"Cap'n, I've only a few days more," he said.
I thought to answer with false cheer that he had lots of life in him yet, and that men worse off than him had gotten well; but I remembered we were shipmates and I was his captain now, and I would not treat him so.
"I know it."
"I'll hate to leave you and Jim, me so lucky, lying and sleeping and never having to wake up in this world no more, the work done and the whipping done, while you and him must stand the misery and then the duty."
"Why do you put it that way?"
" 'Cause that's what it is. I've known it from the first. When Ezra Owens and me was bending the fuse on the powder cask like you'd told us, he whispered to me the orders Cap'n Phillips gave you. To find out if that English lord betrayed us to the pirates and bring judgment on him."
"He said to bring him to lawful punishment."
"Thank God he didn't lay it on me. I could run him down and shoot him, but what good would that do, for he'd only be dead as I'll be dead 'fore the moon's full again? I don't want to think about it no more. It lays a dreadful burden on my mind. Now, Cap'n, I got three favors to ask of ye, two of 'em to do if ye can see your way, and one ye must do, for my soul's sake."
"Speak out, Enoch Sutler."
"One of 'em is for you yourself, if they'll let ye, and nobody helping you but Jim, to carry me up to the hill where them ugly birds is waiting."
"I'll do it if I can."
"If you live long enough, and have the means, I want you to go to Newburyport, where I was born, and inquire for Bessie Sutler, who's my baby sister, and for Calesta Peck, who is my aunt. You needn't bother about my parents, for my ma's dead and my pa went oflF and left us. But if you find Bessie and my Aunt Calesta, tell 'em I didn't do no great wrong, such as murder and treason and suchlike, and that I loved 'em to the last."
"I'll tend to that if I live long enough. Those two are easy, but I'm afraid the third one will be hard."
" 'Twill be hard, but you can do it if you're the man I've took you for since first I knowed you. These next few days is going to be bad. They'll put that old whip on me plenty before they find out it ain't no use, and 'twill be hard for you to watch. So tell Jim to stay clear away, and you give me your promise, before God in heaven, and for the sake o' all the boys who're gone, you won't raise your hand."
"That's a heavy haul," I answered, hardly knowing what I was saying.
"Aye, but ye got to make it, for you're the cap'n, and everything pends on you. Let me hear you say it, or you'll do me mighty bad wrong."
"Enoch Sutler, I swear before God, and for the sake of our lost shipmates, that no matter what they do to you, I won't raise my hand against them."
Sparrow heaved a long sigh.
"You don't know how that comforts me, Cap'n Whitman. It's my part in the big duty—the part assigned to me by Almighty God—to protect you in this danger so you can live and carry out the rest. No matter how much you hear me holler—or maybe even beg 'em to let me be—you'll know it's just the flesh that's weak, and I'm standin' by the ship like Cap'n Phillips ordered us, and I'll die proud."
CHAPTER 10
Stout Dogs
Sparrow proved a true prophet. The next few days were bad.
On the morning following my pledge-giving, he had difficulty getting to his feet, then, staggered and fell. Only after three cuts by Caidu's whip did he rise, his face and his naked back both stained with blood, and join the file. Because Caidu had had the night watch, Ibrim and another guarded the quarry gangs; and by the mercy of Allah, they pretended not to see Sparrow's faltering hands and nodding head over the blocks.
On the second and third mornings, Sparrow rose and ate and took his place with the rest, but on the fourth, the cruel lash cracked six times against his shuddering form before he could lurch up; and meanwhile the men stood mute with dull, bestial faces, their chains hanging loose and silent. The fifth morning was one that every prisoner would remember as long as his mind lived, no matter how inured he was to violence and horror.
The ordeal began when Sparrow did not waken at the drum. Caidu kicked him once in the side, then gave him three brutal lashes with all his strength. Sparrow's body jerked at each one and short grunts came forth from his bloodstained lips, but he did not appear to waken. As Caidu turned away, I did not even dare hope he had left him to die in peace. As we ate and then formed our ranks, I was not the only man gray and glassy-eyed with ineffable dread. Now the gate was thrown open and Ibrim and his fellow guard took their places at the head and the foot of the file. Ibrim already carried an ox whip, and Caidu passed the bloodied one into the rear guard's hands. We knew what would happen now; we had seen the signs. He was not satisfied, monster that he was—the uproar the men had raised a few days before still stung him—and he took down the kurbash from its nail in the stockade wall.
It was a pliant cane made of rhinoceros hide, amber-colored and somewhat translucent and rather pretty in the eyes of those who did not know its use. It had a cutting edge for inflicting ineffaceable stripes and a blunt side for dealing extreme pain. Caidu turned it in his hand so that the blunt side was outermost. As he walked slowly toward Sparrow, a man behind me vomited on the ground.
Caidu sat down beside Sparrow and, clutching his ankle, raised his foot backward and up to expose the sole and instep. At the first blow another man retched, and as one after another fell in measured pace, hard as a carpenter's hammer driving a nail, the sickness ran up and down the file as might some instantaneous contagion. At first there was no sound other than the sobbing and retching of the vomiters and the dull thuds of the kurbash; but in a little while I heard a more terrible sound. Sparrow had roused up from his merciful trance and was uttering a shapeless yell at every blow.
Kerry's hand closed about my wrist, shaking but strong. I did not need its restraint; something stronger than either muscle or iron had me in its grip, and I watched steadfastly without sound or movement. Not so a man nearer to Sparrow, Kerry, and me than any other in the double file. He stood three ranks ahead of me and nearest to the torture. His name was Holgar Blackburn, and sometimes he had impulses that he could not disobey.
Like us all, Holgar wore chains between the shackles on his wrists and ankles. Yet I had never seen a man move so fast as Holgar moved in the three strides he took. His feet rose high and his arms rose and fell with them as in some grotesque, long-practiced dance, and thereby his chains remained taut enough not to rattle, but not too taut to impede his movements. The cry of warning from the watching guards broke forth too late. Caidu's back was to us, and his attempt to spring to his feet was far too late. After his third stride, Holgar kicked high with his right leg, at the same time taking a doubled length of the slackened chain in his savage grasp. The weapon was less than a foot long, but we knew well its weight, and Caidu had time to turn his head and anticipate the might of the blow in the instant ere it f ell.
It was the last instant of Caidu's life. With that furious gigantic blow the chain broke through his skull to the eyeline. We saw him topple back under a crimson geyser; and now there was no sound-the slaves watching with the stares of madmen-for Holgar was not quite done. . ,
Alternately kicking high and bending low to keep his grip on the chain, he moved quickly to Sparrow's fore.
"Forgive me, little Yank, but it's for the best," he said.