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brittle as glass. Exhaustion brought him close to the point of sleep
again and again, only for panic to jerk him awake as he felt his
blood slow.
Only a wall of canvas and battens separated him from John s
cabin. There he could hear the restless rustle and the creak of
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292 FALSE COLORS
rope as John s sleepless movements set his cot swinging. What
keeps him awake? A guilty conscience?
Alfie turned over, drawing the blanket, his boat cloak, tar-
paulin jacket, and best dress breeches up over his head, then shiv-
ered at the blast to his kidneys. Oh, for a down comforter! Oh, for
any excuse to take his bedding with him and go crawl in with
John& .
 What would you have to say for yourself, eh? he murmured
under his breath, the words pleasantly warm as they passed his
lips.  Gibraltar I can understand. If anything, I knew what you d
do. I blame myself for coming out with it too early. Bad tim-
ing& .
A frustrated exhale of breath in the dark, almost a groan, and
for a moment Alfie thought John had heard him. But no, the
noise came from the other side where the ship s surgeon rested
in his dispensary. A couple of grunts and a cut off, incompre-
hensible word of deep Scots Gaelic, and the breathing settled
back into sleep.
Alfie lowered his voice until he could barely hear it himself,
the warm mist of ghost words a strange sensory pleasure in his
mouth.  But why aren t you more guilty? You promised me aid,
in prison. You promised, and then you disappeared. I thought
you were more honest. Less of a coward.
Perhaps he would put the question to John if ever they
touched at England and found themselves in more private sur-
roundings than these? It would be a day much like today. Cold.
Silent snowfall outside the windows. The two of them would sit
together in a room in John s house, wherever that was, with fire
glowing in the grate, brandy and gingerbread on little tables be-
side their deep armchairs. The servants would be bickering and
laughing in the kitchen below, their voices forming a pleasant
drone with the crackle and murmur of the flames.
They would talk, John and he, all through the short day, safe
together away from the prying world. And then perhaps go up-
stairs together and make love all the long night. He could imag-
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ALEX BEECROFT 293
ine that too. John s bed would have crisp white sheets, and a
heavy bed-rug covered in the same garish flowers as his banyan.
Something his mother had embroidered for him....And it would
smell of John that faint cream, salt, and citrus smell that made
Alfie think of royal creamed ice.
But at the thought of ice cream his surroundings returned to
him in a trickle of shivers down the back. He could hear ice thick-
ening on the water outside, grinding down the hull like a saw.
Love and lust and disappointment were all nothing to it. If the
wind picked up and the seas rose he could find all his ponder-
ings cut short by the indifference of nature. Perhaps it would be
better to reach out and snatch what was offered than to freeze
into a block while mourning over lost illusions....
The thought had a bitter taste, lodging in his throat like a bite
of half-cooked seagull. It gave him resentful dreams.
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CHAPTER 30
 Make ready to cast her loose! cried Alfie. The drums rolled, their
staccato tapping echoed back from distant caves as a deep, inhuman
roar, as though the Albion rested in the land of the ice giants and
unwisely kept shaking them awake.
Sailors poured up the companionways, the topmen running
on, unpausing, up the shrouds, ice falling fractured from the
ropes beneath their rag-bound bare feet. Teams of four men on
each anchor cable stood waiting with axes to cut the cables si-
multaneously on his signal. All had been prepared for above a
week now, but for the wind that had blown relentlessly on to the
ice for day upon day. This morning, however, it had wheeled di-
rectly astern. There was a chance, now, that once the Albion was
back in the water she might get clear.
 All hands lashed aboard? Alfie tightened the rope about his
own waist that held him to the binnacle, watched impatiently
while the men on the yards secured themselves. Any moment the
wind could wheel again, trapping them for another month with
fuel for the galley running out and winter tightening its grip.
 Aye aye, sir! the midshipmen of their divisions reported,
passing a final line about themselves as they huddled about the
main mast.
 Make fore and main topsail, mizzen topsail and mizzen stay-
sail!
As the topsails sheeted home, the sprung foremast creaked
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with a strange high pitched whine. The masts bent forward, rig-
ging pulling taut as iron. The anchor cables strained. Alfie s
breath came fast and shallow.
 On my mark, loose the anchors. Three, two, one. Mark!
The axes flashed like mercury through the air. The aft cable
parted a sickening moment earlier than the fore and Albion s
stern began its slide an instant before her bow. Then the bow
rope twanged apart and the whole ship went sliding sideways into
the sea. With a great flume of bitter spray she plummeted into
the waves and the sea surged aboard. Deep in her belly the
pumps throbbed back into life. The yards twanged like longbows
and the men tied to them yelled, clinging on with both hands.
Alfie s feet left the deck. The line around him drove up under his
ribs as it caught him. He coughed and gasped out,  Let fall fore
and main sail!
Wind snapped in the wet sailcloth. Albion s speed picked up
and she began to move forward, driving herself through a sharp-
edged spume of floating ice. Blocks tipped up beneath her head
and shattered on either side of her bow, drawing back together
beneath her stern, fouling the rudder. Still she ploughed on,
thrust onwards by the gale, the berg so close the men on the star-
board studdingsail yards might have reached out and grabbed a
handful of snow.
With a sick feeling of inevitability, Alfie saw the sails shiver at
the edge and felt the wind behind him veer a point. Nothing sig-
nificant at all if out at sea, but here it placed the berg to leeward.
As they moved forward, he saw, they would drift sideways back
into its facets, to inevitable grounding on sheet ice, hull split open
like a fruit beneath the knife, bleeding warmth until she seized in
place and snow covered all.
 We must claw off, sir! Alfie yelled, throwing off the lifeline
so that he could move again.
Gillingham, all his blankets clutched about him, nodded.  Yes,
we must. Make all sail! Helm hard a larboard.
The whole ship s company hauled on their lines as if possessed
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ALEX BEECROFT 297
by devils. The sails thundered out and drew taut, the water by
her bow foaming up as her speed increased. The hole in the fore-
mast twisted, gaping, but the mast endured even under the full
spread of canvas. Albion began to turn slowly to port, even as the
wind was still blowing her leewardly towards the ice mountain.
Snow skirled away from the thing in plumes, leaving it bare to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]