In the ship's bows, Aboli returned the greeting, raising his hand above his head in salute and calling out in the Lnguage that only Hal could understand, "I see you, wise old man. Go in peace, for I am of your totem and I mean you no harm."
At the sound of his voice the elephants backed away from the water's edge, then turned as one and headed back into the forest at a shambling run. Hal laughed again, at Aboli's words and to watch the great beasts go, trampling and shaking the forest with their might.
Then he concentrated once more on picking out the sandbanks and shoals, and in calling down directions to his father on the quarterdeck. The Resolution followed the meandering channel down the length of the lagoon until she came out into a wide green pool. The last scrap of her canvas was stripped and furled on her yards, and her anchor splashed into its depths. She swung round gently and snubbed at her anchor chain.
She lay only fifty yards off the beach, hidden behind a small island in the lagoon, so that she was concealed from the casual scrutiny of a passing ship looking in through the entrance between the heads. The way was scarcely off her before Sir Francis was shouting his orders. "Carpenter! Get the pinnaces assembled and launched."
Before noon the first was lowered from the deck to the water, and ten men went down into her with their ditty bags. Big Daniel took charge of the oarsmen, who rowed them down the lagoon and put them ashore at the foot of the rocky heads. Through his telescope Sir Francis watched them climb the steep elephant path to the summit. From there they would keep a lookout and warn him of the approach of any strange sail.
"On the morrow we will move the culver ins to the entrance and set them up in stone emplacements to cover the channel," he told Hal. "Now, we will celebrate our arrival with fresh fish for our dinner. Get out the hooks and lines. Take Aboli and four men with you in the other pinnace. Dig some crabs from the beach and bring me back a load of fish for the ship's mess."
Standing in the bows as the pinnace was rowed out into the channel, Hal peered down into the water. It was so clear that he could see the sandy bottom. The lagoon teemed with fish and shoal after shoal sped away before the boat. Many were as long as his arm, some as long as the spread of both arms.
When they anchored in the deepest part of the channel, Hal dropped a hand line over the side, the hooks baited with crabs they had taken from their holes on the sandy beach. Before it touched the bottom, the bait was seized with such rude power that before he could check it the line scorched his fingers. Leaning back against the line he brought it in hand over hand, and swung a flapping, glistening body of purest silver over the gunwale.
While it still thumped upon the deck and Hal struggled to twist the barbed hook from its rubbery lip, Aboli shouted with excitement and heaved back on his own line. Before he could swing his fish over the side, all the other sailors were laughing and straining to pull heavy darting fish aboard.
Within the hour the deck was knee-deep in dead fish and they were all smeared to the eyebrows with slime and scales. Even the hard, rope-calloused hands of the seamen were bleeding from line burn and the prick of sharp fins. It was no longer sport but hard work to keep the inverted waterfall of living silver streaming over the side.
Just before sunset Hal called a halt, and they rowed back towards the anchored galleon. They were still a hundred yards from her when, on an impulse, Hal stood up in the stern and stripped off his stinking slime-coated clothes. Stark mother naked he balanced on the thwart, and called to Aboli, "Take her alongside and unload the catch. I will swim from here." He had not bathed in over two months, since last they had anchored in the lagoon, and he longed for the feel of cool clear water on his skin. He gathered himself and dived overboard. The men at the galleon's rail shouted ribald encouragement and even Sir Francis paused and watched him indulgently.
"Let him be, Captain. He's still a carefree boy," said Ned Tyler.
"It's just that he's so big and tall that we sometimes forget that." Ned had been with Sir Francis for so many years that he could be forgiven such familiarity.
"There's no place for a thoughtless boy in the guerre de course. This is man's work and it needs a hard head on even the most youthful shoulders or there'll be a Dutch noose for that thoughtless head." But he made no effort to reprimand Hal as he watched his naked white body slide through the water, supple and agile as a dolphin.
Katinka heard the commotion on the deck above, and raised her eyes from the book she was reading. It was a copy of Francois Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel which had been printed privately in Paris with beautifully detailed erotic illustrations, hand-coloured and lifelike. A young man she had known in Amsterdam before her hasty marriage had sent it to her. From close and intimate experience, he knew her tastes well. She glanced idly through the window and her interest quickened. She dropped the book and stood up for a better view.
MevroU, your husband, "Zelda warned her.
"The devil with my husband," said Katinka, as she stepped out onto the stern gallery and shaded her eyes against the slanting rays of the setting sun, The young Englishman who had captured her stood in the stern of a small boat, not far across the quiet lagoon waters. As she watched he stripped off his soiled and tattered clothing, until he stood naked and unashamed, balancing with easy grace on the gunwale.
As a young girl she had accompanied her father to Italy.
There she had bribed Zelda to take her to see the collection of sculptures by Michelangelo, while her father was meeting with his Italian trading partners. She had spent almost an hour of that sultry afternoon standing before the statue of David. Its beauty had aroused in her a turmoil of emotion. It was the first depiction of masculine nudity she had ever looked upon, and it had changed her life.
Now she was looking at another David sculpture, but this one was not of cold marble. Of course, since their first encounter in her cabin she had seen the boy often. He dogged her footsteps like an over-affectionate puppy. Whenever she left her cabin he appeared miraculously, to moon at her from afar. His transparent adoration afforded her only the mildest amusement, for she was accustomed to no less from every man between the ages of fourteen and eighty. He had barely warranted more than a glance, this pretty boy, in baggy, filthy rags. After their first violent meeting, the stink of him had lingered in her cabin, so pungent that she had ordered Zelda to sprinkle perfume to dispel it. But, then, she knew from bitter experience that all sailors stank for there was no water on the ship other than for drinking, and little enough of that.
Now that the lad had shed his noisome clothing, he had become a thing of striking beauty. Though his arms and face were bronzed by the sun, his torso and legs were carved in pure unsullied white. The low sun gilded the curves and angles of his body and his dark hair tumbled down his back. His teeth were very white in the tanned face, and his laughter so musical and filled with such zest that it brought a smile to her own lips.