To the Bitter End by Marcus Palliser

Author:Marcus Palliser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McBooks Press
Published: 2021-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

12

BARE ESCAPE

Irocaibi and I faced a simple truth. We had to reach Fort Rupert or die.

Before us was a sea passage of fifty leagues in an open boat along a coast strewn with rocks and shoals. The contrary wind kicked up a vile sea yet we were only two men to row, one of whom had never plied a sweep in his life. We had no compass nor cross-staff. Even my pilotage notes were aboard the Pursuant. There were rations for one man, some knives and tools, and a few arms, the equipment put in the shallop for Irocaibi's lonely trek.

But first things first. The picks were still in the boat. I took one and crossed the foreshore to the start of the land, where there was a low escarpment leading a few feet up to a flat plain. The tundra stretched baldly away in hues of grey and green till it met the bottom of the great dome of sky. I scraped at the rocky ground but after half a glass had gouged no more than a scoop an inch or two deep. Wearily, I gathered beachstones and carried them up the rise to lay them beside the hollow. At first, Irocaibi watched. After a while, he fell in to help.

An hour later, with a suitable pile built, we lugged Eli's mortal remains to the grave. When we had done, the old salt lay there under the smooth, rounded beachstones heaped into a cairn. Briefly, a sense of calm overtook me, despite the turmoil of my mind, as I stood over the grave and spoke a few plain words, though without priestliness in them. It might have been as desolate and lonely a spot to lie as anywhere on the globe, yet in its ocean-like serenity it seemed a fitting place for a seaman like Eli Savary.

Back at the boat, I hefted out all unnecessary items such as spare knives, the musket and shot, extra skins and clothing. For the sake of lightness I left only the food, the pistols and one knife a-piece, for this was going to be hard enough without carrying unnecessary weight. In landsmen's parlance, it was more than a hundred and fifty miles by sea to the fort and we had a heavy boat with just two men to row it into a stiff wind and sea. The sooner we made a start, the better. My first object was to scull to the inlet's windward side and judge the state of the sea.

'Irocaibi, you shall have to learn the white man's way of rowing,' I said, and indicated that he should bend his weight to give a shove off.

He stood immobile.

'Look alive there, man,' I said, 'I can't do it on my own.'

He glanced with distaste at the boat and its contents.

'We walk,' he said.

I gave a hollow laugh. Not only had I lost my ship, been deprived of my future at Esperantia and just buried my oldest friend, but I had been stranded ashore with only a fool for company.

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