Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [333]
MacKenzie was the worse for wear—so was Roger, as he discovered when he passed a hand across his face and felt his split lip—but his skin was clear of pustules.
“Good enough,” said Hutchinson briefly, and the man was thrust unceremoniously toward the hatchway.
His comrades gave Roger a rough hand up, and then left him swaying, dazed and ignored, as they finished their work. The resistance had been short-lived; though armed with the fury of despair, the passengers were weakened by six weeks under hatches, by sickness and scanty food. The stronger had been clubbed into submission, the weaker forced back, and those sick of pox—
Roger looked out at the rail and the path of the moon’s aisle, serene on the water. He grabbed the rail and vomited, retching till no more than bile came up, burning the back of nose and throat. The water below was black, and empty.
Drained and shaking from exertion, he made his way slowly across the deck. Those seamen he passed were silent, but from the battened forward hatchway, a single thin wail rose up, and up, an endless keen that drew no breath and knew no respite.
He nearly fell down the companionway into the crew’s quarters, went to his hammock, ignoring all questions, and wrapped his blanket over his head, trying to shut out the sound of the wailing—to shut out everything.
But there was no oblivion to be found in the suffocating woolen folds, and he jerked the blanket off, heart pounding, with a sensation of drowning so strong in his chest that he gulped air, again and again until he felt dizzy, and still breathed deep, as though he must breathe for those who could not.
“It’s for the best, lad,” Hutchinson had said to him with gruff sympathy, passing by as he puked his guts out over the rail. “Pox spreads like wildfire; none in that hold would live to make landfall, did we not take out the sick.”
And was this better than the slower death of scabs and fever? Not for those left behind; the wail went on and on, lancing the silence, piercing wood and heart alike.
Maimed pictures flashed in his mind, truncated scenes caught by the popping of invisible flashbulbs: the sailor’s contorted face as he fell into the hold; the little boy’s half-open mouth, the inside scabbed with pustules. Bonnet standing above the fray, with his face of a fallen angel, watching. And the dark hungry water, empty under the moon.
Something bumped softly, sliding past the hull, and he rolled into a shivering ball, oblivious alike to the sweltering heat in the hold, and the sleepy complaint of the man next to him. No, not empty. He had heard the seamen say that sharks never sleep.
“Oh, God,” he said aloud. “Oh, God!” He should have been praying for the dead, but could not.
He rolled again, squirming, trying to escape, and in the echo of the futile prayer found memory—the misplaced hearing of those few frantic words, panted in his ear during those moments of unthinking frenzy.
For the love of God, man, the fair-haired man had said. For the love of God, let her go!
He straightened and lay stiff, bathed in cold sweat.
Two figures in the shadow. And the open hatchway to the stores hold some twenty feet away.
“Oh, God,” he said again, but this time, it was a prayer.
It was the middle of the dogwatch next day before Roger found an opportunity to go down to the hold. He made no effort to avoid being seen; watching his shipmates had taught him quickly that in close quarters, nothing drew attention faster than furtiveness.
If anyone asked, he had heard a bumping noise, and thought perhaps the load had shifted. Close enough to the truth, at that.
He hung from the edge of the hatch by his hands; less chance of being followed if he didn’t put down the ladder. He dropped into the dark and landed hard, jarring his bones. Anyone down here would have heard that—and