“We were in the cave for five hours,” said Bill. “It is now twenty hours since they entered.”
I felt neither sadness at their loss nor any satisfaction at having risked our lives trying to save them, only a dull wretchedness.
Bill left to investigate the graves further. I attempted to read more of the Ovid but my mental powers were not up to the task. Instead I took up this notebook and glanced through some of my entries — a sketch of a terrapin, a description of St. Elmo’s Fire, a rudimentary calculation of the volume of water passing over a nameless cataract — recalling the stories evoked by these details. After several hours Bill returned in possession of a new skull and a signet ring bearing the initials “JDC” engraved as three interlocking curlicues. “There are six graves in all,” he said. “This was in the last.”
He departed on a second errand and reappeared carrying two bladders of water and some palm hearts. He roasted the latter and I ate them with a mug of weak coffee while he boiled and strained the water before pouring it into all our receptacles. He then set about sorting our equipment into that which was now dead weight and that which remained useful. I bridled to see him make himself so free with objects, some of them intimate, which had belonged to Edgar and Arthur but I was too weak to argue.
Bill carried on working throughout the afternoon. He filled two packs with nuts, roots and more palm hearts. I assumed that he was preparing for our forthcoming journey home. Only when he was making supper did he say, “I have provided you with food and clean water for a week though I do not think you will last that long. I will leave you the whisky. I am only sorry that I cannot leave you a gun.”
I felt like an idiot for not having predicted this turn of events. I had to think about it only for a few seconds to realise that it would be impossible for me to travel anything but the shortest distance through dense jungle. I said, “You are leaving me,” and was embarrassed to hear myself sounding like a child.
He leaned forward and tenderly unbuttoned my shirt to the navel. “Look.” My torso was peppered with livid red spots. “My whole life since the age of ten I have served other men for small wages and smaller thanks. The coming few days are worth more to me than to you.”
I recalled how I had upbraided him for questioning Edgar’s sanity, reminding him that he was merely an employee. I came close to apologising but even here, even now, I felt myself observed and judged by an invisible audience composed of those people whose good opinions I have always sought — my father, my schoolmasters, Christina, my friends — and I did not want to be seen as craven or obsequious. For the briefest of moments I was on the verge of tears, then I gathered myself and wished Bill luck on his journey. He seemed thrown somewhat and I felt stronger as a result.
Darkness fell and the bats came out of the cave. I would see this spectacle only a few more times and be able to tell no one about it. I asked Bill whether he was going to take the signet ring and the skull to the Carlysles. He said that he had not yet decided. There was no financial reward offered and reputation alone rarely put a roof over a man’s head. If he reached the river’s mouth he might not even sail home. He had skills which, in this country, could make him, if not a wealthy man, then at the very least a man of business. He might simply keep the ring and the skull as mementos.
We sat watching the fire. Every so often the wood spat and crackled and a bright ember was carried up into the dark as if we were cooking stars and adding them to the night sky one by one. I was going to die. I wanted very much to talk about this but I could not broach the subject. I thought of the ayah we had in Chittagong and how she would sit on my bed and ask, “What is the matter with the young master?” and I never needed to say what the matter was because the asking of the question itself was what I needed.
The bats woke me at dawn. Bill was already gone. I had a headache and loose bowels. Starting a fire proved too onerous so I ate a handful of nuts, drank a mug of tepid, coppery water and lay wrapped in my canvas sheet watching the sun come up.
I recalled the weekend two years previously during which I had returned to Merton for the Founder’s Supper. After an opulent meal I found myself walking in the gardens with Edgar. Pausing at the armillary sundial in the dying light we smoked a pair of cigars looking down over Christ Church Meadow towards the Isis. I don’t think, hitherto, that he had ever given me his full attention for more than two or three minutes. I was flattered, and when he told me the story of the Carlysle expedition and his plan to bring back news of the family’s missing son I was struck by how pitifully lacking in event my own life had been up to this point.
The memory unsettled me. I drank some more water and added a little whisky to dull the pain in my head. My eye fell on my notebook and I realised that I must try to leave some record of our expedition. If it were never read by another human being it would nevertheless summon a few ghosts and I would be in great need of company over the coming days.
And so I began to write.
Towards the end of the afternoon I relit the fire using the flint and the sealed tin of dried moss which Bill had left me. I roasted another two palm hearts and watched the sun go down. I tried to write more but could not order my thoughts. I had a fever. My left leg was now completely numb and the livid red spots had spread down my left arm. The bats came out to hunt. If I moved quickly my head spun. I drank the last of the whisky and closed my eyes and waited for sleep to take me.
I woke thinking that we were still at sea and that we had run into a storm. Lightning ripped the sky from top to bottom and a vast ocean was lit up momentarily in a burst of white light. Then the world was thrown back into darkness and the thunder followed, like barrels rolling off a cart. Lightning struck for a second time and I saw that the ocean was made of trees, that I was not on a boat and that it was not pitching. There was a little canvas roof over my head but I was lying in water. I tried to stand but I could not make my legs work properly. I raised myself onto my hands and knees like a dog. There was another flash of lightning and I saw my notebook wedged into the open mouth of a pack that was filling with water. I pulled the pack under the canvas, extracted the notebook, stuffed it into my shirt and gave myself over wholly to the belief that if I could save the book then I could save myself.
There was lightning, then there was darkness, then there was thunder. I lost the feeling in my hands and knees and feet. I fell asleep, my arms buckled and I was woken by my head and shoulder striking the hard, wet rock. I got back onto my hands and knees. I do not know how many times this happened.
Gradually the gap between the flashes of lightning and the peals of thunder grew longer and both slowly faded. Then they were gone and I was left in complete darkness and pouring rain. I was going to die at some time in the next few days. Only the thought of the notebook gave me any desire to reach the morning alive. My teeth chattered. I saw Christina and her new husband seated on a terrace, their children playing cricket on a long lawn. I saw a flotilla of Spanish ships approaching over the ocean of trees. I was lifted up and carried into the cave by the surviving members of Carlysle’s expedition.
The bats did not return. Perhaps they could not fly through heavy rain. At dawn a monochrome world became faintly visible. Over the next hour or so the downpour thinned and ceased. The low sky was dirty and grey like a cheap military blanket laid over the world. Drops trembled and fell from every object. The numbness had spread to both my hips. I was still shaking but no longer felt as cold as I had done. Whether this was an improvement in my health or the later stages of hypothermia I had no way of knowing.