Dennis Wheatley - The wanton princess

On the 18th he left Cuba and recrosscd the Windward Passage to Port dc Paix on the northern tip of San Domingo. There he spent another two days, by now sick of the sight of near-nude women and the stench of their cheap perfume. Still he failed to pick up any trail, but he remained convinced that Georgina was alive and was determined not to give up until he had found her; so he sailed along the north coast to the French stronghold of Cap Haitien. Yet another two days' search proved unavailing.

He had by now explored the stews in all the most likely ports to which Georgina might have been taken. There remained only Port Royal outside Kingston in Jamaica. It was more distant from the scene of her disappearance than the others but there, down by the palisades there was a whole town of houses of ill fame that was notorious throughout the Caribbean, and if she had become the victim of an English buccaneer it was in Port Royal that he would probably have sold her.

If Roger landed in Jamaica he could become Mr. Brook, but his crew, although half-castes, were French subjects; so for fear of capture it would be necessary to bribe them heavily before they would agree to put him ashore in some deserted bay. Moreover Kingston was four hundred miles distant from Cap Haitien, whereas the place where the 'Enter­prise' had gone down was only some hundred or so miles off and in the opposite direction. As there had always been the possibility that Georgina was still marooned on a desert island Roger intended, should he fail to trace her in any of the ports, to search the area for her. To go south to Kingston and return would take anything from a fortnight to three weeks; so he decided to save for the time being the money with which he would have had to bribe his crew, explore the islands first then, if need be, go down to Jamaica as a last resort.

Accordingly they sailed from Cap Haitien on April 24th and set a north-west course, which would carry them about half way between the north-eastern tip of Cuba and the many shoals and sandbanks to the south-west of Great Inagua.

The only information Roger had to go on was Mr. Small's statement that 'Enterprise' had been attacked when a day's run outside the Windward Passage and, depending on wind and weather, that might have taken the ship anything from twenty to a hundred miles or more beyond the point of Cuba; so the area to be searched was a considerable one.

On the 27th they sighted the first group of islands. During the next three days the ketch dropped anchor in the shallows off each in turn, and Roger had himself rowed ashore in the dinghy to explore them. Two of the largest were inhabited, but only by a few families of miserable-looking Carib Indians who contrived to eke out a bare existence on fish and coco­nuts and lived in palm leaf huts. Scared out of their wits at the sight of Roger they ran off and hid in the undergrowth; but he made no attempt to lure them out as, not knowing their language, he could not have questioned them.

During the past three weeks Roger had been favoured with good weather, only occasionally meeting with a wind strong enough to make the sea uncomfortably choppy; but soon after the ketch left the group the sky became overcast, the wind dropped and the atmosphere became ominously still. Realizing that a hurricane was blowing up, they hastily got out the oars and pulled with all their strength to get back to the nearest island. Fortunately they reached it near a creek up which they were able to pole the ketch a few hundred yards. By then the sky was black with great drops of rain spattering down. A few minutes later it was descending in torrents. Lightning flashed in great jagged streaks and thunder boomed like the discharge of whole broadsides of guns. The down­pour lasted for two hours, to be succeeded by a terrible wind that it seemed would tear the clothes from their bodies and bent a nearby group of palm trees so far over that their fronds at times brushed the sand. The sea had been churned into huge waves that rushed up the creek and caused the ketch to bounce wildly up and down, then beached her high and dry. By evening the worst of the hurricane was over, but they had to remain there for another three days before the weather was sufficiently settled for them to relaunch the ketch and set sail again.

In the nine days that followed they visited a score or more of other islands, among them several on which there were wild pigs, and one of these, Roger felt sure, after finding the remains of a camp, must be that on which Jenny and Mr. Small's party had been marooned from March to June in the preceding year.

Then, on the morning of May 12th they sighted an island about two miles long with a shelving beach which ran up to higher ground on which there was dense vegetation. As they approached it recognition dawned in Roger's mind. Suddenly he was positive that it was the island to which in his vision he had seen Georgina swimming. The airs were light and with maddening slowness the ketch edged in towards the coast. Trembling with impatience, when they entered shallow water he cried:

'I'll not use the dinghy. Beach her! Run her ashore!'

Captain Charbon looked at him in astonishment but obeyed the order. Jumping from the bow Roger plunged waist deep into the water and waded the last twenty feet to dry sand. Looking swiftly about him he saw the entrance to a shallow valley some two hundred yards to his right. At a run he set off towards it. The valley had a small stream trickling through it and curved inland, the banks growing steeper until on one side he was hastening along beneath a fifteen-foot high cliff. After he had covered a quarter of a mile the little canyon widened into a clearing, in which there were two rough palm-leaf huts leaning crookedly against the cliff. As he stumbled towards the larger of the two he pulled up short and gave a horrified gasp. Sprawled in front of the rickety door lay a bundle of clothes. Inside them was a skeleton.

From the well-cut breeches, the rapier still clutched in the hand of bones and the fair hair that still covered the grinning skull, Roger realized instantly that it must be Lord Rockhurst. It was evident that he had been dead for a consider­able time and that the ants had eaten every shred of flesh from his bones.

Sweating with fear Roger entered the rude hut. It contained two couches of leaves, a roughly made table and stools but was otherwise empty. Turning, he lurched towards the smaller hut, pulled back the doorway made of palm fronds and looked inside. The light there was dim but sufficient for him to see a couch of leaves on which lay another skeleton. It was much shorter than the other and clad only in a pair of sailcloth shorts, but from the skull there rose a mop of dead-black hair.

With a sob, Roger threw himself down beside it. He felt that his heart was breaking, for he had come to the end of his quest and, too late, found his beloved Georgina.

26

The Fate of England Hangs ...

Roger was still crouching there in stricken silence when, half an hour later. Captain Charbon and two of his mulatto crew came upon him. On previous occasions he had often spent four or five hours on his own exploring islands while the seamen hunted for shell fish along the shore; but his excited behaviour that morning had given the ketch captain the idea that he might suddenly have become the victim of sunstroke. Knowing that Roger had been searching the islands for castaways, Charbon on seeing the two skeletons at once grasped the tragedy that had befallen his employer and en­deavoured to comfort him.

But Roger was beyond all comfort and his mind so bemused by shock that he could only shake his head in dumb despair. After a while he allowed himself to be led away, back to the ketch. There Charbon made him swallow several mouthsful of liquid from a small grimy bottle. It contained a potent brew of herbs used by the Negroes in San Domingo to dull pain and, having been given such a large dose, ten minutes later Roger lapsed into unconsciousness.