The Tiger’s Prey. Wilbur Smith

matted with Christopher’s blood and skin. The crew drifted back to their tasks. The men who had pinned him let Christopher go: they were spattered with his blood. He rolled off the barrel into a heap on the deck. He closed his eyes, soaking up the pain.

      Someone put a mug of rum to his lips and he drank thirstily. Danesh. It didn’t make the pain go away, but it did dull it a little.

      Danesh cleaned his back. Crawford refused him fresh water: he had to use a bucket dipped over the side. The salt water hurt almost more than the whip. A black haze covered Christopher’s sight; he wanted to move, but his limbs wouldn’t obey.

      ‘Forty-nine,’ he croaked.

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Forty-nine lashes.’ Christopher grinned, his lips cracking with the effort. ‘He couldn’t even get to fifty. Weakling,’ he said, and fainted.

      A week later, the Joseph anchored in the port of Trivandrum. The crew were merry: it was their first opportunity to go ashore since Bombay, and they planned to enjoy themselves to the full. Crawford brought out a table and stool onto the main deck, and the men queued to receive their pay.

      Christopher waited until all the others had finished, scrawling their marks in the book and walking away with a few coins in their fists. At last, when it was his turn, he stepped forward and put out his hand. Crawford leered at him.

      ‘What do you want?’

      ‘My wages.’

      ‘Of course.’ Crawford made a great play of counting out the coins. He pushed them across the table, but as Christopher reached to take them, he grabbed his wrist and bent it back until the coins spilled out.

      ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

      Tears of pain blinked in Christopher’s eyes. He thought his wrist would snap.

      ‘Taking my wages.’

      ‘Are you thieving from me again? Those belong to me.’

      ‘You said four rupees a week.’

      ‘You signed on as my apprentice. That means all your wages go to me.’ Crawford let go of Christopher’s wrist, so that he stumbled backwards into the group of watching sailors. No one caught him; he landed hard on the deck. Crawford swept the coins off the table and put them back in the box. He snapped it shut and stood, hand twitching at the knife in his belt.

      ‘Have I made myself clear?’

      Christopher lay on the deck, clutching his wrist. Hatred consumed him: all he wanted was to stick the knife in Crawford’s guts and see him bleed out on the deck. He felt the eyes of the whole crew watching him, enjoying his humiliation, and he hated them too.

      He pushed himself upright, ignoring the pain that shot through his wrist, and faced down Crawford. The master looked surprised to see him standing.

      ‘I understand,’ said Christopher thickly. He didn’t trust himself to say more.

      Crawford was about to provoke him again, but something made him pause. Even in the few weeks of their voyage, Christopher had changed from the callow youth who had come aboard in Bombay. His shoulders had broadened out, and his arms had become thicker. He no longer stooped as much. But it was in his face that the difference was most obvious. Harder and firmer, with black eyes that unsettled with the intensity of their gaze. Though Crawford would never admit it, they frightened him.

      He turned away. ‘Lower the boats,’ he ordered. ‘We’re going ashore. Not you,’ he barked at Christopher. ‘You stay aboard to keep anchor watch. Anything happens to my ship while I’m away, I’ll nail you to the topmast and let the crows have you. Understand?’

      Christopher saw Danesh giving him a sympathetic glance. None of the others even glanced in his direction. All Christopher could do was watch as they clambered into the longboat and rowed ashore. Danesh went too. A group of women waited on the beach to welcome them, dragging each man towards the nearest punch house. Whatever pay they’d had, it would be gone by morning. That was no consolation to Christopher.

      He settled down in the shade of the awning, whittling a piece of wood with his knife. He had the ship to himself, and he revelled in the solitude. All his life he had been kept on his own, an only child forbidden to mix with the other children in the settlement, because his father deemed them inferior. Of the few he had befriended, most had died or gone back to England. His mother kept to her chamber, for fear of rousing his father’s temper. He was used to being alone.

      But he now realized that he would never make his fortune this way. Even if he survived Crawford’s bullying, it would be years before he had enough money even to buy himself a new suit of cheap clothes. He could not ask Ruth to wait so long.

      There was another lesson he had learned from his father. Sitting in the Governor’s house, quiet and unnoticed, he had watched men come and go from his father’s office. In the silent house, conversations carried. He had heard men abuse his father in terms he could not have imagined, and walk out of the office with their heads high, convinced they had won a victory. And he had seen those same men weeks or month later, boarding ships to England in poverty or disgrace, broken men who had lost everything. One had even been taken aboard in irons, all for having been discovered in a unnatural act with a sepoy drummer boy.

      Never forget. Never forgive. And take your vengeance when it will most hurt your enemy. He had discovered a new axiom.

      He brooded on this, until the sun went down and the land disappeared. The lights in the harbour burned bright against the darkness.

      He lit the ship’s lamps fore and aft, and checked her anchor cable. He went to the galley, and helped himself to stew from the pot the cook had left. Rummaging through the stores, he found a bottle of arak, the local liquor. He gulped down three or four mouthfuls, delighting in the fiery taste. It gave him courage.

      ‘I didn’t escape my father to serve another tyrant,’ he muttered to himself. He slipped through the hatch to the lower deck. Much of the Joseph’s cargo was bulk goods, bales of cloth and sacks of rice too large for his purposes. He scrabbled around until he felt the smooth sheen of a parcel of silk. That would do.

      This close to the waterline, he could hear the water lapping against her timbers. Every creak of the ship echoed down through the mast. Something knocked against the hull – probably just a wave, or a piece of driftwood, but it set him on edge. Sweat prickled his hands; the liquor rose like bile in his throat.

      He stuffed his pockets with betel nuts from a sack, hoisted the silk bale over his shoulder and stole up the companionway. The longboat was still ashore, but there was a small jolly boat he could row single-handed. He took out his knife and started sawing through the ropes that held it.

      ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ growled Crawford. He stood silhouetted against the stern lantern, casting a long shadow across the deck. ‘Are you stealing from me again? Didn’t I beat it out of you last time?’

      He had come aboard without Christopher hearing. Whether because he did not trust Christopher, or because he had come back to finish the boy without witnesses, Christopher never found out. The captain stepped forward and punched Christopher in the face so hard he flew backwards into the rigging.

      ‘You’ll have to hit me harder than that,’ Christopher told him. A dangerous wildness had come over him. ‘You hit like a small girl or an old woman.’

      With a grunt, Crawford charged. Christopher stood his ground. He put up his hands, forgetting for a moment he was still holding his knife. In the dark, rushing like an enraged bull, Crawford didn’t see it either.

      Instinct took over. Christopher swayed out of the way of Crawford’s lunging fist, and as the big man grappled him he thrust forward.

      The knife slid into Crawford’s belly almost before Christopher realized it. Hot blood gushed out. Crawford screamed and writhed; he tried to pull away, but only succeeded in opening the wound further. His guts spilled out over Christopher’s hand.