A lesser man would have felt it was his own dreams and ambitions that struck the reef, and the shuddering blow of it was his future splintering apart rather than the beams of our ship.
And I, for one, believed we were well and truly fucked—knew it as a certainty that many of us would be dead before daybreak. But our great Captain showed not a moment of doubt that he would save us. As if the strength of his determination alone would hold the ship together—even if it took three days of pumping and straining at the anchor ropes and casting our ballast and heavy cargo overboard. As if he had seen how it would be written, and he would, through his own strength and determination, hold us afloat to limp to shore, where our injured vessel could be hauled up onto the bank to be repaired.
And there are some nights, when the moon is bright across those reefs and the strong southerly winds swirl together my memories and my longings, that I almost believe that is exactly how things played out. We saved every man Jack of the crew and sailed back to England, leaving no ruins of fortifications behind us. No footsteps disappearing away into the wilds. No graves of our dead. No bones left whitening in the grass.
For he didn’t save us, did he. And to quote the Good Book, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
Perhaps if it had been a clearer night. Or if the winds and seas had been calmer. If the reef had been a little lower under the choppy waves. If we had not been dismasted. If our Captain had not been struck by a falling spar. If his confidence in his destiny had been tempered a little by caution.
Plainly I was made of a different mettle than our great Captain, for I could feel it as an immutable truth that our hour of doom was upon us.
That great floating world of ours of stout beams and strong wooden pegs, bound with tarred rope and canvas and protected by tall sides with heavy cannons—it all meant nothing when the reef effortlessly ripped our bottom out. Sharp rocks and corals splintering the wood with a jolt that ran through the whole ship, and through every man on board. Each of us felt it was our own bones that were splintering, our sternums being ripped open and our hearts exposed to the sharp slashing reef below.
That’s what it felt like. That moment of terror when we knew what had happened.
Within a moment of striking, every man and youngster aboard was awake. Those in their hammocks lifting their heads and staring at each other. What was that? Did I dream that? Was it one of the many nightmares that haunt every sailor?
There were so many ways to die far from home that could haunt you. Drowning. Falling from the rigging. Diseases. Wild natives. Heat stroke. Cold. Just closing your eyes one night and drifting into an endless sleep. That question on waking seemed to last so long—though it was really just an instant between the safety of the old world and the chaos of the new.
Then we heard the shouts of alarm. Heard the ship’s bell ring. And everyone knew for certain. Before we even tumbled from our hammocks to find the deck tilting at an unnatural angle beneath us. Everything out of kilter.
We were fucked. I knew it. I knew the timbers beneath us were worn and aged. Worm-riddled, probably. I had heard the officers talking. The ship was not even in a fit state to try to return to England via the Horn. We were headed to Batavia for a refit.
Another dream now.
I made my way forward from the midshipmen’s sleeping space outside the officers’ cabins, through the cursing marines and into the tumble of men and hammocks in the mess deck. Some were trying to stow their hammocks, some were grabbing gear, others were trying to push their way through the melee of men to get to their post.
‘Make way!’ I shouted. As if being a midshipman gave me vast authority over them. As if anyone was actually listening to me.
Voices and fingers plucked at me as I passed. ‘What has happened?’ ‘Have we struck?’ ‘Is it serious?’ All questions and no answers. I made my way through the press of men trying to climb up onto deck, still calling, ‘Make way.’ To no effect.
I had to fight my way up the ladder onto the deck, and the first thing I saw was our great Captain, standing on the aft deck in his nightshirt and taking in the situation, calm and in control. Surrounded by his lackeys who stared at him in foolish devotion, who believed that no matter what danger we were in he would save us all. Like he might still the storm clouds. Like he might part the waves for us. Like he might walk on water and pull the very ship free if he chose.
Lobcocks and idiots!
I could see he knew what needed doing, though. Like he had played it all out in his mind many times. He would order the junior officers down to the hold to inspect the damage to the hull, and to have the anchors readied to be lowered to try to winch us off the reef if we were not holed too badly. If we had hit on a calm moonlit night we might have had a chance of doing that, too. But this night was one of dark fury and terror. Rain and winds screamed at us. The white tops of the high sea leaped over the ship’s side, like large watery hands trying to pluck us into the depths.
The Captain turned his head and looked at me, and I saw him mouth my name. ‘Magra!’ Though I have wished so many times he hadn’t. It was as if he were teetering on the brink of deciding once again if I was guilty or innocent, and the slightest wrong facial twitch on my part would have me in irons. As if this might somehow be my fault too. As if he might remedy things if he could just determine my guilt. But at that moment our ship was lifted on a large swell and dropped back onto the reef. The jolt was tremendous and unseated the mizzen mast.
Our Captain had kept his eyes on me a moment too long. When he finally turned his head away to the dark heavens it was too late. I don’t even know if he saw the spar that struck him. He fell to the deck in a tangle of ropes and canvas. Some of his lackeys were knocked down as well. All shouting and struggling as others fled to avoid getting tangled in the falling ropes and spars and sails. Some made it, some didn’t.
Then we were lifted again, as if those great watery hands were not yet satisfied with the damage they had wrought and were determined to break our spine conclusively. We rose up with a dreadful slowness and were then brought crashing down onto the reef again. This time our main mast went, and with it any hope of saving the ship. It fell to the larboard side, tipping us over on a sharp angle that would make freeing the three ship’s boats more than difficult.
That was the moment that everything went to shit.
We were fucked. Did I mention? Even Banks knew we were fucked. Just a moment before, I’d seen him standing among the lackeys, harrying his servants to carry all his botanical specimens up on deck, to get into one of the boats. He was standing there with an armful of plants and books, preparing to argue with the Captain as to the importance of saving them.
Then the Captain was gone and I could see Banks standing on the aft deck alone. The only man there still standing. His face blank.
The screams all around us were full of panic now. There would be no orders to check the hold. Everyone knew our hull was broken. Like there would be no orders to put out the anchors in an attempt to winch us free. I could hear the winds laughing at us. I could hear men crying to their maker or their mother. I could hear my heart beating loudly. Pulsing in my ears. I knew this was the moment that men chose to either breach the rum barrels and drown in a liquid of their own choosing, or find a way to get free of the sinking ship and try to get to safety.
I made my way over to the boats and tried to get the men there to understand me. It was a hard enough business in calm weather to get the boats lowered over the side of the ship, but in this madness it would be the devil’s own job. I looked around for an officer. There was none. So, I took it upon myself to save whom I could.
‘Get the yawl,’ I ordered some sailors. ‘It will be the lightest and easiest to launch.’ Others could wrestle with the longboat or pinnace. If we were quick we would be in the water and away before every drunken sod and his mate were trying to jump in after us.
Sailors knew the score. There would never be enough boats to take us all off the ship. We had all heard stories of those who had survived wrecks and those who had perished. Some clung to a wooden hatch cover or a mast and made it away alive; others stayed on board for a week or more while a ship broke up under them. It all came down to that fear of leaping off the ship into the angry sea. If you did it, you might drown straightaway, but you might survive. If you stayed on the ship, you knew at least you would be alive for a while longer.
The devil’s choice.
I goaded and pushed the men to make haste. Some joined us, while others gave up and disappeared back down below.
‘Where is the Captain? Where is the Captain?’ I heard one of the two other officers, Lieutenant Gore, shouting. I left it for someone else to tell him, ‘He’s gone.’
And word of that was like the sea washing right over us. With our great Captain gone, some of the men gave up at once. Others renewed their efforts to get the yawl free. Those who chose to take their chances with the sea—with the unknown—did so.
Though, if you’d asked me then what chance any of us had of reaching the distant land alive, I’d have said, ‘Not much fucking chance at all.’ I thought it more likely we’d all be dead by morning. Overturned in the waves. Bashed to death against the reef. Food for the sharks.
But that just goes to show you can’t be right in everything, doesn’t it. I stepped away then, determined not to waste any more time struggling with the boats in what now looked like an exercise in futility. I had another plan to escape that had more certainty to it.
I imagine that every sailor has at some time played out in their prayers all the possible disasters that might befall them—pleading to be spared from each. But I had thought it better to rely not on prayer but on my own resources, and had played out all possible ways to save my own skin from disaster. So, I tapped the shoulders of two choice sailors, Archibald Wolfe and Matthew Cox, and beckoned them to follow me. They barely hesitated. Rogue recognises rogue, after all.
My plan was to go straight to a boat already in the water. For we had been towing one behind us for some time. Having a boat ready made it easier to conduct quick inspections of the way ahead, and for some reason it was Banks’s tiny boat, rather than the larger yawl or pinnace, that was tied up behind us. It was dismissively called a coracle by most sailors, and was built for just one or two people—which was perhaps why no one else had thought of it. Tonight it would carry three.
The boat being tied at the stern also made it easy to get to unobserved. Unless you were trying to do it on a sinking ship in a storm. That had little to recommend it.
I led the way back down below, thankful that just about everyone was up on deck and unable to impede us. We made our way aft towards the midshipmen’s berths, crab-walking under the low deck ceiling to get there. But we found one of the marines, Private William Judge, was there, filling his pockets in the darkness. ‘Where might you be going?’ he demanded.
‘Off the ship,’ I said. ‘Come with us.’
Judge was an ugly cove and a brute, and I knew he would rather escape with us than question me further, so he fell in behind us. The two sailors were a little hesitant—the marines were specifically stationed between the mess deck and the junior officers’ cabins to act as a barrier between the sailors and their masters. ‘Come. Hurry,’ I told them, and they lowered their heads as if ready to knuckle a forehead to whomever they might meet, and followed.
The midshipmen slung their hammocks between the officers’ and the gentlemen’s quarters—at the very rear of the ship—where we now stood. During the day the area was lit by small stern ports that were usually left open. We could climb out them and down the hawser rope into Mr Banks’s little boat.
‘In that?’ asked Judge, with a marine’s distrust of small boats. ‘It would be over-full with two men in it.’
‘Two timid men,’ I said.
Wolfe and Cox nodded. Cox in particular had a furtive rat-like visage with a desperate edge to it. They recognised an opportunity. They were up for it. I looked at my three shipmates. A trio of more untrustworthy and ugly souls you would be unlikely to ever meet. But I needed men prepared to take a risk with me.
We squeezed our way out of the ports and gained the small boat soon enough, but it was quite a task to prevent it from being dashed against the side of the ship in the rough waves. And it took us some effort to get a safe enough distance away from the Endeavour, by which time we could see there was no doubt she was mortally wounded. She was leaning heavily to larboard where the now-fallen masts and sails sprawled. Heaven help those poor bastards up on the main deck trying to get the boats free. They would have to launch them down the higher side of the ship, exposed to the rough seas.
And heaven help us get to shore safely too. We very quickly understood that four souls really was too many for the small boat in rough weather. If a wave managed to come over our gunwales we would certainly founder. But the sailors knew their business and directed Judge and me where to sit and where to move our weight to as they took an oar each and turned us towards or away from each large swell, carrying us safely over.
Yet it soon became apparent that we had turned this way and that so many times that we had lost track of which direction land lay. We could see the ship’s lights clear enough and hear the shouts of the men on board her, but we had lost all sense of which way we should row from her to reach land.
I, for one, had no intention of rowing all the way back to New Zealand and so rose unsteadily to look about us.
A part of me wanted to now disregard my instincts to flee the sinking ship and return to her, convinced I had made the wrong decision. I was overcome with a sudden fear of drowning. I had a fearful image in my mind, as strong as a premonition, of the boat turning over and the four of us trapped beneath it. But I told myself it was just my fear talking to me. My grandmother in Corsica had told my fortune before I was even born and proclaimed that I was destined to live an exceedingly long life.
And her predictions were known to always come true.
Almost always.
‘There,’ I called, pointing into the darkness. ‘I see lights. There is someone on shore with a lantern.’
Bloody idiot that I was.
Judge turned his head and squinted into the darkness. He could see it too. The orange flicker of a light. ‘That’s not a lantern,’ he said. ‘It would be a cooking fire of the savages.’
I sat back down promptly at that. He was right. There were no civilised men but us for hundreds of leagues. Only the dark-skinned savages we had so infrequently glanced on the shore as we had sailed up the treacherous coast of this strange land.
There were wild stories told among the sailors on the ship about them. How they wore the bones of their human victims through their noses. How they scarred their bodies to mark the number of people they had killed. How they carried long poisonous spears they could throw with deadly accuracy. How they would likely be cannibals, because that was the way of all primitive savages.
I know sailors are a superstitious and fearful lot and such stories were likely to be somewhat fanciful, but they were just as likely to be true. We knew almost nothing of the people here nor the land on which they lived.
Well, nothing but that it lay ahead of us. And that way was life. So, we kept rowing.
The rain and wind drove us quickly towards shore, leaving us as drenched as if we had swum, until we saw the dark outline of land against the grey clouds. Then we could see a lighter movement of surf where it was breaking on the shore.
‘Careful now,’ called Wolfe. ‘We’ve not come this far to get dashed onto rocks.’ Several of the man’s teeth were missing, which made him look as far from his namesake beast as could be imagined.
These old salts could tell by the sound of the surf whether it was breaking on sand or rocks, and they steered us safely into a small bay.
I leaped out of the boat and struggled up through the water onto the sand, the receding waves pulling at me as if reluctant to let me go. ‘Lend a hand,’ Private Judge called. I turned to watch the other men climb out and drag the boat higher up onto the beach, but I made no move to step back into those treacherous waters to help them.
I covered my eyes against the rain and tried to see what kind of land was before us. It seemed all dark cliffs everywhere in front of us.
‘We must find shelter,’ Judge said.
‘This will be the only shelter we are likely to find tonight,’ Cox said, and he directed us to turn the boat over. Wolfe dragged over a driftwood log to prop one side up a little and we all crawled in under the boat. Fulfilling my premonition.
So we sat there in the darkness, squeezed up close against each other, shivering and wet and listening to the incessant call of the wind, the crash of waves and the pelt of rain against our boat. They were disturbing sounds, to be sure, but they were preferable to hearing calls for help from the wreck out there.
I wondered again if I had done the right thing. I had foolishly thought the fear would pass when we reached shore, but there was a chill in my stomach to match that in my bones.
Then I heard a curious buzz added to the noise about us and I looked across at Cox. He was asleep. Like any capable sailor, able to nod off anywhere, even in a perilous situation like this.
I thought I would never sleep, being so cramped and uncomfortable and shivering with cold, but I remember suddenly waking to a voice calling my name. A deep, gravelly voice outside our upturned boat. I startled and opened my eyes to find Judge close beside me, his hand tightly gripping my forearm. ‘Magra,’ he said. ‘There is something out there. Moving around.’
We were all awake now. We could all hear it. A low dragging sound that seemed to my mind like someone dragging a body past us over the wet sand, growling with the effort of it.
‘What is it?’ Wolfe asked in a whisper.
‘Some kind of beast,’ Judge said.
‘Or a demon,’ Cox said. ‘I have heard there are many of them in this land.’
And once that word had been spoken it was impossible for us to consider it as anything other than some kind of demon out there. We heard it go fully around us twice, growling as it dragged the unknown thing with it. Perhaps the body of one of our shipmates?
In the dark it could have been anything our imaginations shaped it to be.
And then it was gone.
We all sat there in the dark, unable to see our own hands in front of our faces, but clearly seeing the teeth and claws of the creature that had come to visit us.
None of us slept any more that night. We sat cramped under the upturned boat, like foolish children hiding under a blanket, suspecting it might not really keep us safe. Waiting for the light of day. Knowing that it was harder to be afraid in the daylight. But wondering what horrors we might find.