Hell and High Water

  There were sounds of great activity on deck. Sails were furled. The captain gave the command and a second anchor was dropped. With the ship at rest Caleb caught snatches of the crew’s conversation.

  “We was told to do it tonight. Get the lot stowed on shore, he said.”

  “Too much swell. I’ll not risk the men.”

  “Sir Robert won’t be best pleased.”

  “Sir Robert won’t know. Sir Robert ain’t taking the risk. Sir Robert ain’t never tried rowing there.”

  “Thought it was meant to be finished by now.”

  “Been harder to build than they thought.”

  There were protests. Grumbles. Then someone – the captain? – said, “We’ll wait for this storm to blow over. The cliffs will keep us from the worst of it. We won’t get no thanks if we lose the cargo in this swell.”

  Grunts of relief. “What do we do with this ’un?” A sudden kick at Caleb’s barrel. Despite the sickness, he listened hard.

  “I’ll not do it.” It was the voice of Letty’s father.

  “You’ll do as you’re bid, Edward, same as the rest of us. We’re too deep in this now to go thinking of getting out. You want to see us hanged? We was told to get rid of him, and that’s what we’ll be doing. You heard what Benson said: we unload here, then we sail for Maryland. There’ll be slavers who’ll take him.”

  Caleb’s head swam. His blood chilled. They planned to sell him? He’d rather die!

  “He’s been hit bad. What if he don’t make the crossing?”

  “Bury him at sea. We weigh him down good and proper. Don’t want him washing up on the beach like his father did.”

  For a second Caleb’s nausea was forgotten. Pa! They’d disposed of Pa too? Had they murdered him? He should have beaten his uncle to a pulp when he’d had the chance. He’d do it now. Burst from the barrel. If only he didn’t feel so damned dizzy.

  Having agreed to rest at anchor until the storm blew itself out, the men fell to drinking. There was nothing else for them to do. Caleb heard Edward Avery offer to take the watch. The others must have gone below for he heard nothing more.

  Whether he slept, or whether pain drove him into unconsciousness, Caleb didn’t know. He was only aware that some hours must have passed, for it was dark when the barrel lid was pulled open.

  Cold, fresh air hit his skin so hard he felt he’d been slapped. His end had come. This was it.

  But in the moonlight the face that stared into his with fearful intensity wasn’t a sailor’s.

  “You stink!”

  Letty?

  Caleb’s vision blurred. He shut his eyes. Opened them and saw her father was beside her. Seizing the back of Caleb’s shirt, Edward pulled him from the barrel.

  Collapsed upon the deck, every muscle, every inch of skin screaming in protest, Caleb tried to make sense of what he saw. They were anchored close to cliffs. Strange cliffs that didn’t run in both directions the way they should. There was just a piece of them – a chunk, broken off from the rest and dropped in the ocean by a giant hand. Sea washed all around it. Odd. And how had Letty got here? Did she come aboard in Tawpuddle? Was it her who’d hit him? Had she planned to sell him into slavery all along?

  He would have accused her. Weakness alone stopped the words leaving his mouth.

  “Can you climb down the ladder?” she demanded.

  Still Caleb couldn’t speak.

  It was Edward who answered his unasked questions. “Letty rowed out here, God bless her. To rescue you. You got to get into her boat. Now.”

  “Do you mean to kill me?”

  “Lord love you, Caleb, I’ve done some bad things in my time but murder’s not one of them. I don’t intend it ever should be.”

  “What will you tell the others?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  Letty took Caleb’s hand and was tugging him across the deck. “There isn’t time for talk. We got to get off now before they see us. Come on. Shift your arse.”

  Clouds scudded across the full moon but there was a moment’s respite. A moment’s glimpse of the rowing boat that bobbed at the bottom of the rope ladder. Letty’s boat. Seeing it brought sudden clarity to Caleb’s befuddled mind. She had rowed that tiny thing across the open sea in pursuit of the Lady Jane. She must have seen his finger poking from the barrel. Great God in heaven, she was a marvel. She had no equal, not in the whole of Creation!

  Her father was embracing her, clutching her so tightly to his chest Caleb feared Edward might crack her ribs. He released her and there was one last searing look between father and daughter – one so tender, so full of sorrow that Caleb had to turn his head away. Then Letty went over the side, climbing down the rope ladder as nimbly as a monkey.

  And now it was Caleb’s turn.

  He began his descent, but his fingers were stiff as claws. His numbed feet slipped and he fell, thudding into the boat, almost upsetting it.

  Under her breath Letty cursed. The wind was rising with each passing second.

  There were pinpricks of light in the far distance. But Letty did not turn the boat towards them.

  “We can’t make it back to shore. Not now. Storm’s getting worse. We got to get to the island. We can wait it out there.”

  The island? That broken chunk of cliff was the island! The familiar dot in the bay looked so different from here.

  Letty heaved on the oars but the wind was against them and she could barely make any headway.

  “Come on,” she said, “you’ve got to help.”

  Keeping his weight low, Caleb clambered over, took an oar and tried – tried desperately – to control it. But he was more hindrance than help to her and after his oar almost slipped its rowlock Letty cried, “Leave it be. Sit still else you’ll have us over.”

  Caleb could do nothing but watch as she battled the sea, jaw clamped tight, hair plastered across her face as the rain began to fall.

  The Lady Jane was at anchor perhaps half a mile from the island and Letty had covered but a fraction of the distance when there was a great clap of thunder and the ocean was lit by a flash of lightning. Rain cascaded from the sky in torrents.

  But wind and rain were the least of Letty’s concerns. “They’ve seen us!” Another bolt of lightning lit up the men on the deck pointing, yelling. And now the crew were scurrying up the rigging, setting the sails, weighing anchor, coming in pursuit.

  Suddenly the wind veered around and began pushing the rowing boat hard towards the island, the force of it throwing Caleb from the bench. It was a help to Letty, but sail is faster than oar. She could not hope to outrun the Lady Jane but it didn’t stop her trying.

  Half a mile distant, quarter of a mile, the beach within sight, but the Lady Jane was close now, five hundred yards, four hundred, closer with each heartbeat. Another flash of lightning and it was plain that there was some sort of struggle taking place on deck. There were yells. Shouts. A scream. A man was fighting for his life.

  “Father!” Letty paused at the oars. The Lady Jane was almost upon them.

  And then a wave as large as a house took hold of the rowing boat, flipped it into the air and turned it upside down.

  Caleb was tossed to one side, Letty to the other. The water was icy cold but it woke Caleb, cleared his head, numbed the pain.

  He could not row, but he could swim. Letty was a sailor: she’d never learned. Once, twice, she went down before he could reach her. Each time she bobbed back up, screaming, gasping, thrashing. If she went under a third time, that would be the end of her.

  Pa had once told Caleb that there is danger in swimming towards a drowning person. In their desperation they will seize you so hard they are likely to take you both down.

  Caleb swam behind, hoping she wouldn’t notice him until he had hold of her hair. But a wave knocked her sideways and seeing him so close she lunged for him. There was nothing for it but to put both hands on top of her head and push her under as though he meant to drown her.

  The shock mad
e her limp. He was able to get his hands beneath her arms and then to tug her up to where she could breathe again.

  “Lie back. Kick, Letty. Kick!”

  Progress was slow and hard, the deadening cold making their limbs sluggish. Letty’s skirt was tangled around her legs, dragging her deeper. And all the while Caleb could see the Lady Jane coming ever closer. She was going to run them down, they would be ground beneath her hull. Caleb strained against the might of the sea, struggling to keep Letty’s head above water, desperate to evade the ship.

  A flash of lightning. Thunder. Another flash. She loomed above them…

  And then a flash brighter than any Caleb had ever seen knifed across the sky and hit the Lady Jane’s mast, hurtling down its length, crackling over the deck. A direct strike, as though from the very hand of God.

  There was an explosion deep within the ship’s belly, louder and more terrifying than any clap of thunder.

  “Gunpowder!”

  The thought had a fraction of a second to pass through Caleb’s head before great shards of timber blasted outwards from the hull. Jagged spears hurtled through the storm. The air itself was like a fist that punched them towards the rocks that thrust out of the sea, savage and sharp.

  Caleb kept swimming, but Letty was a dead weight now, so limp he feared she’d been killed by the explosion. What was left of the ship tilted to the left. Her sides were split, gaping wide to the sea. She seemed to pause, as if stunned by what had befallen, before the water rushed in and devoured her.

  And now Letty recovered the use of her limbs. She kicked hard towards the rocks, screaming at Caleb to do the same. Had she taken leave of her senses? She’d be torn to shreds! He had to keep her from them. They fought each other, going under, gasping, wrestling, struggling. They were almost upon the rocks when Caleb felt a strange and alarming sensation.

  Suddenly the water seemed to thin and become insubstantial as air. The Lady Jane was pulling them towards her. They were being sucked down. And Letty knew! She knew it would happen! That’s why she’d tried to reach the rocks. In sheer desperation he hurled her at a jagged outcrop, pushing her against it. It tore flesh, ripping great slashes across Letty’s hands but she held on. The sea dragged at Caleb and he grasped Letty’s skirts to save himself.

  Another flash of lightning showed Letty clinging to the cold, jagged stones. Caleb clinging to her legs. Both of them watching the Lady Jane’s mast disappear beneath the sea.

  PART 3

  1.

  Through long hours of darkness Letty and Caleb were blasted and bludgeoned by the twin forces of wind and sea. But little by little the tempest abated and, though the rain continued, the thunder and lightning passed on towards the mainland. Tides ebb and flow even in a storm. Inch by inch the sea level waned.

  By dawn the rain had stopped, the tide had gone out and they were able to climb slowly, unsteadily, along the rocks and down to a shingle beach. From the mainland the island had looked like a flat stretch of barren rock, but now Caleb saw that it curved like a horseshoe around a tiny bay.

  They moved stiffly, as though they had aged a lifetime in that one night, their shredded clothes sodden, their bodies chilled to the marrow. There was a cave at the foot of the cliffs and there inside its mouth was a small quantity of driftwood that had escaped the worst of the storm. Shreds of rope were mixed in amongst them that would serve as kindling. By some miracle the sea had not stripped Caleb of the contents of his pockets: he still had Pa’s hellfire pipe, the bag of powdered resin, the tinderbox. His hands were so cold it took an age to strike a spark and when it did the rope would not catch. Letty was standing, moving from foot to foot, rubbing her hands, chafing her limbs to restore a little heat to them, her eyes on the sea, searching. Her voice, when it came, was little more than a whisper.

  “Did they all go down, do you think? Every man?”

  Caleb forgot his attempts to light a fire. He was on his feet, arms about her, holding her tight to his chest, his face buried in her hair. He longed to lie to her – to assure her that there was hope, there was a chance that Edward had survived, that she would one day see her father again alive and well. But he could not. He knew full well that no man could have lived through the destruction of the Lady Jane. As did she.

  Gulls wheeled and shrieked above their heads while Letty wept. She seemed small, fragile as Anne, broken with grieving.

  The birds’ cries were eerie. Mournful. But then they changed, cackling in alarm as they spun away, startled by something. He turned his head to see what had disturbed them.

  And saw that he and Letty were not alone.

  Drenched as they both were, half frozen, cut and bruised by the rocks, their state was nothing compared to that of the wretched souls who emerged from the shadows of the cave.

  Cries of birds … souls of drowned sailors… “Ghosts,” he breathed.

  Caleb’s arms tightened around Letty in sudden panic. She broke free, and let out a whimper of fear – a noise he had never expected to hear from her and which filled him with sudden courage. No harm would come to her while he was alive.

  As the spectres came closer he saw their feet made impressions on the sand. Not ghosts then: living, breathing men. But in what a wretched state! Clothes in tatters, hair matted, ribs clearly showing through their skin. And their eyes told a story of deprivation and despair. Were they shipwrecked sailors: stranded and slowly starving?

  They came closer, crowding in around Caleb and Letty. Suddenly the tale of Robinson Crusoe filled his head: savages, pursuing Man Friday. Cannibals, killing their victims, feasting on human flesh, dancing on the beach. These men were clearly desperate – who knew what they might be capable of? He and Letty should run. Where to? There was nowhere on this godforsaken rock to hide! And no way to get off it either.

  One of the men extended his hand. Caleb flinched, expecting to be struck, but then he realized the man meant only to greet him. He pressed his palm to Caleb’s and shook it. The voice that emerged from the stranger’s mouth croaked like a rusty gate, but his words quelled Caleb’s wild fears.

  “Jack Lancey at your service.”

  Caleb looked at Letty as, one by one, the other men gave their names: the names they had last heard recited in Sir Robert’s kitchen by Narcissus Puddleby. A list of dead men.

  “Mark Andrews.”

  “Thomas Sinnett.”

  “John Kingscot.”

  “Henry Meddon.”

  “Edwin Hampton.”

  “Robert Buckleigh.”

  “Walter Coombs.”

  “William Hockin.”

  “Edward Braddick.”

  “Richard Brendon.”

  There was a pause. “And Joseph Chappell.” Caleb surveyed the ragged assembly. “Joseph Chappell is missing.”

  At the mention of Pa’s name the men began talking all at once. “You know Joseph?”

  “You have seen him?”

  “Did he make it to land?”

  “Is that why you’ve come?”

  “He made it to shore! God be praised.”

  “Have you come to rescue us?”

  Hope lit their faces. It broke Caleb’s heart anew to have to tell them of Pa’s death. “Joseph Chappell was my father. I found his body on the beach five months ago.”

  There were sighs of despair. Groans of pain. Murmurings of grief and sorrow and words of heartfelt sympathy.

  Caleb cut through them. “Tell me, please,” he said, “what in the name of God happened to him?”

  Jack Lancey began to speak, the others adding to his story as it went on. Standing there, drenched and dripping, in that early summer dawn, Letty and Caleb clinging to each other for warmth and comfort, the sorry tale was laid before them.

  The convicts had left Tawpuddle chained in the Linnet’s hold, bound for Maryland. None of them had expected to see the light of day until they reached that foreign shore but they had not been more than two hours at sea before the Linnet had come to rest at anchor.
br />   “They took us off the ship,” said Jack Lancey. “Lowered the little rowboat over the side. Put us in. Stranded us here.”

  “We was marooned. Every man-jack of us.”

  “They said we wasn’t convicts no more. We was slaves now.”

  “We’d be here until the day we died.”

  “Only Joseph wouldn’t accept it, see? He said he didn’t work for no one but himself.”

  “He made a raft. Took him weeks, gathering up bits of driftwood and the like. And then one day he put out to sea on it. Said it could only be three or four miles to the mainland. He meant to paddle the whole way. He’d get us help, he said.”

  But Pa knew no more of the sea than he did, thought Caleb. The raft must have broken up. Maybe Pa had been washed from it by the waves or caught in a rip tide. Keeping his promises to Caleb and the convicts had killed him.

  Letty was sobbing quietly beside him. There was nothing to be done for Joseph Chappell or Edward Avery. There on that bleak island beach Letty and Caleb held each other and wept for their dead fathers.

  2.

  Following the dreadful chill of the night’s storm, a hot day seemed in prospect. The clothes on their backs began to dry and, as the sun rose higher, Caleb and Letty were slowly warmed through. Grief may be overwhelming, but in time the living body makes demands that refuse to be ignored. Both were bruised and sore, their flesh torn and grazed, their limbs aching and weary. Added to which now came a raging hunger.

  The convicts had been marooned on the island for almost ten months. Jack Lancey had informed Caleb that supplies had been brought from the mainland from time to time. Meagre rations, but enough to ensure that they did not starve. The Lady Jane, they presumed, had been bringing fresh food. Now she had gone down and all her cargo with her. If they were to eat, Caleb decided, they must make use of what was on the island.

  The beach was backed by cliffs. Thomas Sinnett pointed out a narrow path that zigzagged up from there to a plateau of land at the top. It was steep, he said, with a sweet freshwater spring halfway up, but the rest of the climb was scarcely worth the effort. The land was coarse, growing with brambles and bracken so thick a man could barely pass. “There be rabbits up there, but you don’t stand a hope in hell of catching the buggers.”