Dennis Wheatley - The Rape Of Venice

The Quartermaster's name was Bill Bodkin and, after they had talked to him for a while, they felt they were lucky to have chanced on such a companion. He was a big, brown-​bearded man of about forty, with an open face and cheerful disposition. From boyhood all his life had been spent at sea and, while he admitted that their situation was about as bad as it could be, having twice before been wrecked and picked up in the ocean he was optimistic enough to believe that he would escape death a third time.

He backed his opinion that God meant him to live with the facts that, of the dozen men who had been with him on the raft when it went under, he alone had come up still clinging to it; that, although most of the gear they had lashed onto it had been torn away by the force of the whirlpool, the one essential to life-​a six-​gallon keg of water-​had been held fast by its moorings; and that although their box of food had been swept away, Clarissa had brought a good quantity of meat and biscuits in the pockets of her cloak, of which he might now expect a share in return for a share of his water.

While they had been talking, the swift darkness of the tropics had fallen; so, considerably cheered by Bodkin's conviction that the Almighty had them under his special protection, they settled down for the night. It was warm enough for them to use their sodden cloaks as pillows but there was little else they could do for their comfort, and for a good part of the long hours that followed they lay gazing up at the brightly twinkling stars in the dark vault overhead, wondering unhappily if there really was much chance of being rescued within the next few days.

When dawn at last came, although the swell had gone down and so much increased their field of vision none of the other rafts was to be seen. The only trace of the Minerva, other than themselves, was a broken hen-​coop bobbing up and down some dozen yards away. Bill Bodkin was most anxious to secure it but he could not swim; so Roger took off his outer garments, which had dried during the night, went in and brought it alongside.

The coop contained ten chickens. Waves breaking over the stern of the Minerva had drowned all the live-​stock on her poop; so the birds must have been, dead for at least two days and, during their immersion in the sea, small fish, having got between their feathers, had, in places, nibbled their flesh away to the bone; so Roger thought their find useless. But Bodkin said that if the birds were gutted, salt water would preserve their meat for a while, and if it did turn their stomachs it could anyway be used as bait for fish; then he promptly set about dealing with this windfall.

During the day the big, bearded Quartermaster busied himself in a dozen other ways. He counted the chairs a great blessing, as the worst enemy of people adrift on a raft in the tropics was the power of the sun. The wood and canvas of the chairs could be used to make a shelter and, perhaps, even a squat mast with a sail. While he worked away with his sharp jack-​knife, Roger unravelled the strands of the rope and Clarissa unpicked the stitching of some of the canvas chair seats.

By midday they had rigged up a temporary structure that would give them some protection from the searing rays which by then threatened them with severe sunburn, and after lying for two hours sweating under it they again set to work further to improve their situation.

Next day, from the twine binding that Clarissa had unpicked, Bodkin made a fishing line and baited it with the entrails of one of the chickens. The result was most unwelcome. Within a few minutes the bait was taken and the line snapped. Peering over the side of the raft down through the clear water they caught the flash of a white belly. As they watched, it turned over, merging into a long grey shape that shot upwards. A moment later an eight-​foot shark broke the surface within a few feet of the raft.

Roger remarked that he had been surprised that sharks had not arrived on the scene to attack the many men swimming in the sea shortly after the Minerva went down. Bodkin told him that, during rough weather, sharks kept well under water, but he added that, now it was calm and they had attracted one, the brute would never leave them till they were either dead or rescued. And so it proved. A more gentle wind was still wafting them north-​westward towards the distant coast of Africa and hour after hour the triangular fin of the great fish now cut through the water, like a small sail, as it followed in their wake. It was still there when they roused up to face their third day on the raft.

That day they completed and rigged a low sail. With their very limited resources there was then no more that they could do, except try to keep cheerful and prevent their thoughts dwelling on how long they had to wait until they were due for the next meagre ration of water and food, which was all they allowed themselves thrice daily.

As an aid to keeping their minds occupied, they started singsongs, but soon gave up because in the great heat singing parched their throats and made them crave more than ever for a drink. Instead, they took turns to tell stories, and played guessing games; but Bodkin was not much good at either, and having no education except in seamanship, was often at a loss to understand what his companions were talking about.

Yet he fared better than they did physically, for he was much tougher. In spite of every precaution to keep in the shade, it proved impossible to protect more than their heads for any length of time; so from their first full day on the raft both Clarissa and Roger suffered a great deal from sunburn on the backs of their hands, ankles and insteps.

From dawn to dusk each day they took hourly turns at the duty of keeping a constant watch for a ship on the horizon, and from a strip of Clarissa's petticoat they had made a flag to wave as a signal should they see one. But they watched in vain; the weather remained calm, the sky a brassy blue and the ocean empty.

Bill Bodkin remained optimistic about their chances of being picked up, but Roger had all he could do to hide his growing fears from Clarissa. They still had water enough to last them for another week, but they had had to finish the meat up on the third day because the heat was beginning to turn it bad; it was futile to fish because the shark would have snapped up anything they caught before they could pull it in and, although they had been allowing themselves only one thick ship's biscuit each a day, their sixth night on the raft would find them food-​less. Already they were suffering pangs of hunger and conjuring up visions of their favourite dishes, so he dreaded to think of the state to which they would be reduced when they had not even a morsel of stale baked flour and water with which, every few hours, to still their cravings.

By the fifth day they had almost given up talking and lay for long periods silent and unmoving, trying to keep their thoughts off such heavenly delights as fresh juicy fruits, chilled white wine, cold lobsters and iced parfaits. All through the day they sweltered, protected only by the thin canvas of the chairs from the direct rays of the blazing sun. At last it set and with darkness they dropped off into a fitful doze.

It was Clarissa who roused them. A little after midnight she shook Roger by the shoulder, and said in a husky voice: 'Have I been dreaming, or is the air different? It has become… well, balmy describes it; and it smells scented… like apple pie.'

Bodkin had woken on the instant. He sniffed loudly, then exclaimed: 'You're right, Missey! Praise be to God! I believe we're hard by the Isle of Cloves!'

Hurriedly they wriggled out from under the flimsy shelter and stood up. Clearly defined against the starlit sky a jagged frieze of blackness rose from the horizon towards which the raft was drifting. There could be no doubt about its being a coast-​line. It seemed to them an interminable time before they came any closer to it, but actually within an hour they could make out groups of tall palms standing out from a solid mass along a low shore, and the white line of foam as curling waves broke upon it.