Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [131]
“How are you doing, Johnny?” he asked, his voice strained, gasping with his own pain.
There was no answer.
“Somebody help me!” he begged. “I think he’s out cold! We’ve got first-aid stuff in the locker, and there should be a lantern, and food and water, and a compass.”
Joseph handed the oar to Mason, who moved to the center of the seat and took over. The boat slowed a little, but it was possible for one man to manage, as long as the weather got no worse.
Joseph opened the locker, feeling in the dark, fumbling a little until he located the lantern and, shielding it from the wind with his body, got it alight. Then he could see that indeed there was a first-aid box, several bottles of water, hard rations of biscuits, dried beef, and bitter chocolate, and even a couple of packets of Woodbines. The matches he already had, from lighting the lamp.
The first thing was to see how badly the crewmen were injured. He looked first at the man lying on the boards. He had been shot twice, once in the upper thigh and once in the shoulder. Both wounds had bled badly and he was barely conscious.
“Can you do anything for him?” the other crewman asked anxiously.
“I’ll try,” Joseph replied. He had very little real medical knowledge, but this was not the time to say so. He certainly would not even think of attempting to take a bullet out by lamplight on the floor of a pitching boat, but he could roll up cloth into pads and do everything possible to stop the bleeding. It might be enough.
“Hold up the lantern,” he asked. “What’s your name?”
“Andy.” In the yellow light he looked no more than nineteen or twenty, fair-haired, a blunt freckled face, now pasty white.
Joseph worked as well as he could, but it was difficult and the clothes around the wounds were soaked in blood. Even when he pressed on them, the injured man barely groaned. He was sinking deeper and there was nothing they could do about it. When he had bound him up, Joseph tried to get him to take a little water, even just to moisten his mouth, but he was too far gone to swallow.
After that he did what he could for Andy. His upper arm had been shot through and it was bleeding badly as well, but the bone was intact. When he bound it as tightly as he dared without cutting off the circulation, it seemed to stanch the bleeding, even if it was no help for the pain.
He returned to take the other oar from Mason. The wind was stronger and they were having to work much harder to keep the boat moving, and headed against the waves so it did not turn sideways to them and risk being swamped.
There was a faint paling in the northeast of the sky, as if dawn were not far off. The other boat was nowhere to be seen.
“I suppose you’ve still got your story about Gallipoli?” Joseph asked.
“Of course,” Mason replied.
“And you’re still determined to hand it in?”
“You’ve already argued that one, Reverend.” He used the word with mild sarcasm. “You preach your gospel, I’ll preach mine. You want to protect people from the truth, for what you think is the greater good. I think they have the right to know what they’re signing up for, what the battle will cost them, and what chance they have of winning anything worth a damn.” He dug into the water and pulled, hurling his weight against the oar.
“You’re going to tell them the truth about Gallipoli, how many men are dying, and how?” Joseph pressed.
“Yes!”
“And what you think our chances are of winning and making it through to Constantinople?”
“No chance at all. Nor of getting the Russian fleet out of the Black Sea. And even if we did it would make no damn difference in the end. We’d probably give Constantinople to the Russians anyway,” Mason said.
“And that our generals out there are ill informed and for the most part incompetent?”
“For the most part, yes. You want to protect them? That’s naive, Reverend, and dangerous. Your pity for them, God knows why, is getting in the way of your intelligence. Maybe your religion requires you to be compassionate