"It's going to hurt like Billy-o." Sebastian's voice was hoarse.
The rowers were resting on their oars, watching with frank curiosity, while the raft eddied and swung in the drift of the Mozambique current. Above them the sail that Sebastian had rigged from salvaged planking and canvas flapped wearily, throwing a shadow across the leg.
"Mohammed, you and one other to hold the master's shoulders. Two others to keep his legs still."
Flynn lay quiescent, pinioned beneath them on the slats of the deck.
Sebastian knelt over him, gathering his resolve. The knife he had sharpened against the metal edge of the raft, and then scrubbed clean with coconut fibre and seawater.
He had sluiced the leg also, and washed his hands until the skin tingled. Beside him on the deck stood half a coconut shell containing perhaps an ounce of evaporated salt scraped from the deck and the sail, ready to pack into the open wound. "Ready?"he whispered.
"Ready," grunted Flynn, and Sebastian located the lump of the bullet and drew the edge of the blade across it timidly.
Flynn gasped, but human skin was tougher than Sebastian allowed. It did not part.
"Goddamn you!" Flynn was sweating already. "Don't play with it. Cut, man, cud'
This time Sebastian slashed, and the flesh split open under the blade. He dropped the knife and drew back in horror as the infection bubbled up through the lips of the knife wound. It looked like yellow custard mixed with prune juice and the smell of it filled his nostrils and his throat.
"Go for the slug. Go for it with your fingers." Flynn writhed beneath the men who held him. "Hurry. Hurry. I can't take much more."
Steeling himself, closing his throat against the vomit that threatened to vent at any moment, Sebastian slipped his little finger into the slit. Hooking with it for the bullet, finding it, easing it up although tissue clung to it reluctantly, until it popped from the wound and dropped on to the deck.
A fresh gush of warm poison followed it out, flowing over Sebastian's hand, and he crawled to the edge of the raft, choking and gagging.
"Wished we had some red cloth." Flynn sat against the rickety mast. He was still very weak but four days ago the fever had broken with the release of the poison.
"What would you do with it?" Sebastian asked.
"Catch me one of those dolphins. Man, I'm so god damned hungry I'd eat it raw."
A four-day diet of coconut pulp and milk had left all their bellies grumbling.
"Why red?"
"They go for red. Make a lure."
"You haven't any hooks or line."
"Tie it to a bit of twine from the sack and tease them up to the surface then harpoon one with your knife tied to an oar."
Sebastian was silent, peering thoughtfully over the side at the deep flashes of gold where the shoal of dolphin played under the raft. "It's got to be red, hey?" he asked, and Flynn looked at him sharply;
"Yeah. It's got to be red."
"Well..." Sebastian hesitated, and then flushed with embarrassment under his tropical sunburn.
"What's wrong with you?"
Still blushing, Sebastian stood up and loosened his belt then, shyly as a bride on her wedding night, he drew down his pants.
"MY God," breathed Flynn in shock, as he held up his hand to shield his eyes.
"Haul Haul"was the chorus of admiration from the crew.
"Got them at Harrods," said Sebastian with becoming modesty.
Red, Flynn had asked for but Sebastian's underpants were the brightest, most beautiful red; the most vivid sunset and roses red, he could have imagined. They hung in oriental splendour to Sebastian's knees.
"Pure silk," said Sebastian, fingering the cloth. "Ten shillings a pair."
"Whoa now! Come on, little fishy. Come on there, Flynn whispered as he lay on his belly, head and shoulders over the edge of the raft. On its thread of twine, the scrap of red danced deep in the green water. A long, slithering flash of gold shot towards it, and Flynn jerked the twine away at the last instant. The dolphin swirled and darted back. Again Flynn jerked the twine. Chameleon lines and dots of excitement showed against the gold of the dolphin's body.
"That's it, fishy. Chase it." The other fish of the shoal joined the hunt, forming a sparkling planetary system of movement around the lure. "Get ready!"
"I'm ready." Sebastian stood over him, poised like a javelin thrower. In the excitement he had forgotten to don his pants and his shirt-tails flapped around his thighs in a most undignified manner. But his legs were long and finely muscled, the legs of an athlete. "Get back!" he snapped at the crew who were crowded around him so that the raft was listing dangerously. "Get back give me room," and he hefted the oar with the long hunting knife lashed to the tip.
"Here they come." Flynn's voice trembled with excitement as he worked the scrap of red cloth upwards, and the shoal followed it. "Now!" he shouted as a single fish broke the surface four feet of flashing gold, and Sebastian lunged.
The steady hand and eye that had once clean-bowled the great Frank Woolley directed the oar. Sebastian hit the dolphin an inch behind the eye, and the blade slipped through to lacerate the gills.
For a few seconds the oar came alive in his hands as the dolphin twitched and fought on the blade, but there were no barbs to hold in the flesh, and the fish slipped from the knife.
"God damn it to hell! "bellowed Flynn.
"Dash it all! "echoed Sebastian.
But ten feet down the dolphin was mortally wounded; it jigged and whipped like a golden kite in a high wind while the rest of the shoal scattered.
Sebastian dropped the oar and began stripping his shirt.
"What are you doing? "demanded Flynn.
"Going after it."
"You're mad. Sharks!"
"I'm so hungry, I'll eat a shark also," and he dived over the side. Thirty seconds later he surfaced, blowing like a grampus but grinning triumphantly, with the dead dolphin clasped lovingly to his bosom.
They ate strips of raw fish seasoned with evaporated salt, squatting around the mutilated carcass of the dolphin.
"Well, I've paid a guinea for worse meals than this said Sebastian, and belched softly. "Oh, I beg your pardon."
"Granted," Flynn grunted with his mouth full of fish; and then eyeing Sebastian's nudity with a world-weary eye, "Stop boasting and put your pants on before you trip over. Flynn O'Flynn was slowly, very slowly, revising his estimate of Sebastian Oldsmith.
The rowers had long since lost any enthusiasm they might have had for the task. They kept at it only in response to offers of bodily violence by Flynn and the example set by Sebastian, who worked tirelessly.
The thin layer of fat that had sheathed Sebastian's muscles was long since consumed, and his sun-baked body was a Michelangelo sculpture as he leaned and dug and pulled the oar.