The master breathed in deeply and took control. “I’ll fix our position and have you aboard your ship as soon as I can.”

CHAPTER 7

Three days later, back aboard Duke William, Kydd and Bowyer were with the starboard watch up on the topsail yard, shaking out a reef. In the maintop sailors swore heartily when the inexperienced officer of the watch let the ship come into the wind. Ponderously, the seventy-five-foot yard swung as the wind caught the sail momentarily aback, then more sharply swayed it back – to bring up hard against the braces.

One moment Kydd was standing watching for orders, the next he heard a brief cry and turned to see a gap where Bowyer had been shortly before. He stared down and saw men hurrying over to a still form, face down and at a distorted angle. For a moment he was stunned. Then, in a rising storm of feelings he shouted, shrieked – and flew down the shrouds.

A small crowd had gathered around Bowyer. Kydd thrust past, distraught at the spreading dark wet stain beneath. Gently he pulled Bowyer around to face upward. His eyes were closed and he was very pale, blood issuing from his nose and ears. His breathing was unnatural; harsh and stertorous.

“Where’s the doctor?” Kydd’s hoarse cry rose above the hushed voices. He cradled the barely breathing Bowyer, feeling the warmth seeping from his body.

“Stand clear – what happened?” the surgeon asked breathlessly.

“Fall from the yard,” said an officer, arriving from the quarterdeck.

The surgeon dropped to his knees and felt for a pulse, his eyes passing briefly over the inert body. He rolled back an eyelid. Holding a small silver mirror to Bowyer’s lips, he inspected the result. “He lives yet, but I’ll not be sanguine about the outcome.” He straightened and looked around.

In the shocked silence nobody moved.

“Broken bones bear on his brain – it must be relieved. Tie him to a grating and take him below to the cockpit.”

The main hatch grating, which had so often seen the blood of floggings, was now smeared with the bright red of Bowyer’s lifeblood. There was no lack of men to help Kydd carry it below.

In the center of the noisome gloom of the cockpit Bowyer was placed on a table. Lanthorns could only provide their usual dim light, leaving much of the scene in shadow. The loblolly boys, broken-down men who were fit for no other work, stretched out Bowyer’s limbs, tying them to stanchions. Then they stood back and waited for the surgeon to return with his chest.

Suddenly Bowyer’s back arched and with a loud, tearing groan his body strained in a terrible convulsion. Kydd threw himself at his friend and tried to force him down. “F’r God’s sake, help me!” he screamed at the loblollies, who were standing well back in the shadows.

They remained still, one rhythmically chewing tobacco.

“Help, for Chrissake!” Kydd sobbed. The body was rigid and contorted in a grotesque upward spasm. His efforts to press the spine down were hopelessly ineffective.

There was a movement in the lanthorn glow and the surgeon was at his side.

Kydd gasped with relief. “He – he’s -” he tried to say.

“Opisthotonos,” the man muttered.

Kydd stared at him.

“Not unusual in these cases – leave him, it’ll pass.” He casually upended a green bottle, wiped his mouth and replaced the bottle in the capacious side pocket of his black coat.

Kydd reluctantly let go of his friend and hovered next to the convulsed body, unsure and cold with horror.

The surgeon pulled at Kydd’s jacket and said testily, “Be so good as to let me get on with it, will you?”

Kydd stepped back and watched as the surgeon rummaged in his chest, bringing out some steel instruments, which he laid on a small collapsible table next to Bowyer’s head. The convulsion passed and Bowyer sank down.

The surgeon went to Bowyer’s head and addressed himself to the task. A razor was flourished, and Bowyer’s head was shaved around the seeping blood, leaving a monk-like tonsure.

“More light, you oaf!” he growled at the taller loblolly, who obediently held two lanthorns each side of Bowyer’s head.

The surgeon felt the skull all over, then picked up a scalpel and, stretching the scalp with one hand, drew the blade smartly across in a three-inch incision. He made a similar cut at right angles at one end of the first incision, then peeled the scalp away in a triangle.

The sickly white of living, gleaming bone was clear in the close lanthorn light. The surgeon bent nearer and traced the long depressed fracture to where it continued under the scalp. Another incision and the whole was exposed. “Mmm, we have a chance, possibly,” he muttered. He lifted a complex instrument. “Basson’s patent trephine,” he said, with pride. Carefully he felt around the floating skull plates until he found a sound area, then applied the instrument and set to work.

In the breathless silence the tiny bone-cutting sounds grated unbearably. Kydd looked away at the loblolly boys, who watched the operation stolidly. The men who had helped him carry Bowyer down retreated farther and Kydd caught the gleam of a tilted bottle. The lanthorns gave off a hot oily smell.

A young midshipman from their nearby berth lingered, fascinated, and glanced up at Kydd with a twisted grin.

The surgeon exchanged his trephine for another instrument and inserted it in the skull cavity. Kydd let his gaze drop to the wound and saw Bowyer’s brain tissue, blood dripping slowly in small threads down the side of his face and to the deck. He could not control the sudden heaves – he staggered and held desperately to a deck stanchion. The surgeon straightened and glared at Kydd. “If ye’re going to cast your accounts now, kindly do it somewhere else.”

Kydd stumbled blindly toward the other men.

“Well, I hold myself in some amazement; he still breathes,” the surgeon said later, waving away the lanthorns and stretching. He wiped his hands on his bloody apron, which he tossed to the loblolly boy, and took a long pull at his bottle. “You may have him,” he said shortly. “The loblollies will attend in course.” He disappeared into his cabin.

Kydd let out his breath. It was a waking nightmare, the blood-bespattered head all bandaged, the eyes receding into dark sockets.

They took Bowyer to the bay, the extreme fore part of the middle gundeck where the bows came to a point, and laid him down in a swinging cot, next to where the root of the mighty bowsprit reared outward.

One of the loblollies stayed, his tobacco chewing never ceasing.

His eyes dull with grief, Kydd sat with his friend. The hours passed; he willed with all his heart for some indication that the world had been set to rights again – for the eyes to flicker open, that slow smile – but there was only stillness and the hypnotic cycle of the rise and fall of the chest, a long moment of waiting, then another.

Kydd got up and stretched. There was no change; he would take a short break.

He returned to see the loblolly boy bent over Bowyer, working feverishly at the body. Kydd ran forward, guilt-ridden at having been absent. He realized that the loblolly boy had been at work on Bowyer’s finger, trying to pull off the worn ring. Kydd wrenched him around and pinioned him against the fore bulkhead.

A crowd quickly gathered at the commotion.

The loblolly’s eyes shifted. “But ’e’ll not need that where ’e’s goin’!” he whined.

Kydd smashed his fist into the man’s face and drew back his arm for another blow, but felt his arms seized from behind. “Don’t do ’im, mate – ’e’s not worth a floggin’!” someone cried.

Kydd fell back and the loblolly fled.

At three bells Bowyer gave a muffled groan and writhed in a weak spasm. Kydd lurched to his feet and held him down until it passed.