‘Slept your fill, Master Stephen?’ inquired a familiar voice, mildly sardonic, from the direction of the helm. ‘Have no fear, they’re but signal guns.’
‘Of course,’ I mumbled, or something of the sort, fighting to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth. ‘Nice uv yuh t’let m’sleep. Nice soft deck …’
A boot tapped musically against wood. ‘Your cabin’s yet unrepaired, or we’d have stowed you there. There’s water in the butt here, should you wish it.’
I downed a pannikin practically in one gulp, and felt a lot better. ‘Could I have another? Is there enough?’
‘To soak your head in, an it’ll not fall off!’ grinned Mall. I followed her advice, as far as my face anyhow; the water was tepid and brackish, but incredibly refreshing all the same. ‘Take all you will, there’s no lack. See, we’re in sight of land.’
‘Uh?’ I jerked my head up, spluttering and streaming. ‘What? Where?’ But I saw it even as she pointed, a dark streak between the sea and a strangely luminous skyline.
‘We’ve run up a signal for aid. That’s what purpose the guns serve, to call attention to it – and a’looks as though we’ve snared our hare!’
I wiped my streaming eyes and peered out; something was there, something like a glowing coal across the low swell, and growing slowly larger. The hands were lining the sides, laughing and pointing. I shivered, though the night was warm; it looked uncomfortably close to my dream. But when it rolled a little closer, and Pierce hailed it, I laughed myself. It was a little steamship, craziest-looking thing I’d ever seen with its immense crowned smokestack, tethered by stays just like a mast, and huge uncovered paddlewheels at either side of the little wheel-house that was all its superstructure. When it tooted its whistle and hove-to alongside I’d have expected Mickey Mouse to look out. Instead a vision of white whiskers and brass buttons appeared with a megaphone, rubbing his hands, and greeted Pierce with the cheerful sympathy of a man about to profit from his neighbour’s problem. They began a spirited negotiation, only about half intelligible – which was probably just as well, given the half I could make out; terms like ‘raggedy-ass lime-juice freebooter’ and ‘pinch-penny tea-kettle sailor’ were flying back and forth quite freely. Unless I was much mistaken, each challenged the other to a duel at one point. But all at once they came to a friendly accord, and the steamboat began chugging laboriously around, paddles churning in opposite directions. Pierce and Jyp came striding aft, sounding very cheerful.
‘A stroke of high fortune, by Jove!’ the captain rumbled. ‘A steam tug for our tow, and at a most reasonable rate.’
‘That’s so,’ agreed Jyp placidly. ‘Last one, I recall you solemnly vowed if he didn’t come down two bits a mile you’d rape his wife and burn his house down. And shoot his dog. Okay, Mall, I’ll relieve you now; this river’s an old friend of mine. There’s sandbars and mudbanks aplenty right up the river, and I know all their first names.’
‘And whom they wedded, I’ve no doubt. The wheel’s to yourself, pilot! I’ve a mind to rest me awhile.’ With a friendly wave she trotted lightly down to the maindeck. Seeing the spring in her stride as she threaded her way through the growing snarl-up there, you wouldn’t have thought she needed any rest at all. The mate was struggling to organize the reefing of the makeshift mainsail; without proper rigging this was a murderously difficult job, and even these hardened sailors were so tired they were tripping over and tangling lines everywhere you looked. Pierce glared and seized his speaking trumpet. ‘Deck, there! Belay, all! One fall at a time! Haul by turns, you pox ’spital outsweepings!’ They stared up stupidly, and he began to thump time on the rail, ‘Haul, one! Then haul two!’
A clear musical note picked up the rhythm of his shout and wove it into a mocking little rise-and-fall tune. Laughter rippled, and one of the women sang along with the line.
The men picked up the song, hoarse as corncrakes but with reviving energy. Order seemed to flow across the deck, and they threw their weight on the falls in time to the repeated lines.
Miracle of miracles, the snarl-up was beginning to clear, and men could shin up the makeshift mast and out on the yard – gingerly, since there wasn’t any footrope.
I glanced round for the source of the music, and was astonished to see Mall appear at the door of her cabin, a violin at her shoulder, swaying with each bold sweep of her bow. Out into the tangle she stepped, skipping over snags and kicking stray ends of rope aside without missing a note, and perched herself nimbly upon the rail. As they finished hauling she shifted almost imperceptibly to another tune, a strange sad reflective melody with an oddly Elizabethan sound – or not so oddly, when you thought about it. It was incredibly calm and beautiful.
‘Great little fiddler, isn’t she?’ said Jyp softly.
‘The best – not that I’m any expert. Doesn’t she ever sleep?’
‘Not often. I’ve seen her, once or twice. Never for long.’
‘Do you?’
Jyp chuckled softly. ‘Now and again.’
The tug hooted impatiently, and a cloud of smutty soot from its stack blew across the deck, inspiring Pierce to further inspired cursing; a line was flung from its stern to our bows, and there made fast. The little tug tooted again and turned clumsily away, paddles stirring the dark water to a froth. The line took the strain, hummed taut, the Defiance wallowed horribly under us a moment and then surged forward in a new rhythm, bobbing and bucking across the waves. I turned to Jyp. ‘You called this a river? With only that streak of land in sight? Looks more like the sea, still.’
‘Sure is, in a sense.’ He spoke a little absently, his eyes fixed on the water ahead. ‘But it’s a big river, this, strong current carrying a mighty load of silt and flowing right out against the sea to dump it. Delta here sticks out a long way, and the current’s building the banks all the time. We’re steering down the main drag already; can’t see it, but it’s there – hallo!’ A soft, almost subliminal judder seemed to pass through the ship. ‘Baby’s grown a mite. Ah, well, it scrapes the copper clean. Man can’t be too careful round here.’
And I realized with a sudden thrill that even while we’d talked the waves around us had been growing slower, heavier, flatter, as if the water itself was turning somehow thicker; a shadow seemed to be spreading beneath. At last they began to break over the hidden solidity and their voices changed to the resigned hiss of surf – too near, all too near to come from that far-off streak of land. Slowly, almost shyly, hummocked silhouettes rose on either side in the starlight, and before long I saw them topped with scrubby grass and clumps of bushes. The ship’s motion was changing, growing steadier, the thudding pulse of the surf already behind us and dying away. It was as if, in the blackness beyond the light of our lanterns, the land had reached out to meet us.
So it went on, hours into the night. Clouds hid the moon, and the starlight showed us only the barest outlines of the bank; our lanterns couldn’t reach. Ahead of us blazed the open door of the tug’s firebox, an angry guiding star in the blackness with the insistent, relentless chuffing of its engine. I did my best to doze, lying or sitting leaning against the transom, but without the combined effects of rum and exhaustion the discomfort of the deck kept on waking me every hour or so. Once something sang uncomfortably in my ear, and I sat up sharply and stared around. The banks had changed a little, not necessarily for the better. There were trees there now, oddly stunted and growing in swampland, to judge by what drifted out to us on the warm breeze – the smells, and the incessant chorus of chirps, croaks and whistles. And the mosquitoes; I slapped and swore, but they didn’t seem to bother Jyp.