"Bring the book and let us sign."
"We're with you. My oath and my mark on it."
Hal stopped them again. "You will come one at a time to my cabin, so that I can learn each of your names and shake you by the hand."
He turned to the rail and pointed back over their stern. "We have made good our offing." The African coast lay low and blue along the horizon. "Get aloft now to make sail and bring the ship around onto her true course for the Great Horn of Africa."
They swarmed up the shrouds and out along the yards and the canvas billowed out until it shone in the sunlight like a soaring thunderhead.
"What course, Captain?" Ned Tyler called from the helm.
"East by north, Mister Tyler," Hal replied, and felt the ship surge forward under him, as he turned to watch the wake furrow the blue rollers with a line of flashing foam. he never one of the crew passed the foot of the mainmast where Sam Bowles AW crouched, shackled at hand and foot like a captive ape, they paused to gather saliva and spit at him. Aboli came to Hal in the forenoon watch. "You must deal with Sam Bowles now. The men are becoming impatient. One of them is going to cheat the rope and stick a knife between his ribs."
"That will save me a deal of bother." Hal looked up from the bundle of charts and the book of sailing directions that he had found in Christopher Llewellyn's chest. He knew that his crew would demand a savage revenge on Sam Bowles, and he did not relish what had to be done.
"I will come on deck at once." He sighed, surrendering at last to Aboli's ruthless persuasion. "Have the men assembled in the waist."
He had thought that Sukeena was still in the small cabin that adjoined the powder magazine, which she had turned into a sickbay and in which two of the wounded men still teetered on the edge of life. He hoped that she would stay there, but as he stepped out onto the deck she came to meet him.
"You should go below, Princess," he told her softly. "It will not be a sight fitting to your eyes."
"What concerns you is my concern also. Your father was part of you, so his death touches upon me. I lost my own father in terrible circumstances, but I avenged him. I will stay to see that you avenge your father's death."
"Very well." Hal nodded, and called across the deck. "Bring the prisoner!"
They were forced to drag Sam Bowles to face his accusers, for his legs could barely support him and his tears ran down to mingle with the spittle that the men had ejected into his face.
"I meant no ill," he pleaded. "Hear me, shipmates. "Twos that devil Cumbrae that drove me to it."
"You laughed as you held my brother's head under the waters of the lagoon, shouted one of the seamen.
As they dragged him past where Aboli stood with his arms folded across his chest, he stared at Sam with eyes that glittered strangely.
"Remember Francis Courtney!" Aboli rumbled. "Remember what you did to the finest man who ever sailed the oceans."
Hal had prepared a list of the crimes for which Sam Bowles must answer. As he read aloud each charge, the men howled for vengeance.
Finally Hal came to the last item of the dreadful recital. "That you, Samuel Bowles, in the sight of their comrades and shipmates, did murder the wounded seamen from the Golden Bough, who had survived your treacherous ambush, by causing them to be drowned."
He folded the document, and demanded sternly, "You have heard the charges against you, Samuel Bowles. What have you to say in your defence?"
"It was not my own fault! I swear I would not have done it but I was in terror of my life."
The crew shouted him down, and it was some minutes until Hal could quieten them. Then he asked, "So you do not deny the charges against you?"
"What use denying it?" one of the men shouted. "We all saw it with our own eyes."
Sam Bowles was weeping loudly now. "For the love of sweet Jesus have mercy, Sir Henry. I know I have erred, but give me a chance and you will find no more trusty and loving creature to serve you all the days of your life."
The sight of Bowles disgusted Hal so deeply that he wanted to wash the foul taste of it from his mouth. Suddenly an image appeared in the eye of his mind. It was of his father lying on the litter, being borne away to the scaffold, his body broken and twisted from the rack. He began to tremble.
Beside him, Sukeena sensed his distress. She laid her hand softly on his arm to steady him. He drew a deep, slow breath and fought back the black waves of sorrow that threatened to overwhelm him. "Samuel Bowles, you have admitted your guilt to all the charges brought against you. Is there anything that you wish to say before I pronounce sentence upon you?" Grimly he stared into Sam's flooded eyes, and watched a strange transformation take place. He realized that the tears were a device that Sam could call upon at will. Something else burned out from a deep and hidden part of his soul, a nimbus so feral and evil that he doubted he still looked into the eyes of a human being and not those of a wild beast standing at bay.
"You think you hate me, Henry Courtney? You do not know what hatred truly is. I glory in the thought of your father screaming on the rack. Sam Bowles did that. Remember it every day you live. Sam Bowles might be dead but Sam Bowles did that!" His voice rose to a scream, and spittle foamed on his lips. His own evil overwhelmed him and his shrieks were barely coherent. "This is my ship, my own ship. I would have been Captain Samuel Bowles, and you took it from me. May the devil drink your blood in hell. May he dance on your father's twisted and rotting corpse, Henry Courtney."
Hal turned away from the revolting spectacle, trying to close his ears to the stream of invective.