‘Captain sahib,’ a voice pleaded in the hazy distance. ‘You must eat, Captain sahib.’
Horne emerged from unconsciousness, aware that he was lying on a narrow bunk, that the bunk was aboard a ship rising and dipping on ocean swells, and that there were figures gathered round him in the ship’s cabin, staring at him.
Attempting to raise himself on his elbows, he felt pain stab across his skull and collapsed back onto the thin pallet.
‘Captain sahib,’ implored the voice alongside him. ‘You must not move, Captain sahib.’
The speaker was Jingee; he was dressed in a fresh white cotton tunic and turban, holding a tray with a steaming mug of tea and a plate piled high with golden chapatis. Kiro and Groot hovered beside Jingee, their faces set with concern, Groot nervously twisting his blue cap.
Horne tried to speak but, feeling a sickly dryness in his mouth, swallowed and tried again. ‘What … happened?
‘You’ve been asleep for almost a day, Captain sahib.’
‘A day?’ Horne again tried to raise himself.
Setting down the tray, Jingee hurriedly arranged the hemp pillows behind Horne’s head as Groot asked, ‘Do you remember being struck, schipper? Do you remember the boarding party?’
Horne recalled the Malagasy flotilla, the sea battle with the pattimars and sloop, his orders for hand-to-hand combat.
Jingee reminded him, ‘A few minutes after we boarded the sloop, Captain sahib, someone hit you on the head.’
‘From behind, schipper,’ added Groot.
Kiro stepped closer to the bed. ‘But I got your attacker, sir.’ He cut down the edge of one hand and grinned.
Horne looked in turn at Kiro, Groot and Jingee. ‘Was anybody killed?’
‘None of our men, schipper,’ Groot answered proudly.
‘Where’s the sloop?’
Holding his blue cap in front of him, Groot replied, ‘It burned, schipper.’
‘The Malagasies set it afire,’ elaborated Jingee. ‘They burn their ships rather than allow them to be captured, Captain sahib.’
‘The pattimars burned, too?’ Horne asked.
‘Aye, schipper. But their men escaped on rafts and small boats. Probably picked up by the first two pattimars.’
‘Did we take any prisoners?’
‘None, schipper.’
Jingee interjected with disdain, ‘The stupid sudras prefer to drown than to come aboard a feringhi boat.’
Horne forced himself to sit higher on the pallet. ‘Groot, get me details of damages to the ship.’
Jingee rushed to Horne’s side. ‘Captain sahib, you must rest.’
Horne ignored the throbbing pain inside his head and pushed away Jingee’s hand. ‘Who’s in charge of the watch?’ he asked. ‘Who’s charting our course?’
‘Jud and I chart our course, schipper.’
Throwing back the coverlet, Horne realised he was naked. ‘Jingee, bring me my breeches,’ he ordered.
As Jingee reluctantly handed Horne his clothes, Kiro and Groot answered his questions about crew, the damages the Huma had suffered in battle, the repairs done on hull and sails.
Horne only called an end to the meeting when a wave of nausea engulfed him. Reassuring the anxious men that he only needed sleep, he sent them from the cabin and tried to ignore the niggling fear that his injuries were more serious than he was willing to admit.
* * *
The Huma continued her passage down the west coast of India without further incident. Dirk Groot charted the course through the Gulf of Mannar, taking advantage of the Magercoil winds to pass through the Ceylon Strait and begin the voyage north towards the settlements of Cuddalore and Pondicherry, with hopes of reaching Madras no later than the second week out of Bombay.
Halfway up the Coromandel Coast, Jud spotted the sails of a merchantman flying the red, white and blue pennant of the East India Company. Apart from a few fishing vessels off the south Arcot district, no other ships were sighted.
The sky remained cloudless day and night; the wind decreased after rounding the mainland’s tip and the sun’s torrid temperature became more apparent as the breeze waned.
Babcock and Jud served with Groot as ship masters, dividing the watches between them and, in their spare time, selecting men from the crew who showed interest in navigation. At the same time, Kiro drilled new gun crews as well as overseeing the repairs on the ship.
For some days Horne remained too ill to resume his usual place on the quarter-deck. Despite his persistent bouts of dizziness, however, he insisted on spending at least short periods in the fresh air.
His favourite time became the night when the sky was a vast bowl of twinkling pinpoints, occasionally slashed by falling stars. Jud’s soft midnight songs drifted over the continuously rolling waves.
Left alone during his nightly vigils, Horne remembered his early days of training on the tumbledown Wiltshire estate of the old soldier, Elihu Cornhill. Cornhill had seen service in Canada and afterwards tutored young students in tactics he had observed among the North American Indians—surprise attack, survival in the wilderness, camouflage. He preferred choosing young men who had been involved with crime, either as a perpetrator or victim. A radical in his thinking, he equated warfare with crime.
As Horne recuperated in his late-night watches, he wondered if there had been a serious gap in Cornhill’s training. The old soldier had tutored his pupils for captivity—how to survive solitary confinement, how to resist enemy interrogation; but what does a fighting man do when he is sick or dying? How does a man combat the feeling of sheer uselessness?
* * *
Groot diverted his anxiety about Horne’s physical well-being into concern about Babcock. There was a delicate subject that he must broach with him.
A light sleeper, since leaving Bombay Groot had been awakened every night in his hammock by Babcock calling out in his sleep, ‘Pa … don’t hit me, Pa …’
Should he ask Babcock if something was troubling him about his father? Groot spent each forenoon watch at the helm, worrying about his predicament as the gentle slopes and curves of the Coromandel Coast slipped by off the larboard bow.
Groot did not know whether Babcock’s father was alive. The five Marines were good friends but no one except Jingee ever talked much about family. The main reason was that most of the Marines had no home ties.
Groot’s parents had died in Holland from fever when he had been a small child. As he was shunted from relative to relative, he struggled to keep a cheery face and learned how to entertain himself by escaping into fantasy games. A Viking king, the Sultan of Constantinople, an explorer crossing the Americas—the young Groot had been all by turns, and his dreams for adventure had brought him to India on a Dutch merchant ship before his eighteenth birthday; carelessness landed him in gaol a little over a year later.
Knowing where he could steal a wagon of precious Saidabad silk belonging to the Honourable East India Company, he had made arrangements to sell it and return home to Amsterdam with the money, imagining himself entertaining all his friends and relatives with sumptuous feasts every night of the week.
Unluckily for Groot, the man who had said he was a Dutch trader interested in buying the contraband silk turned out to be an agent for the Honourable East India Company. Groot was sentenced to twenty years in the cells beneath Bombay Castle.
In the two-and-a-half-years which Groot had served of his sentence, he had returned to his fantasy life, planning adventures, imagining himself as everything from an oriental potentate to a gladiator in Rome’s ancient games. Since being released from prison by Adam Horne and training to become a Bombay Marine, however, he had found less and less need to day-dream about a life of adventure. Belonging to Horne’s elite squadron, he had helped kidnap the French Commander-in-Chief in India, fought pirates in the Indian Ocean, stolen a fortune in gold coins.
Groot’s optimistic nature helped him through the dull days ashore between assignments, but recently he was finding it increasingly difficult to share rooms with Babcock in Bombay.
On the last mission, Babcock had bought a monkey in Madagascar. After the animal had almost caused their ship to founder on hidden reefs, Groot had thought Babcock would get rid of the pesky creature. But Babcock had taken the monkey back to the rooms in Bombay, and every night the wretched little beast would wake Groot from his sleep. Nevertheless, Groot tried to control his temper, for he knew Babcock loved the monkey; it was no secret that he would hate to part with it.
Thinking he would be able to sleep peacefully once he was back at sea, Groot found that it was Babcock himself who now disturbed his rest, calling out for his ‘Pa’ in troubled nightmares.
How long-suffering did a friend have to be? Should he tell Babcock about his cries? For some reason he thought the American might be embarrassed by the disclosure. Perhaps he should swap hammocks with Jud or Kiro and let one of them have the problem of telling Babcock.
Groot remembered his Aunt Sophie criticising him many years ago—You’re too considerate for your own good, child. You let your friends walk over you.
* * *
‘The encounter with the Malagasies was brief. Damage to the Huma insufficient to slow progress …’
Horne lowered his pen. Less than a day remained before entering the Madras Roads. He was completing the dreaded task of writing the report for Governor Pigot on the voyage from Bombay to Madras.
The combination of sleep, Jingee’s good cooking, and fresh air had rallied Horne’s strength. The only thing that troubled him at the moment was a question which Kiro had recently put to him.
‘Captain, sir, I have a morbid question to ask,’ Kiro had announced the previous night on the first watch.
Horne had replied, ‘I’ve always been accused of being a trifle too morbid, Kiro.’
‘What would happen to your Marines, sir, if you were killed in battle.’
‘The unit as you know it, Kiro, would most likely be disbanded.’
Now Horne sat at his desk and wondered if he could leave a squadron in a last will and testament: To so-and-so I bequeath five men good and true.
Hmmm. He must consider the idea.