The Hortator and his men were coming round now, unshackling the dead rower and the injured ones. One of them went over Jason much as Beric had done, but finding no broken ribs, grunted: ‘This one is foundered, but he’ll be fit to row again when the time comes,’ and moved on. Wine was issued to the rowers; real wine, harsh and fiery, and a double ration of black beans. The wine put a little life into them, and warmed them against the chill of exhaustion and the cutting wind-blown spray, and the beans stayed their aching stomachs. Beric poured Jason’s share of the wine into him, and a good deal of his own as well, and though it made him choke, it seemed to do him good, so that afterwards he was able to eat some of the black beans which Beric had saved for him in the lap of his drenched and filthy kilt.
The wind was backing steadily but slowly, and the little convoy ran before it, strung out and scattered like a gale-blown skein of geese. On board the Alcestis all sense of time had ceased for the rowers, crouching on decks that were awash, with their humped backs to the following seas; there was only a present time of cold and wind and turmoil that seemed to stretch into an eternity. And they did not see, as the day turned towards evening, the dark coastline of Gaul lying low on the tossing skyline, nor know that the gale had gone booming round to the north-west; not even that it was raining.
Beric, still crouching over Jason, so as to shelter him with his own body from the sheets of hissing spray that dashed over the gunwale and forced their way through the shielded oar-ports, slipped gradually into a state between sleeping and waking; an uneasy state in which he seemed to catch ragged glimpses of many dreams, without ever escaping from the tumult all around him; without ever for an instant losing the fear that seemed to twist in his stomach because of Jason.
The light began to fade, and the little convoy, scattered now over miles of sea, was scudding down the coast of Gaul. As the Alcestis drew steadily nearer to the shore, the Master and pilot stood together beside the steersman, gazing shoreward as the dark coastline unfurled. ‘Keep her out a bit,’ the pilot ordered.
And as the steersman eased the rudder over a little, the Master glanced at the man beside him, enquiringly, but without anxiety. He did not know this coast well himself, but he trusted his pilot. The other’s face was alert and confident under his leather bonnet; clearly he knew what he was looking for, and was sure of finding it. A green sea broke aft, sluicing all three men with water that could make them no wetter than they were already, and as it foamed across the heaving deck and down among the rowing-benches, the pilot gave a satisfied grunt. ‘There she is, sir.’
In the dark wall of the coastline a gap had appeared, which opened wider moment by moment. The pilot gave another order to the steersman, setting his own hand on the kicking rudder bar as he did so, and the galley altered course slightly. The light was going fast, but the gap was widening faster, into the mouth of a great river, and as the Alcestis ran towards it, suddenly through the rain-swathes and the deepening twilight a light flared fiercely golden as a marigold, above the darkening headland. ‘Ah, there goes the beacon,’ the pilot said, hand and eye steady on the business of the moment. ‘Best get the sail down and have the oars out again, sir.’
So in the last fading of the gale-torn dusk, the Alcestis, with her weary rowers once more at their oars, ran in safely under the flaming beacon at the mouth of the great Gaulish river, and dropped anchor in the comparative shelter of the shore.
XIII
JASON’S ISLAND
ONE by one through the early hours of the night, the rest of the storm-scattered convoy came running in under the beacon on the low headland, until all five lay at anchor in the lee of the wooded shore, sheltered from the full force of the gale that sent the white-capped seas charging in from the river mouth and drove the hissing rain-swathes before it through the dark. Below decks, the crew and marines grew cheerful over their evening meal, and in the cabin, the Legate had a flask of Falernian broached, but turned in loathing from the cold fried chicken legs provided for him and his staff; and between the rowing-benches the slaves huddled close under the pieces of rotten sail-cloth that had been given them for shelter, too spent to fight over their lumps of greening barley bread.
The gale well-nigh blew itself out in the night, as the pilot had forecast, and dawn broke on a world that seemed utterly spent. The rain had almost stopped, and the stress of the tempest was over, though the woods still moaned and fretted, and the light touched silverly on the heaving swell at the river mouth.
Beric woke to a great crying and calling of shore birds in the first sodden light, and moved cautiously. The first movement of the day always hurt, for one’s shackle-galls and stripes had had time to stiffen while one slept; and this morning it was agony. Every muscle ached, the galls on his wrist and ankle were red raw, while the hardened skin of his hands was rubbed through so that his palms were almost as raw as his shackle-galls, and his breast and belly were a mass of stiffened bruises. Groaning, he dragged himself back to full wakefulness and the weary business of another day. Then he remembered Jason, and thrusting back the sail-cloth that had been over his head, came to his elbow with a jerk, and peered down at his oar-mate.
Jason lay with his head on his arm, his gaunt, bearded face seeming younger in sleep than it did when he was awake. He looked very quiet—like a free man, Beric thought, and was suddenly and piercingly afraid.
But in the same moment, Jason opened his eyes, with a small bewildered pucker between his brows, as though he had been in some very different place, and was not yet fully returned to his shackles. Then, as Beric drew a gasping breath of relief, he rolled over, and lay looking up at him, with the quietness still in his face.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I was afraid,’ Beric said simply.
Jason did not answer at once, but lay studying Beric’s face. Suddenly he smiled, the old twisted faun’s smile. ‘Oh no, not that,’ he said. ‘There are but few things worth being afraid of, in this world, and assuredly that is not one of them. Life is none so sweet on the rowing-benches, and death none so far from any of us who row the great galleys, that we need pay so much heed to either.’
All around them the huddled wretches were stirring into life, but for the moment they did not exist for Beric or Jason. Beric shook the matted hair out of his eyes, and said fiercely: ‘Who said it was that that I was afraid of? It does not matter what I was afraid of. You are better, now that you have slept, and—I will not talk of such things!’
But Jason was not listening; he had turned his head on his arm to watch something afar off in the sky: and Beric, following the direction of his gaze, saw a slender skein of wild geese thrumming out of the morning emptiness. Almost in the same moment he heard them, a thread of sound at first, caught and blown about by the upper air, but strengthening as the dark skein swept nearer, into a vibrant babble, a yelping, half musical, half eerie, like a pack of small hounds in full cry.
‘It is spring, and the grey geese fly north again,’ Jason said; and then, as the lovely wind-curved skein passed almost overhead, ‘That would make a fine fresco; but one would need brushes made of comet’s hair to catch the living swiftness of it.’
Beric watched the flying skein out of sight, frowning; then, frowning still, dropped his gaze to his friend once more. He had never heard Jason talk quite like this before, and it worried him—worried him badly.
Jason saw the trouble in his face, and said quietly: ‘It is only that I dreamed in the night, nothing more.’ It was so seldom that one dreamed under the rowing-benches; one laboured like a beast of burden, and slept like one.
‘Was it a good dream?’ Beric asked.
‘It was a good dream.’ Jason’s quiet gaze drifted back to the sky. ‘I dreamed that I was back among my own people, in the days before ever I thought of Rome … . There was a little boat that my brother and I had for our own. We painted her like a mallard, with green and purple on her wing-coverts, and the eyes at her bows little and bright like a mallard’s
. I was dreaming of her … . It was just after the winter rains, and the whole island scarlet with anemones—most of all where the olive trees fell back behind the house. They always grew most thickly there. And Briseis, my mother’s old slave, had been baking bread.’
The other rowers were well awake now; measured footsteps came up from below; from the foredeck of the Alcestis the trumpet sounded cockcrow, and an instant later the call came back like so many echoes across the water from the Janiculum and the transports. The convoy woke to life and a quickening hum of activity. The rowers were fed and watered, seamen were busy among the damaged spars and rigging; little boats came out from the settlement, bobbing over the swell, with officers to speak with the Legate, and vegetables for sale. The Legate himself appeared on the poop, speaking with this man and that, pacing up and down, at first with his military cloak drawn close about him, then, as the day warmed to fitful sunshine, flinging the brilliant folds impatiently back from his shoulders as though they were something that he felt to clog his movements and hold him back.
The slaves on the rowing-benches watched him, sullenly and slantwise. They knew, as they knew most of what went on in the Alcestis, that the Master wished to make up-river to a town where the more serious storm damage might be set right and they could take on more reserve rowers; for with five men out of action they would have too few reserves for safety, and the Janiculum was in worse case than themselves, while one of the transports had strained a seam. But the Legate would not brook the delay. They watched his quick, impatient gestures, heard his slightly raised voice. When, in the Master’s judgement, would the seas have abated sufficiently for the oars to be used? In a day and a night? Very well, then, let the convoy put to sea once more on to-morrow morning’s tide.
During all the long waiting hours of that day the rowers sat hunched and listless in their places. The brief purpose that had come to them yesterday had gone down with the gale. They leaned forward, their arms on their knees; for the most part seeing nothing, hearing nothing; while Naso lolled at ease against the mast, with his coiled lash ready in his hand.
But at dawn next day their respite ended. They were roused out and fed, and when the order came to make ready for sea, they had been ready on their benches a long while, sitting as they had sat all yesterday, staring listlessly before them. The Hortator, still gummy-eyed from his long vigil, was in his place, and Porcus, uncoiling his whiplash, had begun his prowling to and fro.
‘Out oars.’
In sullen, drilled unison, the rowers stooped for the oars housed along the base of the flying-deck, and ran them out through the oar-ports. On each oar the rower of the outer watch bent to slip home the thong loop which held the shaft to its thole-pins. As Jason stooped to the task, he gave a little dry cough, and instantly all Beric’s fears, which had sunk a little, flared up again. Jason had eaten his share of the morning food; he had seemed much as usual, after the day’s rest, and Beric had contrived to make himself believe that nothing more than exhaustion had ailed his oar-mate. Now he realized that something very much more than exhaustion was amiss with Jason.
Half turning, with his hands on the oar-loom, he shouted to the Overseer: ‘Here—put on a reserve here. My mate is done!’
Porcus swung round and came striding down the deck, his whip raised. ‘Who gives orders on the rowing-benches?’
‘I do!’ Beric cried. ‘My mate is sick, he cannot row. If you keep him at the oaryou’ll kill him!’ He caught his breath, as though plunged into icy water, as the lash flicked his cheek.
‘You will give orders in this galley!’ said Porcus in that soft slurred voice of his. ‘You will say when the reserves go on! You insolent hound! If we kill him, there are plenty more where he comes from; look to it that we do not kill you!’
Again the lash flicked out, stinging like a hornet; but furious as he was, Beric felt the sting of it less keenly than he did the warning pressure of his mate’s hand against his own. He turned under the lash to meet Jason’s compelling gaze. Jason shook his head slightly, and the look in his face silenced Beric’s fury as the Overseer’s whip could not do.
He had seen that look on a man’s face once before, when he had gone to stand behind Glaucus at the Colosseum and fan the flies off him. He had seen it on the face of a gladiator, down on the reddened sand, and a few moments later the Mercuries had come with their hooks and dragged his body away.
Whitt came the lash again, in a parting cut, as Porcus prowled on. The anchor was secured, and the Hortator’s hammer was poised for its first beat. It came down, clack, on to the sounding-table. With a sob of utter helplessness, Beric bent to the oar.
Through the hours that followed, his heart bursting within him, he struggled to pull for Jason as well as himself; but there was little enough that he could do in that way. He had thought that once they were clear of the estuary, half the rowers would be stood off as usual, and even if it was the inner watch that was relieved, surely they would let him exchange with Jason. But the Legate was in a hurry, and he soon realized that both watches were to be kept at the oars.
The shores of Gaul slipped away on the steerboard quarter, growing gradually fainter, sinking into the sea. It was hard rowing in the heavy swell which still rolled in long, oily curves to the skyline, and the light wind was too far westerly to serve the galley’s sail and ease the burden of her straining rowers. Porcus prowled to and fro, tickling them up as a charioteer overfond of the whip might tickle up his team. The Legate stood aloof and arrogant beside the Master, looking towards Britain. ‘Curse him!’ Beric thought. ‘Curse him in this world and the next! There he stands above us, untouched by our agony! We swing to and fro, to and fro; our hearts burst, and we die at the oars, that he and his pretty tribunes may be an hour sooner at their journey’s end; and he does not even notice. May he suffer one day as we suffer now, and may our ghosts be there to see it, and laugh, and warm our burst hearts at the sight!’
About the end of the second hour Jason began to cough again. The cough became a wet choking, and he sank forward across the oar-loom, and did not cough any more.
‘Jason!’ Beric cried. ‘Jason!’ But Jason did not answer.
There was nothing for him to do but somehow keep the oar swinging with his mate’s weight upon it, while feet came striding along the deck, and an instant later the watchful Porcus was standing over them. Beric glared up at him, his teeth bared as he struggled with the burdened oar-loom. ‘Look!’ he shouted. ‘Look, Porcus! Did I not say he was sick?’
‘Or shamming!’ Porcus laughed, and whirled up his whip arm; and the long lash flickered out with a hiss and a whitt, across Jason’s gaunt, scarred back. ‘Up, dog! I’ll teach you to sleep at the oar! I’ll——’
Jason jerked convulsively under the blow, half raised himself, and then, with a long, shuddering sigh, fell forward again, and lay still. As the whistling lash came down again, Beric released the oar, and with a furious cry flung up his free arm to ward it off. The abandoned oar-loom kicked back and all but swept the next pair of rowers from their bench. The whiplash wrapped itself round Beric’s wrist, and in the moment’s confusion he all but jerked it out of the Overseer’s grasp. Then there was a rush of feet and Porcus’s Second had come to his aid with a couple of seamen. Dimly, Beric was aware that the Hortator’s hammer was no longer sounding through the galley, and the rowers were resting on their oars, craning round to see what was happening. He was thrust aside, and the lash was torn from his grasp and fell again and again on Jason’s back. But Jason did not stir; and the blood came slowly, very slowly, scarcely at all.
Cursing, the Overseer stooped over him and pulled him back by one shoulder, then let him fall again. ‘So he was not shamming,’ he said, and turned to the Hortator, who had come up. ‘Have to get one of the reserves up after all, sir: this one is dead.’
The other rowers had broken into a sullen muttering, and the sound rose and quickened, half angry, half excited: but Beric had stopped shouting. He crouched very
still against the next bench, looking down with hard eyes at his oar-mate’s body.
The Hortator took from the breast of his tunic the heavy key which never left its chain round his neck, and stooping, unlocked Jason’s shackles. Then he stepped back, with a quick gesture towards the gunwale. The Overseer and his Second took up the dead rower between them.
Beric never moved, never raised his eyes. He heard the splash as Jason’s worn body hit the water. That was all, when a rower died at the oar; a splash, and a fresh rower shackled in his place, and the galley going on … .
The reserve had been brought up, and stood ready; a powerful, fox-red man. He was thrust past Beric into the place that had been Jason’s, and the Overseer stooped for the leg-iron.
As he did so, Beric sprang upon him.
Beric had fought in deadly earnest before to-day: for his place in the Tribe when he was nine years old, for his freedom under the window of Rhodope’s storeroom; he had fought often enough with his fellows of the rowing-benches—though that had been a casual business, the snapping and snarling of dogs over a bone. But this time it was different. This time, hurling himself on Porcus with a black berserk fury that saw in him not only the hated Overseer who had killed his friend, but the proud and heedless Legate on the poop, the men who had turned down their thumbs for a gladiator at the Colosseum, the whole pitiless might of Rome; this time he fought to kill.
Taken completely unawares, Porcus went down beneath him with a surprised grunt. Through the red haze beating behind his eyes, Beric saw the man’s brutal face upturned, and he ground his wrist-iron into it—that was an ugly trick learned on the rowing-benches-while with his free hand he went for the strong throat. Heedless of the blows the other drove up at him, heedless of the tumult and the hands that grasped and dragged at him from above, he hung on like a hunting dog, watching, through that beating red haze, the broken and bloody face of his enemy begin to blacken.