This time I carefully didn’t look down, and it seemed to help. I reached the foretop quite quickly, though the ropes raised blisters and the sweat was stinging my cuts. The crow’s-nest was nothing like those nice secure tubs you see in films – just another bare platform, but with iron loops set at waist height on either side of the mast, and a low rail to slip your toes under. The look-out, a picklefaced she-pirate with the build of a Russian trawler captain, showed me how to fasten my belt to the loops, cackling all the while.
‘You and Mistress Mall, heh-heh! Saw you from atop here! A fine disarmin’ stroke you have on you. Go try’t on a Wolf! But ware the return thrust, heh-heh-heh!’ Busy finding my footing, I ignored all that till she thrust her leathery face into mine, more serious now. ‘Twas a fell time in these parts to be tryin’ such jinks, young sir! Best not, when the souffle Erzulie’s a-blowin’! Or there’s no tellin’ what the end might be!’
‘The what?’
The landwind – did you not feel’t? Aye, well, that’s what they calls the sigh of Erzulie down this-a-way, the warm airs blowin’ from the land at even. Aye, and a wicked hot wench she is, to be sure! Sets fire in the blood without reck’nin’ how it’ll burn, or who.’
I grinned. ‘She doesn’t sound so bad. I could use a little fire in mine, maybe.’
‘There’s fire that warms and fire that burns, hah? And when she’s Erzulie Blood-i’the-Eye, Gé-Rouge, then ’ware all that’s young and open; for she’ll run madness in their reins! Might’ve brought you a sword in the heart, she might, that riggish mistress! For is not seven such the sign of her – heh? It’s not for nothin’ they’ve another name for that wind, down Jamaicey way – the Undertaker, so they call it. Sweeps the last breath of the dyin’ away!’ And with a final cackle she plunged over the edge of the platform.
‘Hey!’ I protested, or something equally sensible – and looked down after her.
That really was a mistake.
Emptiness roared up into my face. It was like looking off a cliff – and having it whipped out from under you. There was nothing directly beneath me. No deck, no ship – nothing but the churning ocean an impossible distance below, and the waves heaving greedily up towards me, dropping away with sickening suddenness. My fingers clamped tight to the loop, but the sweat made them slip. My toes were dug in under the rail, but my legs were shaking. I had to turn my head to see the Defiance, almost hidden behind the bulging sails; she looked like a toy boat at the end of a supple stick, bounced and buffeted this way and that by the sea she rode on. And at this height every little movement of that heeling deck became a lurch, a wild whipping sway …
After eternity or thereabouts I managed to force my eyes away, to those inscrutable hills. Against their softly tossing treetops the sway was less noticeable, and I began to ride with the rhythm of it. After a while I was able to turn my mind to the job I seemed to have got stuck with, and risk a careful scan around the darkening horizon. I saw no more than we’d seen since we left the Mississippi; the sun, angry at its fall, and nothing new under it. No other ship; no turn in our luck.
I shifted uneasily on my windblown perch. Look with your own damned sheep’s eyes, Le Stryge had said; and I’d ended up doing exactly that. Just coincidence, of course. It had damn well better be coincidence. But then you couldn’t be sure of anything around here.
Such as exactly what I was supposed to be looking for. Anything capable of defeating Le Stryge’s unpleasant ways of seeing ought to be able to play hob with my plain two eyes. Unless, of course, it only had power over sorcery. But it wouldn’t take much magic to hide things among these lushly overgrown hills. For long hours we’d seen no sign of life bigger than birds and giant butterflies, flutters of flashy colour against the green, and the occasional white thread of smoke rising from a distant clearing, or a patch of leafy thatches. We’d put in at several of these little settlements along the shore. We’d hove to and questioned fishermen in their boats, we’d sent ashore to ask villagers, always the same question – un grand navire noir aux trois mats, orne aux lanternes comme des cranes grotesques, on I’a vu, hein? Its viennent d’enlever une fillette –
And always a veil fell between us. They were plain, lean peasant people for the most part, very simply dressed, looking more African than the West Indians I knew. All but the youngest had that look of premature age that goes with gruelling work and poor food. Their faces, old and young, ran to high bones and hard lines, well made to be inscrutable; their downcast eyes gave nothing away. Even the children, meant to be happy and laughing, would fall silent and scuff their toes in the dust when we spoke to them, and all the cajoling in the world would not move them. You couldn’t blame them; the word that something was brewing must have spread, and they’d no more reason to trust us than the Wolves. In one or two places the very sight of us landing sent villagers bolting screaming into the jungle; in another somebody even shot at us, winging a crewman. Not badly; it was crude bird-shot, fired more in fright than in malice. It wasn’t even worth trying to find whoever fired it among that shadowy tangle. We left them in peace, and went back to using our own eyes.
Mine, now; sweeping this way and that over land and sea and sky, bleak and empty all.
We rounded a promontory, crossed yet another empty bay; no village, no smoke, nothing but trees to the water’s rim. Out ahead, beyond the far headland, the sun was a blazing copper dome sinking into the sea, the clouds like plumes of exploding steam. I thought of Atlantis; was it, too, out here somewhere? In the shadows were all things, it seemed. This ship itself was part of shadow, a lingerer beyond the Core – and I? I had ridden on it, east of the sunrise; for better or worse I was part of it. I had begun to see with different eyes. So where, now, did I belong? The sunset burned the headland ahead into stark silhouette, its fringe of trees bending and tossing in that mocking, stifling breeze.
Except that some weren’t bending or tossing. Only swaying a little, stiffly, leafless. One – two – three –
We were not far off the point. I gathered my nerve and my breath together, leant over and shouted, but it was no use. I hadn’t the knack of hailing; the wind whipped away my words. Any louder, too, and it might be heard elsewhere, give someone the extra minute to run out those enormous guns. Quickly, trying not to fumble, I unclipped my belt and swung down through the open trap – called the ‘lubber’s hole’, suitably enough – and into the shrouds again. It was just like rock-climbing – getting down was the hard part. In one piece, anyhow. My legs were shaking; I was going too slowly. Desperately I looked around, and saw, just below me, one of the back-stays meet the mast – a heavy cable taut as a piano-wire, angling steeply away towards the rail. With abseil gear – but I didn’t have any. Too bad.
Slinging my sword well back, I reached out, wrapped an arm, then a leg, monkey-fashion, about the cable and swung myself across. Hand over hand, that was how to slide down – only I didn’t get the chance. I was sliding already, too fast, the cable skidding through my sweaty hands. I clung like the original monkey on a stick, whimpering, and dug my shoe soles into the rope like brake pads. They juddered across the ridged coils so hard they almost jolted me right off; then they bit. I arrived at the deck green and gasping, my arm streaked with scarlet rope-burns – but in time to wheeze out my message.