‘Halfway to Norwich the horse lay down …’ Captain Purdew was heard to whimper.
The sun rose, to batter them about the head and shoulders. At one point the woman lowered her glance as though unable any longer to face the glare, and the rings she was wearing flashed back an ironic message. For a few steps she closed her eyes. Patterned with salt and sweat, her dark clothes might have been drawing her under, to depths from which she had but dreamt that she was delivered.
As for Mr Roxburgh, he had abandoned his overcoat and jacket (his boots had abandoned him) but was still wearing his waistcoat in the heat of the day to ensure safe carriage of the Elzevir Virgil buttoned inside.
Mrs Roxburgh could have cried for her husband’s long narrow feet: pale and cold according to her memory, they were now ablaze.
From the sun’s position it must have been the middle of the day, when the most torpid mind was compelled to take notice, by a hissing sound followed by a marked thud. A spear had planted itself obliquely in the sand a few feet ahead of Mr Courtney and the seaman who were leading the procession. The spear had scarcely ceased vibrating when a second grazed Captain Purdew’s left shoulder, tearing the shirt and letting a trickle of blood.
Several of the crew started shouting, to assert their courage or disguise their fear, as Mr Courtney and his companion, who were in possession of the firearms, headed in the direction of some dunes to landward where fifteen to sixteen natives were seen to have congregated, their gibberish accompanied by overtly hostile gestures.
Above the pain and shock Captain Purdew must have been suffering from his wound, he was made frantic by the prospect of his subordinates committing violence. ‘Ned! Frank!’ He shambled forward, emotion causing him to spit so inordinately that he sprayed Mrs Roxburgh’s face in passing. ‘We’ll do no good by spilling blood!’
‘Nor by palaverin’, neether!’ an anonymous voice rejoined.
The first officer and the promoted seaman were taking aim with a precision which fitted the sudden stillness.
A single report from one of the guns sounded horrendous to those who were listening for it; the second weapon played dead, to the fury of the seaman who had been counting upon his moment of glory.
The savages emitted horrid shrieks as one of their number fell, jerking and convulsed, and disappeared from sight amongst the dunes.
The captain was quite demented. ‘We’ll pay for it, I tell you!’ he shouted.
He was, in fact, the one who did, for the next instant a spear was twangling in his ribs. It went in as though he were scarcely a man, or if he were, nobody they had ever known. As he toppled over he conspired with fate by driving the spear deeper in.
There were howls from the blacks, and the shouting of incensed, helpless sailors.
For the second time Mr Courtney took aim, but his gesture produced no more than silence.
Ellen Gluyas watched the bloodstain widening on the sand. There had not been so much blood since Pa and will slaughtered the calf during their lodger’s interminable stay.
Now she too, was interminable, transfixed by time as painfully and mercilessly as by any spear. She, the practical one, and a woman, should tear herself free and rush back into life — to do something.
But it was Mr Roxburgh who ran forward, to do what only God could know. Here he was, bestirring himself at least, in the manner expected of the male sex. Into action! He felt elated, as well as frightened, and full of disbelief in his undertaking. (It was not, however, an uncommon reaction to his own unlikelihood.)
He was several yards from the dying man when Mrs Roxburgh became aware of a terrible whooshing, like the beating of giant wings, infernal in that they were bearing down upon her more than any other being. Indeed, nothing more personal had happened to her in the whole of her life. For a spear, she saw, had struck her husband; it was hanging from his neck, long and black, giving him a lopsided look.
‘Awwwh!’ Ellen Gluyas cried out from what was again an ignorant and helpless girlhood.
Austin Roxburgh was keeling over. On reaching the sand his body would have re-asserted itself, but the attempt petered out in the parody of a landed shrimp.
‘Oh, no! No, no!’ It was the little skipping motion, of defeat in the attempt, which freed her; it was too piteous, as though all the children she had failed to rear were gesticulating for her help.
When she reached his side his eyes were closed, pulses could be seen palpitating beneath the skin, while the long black spear led a malignant life of its own.
At least there was no sign of blood.
‘Oh, my husband — my darling!’ She was blubbering, bellowing, herself the calf with the knife at its throat.
He opened his eyes. ‘Ellen, you are different. The light … or the brim of that … huge … country… hat. Raise it, please … so that I can see …
In her desperation she seized the spear and dragged at it, and it came away through the gristle in his neck. At once blood gushed out of the wound, as well as from the nostrils and mouth.
She fell on her knees.
‘I forgot,’ he said, rising for a moment above the tide in which he was drowning. ‘Pray for me, Ellen.’
She could not, would never pray again. ‘Oh, no, Lord! Why are we born, then?’
The blood was running warm and sticky over her hands. Round the mouth, and on one smeared temple, more transparent than she had ever seen it, flies were crowding in black clots, greedy for the least speck of crimson before the sun dried the virtue out of it.
Huddled on the sand beside a husband with whom the surviving link was his dried blood, Mrs Roxburgh had taken refuge inside the tent of matted hair which, hanging down, could be used to protect her face from the flies, as well as screen her to some extent from what might provoke a further wrench of anguish.
Had she been a free agent she would have chosen just then to succumb to the heat, the weight of her clothes, and numbness of mind, but heard a shot followed by an outburst of laughter, and raised the curtain enough to discover the reason why the second incongruous explosion should follow so closely upon the first.
The men, it appeared, had begun digging a trench in the sand in which to bury their late captain, scratching with their hands alone in a frenzy of application to create the illusion that they were occupied positively, while hoping that the officer who had joined them at their work might come up with some plan to reduce their plight. During it all, a youth named Bob Adams who had a record as a sawney, started digging with the butt of one of the impotent muskets. Which went off. Mr Courtney’s ally, Frank Runcie, cursed fearfully, and the officer himself used every word of a vocabulary to which his blunted authority entitled him.
It was a relief for the others to laugh. ‘At any rate, nobody stopped it!’ one fellow guffawed, and some of the others persisted in labouring the joke.
When Mrs Roxburgh glanced again, the sailors and officer had finished their game of sandcastles: Captain Purdew was decently disposed of, his tomb decorated with a pattern of the hand-prints of those who had shared his last trials. It did, however, face them with the problem of how to deal with the passenger whose wife sat mourning over him. Not one of them would have cared to intrude on the lady’s grief, least of all Mr Courtney, whose duty it was to take the lead and offer some form of condolence.
Mrs Roxburgh made no attempt to help, simply because she could not have been helped.
A solution was provided by the blacks’ return, the more dignified among them striding directly towards their objective, others capering and play-acting. The party of ineffectual whites was soon surrounded by the troop of blacks, all sinew, stench, and exultant in their mastery. One of them ripped the shirt off Mr Courtney, another the belt from Runcie’s waist.