At this point Tora dozed off.
He woke to a sudden, sharp pain to his injured chest and roared. Dragon Tattoo loomed above him, his foot still in the air. He grinned malevolently. The bastard had kicked him. Tora sucked in his breath and steeled himself for more. The pirate’s grin was spoiled by a fresh gap in his front teeth. Tora took some satisfaction from that.
But no other blows fell.
“What the hell did you do to me?” Tora croaked.
“It’s not what I did, scum. It’s what I’m going do,” said Dragon Tattoo, baring his missing teeth again. “You’ll be talking to my chief, and when he’s done with you, you die.”
“Why? What’s going on? And where are we going?”
“None of your business.” Dragon Tattoo spat in Tora’s face and walked away.
Rubbing the spittle off on his shoulder, Tora considered. The chief was not the captain and did not appear to be on the ship. So he was being taken to some pirate stronghold or hideout. Perhaps there was still some hope of talking himself out of this fix. Dragon Tattoo’s threat he put from his mind. There was time to deal with him later. He closed his eyes again.
He woke with a terrible thirst. This time, he had lost all sense of time. The sun was high, and he was baking like a fish on a griddle. At the corner of the cabin, four pirates were throwing dice. Evidently, gambling was their main occupation when they weren’t asleep or working.
He croaked, “How about some water?”
They turned their heads and stared at him. One of them muttered something. They guffawed and went back to their game.
“Oh, come on! Just a drink of water. I’m burning up here.”
One of them got up, walked over to the side of the ship and dropped a pail on a rope into the sea. Bringing it back up, he carried it to Tora and flung the contents over him. “Wet enough for you, spy?” he asked.
The others guffawed some more.
The water cooled Tora’s burning skin for a moment, but the little that got into his parched mouth made his thirst worse, and his skin began to itch.
Spy?
Where did they get the idea he was a spy? He thought back and could not remember saying or doing anything that would have given his purpose away.
Nothing much happened the rest of the day. They ignored him. His thoughts went to Seimei and he grieved. Seimei would be disappointed in him, but he would tell him, “Don’t be afraid to mend your faults.” How did you mend this fault?
He tried to beg for water one more time when a different sailor walked past and got another kick for his troubles. In the afternoon, clouds moved in, and a sharp wind sprang up. It got cold very quickly. The big sails flapped and the masts creaked. Tora shivered.
Within an hour or so, the sky had turned dark, lightning tore across it, and the wind buffeted the sails, and caused turbulent waves. The ship plunged and rose, plunged and rose. Thunder rolled.
The pirates did not seem too concerned, and Tora decided that they knew what they were doing. He thought about rain. Surely there would be rain. Blessed rain. He was utterly parched and miserable. But the rain held off, and the wind grew stronger. The day turned into a long night.
When the rolling of the ship increased, Tora pushed himself against the railing and held on with the fingers of one hand. The movement and strain hurt his damaged rib, so he tried to find a more comfortable position by moving his arms to ease the pressure of the rope. This proved in vain on his right side, but on the left, a knot allowed his wrist and hand enough room to twist a little. Encouraged, he continued to work at stretching and shifting the loops around his chest. It occurred to him that he might push the rope lower, toward his waist, and gain some extra room. He looked around and saw a large metal ring attached to the deck. It probably served to fasten something or other but was not in use and only a couple of feet away. Lying down, he used his legs to slide his back on top of the ring. When the ring caught against the rope that passed around his back and chest, he started pushing hard.
The heart of the storm came up fast, and all hell broke loose on the ship. The pirates rushed about; sails flapped as men moved the great horizontal beams that held the canvas spread out to lessen and deflect the force of the wind against them. It took three men to hold and move the rudder, and the ship tossed about, rolled, and rose to unimaginable heights, only to drop into precipitous depths over and over again.
Tora’s work became immeasurably harder. He kept sliding and had no way of controlling this. Besides, his struggles at pushing the rope down were extremely painful, and he seemed to be making things worse. He was sweating, yet he shivered in the cold wind. Spray came over the sides. He was afraid the rope would tighten further when it got wet, and so he tried to push harder and faster. All the while, he kept an eye on the sailors and made himself as small as he could, afraid that they would stop him.
But there was little chance of that. They were busy reefing the sails and tying things down. Feet stepped on him, stumbled over him, kicked him here and there, but they paid him no other attention.
It got dark very quickly-a good thing, because they could not see what he was doing, but the darkness added to his fear. If the ship went down, he would not be able to save himself.
The rain finally came in great gusts. He let it fall into his open mouth, tried to soak it up with his skin. Blessed rain. And he finally felt the rope begin to give a little. His rib cage protested briefly and very painfully, but then the strain shifted lower, to his flat belly, and he had a little room to twist and turn his left arm.
This was still a far cry from being able to extricate it, but further painful maneuvers, including rolling back and forth on the wet deck, loosened the rope loops some more, and he freed first his upper arm and then, with a final excruciating effort, his elbow. The rest was easy, but he was by then utterly worn out from pain and effort. He lay exhausted, flexing his free hand.
The storm did not rest. Lines snapped, a sail came loose and tore, the roof of the cabin came off, piece by life-threatening piece hurling about the deck and overboard. Then one of the masts cracked and slowly leaned, tilting the ship.
Tora slid hard against the railing and held on with his free hand. The sea washed over him, and he pulled himself up to catch a breath, muttering a prayer under his breath. Only a short while ago, he would have been lost, bound hand and foot and washed over the side.
Suddenly he was not alone. One of the pirates had slid down, hit the rail beside him, and started to go over the side. Instinctively, Tora let go and grabbed the man. For a moment, their lives hung in the balance. The next roll of the ship would toss them both overboard.
But the sailor, having both arms free, caught himself and clasped the railing, then pulled them both back from the brink. They stood, staring at each other, and Tora released him. They would come now and tie him up again, he thought. All that effort and pain for nothing and he would still drown in the end.
The sailor suddenly pulled a knife, and Tora jerked away and fell. Never mind drowning, he thought, lying on the wet deck, the knife will be quicker. But the man bent to his feet, and Tora felt those bonds parting. Then he cut the rope that still held his right arm. When he was done and Tora was free, he turned away and plunged back into the driving rain where the others were using axes to cut loose the broken mast.
Tora sat against the side and held on. The storm was still fully upon them and water came from all sides. It was impossible to tell what was rain and what sea. Waves washed across the deck, and once, as the ship pitched hard, he almost tumbled over the side again.
While lightning flashed and thunder rolled, and ever larger seas swamped the ship, Tora thought of his family, and how he loved his sweet, dainty wife Hanae with every fiber of his being. She had been the one to make sacrifices to be with him and she had given him his son Yuki. He felt a fierce pride that Yuki had attacked the armed intruders. The love and the courage of that act! If he died in this storm, he would lie lost and unburied among the shells and fishes. They would mourn him for years, hoping in vain that he might return some day. He wept at the pity of this, and then he prayed to the Buddha and clutched the railing with icy fingers.