'Know how to shoot?' asked Jezreel. Clearly he was someone who wasted few words.
Hector nodded.
'We'll get in some fresh meat for your captain when he returns.'
The big man reached up and tugged a musket from where it had been stored within the thatch, and handed it to the young man. From a hanging satchel he produced half a dozen charges of gunpowder wrapped in paper, a small powder horn, and a bag of bullets. Checking over the gun, Hector saw that it was an old-fashioned matchlock. To fire it, he would need to load, then add powder to the priming pan and keep the fuse lit until he was ready to pull the trigger. He thought to himself that a flintlock would have been much easier to use in such wet conditions, and could only suppose that Jezreel had been unable to obtain modern weapons.
He followed the giant out of the camp, and was led at the same brisk pace deeper into the swampy savannah. The ground was moist and soggy with a thin layer of rotting leaves covering yellow clay. From time to time they passed scatterings of pale wood chips on the ground. 'Logwood,' explained the big man, and seeing that Hector was puzzled, he added. 'Only the dark heartwood is taken. You must trim away the rest. The sap rind is near white or yellow.'
They walked on in silence.
Eventually they came to the margins of a wide, shallow lagoon. Here and there were low islands covered with grass and small thickets of brushwood. Hauled up on the shore was a small dugout canoe, evidently kept by Jezreel for his hunting trips. The boat was little larger than the one Hector had used in his escape from Port Royal. There were two paddles wedged under the thwarts.
They waded out into the shallows, pushing the little craft ahead of them and holding their muskets high. Jezreel gestured for Hector to climb in and take a seat in the bow, then the big man took up his position in the stern and soon they were moving forward across the mere. From where he was sitting, Hector felt the canoe surge forward each time Jezreel took a stroke. By comparison his own efforts felt feeble. Neither of them said a word.
After some fifteen minutes Jezreel abruptly stopped paddling, and Hector followed suit. The canoe glided forward as Hector felt a tap on his shoulder, and the giant's hand appeared in the corner of his vision. Jezreel was pointing away into the distance. On the shore of an island and difficult to see against the background vegetation stood half a dozen wild cattle. They were smaller than the domestic cows that Hector had known at home in Ireland, dark brown in colour, almost black, and armed with long curving horns. Three of them were standing up to their hocks, feeding on lilies. The others were on the shore, grazing.
Behind him there was the sound of flint on steel. A moment later his companion passed him a length of glowing slow match. Hector fixed it in the jaws of his musket's firing lock. Very gently, they stalked the wild cattle, closing the gap without being observed. From time to time one of the animals would raise its head from feeding, and scan for danger.
Hector calculated that they had got within a very long musket shot when, unexpectedly, there came the thump of a distant explosion. For a moment he thought that Gutteridge's sloop had returned and was firing a signal gun. But the sound had come, not from the sea behind them, but somewhere over to his left, from the savannah.
Whatever the source of the detonation, it had stampeded the wild cattle. Tails held high in panic, they abandoned their island and dashed deeper into the lake, then began swimming away. All that was visible was a line of horned heads disappearing in the distance.
Hector was about to turn and speak to Jezreel when the big man's voice said 'Hold still!' and the muzzle of a musket slid past beside his right cheek. The barrel was placed on his shoulder. He froze in position, all thought of paddling gone. Instead he gripped the sides of the canoe, scarcely breathing. He heard Jezreel behind him shifting his stance, and felt the musket barrel on his shoulder move a fraction. There was a whiff of slow match. The next moment there was the flat explosive crack of the weapon firing. The sound was so close to Hector's face that it made his head ring, and left him half deaf. His eyes watered with the cloud of gun smoke, and for a moment his vision was obscured. When the gun smoke blew away, he looked forward to where the cattle had been swimming. To his amazement one of the animals had swerved aside.
The creature was already dropping back, separating from its fellows. Jezreel's marksmanship was far out of the ordinary. To have hit his target from such a distance while seated in an unstable canoe was a remarkable feat. Even Dan, whom Hector considered the best marksman he knew, would have found it difficult to achieve such accuracy.
Already Jezreel was back at work, driving the canoe forward with huge paddle strokes. Hastily Hector joined his effort, for the wild cow was still able to flounder through the water and had turned directly for shore. Moments later it was in the shallows, and with great thrashing leaps was plunging towards safety, blood streaming from its neck and staining the water a frothy red.
The two hunters reached their prey while the animal was still hock deep on the shelving edge of the lake. It was a young bull, wounded and very angry. It turned to face its tormentors, snorting with pain and rage, and lowered its vicious horns.
Hector put down his paddle. The bull was perhaps fifteen yards away, still at a safe distance. The young man poured priming powder into the pan of his musket, blew gently on the burning matchcord to make it glow, raised his musket, and pulled the trigger. At that range it was impossible to miss. The ball struck the bull in the chest and he saw the animal stagger with the impact. But the animal was young and strong, and did not drop. It still stood on the same spot, menacing and dangerous. Hector expected his companion to hold back, until the two men had reloaded, then finish off their prey. Instead Jezreel drove the canoe into the shallows, and leaping out into the water began to wade towards the wild bull. To Hector's alarm he saw that the logwood cutter was empty-handed. There was a long hunting knife in Jezreel's belt but it stayed in its sheath. The young man watched him advance until, at the last moment, the bull lowered its head and charged. The attack could have been mortal. But Jezreel stood his ground, and in one sure movement leaned down and seized the creature's horns before the animal could lift its head and impale him. As Hector watched, the big man twisted and, using his great strength, threw the bull off its feet. In a welter of foam and muddy water, the beast fell on its side, the logwood cutter dropped one knee on the animal's neck, then forced its head under water. For several moments there was a succession of desperate heaves as the trapped animal attempted to escape. Then gradually its struggles eased and, after one last shudder, it ceased to move.
Jezreel held the drowned creature's head submerged a full minute to make sure that it was really dead. Then he rose to his feet and called to Hector. 'Pull the canoe up on land, then come and give me a hand to butcher the beast. We'll take what we can carry, and they can have the rest.'
Following his companion's glance, Hector saw the snouts of two large alligators gliding across the water towards them.
'You'll see plenty of others,' explained his companion. 'Mostly the caymans stay their distance. But if they are hungry or in a bad humour, just occasionally they will run at you and take you down.'
Working quickly, they began to butcher the wild bull into quarters. Here, too, Jezreel was an adept. The blade of his hunting knife sliced through skin and flesh, skilfully working around the bones and severing the sinews, until the slabs of fresh meat had been separated from the carcass. They dropped them into the canoe, and pushed off, heading back towards their camp. Looking over his shoulder, Hector saw the caymans crawling up the slope. As he watched, they began to snap and chew at the bloody carcass, like huge olive brown lizards attacking a lump of raw flesh.