Part 15 (2/2)

Even as everyone turned to look, a native was pus.h.i.+ng a canoe off from the sh.o.r.e, sliding in and paddling rapidly across the estuary. Three other canoes, full of natives, had almost reached the far bank. One was already drawn up on the sand there. A group of men stood looking across at where the redcoats panted. Rooke could hear cries and shouts-of fear or mirth, he could not tell.

Silk stared across. His back was straight, his narrow shoulders held stiff. The distance was not enormous, the river no wider than the Thames at Westminster, but a distance and depth impossible for a party of armed men.

Willstead was opening his mouth to speak, but Silk was there first.

'Quick, men,' he shouted. 'They are not out of range, quick now, load and fire!'

Rooke went about it slowly, even dropped his bag of shot, but all around him he could see the eagerness of the men. Next to him a heavy red-faced private was breathing noisily through his nose, the air whistling in and out as he loaded and rammed.

By the time the guns were ready, the natives were too far away for any but the luckiest of shots to find a target. One by one the men fired, Rooke among them. He fixed on a patch of glittering water far from the canoe, and hoped that for once his aim was good.

The last canoe was pitching in the swell coming from the bay. Rooke watched it while around him men put away their powder horns and slung the guns back over their shoulders.

In the stern of the canoe someone turned and looked back. It was too far away to make out features, but the figure was a child's. Across the water Rooke and the child gazed at each other, the canoe bobbing up and down, the paddles glinting wet. He was piercingly reminded of Tagaran and the stricken look she had given him when he had mimed a musket to the shoulder.

Silk turned to face the men, speaking calmly, as if everything had gone exactly to plan.

'Well done, men. Well done.'

Rooke did not think anyone was fooled by this, but no one said so.

'Now form up, we will return to the place where we rested. We will make camp there and tomorrow we will continue our search to the south.'

The party moved quickly on the way back down the beach. Rooke came along behind at a leisurely pace. All at once the afternoon was benign, the breeze coming from the sea soft against his cheek.

'A native, sir, a native in the water,' one of the soldiers called. 'Out in the water, sir!'

Rooke shaded his eyes against the glare of the water and made out a speck.

'Do not look,' Silk called. 'Mr Willstead! Mr Rooke! We will continue up the sh.o.r.e, we will not stop here. Pa.s.s on if you please with your faces turned away.'

Willstead still squinted out at the water.

'Do not look, Willstead,' Silk said sharply. 'You are still looking, man. March on!'

But Willstead unshouldered his musket and rested it b.u.t.t-down on the sand as if prepared for an argument.

'Are we not to take him, then?'

'At this distance we can neither seize him nor shoot him. Any such efforts would simply have the effect of rendering us ridiculous. We will pa.s.s by without letting him see that we have noticed. March on, quick, man!'

They turned away, but Willstead must have been looking after all.

'He is coming to us! He is coming to join us!'

Sure enough, the man was wading through the water towards them. Rooke could see his torso turning with each step and his arms out to the sides to speed his progress.

It was no longer possible to pretend.

'Halt!' Silk called. 'We will allow him to come to us.' He was sweating, his face waxy, his faded red jacket dark under the arms.

Rooke had not thought that a piece of theatre would look quite like this.

'Do him no harm, men,' Silk shouted. 'No harm, do you understand? He is coming to us in trust, it is no part of our intention to betray trust, only to punish.'

His voice strained to be heard over the sounds of the breeze in the trees and the water against the sh.o.r.e.

'But, sir,' Willstead said. 'Are not our orders to take any male natives?'

'Take, yes, but only by force, what would be the point, man, if the native invites himself to be taken? There is no message there for the others.'

'So if they run away,' Willstead said, dogged, 'if they run away we can take them, except we cannot catch them. But if they come to us we must not take them?'

The soldiers closest to him caught this and there was a stirring, perhaps even a sn.i.g.g.e.ring.

The man was running up the beach towards them. They could see the sand spurting at each step and he was close enough now that they could see the woolly hair on his face, the band around his forehead, his feet caked with fine yellow sand like a pair of slippers: Warungin, coming to meet them with every appearance of good cheer.

He caught up to them, hardly out of breath, and greeted such men as he knew. When he came to Rooke there was not a flicker of any consciousness, no hint of acknowledging a collaborator.

If Warungin did not know the purpose of their expedition, it would be normal for him to enquire what they were doing there, and Rooke was glad when he did so. Were they hunting kangaroo? he mimed. Were they fis.h.i.+ng, or had they come for something in the trees, honey perhaps?

Silk did not commit himself on the matter of kangaroo hunting or honey gathering.

'Warungin,' he said, smiling, the effort to appear casual evident in his voice, 'Warungin, my friend, can you tell us where we would find Carangaray? Where is Carangaray?'

Warungin frowned at the name.

He gave a short speech, in the course of which he mentioned the name Carangaray frequently, each time flicking his hand in a broad gesture that started with it hanging from the wrist and finished with the palm up, facing south.

'Mr Rooke, you are by way of being the linguist among us,' Silk said. 'What is he saying?'

'He speaks too fast,' Rooke said. 'I cannot follow.'

This was so irreproachably the truth that Silk did not insist.

Silk now tried charades to convey his meaning. Walked his fingers though the air, repeating Carangaray. Warungin watched stolidly, copied, the fingers walking in the air, but he improved on Silk's performance, pus.h.i.+ng his arm out as he did so to demonstrate the idea of a long way. Then he did a palm-under-cheek motion and a sweeping gesture across the sky to indicate the pa.s.sage of the sun. The message was unmistakable: Carangaray was at such a distance that the sun would travel two or three times across the sky, and men would lay their palms under their cheeks to sleep three or four times, to reach the place where he now was.

Much too far, in other words, for thirty heavily armed but lightly provisioned soldiers to go in pursuit.

They tramped back to the pool behind the beach. Warungin made no signs of leaving them. Willstead grumbled that he was hanging about in the hope of a meal at their expense, but Rooke did not think the delights of dry crumbled bread, and a handful of shreds of salt beef, would be much of a temptation.

As the men cut ferns to sleep on and gathered wood to last their fires through the night, Warungin did in fact disappear. Rooke and Willstead paused to watch the lightness of his step as he went off down the path with his fishgig swinging backwards and forwards.

'They come and go like children,' Willstead said. 'He is a good enough fellow, I suppose, but you could never rely on any of them. When the whim takes them, off they go.'

But, by the time they had the fire going, Warungin was back, eight plump mullet hanging from his hand, strung together with a length of vine. He sc.r.a.ped a few flat places among the coals, briefly cooked his catch, and then broke the fish into pieces with his fingers and shared them out among the officers. Laughed to see how squeamish they were about the heads. Took them back and crunched the heads entire, indicating how good they were.

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