Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [337]
The deck was quiet save for the murmur of helmsman and bosun, invisible at the wheel. Roger eased the hatch cover back in place, his heart beginning to slow again, the touch of her still warming his hands. Two days. Maybe three. Perhaps they would make it; Roger at least was convinced she was right, the child did not have pox.
There should be no occasion for anyone to go into the hold soon—a fresh water-cask had been brought up only the day before. He could contrive to feed her—if only she could stay awake long enough … the sharp ting of the ship’s bell pierced the fog, a reminder of time that no longer seemed to exist, its passage unmarked by any change of light or dark.
It was as Roger crossed toward the stern that he heard it; a sudden loud whoosh in the mist off the rail, very near at hand. The next instant, the ship trembled slightly underfoot, her boards brushed by something huge.
“Whale!” came a cry from aloft. He could see two men near the mainmast, dimly outlined in the fog. At the cry, they froze, and he realized that he, too, was standing rigid, listening.
There was another whoosh nearby, another farther off. The crew of the Gloriana stood silent, each man charting in his head the great exhalations, marking an invisible map on which the ship drifted through moving shoals, mountains of silent, intelligent flesh.
How big were they? Roger wondered. Big enough to damage the ship? He strained his eyes, vainly trying to see anything at all through the fog.
It came again, a thump hard enough to jar the rail under his hands, followed by a long, grating rasp that shuddered through the boards. There were muffled cries of fear from below; to those in the steerage, it would be right next to them, no more than the planks of the hull between them and rupture—a sudden smash and the frightful inrush of the sea. Three-inch oak planks seemed no more substantial than tissue paper against the great beasts that floated nearby, breathing unseen in the fog.
“Barnacles,” said a soft Irish voice from the mist behind him. Despite himself, Roger jumped, and a low chuckle materialized into Bonnet’s shadowed bulk. The Captain held a cheroot between his teeth, a spill from the galley fire illumining the lines and planes of his face, dissolute in red light. The rasping shudder came again through the boards.
“They scratch themselves to rid their skins of parasites,” Bonnet said casually. “We are no more to them than a floating stone.” He drew heavily to start the flame, blew fragrant smoke, and tossed the burning paper overboard. It vanished in the mist like a falling star.
Roger let out a breath only slightly less noisy than the whales’. How close had Bonnet been? Had the Captain seen him coming out of the hold?
“They will not damage the ship, then?” he said, matching the Captain’s casual tone.
Bonnet smoked for a moment in silence, concentrating on the draw of his cigar. Without the illumination of the open flame, he was once more a shadow, marked only by the glowing coal of the tip.
“Who knows?” he said at last, small spurts of smoke puffing out between his teeth as he spoke. “Any one of the beasts might sink us, should he have a mind in him for mischief. I saw a ship once—or what was left of it—battered to pieces by an angry whale. Three feet of board, and a bit of spar left floating—sunk with all hands, two hundred souls.”
“You don’t seem troubled by the possibility.”
There was a long sound of exhalation, a faint echo of the whales’ sighing, as Bonnet blew smoke between pursed lips.
“ ’Twould be a waste of strength to worry myself. A wise man leaves those things beyond his power to the gods—and prays that Danu will be with him.” The edge of the Captain’s hat turned toward him. “Ye’ll know of Danu, will ye, MacKenzie?”
“Danu?” Roger said stupidly, and then the penny dropped, an old chant coming back to him from the mists of childhood—something Mrs. Graham had taught him to say. “Come to me, Danu, change my luck. Make me