An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (13 page)

Having instructed Master Baxter to call him if there was the slightest difficulty in steering, if there was a sail in sight or anything untoward happened, Rodney went below. He would have liked to have a wash and snatch some breakfast, for he had had nothing either to eat or drink since the evening before when they sighted the Spanish carrack, but he knew it would be expected of him first to see the wounded.

With Barlow following him he went below decks. It was dark and the oil lamps flickering from the beams cast long dark shadows. It was desperately hot and even to Rodney, who was used to the stench and fug of a ship, the atmosphere was stifling. The wounded men lay in a row, some of them cursing blasphemously as the roll of the ship hurt their shattered limbs or made it difficult for them to retain the posture in which they lay.

It was only as he reached the men that Rodney remembered that, having seen Dobson killed, he should have appointed someone to act as surgeon in his place. It was the usual procedure when the ship’s surgeon was killed, but he wondered now who on board would have the slightest conception of what that post entailed.

Rodney had not liked Dobson and could not pretend to be sorry that as a man he was dead, but from any other point of view his death was vastly inconvenient. On a voyage of this sort a ship’s surgeon was a vital necessity, and although they usually killed as many men as they saved, they at least had some knowledge of their profession, however inadequate.

As he moved forward now in the darkness, disliking the heat, the smell of bilge and unwashed bodies, Rodney tried to remember all that he had learnt when he was with Drake. That amazing man had a vast knowledge of medicine. He had studied the uses of healing herbs, and the men with whom he sailed would rather have trusted him to doctor them than any surgeon, however skilled by reputation.

But as he tried to recall what he had seen and heard, Rodney felt helpless. He could not be certain that his memory was to be relied on and in reality, he thought, he was as inexperienced in the matter as the merest cabin boy.

It was then, as he reached the men, that the wavering light of the lantern showed him a kneeling figure by one of them. Someone had the doctor’s polished case with all its paraphernalia of bottles open on the floor. Rodney stared as the swaying lantern flickered on a red-gold head and he saw who knelt there.

Lizbeth was bandaging a man’s arm while he swore one resounding oath after another at the pain his wounds were giving him.

“Quiet there!” Rodney’s voice was crisp and authoritative and the man was instantly silent, and then he stared down at Lizbeth, not knowing what to say.

It was a shock seeing her tending a half-naked man in such a manner. No decent or superior woman was interested or concerned with the dirty work of nursing. Gin drinking old women might hire themselves out as midwives, women of the lower orders without any training or special skill took up nursing as an inferior means of livelihood, but in the main it was men’s work to look after the sick, and at sea, as on the shore, the weakest and most inefficient men were ordered to such a menial and unimportant task.

And yet it was difficult in the circumstances for Rodney to know what to say. He would have liked, if he could have expressed himself naturally, to order Lizbeth to leave the man alone and go on deck immediately. And yet, even as the words framed themselves on his lips, he knew he could not say them. Someone had to take up Dobson’s job and he intended to appoint a Petty Officer – the one most easily spared. But this was not the moment to do so with his supposedly honoured guest concerning himself with the men’s well-being.

“Have you any
aqua vitae
on board?” Lizbeth asked, looking up at Rodney as he stood speechless beside her.

“
Aqua vitae?”
he echoed stupidly.

“Yes, I require it for the next man.”

She nodded as she spoke to a man lying on the other side of the one she was treating. He had been hit in the shoulder – a great open wound, torn, bleeding and blackened with powder.

“Give him spirits if you have no laudanum,” Rodney said, well aware there were only two sorts of medicine for wounded men when the pain became really unbearable.

“He has had some laudanum,” Lizbeth replied, “and I do not wish him to drink the aqua vitae, I want to pour it into the wound.”

“God’s light! Whatever for?” Rodney ejaculated.

There were a few bottles aboard of the precious brandywine, which he himself enjoyed, but he thought for a moment that Lizbeth was demented when she asked that he should sacrifice his special liquor for such a cause.

She saw his confusion and explained patiently.

“You see how dirty the wound is. When the Spanish cannonball hit him he was carrying the powder and shot between our own cannons. ‘Twas spilled all over him. A wound that is as dirty as that is bound to get gangrene unless we can get it clean. If I had herbs such as I have at home, I could deal with it. A clove of garlic is excellent, but I have none here and I believe that
aqua vitae
will clean it up equally as well.”

“Who told you such things?” Rodney asked.

“I have heard men talk since I was a child of the hurts they have suffered. It was a favourite topic of conversation at my father’s table. I know, too, a little of the healing properties of herbs and the cleaning value of raw spirit. Can I have the
aqua vitae
?”

Quickly, because he could not find the words to refuse her, Rodney sent a ship’s boy to his cabin for a bottle.

The man cursed and swore as Lizbeth poured it on his wound, but when she had bound it up he thanked her.

There were three men left to bandage and Rodney waited until Lizbeth had finished with them. There were splinters which had to be extricated from a seaman’s burly chest with very inadequate instruments in Dobson’s medicine-case. Another man had lost a foot, but Lizbeth knew she could do nothing about the jagged, mutilated limb which needed amputating. It was a job for the butcher as Dobson was dead, and was best left, Rodney decided, until they could be steady in harbour.

The last man was dead. There was a great pool of blood on the floor beside him. There was another stream which had flowed in a sticky trickle from his mouth. His eyes were wide open, startling in their fixed stare, and Rodney’s voice was harsh as he gave orders for the man to be carried on deck to join the other three bodies awaiting burial.

He knew the man well. He was a big, burly man of Devon called Clerihew and had sailed in the
Golden Hind
on Drake’s brilliant exploit when they captured the
Cacatuego
and sailed home rich with plunder. Now Clerihew was dead, and Rodney felt as if he had lost an old friend. It almost surprised him how much he resented the fact that such a man should die for no good reason. They had achieved nothing, they had run away, and that in itself was more bitter than anything else.

Lizbeth’s task was done. She stood up, looked at the row of men bandaged and drugged, and told a man who was not wounded to make them as comfortable as possible.

“It’s hot here,” she said hesitatingly, conscious of the sweat on her own forehead. “Perhaps they could have some air?”

“They can be taken on deck later,” Rodney promised.

He would have promised anything at that moment to get Lizbeth away. He was feeling more embarrassed every moment by her proximity to the wounded men.

“Thank you, that will help them, I am sure,” Lizbeth said.

She turned to a seaman who was in attendance and asked him to carry the medicine-chest back to her cabin, and then she turned and walked along the lower deck to the companion-way.

“’Tis best that the medicine should not be left with the men. They might be tempted to help themselves,” she remarked. “there are many drugs there which I am sure are deadly poison.”

Rodney said nothing until they reached the upper deck, and then, as he drew a deep breath of fresh air, he said,

“I must thank you for doing your best with the men, but there is no need for you to attend to them any more. I will appoint an Acting-Surgeon.”

He was speaking to Lizbeth, but his eyes were looking around as he spoke. There was no sign of a ship, but the coast was in sight. They had reached it none too soon, Rodney thought. He had no intention of alarming anyone, but while he had been below watching Lizbeth bandaging, the wounded men, he had heard sounds which were all too ominous to a man used to ships.

There was a sound of water beneath the lower deck, he could hear the lap and swirl of it, a burbling sound which was, very unlike the usual wash of the bilge. He could hear, too, the monotonous clang of the pumps, but he knew how little they would achieve. It took a lot to sink a ship such as the
Sea Hawk
and yet it was by no means an impossibility, and there were still eight or ten miles ahead of them before they could reach the coast.

Lizbeth was speaking, but for a moment he could not concentrate on what she was saying.

“Is there anybody on board who has any knowledge of medicine – real knowledge?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” Rodney replied. “I shall have to make enquiries.”

“If there is no one, as I suspect,” Lizbeth said, “then I shall continue to do what I can for the men. I am not afraid of blood, as some women are, and at least I shall be gentler with them than the man I found trying to move them about when I went below.”

“I forbid it,” Rodney retorted quickly.

“In this I refuse to obey you,” Lizbeth replied. “You may be in command of the ship, but men should not be allowed to die because there is no one to care for them.”

“I have told you, it is no work for you or for any woman for that matter,” Rodney said.

“I shall look after them, and nothing you can say can stop me,” Lizbeth answered.

Tired though he was, preoccupied with other things, Rodney glared back at her. He felt so irritated by her defiance that he had half a mind to take her by the shoulders and shake her. He almost forgot in that moment that she was a woman. She was instead something quite impersonal that was defying him, and Rodney was not used to being defied.

“You will do as I say or I will put you in irons.”

She laughed at him then, her head thrown back a little, the sun glinting on her red hair.

“You would not dare,” she replied.

He remembered then what she had said to him the evening before. He remembered how during the night he had thought often of how she despised him for having run away from the Spanish ships.

“Go to your cabin,” he said furiously, “or I swear I will have you carried there!”

She did not move, but her green eyes gleamed beneath her dark lashes. They were both tense, both burning with indignation, both tingling alive with fiery anger which made everything forgotten save themselves.

An interruption came like a thunder-clap.

“Excuse me, sir,” Barlow said at Rodney’s elbow. “There is a small fishing-boat just ahead of us with three men in it. Shall we take them on board?”

Rodney looked out to sea-nothing else was in sight.

“Take them on board, Mr. Barlow,” he said, “but delay our passage as little as possible.”

Barlow understood and, forgetful of Lizbeth, Rodney strode up to the quarter-deck and watched the drama taking place below.

The fishing-boat was forced to heave to as the ship’s boat which had been lowered drew alongside her and in a short time the three men were hauled aboard. One was an Indian – there was no doubt about that – the other two were darker-skinned with high cheek-bones. At first glance Rodney was sure these were Cimaroons. Bitter enemies of the Spaniards, Cimaroons were Negro slaves who had run away from the cruelty of their masters and lived with Indians of the woods.

So many had escaped during the Spanish rule that they had now grown into a people who lived in the forests around the Isthmus of Panama. They had their own king and were split into several tribes. But all were united by one controlling spirit – a common hatred of those who had oppressed them.

The three men were dragged across the deck. Their faces were sullen, their eyes smouldering with suppressed fires. Rodney spoke to them in Spanish. He asked them who they were and when the oldest man answered him surlily that he and his brother were Cimaroons he smiled.

“Release the prisoners,” he ordered. “Let them stand free.”

The seamen obeyed him wonderingly. As he went on to speak in Spanish to the men he had captured, they stared in even more astonishment. For as Rodney talked, a vast change came over the three fishermen. First they looked surprised, then their mouths were wreathed in smiles and finally they were down on their knees, touching their foreheads to the deck in servitude.

For the first time in her life Lizbeth was glad that her education had been so extensive. Her father had had her taught in much the same way as Queen Elizabeth had been instructed. At the age of ten she had been learning Italian, French, Latin and Greek, and when she was twelve a tutor in Spanish had been found for her. She alone aboard the
Sea Hawk
besides Rodney knew why the fishermen had changed their attitude so quickly when Rodney spoke to them. They thought that they had been captured by the Spanish!

When they found that the ship was English and that her Captain had sailed with their friend Sir Francis Drake, they were only too willing not only to reveal any information that might be of use to the English Captain, but to offer their help.

Quickly Rodney explained their need for a harbour. The three natives looked at each other; then the oldest, the Cimaroon who had spoken first, began a long reply. Immediately ahead of them, he said, was the coast of Nicaragua. Rodney started at that, because he had been expecting to reach land south of Panama. The night wind had blown them further than he had anticipated.

He and his brother, the Cimaroon went on, were visiting an Indian settlement, but a week ago one of the gold ships from Panama, en route for Havana, had been forced to seek shelter in their harbour while a split rudder was repaired. The Spaniards had forced into slavery those of the Indians whom they had not killed, they had seduced the young women, and, rather than eat the provisions with which the ship was stocked for the journey back to Spain, they had ravaged the whole countryside in search of food.