chapter XIII
OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN INTO THE FIRE
Jake Harris and Will Kilick had both made previous voyages to the West Indies, but the American, Benjamin Wilson, was the only member of the boat's company who had lived in them for any considerable time; so he was the first to realize the new ordeals of sun-scorch and thirst which they must now face owing to having adopted his own suggestion of making for Saint-Domingue.
While darkness lasted they could have landed unseen on the west point of the bay, hidden the boat among the mangroves and concealed themselves in the jungle, slept all day and then had a full night before them in which to make the crossing. But they were a good mile from land. To turn back now meant exposing themselves to a still greater risk of recapture, and even if they could get safely ashore they would have to abandon the boat from fear that they were under observation by a look-out on the point who would swiftly bring the pirates to the spot where they had landed.
Silently the American cursed himself for his misjudgment: although in fact he was little to blame, as he had known nothing of the adverse current which made every yard they gained a struggle, and in the urgency of the moment anyone might have overestimated the pulling powers of his eleven companions.
As it was Dan, Jake, the Doctor and himself were the only members of the party capable of putting in an effective spell at an oar, and even they were already nearly played out owing to their previous night's exertions. Roger, now in great pain, lay helpless on the stern boards. The wound in Kilick's shoulder, although only flesh deep, made rowing an agony for him. Pirouet and Tom had both proved broken reeds; the one because he had a weak heart, and the other because the blood he had lost after receiving a cut across the head had resulted in his becoming weak and feverish.
That left only the women. Georgina was still unconscious, and Amanda had a wrenched arm. But soon after dawn Clarissa and Jenny volunteered to relieve in turn for a spell two of the four men who were rowing^-Neither of the girls had ever before handled a heavy oar; so at first their erratic efforts proved far from helpful, but after a while they got into the rhythm of pulling and gamely stuck it for an hour.
By then the boat had gained another hard-won mile to seaward, and there were still no signs of pursuit; so most of them felt an increasing optimism about their chances of escape. But the seafaring members of the party, while keeping their thoughts to themselves, were much less inclined to think they were nearly out of the wood. They rightly assumed that they had been allowed to get so far un-pursued only because the early morning calm would have made it futile for the pirates to hoist the sails on either of the ships, and that as soon as a breeze sprang up they might expect to see then* enemies coming after them. With this in mind, when Fergusson suggested that they should take it easy for a while, Dan would not hear of it, and insisted that they must not relax their efforts as long as they had an ounce of strength left in them.
The next hour was a grim one. The arms of the rowers ached to breaking-point and the sun was mounting with an ever-increasing glare. As some consolation the strength of the current gradually lessened until they had passed right out of it; so they were able to maintain the boat's pace with less exertion, and the mangrove-tangled shore of Tortuga dropped below their horizon. But Dan, knowing that the boat could soil easily be picked up by a look-out from a snip's mast, continued to urge them to stick it for a while longer.
Soon after eight o'clock both Fergusson and Wilson were so worn out that every few minutes one or other of them caught a crab, and it became obvious that they had become more of a hindrance than a help; so Jenny and Clarissa again relieved them. By nine the hands of the two girls were badly blistered from the unaccustomed work and they were hard put to it to suppress tears, while Dan and Jake had also reached the limit of their strength. There was then nothing for it but to ship oars and let the boat drift, praying that a now favourable current they had struck would continue to carry it farther from Tortuga.
The rest of the day was one long nightmare that seemed never ending. The pursuit which would certainly have meant their recapture never matured, because it proved one of those days which occasionally occur in the tropics when a calm continues almost unbroken from dawn till dusk; yet at times they would have almost welcomed the sight of their enemies' topmasts as the price of a refreshing breeze.
Hour after hour the glassy sea for miles around reflected the cloudless blue sky, and a brazen sun blazed down upon them unmercifully. In vain they cowered in the bottom of the boat seeking to take advantage of every vestige of shadow thrown by thwarts and the oars laid along them. Their clothes were their only protection from the scorching rays, and adjust them as they would it was next to impossible to keep heads, necks, ears, faces, hands, wrists and ankles covered at one time; yet the exposure of any area of skin for more than a few moments had to be paid for later by most painful burning. Had the Circe's late passengers not become to some degree immunized to tropical sunshine during the last weeks of her voyage, they must all have been .driven insane; even as it was they suffered acutely.
They were in no urgent need of food but by midday thirst began to worry them. At first it took the form only of parched throats, but as the seemingly ^terminable hours of the afternoon wore on their tongues began to swell and they no longer had enough saliva in their mouths to moisten their cracking lips. Tom added greatly to their distress, for he became delirious, and their hearts were wrung by his cries for water, which they could not satisfy.
Meanwhile, the current had carried the boat out into mid channel and some miles to westward of the course they had set early that morning. From time to time two of the men got out oars and again impelled the boat towards the shore that meant safely and succour, but short spells were all that they could manage. To southward, for as far as they could see on either hand, stretched the shores of Saint-Domingue. From them the western end of the island rose in fold after fold of forest-covered slopes to a great range of peaks eastward in its distant centre, which had caused its aborigines to call it Haiti, meaning 'Mountainous'. Its lack of all signs of human habitation gave it a mysterious, slightly sinister, look, yet with aching eyes they gazed towards it as to a Promised Land.
At about three o'clock Georgina at last came round but, mercifully, almost at once fell again into a torpor. By then the pain of Roger's wound had dulled to an ache which was supportable as long as he remained quite still; and since he had been lying almost motionless all day with his coat rigged like a tent over his face he was not plagued by thirst to the same degree as the others.
Some of them, crouching between the thwarts with their heads similarly buried, managed to doze fitfully for short periods but their physical distress was too acute for them to free then: minds from it for more than a few minutes at a time. They were, too, constantly a prey to the terrifying thought that as they lacked the strength to propel the boat it might be earned by adverse currents out into the open ocean, where they must die in circumstances too horrible to contemplate.
At last the fiery sun began to lose a little of its terrible potency and when it had sunk to within some twenty degrees of the western horizon Dan roused those of his companions who were capable of rowing, urging them to man the oars in a new effort.
In voices made hoarse by thirst they argued against undertaking any fresh exertion before the sun had set, but he pointed out that the injured were in urgent need of proper attention. Within the past hour they had picked out a tiny white patch high up on a headland which jutted out from the coast some distance to the west. There could now be little doubt that it was a large house, and if they could beach the boat below it they could hope to find ready aid there; but if they waited until darkness to make the attempt they might miss the point by miles. As a final incentive he added that if with sundown the sky became overcast, veiling the stars, they might lose their direction altogether, and so fail to get ashore at all.