Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [135]
That was on the fourth day of his freedom. After the rain the long, tawny grasses were swept by whispers, the sun came out again and the ground steamed. His pace was slow now and he staggered a little, but he was cooled by the rain and his mind was clear. He had no sense of a destination. It came to him that he had never had one. All his destinations had been only breaking loose … But that was not it either. Patiently, like a celibate remembering some cherished episode of love, he began to assemble the details of that first escape, the feel of the metal bar in the dark, the fear and exultation of the splintering wood. No tropical light had ever been so blinding as that of the dim dawn he had stepped into then, no sky at sea so vast as that one. That light, that enlargement, had been destination enough. He had never found it again, he had run ever since between narrowing walls, under lowering skies.
He slept in his damp clothes and woke feverish. At first light he was on the move again, but his progress now was very slow. He was beginning to lose his sense of the rhythm of his walking, stepping too short, not raising his feet enough, so that he frequently stumbled and sometimes fell. With each fall the recovery took longer.
Soon after sunrise, crossing a wide savannah, with the grass-heads glinting reddish and the low, broad-leaved trees beaded with fire, Deakin saw figures moving like dark flames to encircle him. One pointed or gestured, with a strange, repeated jabbing motion, and the sun ran in glitters on something.
They were round him in a circle. That is how you capture a man or a beast, Deakin knew – one that you think might be dangerous. To be enclosed on all sides is the end of a runner. Frighten them off. Again the gleam of the raised spears caught his eyes. They would want his pistol and his water bottle and his leather belt. They would want to tie him … His sight was confused. He fumbled the pistol out of his belt and fired at a flash of sunlight. The sound was shattering. It was inconceivable that any sound could ever follow it and for Deakin none did. He saw another flash, different, speedy, but he heard nothing. The spear struck him below the breastbone and pierced him almost through. He fell to his knees and rested there a moment, holding the shaft like something precious, and the destination of light briefly flooded his eyes from a sky that blazed and closed.
TWENTY-NINE
No one on board ever knew what had become of Deakin. He joined the company of those who have no official death. For the Admiralty he remained a deserter in perpetuity. On Thurso’s crew-list he was entered as ‘Run’, and this was all his epitaph. Paris, writing in his journal at intervals that grew longer, gave him space only for good wishes. By this time, for the surgeon, Deakin’s disappearance had been overshadowed by a death that was official.
Jack Simmonds, our second mate, is no longer with us. He departed this life yesterday. I had noticed on our return from. Tucker’s that he bore every appearance of fever. The day following he was sent out again and on return of the yawl was unable to get aboard without assistance and complained much of headache and a weakness in his limbs. That evening, the fever mounting, I had him conveyed to the sickroom and attempted to allay the heat by bathing of his limbs and administering an infusion of powdered cinchona bark, of which I came provided with a good stock; but the fever grew worse in the night – I have seldom seen such violent throes; they came close to paroxysm. Early next morning he began to exude small quantities of blood from his nose and gums and the