“Aye, sir.”
The carrack moved smoothly round, the wind coming right aft now. The crew rushed to the braces to trim the yards. Hawkwood saw the white flicker and rush of foam breaking on black rocks off on the starboard side.
“Leadsman! What’s our depth?”
There was a splash, a long waiting minute, then the leadsman declared, “Forty fathoms, sir, and white sand!”
“Take in topsails!” Hawkwood shouted.
The crew raced up the shrouds, bent over the topsail yards and began folding in the pale expanses of canvas. The ship lost speed.
“Why are we slowing down, Captain?” It was Murad, coming up the quarterdeck ladder almost at a run.
“Breakers ahead!” the lookout shrieked. “Starboard and larboard. Three cables from the bow!”
“God almighty!” Hawkwood exclaimed, startled. “Let go anchor!”
A seaman knocked loose the heavy sea anchor from the bows with the blow of a mallet. There was an enormous splash that lit up the black sea and the ship lost way, coming gradually to a full stop. She began to yaw as the wind pushed her stern around.
“Get a bower anchor out from the stern, Velasca,” Hawkwood told his first mate. “And pray it holds in this ground.”
He could see them himself: a broken line of white water barely visible off in the night and there was a new sound, the distant roar of surf. Hawkwood found he was trembling, his shoulder a scarlet flame of pain and the sweat sour and slick about him. But for the vigilance of the lookout, the ship would still be sailing towards the distant rocks.
“Is that it?” Murad asked in a breath, gazing out at the white foam which sliced open the darkness.
“Maybe. It might be a reef. We can’t take any chances. I’ve dropped anchor. I don’t like the ground, but there’s no way I’m going any further in at night. We’ll have to wait for daylight.”
They both listened, watched. Hard to imagine what might be out there in the night; what manner of country lay beyond the humid darkness and the line of treacherous breakers.
“Stern anchor out and holding, sir,” Velasca reported.
“Very good. Send down the larboard watch, and have the starboards haul the boats out over the side. They need a wetting, or they’ll leak like sieves in the morning.”
“Aye, sir.”
Hawkwood stared out into the darkness, feeling the ship roll and pitch beneath his feet like a tethered animal bucking the halter. The heat of the night seemed more intense now, and he thought he saw the tiny bodies of insects flickering about the stern lantern. Not an isolated reef, then, but something more substantial. It was hard to believe after all this time that their destination was most likely out there in the darkness, under their lee.
He wondered what Haukal would have made of it, and for a moment pondered the disappearance of his other ship, the graceful little caravel and the good seamen who had manned her. Were they sailing still, on some distant latitude? Or were the fishes gnawing at their bones? He might never know.
Murad had gone. Hawkwood could hear the nobleman shouting orders down in the waist, calling for his officers and sergeants. He must have everything polished and shining; they would be claiming a new world for their king in the morning.
T HAT last night, Hawkwood, Murad and Bardolin shared a bottle of Candelarian wine in the stern cabin, the shutters open to let in some air. A moth flew in the glassless windows and flapped about the table lantern like a thing entranced, and they, equally entranced, watched it avidly until it ventured too close to the flame and fell to the table, blackened. They let it lie there like some sort of mocking talisman, a promise of things to come, perhaps. And they toasted the voyage and whatever the morning might bring in the good wine, saving the last drops for a libation to be poured into the sea in a ritual far older than any vision of Ramusio’s. They drank to those whose souls had been lost in their passage of the ocean and to whatever future might appear to them out of the sunrise.
In the morning the sun came up out of a belt of molten cloud, like the product of some vast furnace housed below the eastern horizon. Every member of the ship’s company was on deck dressed in their best; Hawkwood was even wearing a sword. They could hear clearly the thunder of breaking surf, feel the damp, heavy air of the land. There were birds perched in the rigging, little dun sparrow-like creatures that twittered and sang with the rising of the sun. It was a sound that had the crew staring and smiling with wonder. Birdsong-something from a former life.
There was a mist, honeyed by the sunrise. The lookout in the foretop was the first man to be clear of it, and he yelled out to the depth of his lungs:
“Land ho! Abaft the starboard beam there-hills and trees. Great God!”
There was a spasm of cheering which Murad and his officers silenced. The mist thinned moment by moment.
And there it was. A green country of thick vegetation solidifying out of the veils of morning. Mountains rearing up into a clear sky, and the gathering sunrise gilding it.
“Man the boats,” Hawkwood said hoarsely.
The crews of the two ship’s boats that had survived scrambled down the ship’s side, the soldiers clumsy with armour and weapons, the seamen agile as apes.
“Cast off!” Hawkwood shouted as soon as they were seated on the thwarts. There was no need to say anything else; all the crew had been well briefed, and Velasca knew his duty.
The lines were flung clear of the gunwales and the oars were lowered. The men began to row steadily, the exertion squeezing sweat out of their pores despite the youth of the morning. The ship grew smaller behind them.
There was a long gap in the breakers which would have accommodated the Osprey the night before, had there been the light to see it. The two boats powered through, lifted and tossed by the breaking waves. Within the reefs the water was calmer and they could see a ribbon of white sand fringing the unbroken curtain of jungle ahead.
“Captain!” one of the men cried. “Captain, look aft, on the landward side of the reef!”
Hawkwood and Murad turned as one to squint into the morning sun.
“I can’t-” Murad began, and then was silent.
There on the westward side of the reef was the fragment of a ship. It was a beakhead part of a keel and a few other skeletal timbers. It looked as though the ship had run full tilt upon the reef, the fore part of the hull riding over it, the rest smashed away and sunk.
It was the Grace of God.
Men made the Sign of the Saint at their breasts, murmuring. Hawkwood’s eyes were stinging as though in sympathy with his aching shoulder. To have come so far only to fail. So many good men.
“God have mercy on them,” he murmured.
“Could any have survived?” Murad asked.
He shook his head slowly, studying the fragmented wreck and the booming surf, the jagged reef. It was sheer fluke that a portion of the ship had remained caught on the reef; it had been wedged there by the explosive force of the breakers. Only a miracle could have preserved those aboard.
“We are alone then,” Murad said.
“We are alone,” Hawkwood agreed.
The water shallowed. They could feel the heat of the land like a wall. The men raised their oars and a few seconds later the bottom of the boats kissed the sand.
Richard Hawkwood splashed out of the first boat, closely followed by Murad. Through the noise of the breakers out on the reef a glimmer of strange birdsong could be heard from the wall of jungle ahead.
They walked up out of the shallows and stood in hot white sand with the early sun heating their backs. The crews hauled the boats out of the water and stood panting. Soldiers held their arquebuses at the ready.
Murad turned to look at Hawkwood, and without a word they both began walking up the blazing beach, to where the jungle of the Western Continent gleamed dark and impenetrable before them.