrible grey shape of a huge fish, longer than he was, with small eyes in a massive head, and a wide mouth that seemed to be smiling. He fought with every inch of his will not to move, not to kick out, and the fin turned suddenly, whipping away through the water. It moved off some thirty yards, and then he saw it turn. It was coming back again.

‘Both of us,’ said Hodge. He felt like his throat was bleeding from the effort of speech. ‘Same side of raft. Weight down.’

Nicholas did as he said, and the raft dipped down into the water at an angle. Nicholas rolled on to the submerged edge. Hodge swam slowly round to the other side and hung on. The raft flattened out and Nicholas was just out of the water. Hodge was not.

‘Keep still,’ whispered Nicholas. ‘Do nothing.’

The fin came closer.

Nicholas pulled the small dagger from his waist. As well fight a lion with a twig.

The fin passed by again and he swiped clumsily at it with the blade, nowhere near, almost rolling from the raft into the sea.

Hodge shook his head.

Nicholas knelt up precariously on the four lashed timbers. One of them was coming loose.

Hodge shook his head again more strongly.

Nicholas’s swollen fingers struggled with the knot where it was tied with a piece of cloth, but it was impossible. Tight with salt water. He crouched over the knot, swaying like a drunken man, and began to saw at it with his dagger. It came free. He clamped the dagger back between his teeth and, with his very last strength, hauled the spar from the sea. It was the broken shaft of an oar, splintered in two by the explosion, and the far end was jagged.

The shark was gaining speed, making straight for where Hodge hung now, its fin cutting a tiny trickling bow wave. That was how they attacked.

Nicholas tried to roar out, to steel himself, but only a croak came. He lifted the splintered oar in both hands and squinted, and there was a great grey flickering form in the water. He lunged down. The jagged end struck something very hard and dense, like a side of beef, and Hodge was suddenly barged aside, losing his hold on the raft. Nicholas dropped the oar crosswise and seized hold of him.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the dark fin curve away and round — and then come again.

Hodge’s eyes were closed, his head lolled. How could Nicholas drag him on to the raft? Yet he must. He hauled the semi-conscious body to his side. Looking up, he saw three fins around the raft now, circling wide. Four fins. Five. And he saw a dolphin leap.

A dolphin. Several of them.

And as if by magic — or a miracle — those dark circling fins vanished.

Another of the dolphins gave a great curving leap, and then they too were gone, and all was silent.

Nicholas looked down, but there was no blood in the sea. He could have wept. But he didn’t have the tears.

There was only the stony silence of the sea, and the burning sun.

After a while he dropped back into the water, and looped Hodge’s arms around the spar beside him. They were sunk very low now, their mouths only just out of the water. The raft was failing them.

‘Dolphins,’ whispered Nicholas. ‘Dolphins came.’

It was like a miracle. But he had heard of such things. Dolphins and sharks were ancient enemies, and dolphins had been known to save a drowning man, aslike in the myth of Arion.

Hodge’s eyes were closed, his expression one of dull agony. But he said, ‘Sharks fear dolphins. Christian and Turk.’

Still, they both knew the sharks might yet come back.

A little while later, Nicholas said, ‘I am happy to die beside you, Hodge.’

Hodge stirred and spoke one last time, as if remembering something, his voice barely audible now. ‘I saw a mast. You. . on the raft.’

He was dreaming. But in a last act of faith and trust, after many minutes of effort, Nicholas rolled once more on to the raft, having first knotted Hodge’s upper arms to a timber. Trembling under the burning sun as if he were dying of cold, he pulled himself first on to his hands and knees, and then, shaking violently, arms outstretched for balance, feet astride, he managed to stand upright.

He looked out, as best he could.

Hodge’s dream was infectious. There was a mast.

He drew off the wet cloth around his neck and very slowly, almost sobbing with the effort, raised it above his head. But it was far too wet to flutter. A sodden rag made no signal.

He prayed she was a Christian galley. The odds were even, the toss of a coin: Christian or Mohammedan.

Yet this was only a hopeful lie. They were but forty miles off the Barbary coast. There was every chance it would be a Tripoli merchantman — or another corsair galley.

She had no sail up, but she was coming towards them under oar. It must be a dream.

But no. It was a nightmare. She was black hulled and lean. She was a corsair.

Hodge murmured something from the water below him.

Nicholas took out his dagger from his waistband.

‘Is she Christian?’ murmured Hodge.

‘Aye,’ lied Nicholas. ‘We are saved.’

Now he had but to kneel down again, trembling with the effort, and cut his friend’s throat.

For it had all been for nothing after all. If they still breathed by the time the corsair came by, they would be quickly dispatched as too weak to row, and this preposterous lady’s trinket that still sparkled round his blistered neck would be lifted from his corpse. It was time to die now, with what shred of dignity they had left, at their own hands.

‘It was a banner of St John,’ slurred Hodge. Seawater lapped at his chin. ‘I saw it from the sternpost.’

Dying men had dreams. How could he have seen the ship when they lay in the water?

Yet Nicholas, still clutching his dagger in readiness, shaking from head to toe, half blinded by salt and sun, eyelids red and inflamed, lashes encrusted, stared out westwards still. He could see nothing but a white dazzle, his brain throbbing in its bone cave. Nothing but the glaring pain of the world.

Yet he heard the boom of a single cannon, and no cannonball’s whistle to follow.

It was a signal. A sign.

He bowed his head, and the dagger dropped from his hand.

For three days they nursed the two near-dead men they had dragged from the sea.

They washed the crusted salt from their skin, and dressed their terrible sunburn with bandages soaked in vinegar, two strong men holding them down as they applied the dressings. For pain could sometimes be so great that a man might arch his back from the pallet and crack his own spine. They poured water mixed with a small pinch of salt and some honey down the castaways’ throats, a few drops at a time, but constantly, hour after hour, holding their heads up. Their hands were the powerful, knotted, scarred hands of swordsmen and warriors, but now they were as gentle in their ministrations as Carmelite nuns. They continued to make the two men drink water until, long after nightfall, they urinated. That effort alone exhausted them, and they both lay back again, barely conscious.

‘I thought you medics drank a patient’s urine,’ said one of the warriors. ‘For diagnosis.’

The medic looked down at the dark bronze liquid in the bowl. A mere spoonful, but the odour was. . penetrating. ‘In this case,’ he said, ‘that will not be necessary. My diagnosis is that they are still thirsty.’

They made them drink and drink, sometimes mixing the water with a squeeze of lemon juice. They dabbed their many sores and wounds with alcohol, rubbed fat on their atrociously blistered lips, placed and regularly replaced cool cloths on their hot and feverish heads, and finally poured tincture of opium, blessed opium, down their parched throats. Both castaways soon became delirious and talked effusively.