Dennis Wheatley - The Rape Of Venice

There followed twenty minutes of agonised waiting. From fear that their dread companion, the shark, was still lurking somewhere nearby in the darkness, they dared not attempt to swim ashore. They could only pray that the tide would not turn and carry the raft out to sea again before it was cast up on the beach.

At last it was caught in the boiling surf, whirled round and turned over. As they were dashed from it a wave broke over them, but their hands and knees met slithering pebbles. They staggered to their feet. Roger and Bodkin each seized Clarissa by an arm. But they could not advance; the undertow was too strong for them. Another wave hit them and flung them forward. Again they were on their knees, but this time in shallower water. Once more they strove to get a firm foothold on the treacherous shingle. Step by step they fought the backwash. One final effort and the three of them, drenched and breathless but triumphant, lurched clear of the water and threw themselves down on the pebbly strand.

For some minutes they lay where they had fallen, spitting out water and getting back their breath. As soon as they had recovered, they moved farther up the steeply shelving shore to the dark line of trees, and found beneath them thick jungle; so they settled down on its fringe and, wearied out, dozed there for the rest of the night.

When dawn came they saw that they were near one extremity of a long bay. Towards its centre there were sandy stretches, but from end to end jungle, topped by tall palm trees, enclosed it, and it held no habitation or sign of life.

While they were on the raft, anxiety to be saved from death upon it had dominated their minds; now they felt they were in little better case, for they knew only that they had been cast up somewhere upon the immensely long, unexplored coast of East Africa, so must face many perils before they could hope to reach a place of safety.

But their empty stomachs were rumbling with hunger, so their first thought was to find food. The jungle was thick but not impenetrable, and quite near in from its edge they came upon several kinds of trees bearing fruit. All of them were strange so they feared that some might be poisonous, but they were so hungry that they had to take that risk. They minimised it by each eating only of one sort and only enough to still their immediate craving.

Fearing that they might get lost if they went deeper in, they returned to the beach and made their way round the point of the bay, hoping that on its far side they might find a native village, but they were disappointed; another long stretch of desolate shore lay before them.

The scent of cloves was again strong in the balmy air, and Bodkin said he had heard tell that the Portuguese had a settlement on the Isle of Cloves, for collecting the clove crop and shipping it to Europe; so if this was the island, a few hours' walk should bring them to a plantation and the means of getting back to civilisation.

Cheered by this thought, they set off along the shore, but they had not gone far before Clarissa complained of pains in her stomach and there could be little doubt that the particular fruit she had eaten had poisoned her. Halting, they sat her down in the shade of a palm and Roger told her that she must make herself sick. But she could not, so Bodkin fetched sea water in a large leaf and they kept pouring it down her throat until she vomited.

Still racked with pain she rolled from side to side; her skin was hot and large red blotches appeared upon it. Bodkin stood by, murmuring from time to time, 'Poor Missey! Oh, the poor Missey, and she so brave too,' while Roger, distraught with fear that she was about to die, alternatively pressed her hands and soothed her burning forehead.

For over an hour she writhed and groaned; but then her pains gradually eased, and it was clear that having made her sick as soon as possible had saved her. Her ordeal had left her much too exhausted to walk for some time to come; so they decided to stay where they were through the rest of the morning and until the midday heat was well past.

Bodkin suggested that by noon the stones on the beach would be so hot that it should be possible to part-​cook slices of meat with them; so Roger got out his pistols and powder flask with the intention of shooting a bird, or one of the small animals of which they had seen several rooting about in the fringe of the jungle.

Their sadly tattered clothes had dried on them, but the powder was still damp; so Roger spread it out on his handkerchief to dry in the sun. As soon as it was ready he began to prime his pistols, and he was still working on the second when Bodkin gave a sudden joyous shout:

'Sail ahoy! Sail ahoy!'

Unnoticed by them until then, a boat with a single triangular sail had come round the promontory and was now crossing the bay. Bodkin ran down to the edge of the sea, shouting and waving. There were half a dozen men in the boat; they waved back, then altered course and brought their craft close in. As it approached, Roger could see that the men in it were coal-​black, fuzzy-​haired, and naked except for loin-​cloths, and had pieces of bone stuck through their noses.

As he watched he wondered uneasily if it would be wise to trust themselves to these savages. Apart from a few trading centres, mostly separated by many hundreds of miles, Africa, south of its Mediterranean shore, was totally unknown, and tales came back to Europe that its black inhabitants included races of ape-​men, dwarfs and cannibals.

To have escaped drowning, starvation and the shark would be no comfort if they were to be killed with fiendish rites as food for a tribe of man-​eaters. Yet their only hope of ever getting back to civilisation lay in reaching a port and their prospects of doing so, without guides and help, were infinitesimal; so he could only be thankful that, for the moment at least, the natives in the boat showed no signs of hostility. All the same, he felt sure that at best they would not be able to keep their hands off his jewellery; so he swiftly transferred his beautiful, diamond brooch from his cravat, and his ring from his finger, to the fob pocket of his breeches.

With great dexterity the natives manoeuvred the boat in, lowered its sail and, judging the big rollers to a nicety, ran it ashore. Jumping out, they dragged it clear of the surf, then formed an excited, jabbering group about the castaways. By pointing at the jungle, Clarissa, her mouth, and then rubbing his own tummy, Roger indicated that she had eaten some poisonous fruit and their grimaces showed that they understood him. The oldest among them, a tall lean man with a lined face and a fringe of grizzled curls round an otherwise bald pate, made strange clicking noises with his mouth and tongue, upon which two of the others picked up Clarissa as though she weighed no more than a sack of feathers and ran with her down to the boat.

Roger followed promptly on their heels and saw them deposit her upon a pile of newly caught fish. This living, slimy, silver couch was hardly one a European invalid would have chosen, yet it was dictated by common sense, since the boat was a most primitive affair with neither thwarts, stern seats nor bottom boards. Roger and Bodkin climbed in. the old man took the tiller, his crew of brawny negroes ran the boat back into the pounding surf, then like a team of acrobats leapt into her.

For the best part of two hours the boat tacked along the coast, while her crew displayed a mixture of shyness, friendliness and curiosity. The whites of their eyes showing up vividly in their coal-​black faces, they chattered away in their strange clicking language, their gaze riveted on their passengers and. now and then, hesitantly put out a hand to feel the texture of their garments.

At length the boat rounded another promontory and entered the mouth of a small river. Half a mile up it they arrived at a clearing in which stood one great conical roofed hut and half a hundred smaller ones grouped about it. The midday sun was now blazing down from almost immediately overhead and. apart from a few tethered goats and some naked children playing in the dust, the native village appeared deserted. But the old man at the tiller blew loudly on a conch shell and almost immediately the place came to life.