Bolitho smiled at him. He at least seemed in good spirits.
He watched the slow moving hulls. About eighty officers and men with more to follow when he could spare the boats. He sat down and shaded his eyes with his hat. As he did so he touched the scar above his eye, remembering that other watering party he had been with so long ago. The sudden charge, screams all about him, that great towering savage brandishing a cutlass he had just seized from a dying sailor. He had seen it only for a second, and then fallen senseless, his face a mask of blood. It had been a close-run thing. But for his coxswain, it would have been the end.
Herrick probably resented his landing with this watering party. It was work normally given to a lieutenant. But that memory, like the scar, was a constant reminder of what could go wrong without any sort of warning.
'Cable to go, Captain!' Allday eased the tiller bar slightly.
Bolitho started. He must have been dreaming. Undine looked far away now. A graceful toy. While right across the bows and reaching out on either hand like huge green arms, was the land.
Once again Mudge's memory proved to be sure and reliable. Within two hours of beaching the boats and sorting the hands into working parties, the master's mate, Fowlar, reported finding a little stream, and that the water was the freshest thing he had tasted for years.
The work was begun immediately. Armed pickets were placed at carefully chosen vantage points, and lookouts sent to the top of the small hill, below which Mudge's stream gurgled away into the dense jungle. After the first uncertainty of stepping on to dry land, with all the usual unsteadiness to their sealegs, the sailors soon settled down to the task. Pryke, the carpenter, and his mates quickly assembled some heavy sledges upon which the filled casks would be hauled down to the boats, and while the cooper stood watchfully at the stream the other men were busy with axes, clearing a path through the trees under Fowlar's personal supervision.
With Midshipman Penn trotting at his heels to act as messenger, Bolitho retained contact between beach and stream, making several journeys to ensure the operation was working smoothly. Lieutenant Soames was in charge of the beach, and of allocating more men to the work as they were ferried ashore. Davy had the inland part, while Keen was usually to be seen with some armed men at his back trudging around the labouring sailors to make sure there were no unwelcome visitors.
Fowlar had discovered two native fireplaces almost immediately. But they were decayed and scattered, and it seemed unlikely that anyone had been near them for months. Nevertheless, as he paused to watch over the progress of each party, Bolitho was conscious of a feeling of menace. Of hostility, which was hard to define.
On his way inland to the stream yet again he had to stand aside as a heavy sledge, hauled by some two dozen blaspheming seamen, careered past him, shaking the undergrowth, and making several great red birds flap between the trees, squawking discordantly. Bolitho watched the birds and then stepped back on to the crude trail. It was good to know something was alive here, he thought. Beneath the trees, where the sky was hidden from view, the air was heavy, and stank of rotting vegetation. Here and there, something clicked and rustled, or a small beady eye glittered momentarily in filtered sunlight before vanishing just as swiftly.
Penn gasped, 'Might be makes, sir!' He was panting hard, his shirt plastered to his body from his exertions to keep up.
Bolitho found Davy beneath a wall of overhanging rock, marking his list as yet another cask was sealed by Duff for the bumpy ride to the beach.
The second lieutenant straightened his back and observed, 'Going well, sir.'
'Good.' Bolitho stooped and cupped his hands into the stream. It was like wine, despite the rotten looking roots which sprouted from either bank. 'We will finish before dark.'
He looked up at a patch of blue sky as the trees gave a stealthy rustle. It was unmoving air below the matted branches, but above and to seaward the wind was holding well.
'I am going up the hill, Mr. Davy.' He thought he heard Penn sigh with despair. 'I hope your lookouts are awake.'
It was a long hard walk, and when they moved clear of the trees for the final climb to the summit, Bolitho felt the sun searing down on his shoulders, the heat through his shoes from the rough stones, like coals off a grate.
But the two lookouts seemed contented enough. In their stained trousers and shirts, with their tanned faces almost hidden by straw hats, they looked more like castaways than British seamen.
They had rigged a small shelter with a scrap of canvas, behind which lay their weapons, water flasks and a large brass telescope.
One knuckled his forehead and said "Orizon's clear, Cap'n!'
Bolitho tugged his hat over his eyes as he stared down the hill. The coastline was more uneven than he had imagined, water glittering between the thick layers of trees to reveal some inlet or cover not marked on any chart. Inland, and towards a distant barrier of tall hills, there was nothing but an undulating sea of trees. So close-knit, it looked possible to walk upright across the top of them.
He picked up the telescope and trained it on the ship. She was writhing and bending in a surface haze, but he saw the boats moving back and forth, very slowly, like tired water-beetles. He felt grit and dust under his fingers, and guessed the telescope had spent more time lying on the hillside than in use.
He heard Penn sucking noisily at a water flask, and could sense the lookouts willing him to leave them in peace. Theirs might be a thirsty job, but it was far easier than hauling casks through the forest. He moved the glass again. All those men, sledges and casks, yet from here he could see none of them. Even the beach was shielded. The boats, as they drew near the shore, appeared to vanish into the trees, as if swallowed whole.
Bolitho turned to his right, the movement making the men stir with alarm. In the telescope's lens the trees and slivers of trapped water grew and receded as he continued his search. Something had touched the corner of his eye, but what? The lookouts were watching him doubtfully, each caught in his own attitude as if mesmerised.
A trick of light. He blinked and rubbed his eye. Nothing.
He began another slow scrutiny. Thick, characterless forest. Or was that merely what he expected to see? And therefore… He stiffened and held his breath. When he lowered the glass the picture fell away into the distance. He waited, counting seconds, allowing his breathing to steady.
The lookouts had begun to whisper again, and Penn was drinking as before. They probably imagined he had been too long in the sun.
He lifted the glass very carefully. There, to the right, where he had already noticed a faint gleam of water, was something darker, at odds with the forest's greens and browns. He stared at it until his eye watered so painfully he could not continue.
Then he closed the glass with a snap and said, 'There is a ship yonder.' He saw Penn gaping at him, transfixed. 'To the south'rd. It must be some sort of inlet which we did not see earlier.'
He shaded his eyes, trying to estimate the distance, where it lay in relation to Undine and the beach where he had come ashore.
One of the lookouts exclaimed, 'Oi never saw nothin', sir.' He looked frightened, and worse.
Bolitho stared past him, trying to think.
'Take this glass and make sure you can see it now!'
He knew the seaman was more frightened of his captain, or what might become of him because of his negligence, than anything this discovery might mean.
Bolitho's mind recorded all these reactions as he said, 'Have you found it?'
'Aye, sir!' The man bobbed unhappily. "Tis a mast, right enough.'
'Thank you.' Bolitho added dryly, 'Keep your eye on it. I do not want it to vanish again!'
Penn dropped the flask and scuttled after him as he strode down the hill.