Scarborough Fair - Chris Scott Wilson [45]
“On the starboard quarter!”
Varage strode across, hands reaching for the clammy gunwale. He squinted out. “Where?”
“There!” He followed the sailor’s outstretched arm. A long shadow lay against the sea, motionless. Varage waved back at the helmsman so that Cerf began to heel, heading toward it. They closed steadily, then when only twenty feet away, a long plume of water fountained from the shadow. Flukes flicked upward and the big fish was swallowed by the sea.
“A whale,” the sailor said, disappointed.
Varage grimaced, turning away to return to his own lookout post. “Mark! And keep looking!”
***
“Hold your stroke. Rest a moment.”
Cutting Lunt’s head was cocked as he listened for any sound in the thinning fog. He sat in the jolly boat’s stern sheets, a midshipman on either side. Both the junior officers looked miserable. Every man of the crew was exhausted. They had been together now for thirty-six hours chasing the deserters without hot food. The boat’s meager supply of biscuit and water had run out twelve hours previously. While the oarsmen rested, heads fell forward, the men slipping into sleep at their posts. Only Cutting Lunt’s anger at himself kept him alert. He would catch those damned deserters if it was the last thing he did.
“Will they be looking for us, do you think?” asked one of the shivering midshipmen. Not even duck down on his cheeks yet, thought Cutting Lunt. And what could he say to the boy? That there was not a chance in hell Bonhomme Richard would find them in this fog? Besides, they were too far inshore where the seabed climbed too steeply for Richard. Too much shoaling water and too many jagged little reefs hungry to sink their teeth into a ship’s keel.
“Of course they’ll be looking for us, lad. How do you think that ship would sail without me? Now be quiet and listen.”
There was nothing to hear but the sea lapping against the boat’s hull and the whisper of distant breakers. A reef or the shore, he wondered. He turned in his seat, trying to penetrate the fog with his raw eyeballs in an attempt to forget the hopelessness of their situation and the hunger that gnawed like a starved rat in his belly.
Hours passed. The fog did not let up. They were cold, hungry, tired. Each minute of misery sapped even Cutting Lunt’s determination. At last he decided to end it. One way or the other.
“All right! Wake up you scavengers! All oars. At the ready!” The men roused themselves, sniffing and coughing in the chill air. “It’ll warm you up. All oars! Stroke!” With the boat facing the sound of the distant breakers, they dipped and pulled. After a few ragged strokes they found a rhythm where before had only been weariness, and they discovered a strength they thought long drained from aching muscles. The volume of the crashing breakers increased. “I hope to God it’s not a reef,” Cutting Lunt muttered under his breath.
Ten minutes later they glided in, the keel crunching as it drove up the shingle beach. The sailing master was on his feet. “Port oars, and every man out!” He leaned down to one of the midshipmen. “Then we’ll try and find out where in this godforsaken land of leprechauns we are.” They went over the side, the freezing waves soaking the canvas trousers of the oarsmen and the officers’ white stockings. With a concentrated effort, they ran the jolly boat up the beach where she would be safe from the fingers of the rising tide. The men sank down on the pebbles, panting while Lunt drew out his chart. He studied it for some minutes, before walking a few yards until he was drawn up short against a rock face. He retraced his steps back to the boat.
“Where are we, then?” one of the midshipmen asked through chattering teeth.
“Truth to tell, I’m not exactly sure,” he replied, head bowed over the map.
Someone laughed behind him, a rich throaty chuckle. He swiveled, a sneering rebuke ready on his tongue to quell the insolence, but the faces of his exhausted boat crew stared back silently. Then he saw them. Twenty figures emerged from the wall of fog. All were armed. Some carried pistols, others muskets, and