Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [369]
This time, we were allowed ashore, but no great good did it do me. Tiny and dry, with few sources of fresh water, the Turks and Caicos provided little more than numerous tiny bays that might shelter passing ships caught in storms. And the idea of hiding on a foodless, waterless island, waiting for a convenient hurricane to blow me a ship, did not appeal.
To Annekje, though, our change of course suggested a new plan.
“I know these island,” she said, nodding wisely. “We go round now, Grand Turk, Mouchoir. Not Caicos.”
I looked askance, and she squatted, drawing with a blunt forefinger in the yellow sand of the beach.
“See—Caicos Passage,” she said, sketching a pair of lines. At the top, between the lines, she sketched the small triangle of a sail. “Go through,” she said, indicating the Caicos Passage, “but mast is gone. Now—” She quickly drew several irregular circles, to the right of the passage. “North Caicos, South Caicos, Caicos, Grand Turk,” she said, stabbing a finger at each circle in turn. Go round now—reefs. Mouchoir.” And she drew another pair of lines, indicating a passage to the southeast of Grand Turk Island.
“Mouchoir Passage?” I had heard the sailors mention it, but had no idea how it applied to my potential escape from the Porpoise.
Annekje nodded, beaming, then drew a long, wavy line, some way below her previous illustrations. She pointed at it proudly. “Hispaniola. St. Domingue. Big island, is there towns, lots ships.”
I raised my eyebrows, still baffled. She sighed, seeing that I didn’t understand. She thought a moment, then stood up, dusting her heavy thighs. We had been gathering whelks from the rocks in a shallow pan. She seized this, dumped out the whelks, and filled it with seawater. Then, laying it on the sand, she motioned to me to watch.
She stirred the water carefully, in a circular motion, then lifted her finger out, stained dark with the purple blood of the whelks. The water continued to move, swirling past the tin sides.
Annekje pulled a thread from the raveling hem of her skirt, bit off a short piece, and spat it into the water. It floated, following the swirl of the water in lazy circles round the pan.
“You,” she said, pointing at it. “Vater move you.” She pointed back to her drawing in the sand. A new triangle, in the Mouchoir Passage. A line, curving from the tiny sail down to the left, indicating the ship’s course. And now, the blue thread representing me, rescued from its immersion. She placed it by the tiny sail representing the Porpoise, then dragged it off, down the Passage toward the coast of Hispaniola.
“Jump,” she said simply.
“You’re crazy!” I said in horror.
She chuckled in deep satisfaction at my understanding. “Ja,” she said. “But it vork. Vater move you.” She pointed to the end of the Mouchoir Passage, to the coast of Hispaniola, and stirred the water in the pan once more. We stood side by side, watching the ripples of her manufactured current die away.
Annekje glanced thoughtfully sideways at me. “You try not drown, ja?”
I took a deep breath and brushed the hair out of my eyes.
“Ja,” I said. “I’ll try.”
50
I MEET A PRIEST
The sea was remarkably warm, as seas go, and like a warm bath as compared to the icy surf off Scotland. On the other hand, it was extremely wet. After two or three hours of immersion, my feet were numb and my fingers chilled where they gripped the ropes of my makeshift life preserver, made of two empty casks.
The gunner’s wife was as good as her word, though. The long, dim shape I had glimpsed from the Porpoise grew steadily nearer, its low hills dark as black velvet against a silver sky. Hispaniola—Haiti.
I had no way of telling time, and yet two months on shipboard, with its constant bells and watch-changes, had given me a rough feeling for the passage of the night hours. I thought it must have been near