The men bowed their heads and Quince led them in a small prayer, lamenting the loss of their mates and thanking the Lord for their good fortune.
“What’s the next step, men? What do we need the most and how do we go about gettin’ it?”
“Shoes.” The answer from Paul came immediately and was seconded by several voices.
Most of the men, if they owned boots at all, had shed them swimming to land. Even the Jack Tars accustomed to scrambling barefoot up ship’s rigging were hard put to deal with the jagged coral piercing through the sand on most of the islet.
“There’s hardly any damned sand or soil on this rock, Skipper,” one said. “Christ, it’s like we’re walkin’ on broken glass.”
Jack noted the man’s reference to Quince as “Skipper,” carrying with it an unintended import: the men were informally changing the ship’s hierarchy. Quince noted it, too. No one had challenged the first mate’s leadership all along, but the simple use of that term in a seaman’s world was tacit indication that Quince had been promoted.
“You’re calling me ‘Skipper,’ lads, but there’s nothing says that has to be, since the Perdido is a merchant ship, not a sovereign vessel, and we’re well past any imminent peril from the sea. So… is there any objection to my being in charge?”
A general silence ensued. All seemed to feel no reason to disrupt a working system, and none harbored against Quince more than the usual minor grudges one might have for a superior.
“Okay. Shoes it is then. We’ve got water and food and we’re going to damn soon need something to protect our feet.”
“We can make some moccasins,” Red Dog said, “but it’s a bleedin’ shame we can’t get to the cargo, where I know we’re carrying at least one whole damn box of them.”
“Tools, too,” Mentor chimed in. “We’ve got some but could use a lot more.”
“And guns,” Coop added. “Don’t forget that. The savages have been square with us, but what if that changes?”
“Aye guns,” said Smithers. “We’ve got plenty powder and lead but we’re at anybody’s mercy till we have more than one pistol to defend the lot of us.”
“We had a good dozen musket on board,” Quince observed thoughtfully, “but they were locked in the captain’s cabin and that went into the abyss when that wave took all the aft superstructure. Most of the hull seems in shallow water; the rest’s in the bluest part of Davy Jones.”
“I might be able to help,” Jack said.
They all looked at him.
“The fo’c’sle is sunk shallow and intact. It probably still contains my personals.”
“You aren’t sayin’ you were keepin’ guns in the crew quarters, lad? You know darn well that’s against ship’s rules.”
“No, I wasn’t keeping guns, but my most valuable possessions were there and that includes a bag of brass parts to twenty of the finest rifle mechanisms ever made. I know because I helped my father make them. I took the liberty of removing them from the hold one day when I spied them among my father’s possessions that he had left with the captain in Cuba.”
The men were all silence and raised eyebrows.
“And barrels—” bosun Mentor broke in, “—yea, I know what you’re going to say—” he worked belowdecks, often checking the stowage “—there are twenty fine barrels still in the second hold. Your father’s.”
“Yes. I suppose it’s my inheritance of sorts. The mechanisms are made of brass, of course, so they should suffer little from exposure to seawater. The barrels are thick gunmetal and well oiled, so they will also fare reasonably—for a time at least. Given our present circumstances, they would be worth their weight in gold if we could get to them.”
“Jaysus,” Coop said. “With stocks made from the mangrove wood and those parts, we could have twenty operational muskets. We could hold our own against all the savages in creation. Think what we could do with some of the cannon.”
“No, Coop,” said Quince. “It’s the muskets that would do it. Cannon are good to defend a ship, or if we were making a fort, but they’re too damn heavy to lift and move for our purposes. No, the muskets would be the thing.”
“Even better than that,” Jack continued. “These gun parts aren’t for your ordinary musket. They’re mechanisms and barrels for Kentucky longrifles: we could shoot the eyes out of mosquitoes at two hundred paces.”
Quince fumbled for his pipe and tobacco pouch. “Maybe so,” he said, nodding his head toward the Star. “But they may as well be on the moon for all the good they do us out there in five or ten fathom of water.”
“Aye, and what about gettin’ home?” Smithers asked. “What in the name of God are we doing about that, I ask ya?”
“Easy, now,” Quince answered. “We’re going to be here a good spell and need defend ourselves in the meantime.”
“He’s right,” came from Mentor, looking pointedly at Smithers. “We has to live one life at a time, we do. Don’t know when we’re leaving these parts but it’s more likely to be on our own terms, if we got shoes on our feet and guns in our hands.”
They all stared seaward and said nothing; the subject dropped in favor of sleep. The men retired, feeling better than they had in a long time, despite nagging questions of the future. Soon the camp was quiet, the Star’s surviving crew sleeping more peacefully than they ever had since the wreck. But Jack was awake, unable to keep thoughts of the count, or of Colleen, from his mind. He was determined with an almost fearsome intensity that he would meet both of them again.
12
SETTLING IN ON BELAUR
A FEW DAYS LATER, ideas of the salvage of guns or shoes were all but forgotten in order to move camp to the Belauran village. The islet they were on was limited in resources and access to the lagoon. Beyond proximity to the Star, it had little to recommend it. Jawa felt it would be easier to offer the protection of his own clan—and that of the chief of the entire island chain—if the men of the Star moved to Belaur proper on the main island.
The day was spent strapping cargo from the Star to the native outriggers for the one-hour paddle to the main village.
Of great value were sailcloth, needles, and thread. A fair amount survived, although much remained in the hold of the sunken ship. Most of the cooper’s wares were easily accessible, including his mallets and a wide assortment of hoops and staves that would probably prove useful for fresh-water storage and other purposes. Of less immediate utility—but the subject of considerable mirth—was an unmarked crate which, when eagerly opened, revealed over four dozen hoops for women’s dresses, and another forty pounds of horse hair for use in making toothbrushes—enough for a small army.
Most of the gunpowder was left at the islet to dry out, there being no purpose for it in the immediate future.
The men spent the first three days on the main island sorting through salvaged material and resting from their ordeal. They were camped on the outskirts of the village, but the women and children brought them food and drink and helped them construct lean-tos as temporary shelters—though the weather was so pleasant this seemed hardly necessary. They were told not to enter the village because that triumphant moment needed to be attended by great ceremony. Thus far, all communication had been through Gan Jawa. The meeting with high chief Yatoo would symbolize their formal acceptance by the Belaurans and their official induction into village life.