Part 37 (1/2)
”Hoist the line to the p.o.o.p. We'll board her from the stern gallery.
Take the longboat under and drop a ladder. You and you, Garway and Davies, bring the line about, to the gallery rail.”
The current tugged at the longboat, but its line held secure and the seamen pa.s.sed the end up the companionway and toward the stern gallery, where the rope ladder was being played out.
”The longboat'll not take all the men and the silver. Blessed Jesus, there's ten thousand pound sterling in these chests.” Elkington gasped as another wave washed over him, sending his hat into the surf. He seized a running seaman by the neck and yanked him toward the chests.
”Take one end, you wh.o.r.eson b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and help hoist it through the companionway to the p.o.o.p.”
But the man twisted free and disappeared toward the stem. With an oath, Elkington began dragging the chest across the deck and down the companionway. By the time he reached the gallery, the ladder had already been dropped into the longboat.
And five seamen were waiting with half-pikes.
”I'll send you to h.e.l.l if you try loadin' that chest.” Bosun's mate John Garway held his pike in Elkington's face. ”We'll all not make it as 'tis.”
Then Thomas Davies, acting on the thought in every man's mind, thrust his pike through the lock hinge on the chest and wrenched it off with a single powerful twist. ”Who needs the money more, say I, the bleedin'
Wors.h.i.+pful Company, or a man who knows how to spend it?”
In moments a dozen hands had ripped away the lid of the chest, and seamen began shoveling coins into their pockets. Elkington was pushed sprawling into the companionway. Other seamen ran to begin rifling the second chest. Silver spilled from their pockets as the men poured down the swaying ladder into the longboat. As Elkington fought his way back toward the stem, he took a long last look at the half-empty chests, then began stuffing the pockets of his own doublet.
Mackintosh emerged from the Great Cabin holding the s.h.i.+p's log. As he waited for the last seaman to board the longboat, he too lightened the _Resolve _of a pocketful of silver.
With all men on board the longboat's gunwales rode a scant three inches above waterline. Bailing began after the first wave washed over her.
Then they hoisted sail and began to row for the dark sh.o.r.e.
”Tonight you may have been luckier than you suppose, Captain Hawksworth.” The Shahbandar's fingers deftly counted the five sovereigns through the leather pouch Hawksworth had handed him. Around them the final side bets were being placed against the Portuguese captain who would play Mirza Nuruddin next.
”It's hard to see how.”
”For the price of a mere five sovereigns, Captain, you've learned a truth some men fail to master in a lifetime.” Mirza Nuruddin motioned away the Portuguese captain, his doublet stained with wine, who waited to take his place at the board. ”I really must call the dancers now, lest some of my old friends lose regard for our hospitality. I hope you'll find them entertaining, Captain Hawksworth. If you've never seen the _nautch_, you've yet to call yourself a man.”
Hawksworth pulled himself up and thought about the river and slowly worked his way through the crowd to the edge of the marble court. The damp, chill air purged the torch smoke from his lungs and began to sweep away the haze of brandy from his brain. He stared into the dark and asked the winds if they knew of the _Resolve_.
Could it all have been a trap? What if he'd told the Portugals, and they had wars.h.i.+ps waiting?
Without warning, the slow, almost reverent strains of a sarangi, the Indian violin, stirred from the corner of the courtyard, and the crowd s.h.i.+fted expectantly. Hawksworth turned to notice that a carpeted platform had been erected directly in the center of the court, and as he watched, a group of women, perhaps twenty, slowly began to mount steps along its side. The torches had grown dim, but he could still see enough to tell they all wore the veil of purdah and long skirts over their trousers. As they moved chastely toward the center of the platform he thought they looked remarkably like village women going to a well, save they wore rows of tiny bells around their ankles and heavy bangles on their wrists.
The air was rent by a burst of drumming, and the courtyard suddenly flared as servants threw oil on the smoldering torches around the balcony. At that instant, in a gesture of high drama, the women ripped away their turquoise veils and flung them skyward. The crowd erupted in a roar.
Hawksworth stared at the women in astonishment.
Their skirts, the skintight trousers beneath, and their short halters-- were all gossamer, completely transparent.
The dance was underway. Hips jerked spasmodically, in perfect time with the drummer's accelerating, hypnotic rhythms--arching now to the side, now suggestively forward. Hawksworth found himself exploring the dancers' mask-like faces, all heavily painted and expressionless. Then he watched their hands, which moved in sculptural arcs through a kind of sign language certain Indians in the crowd seemed to know. Other hand messages were understood by all, as the women stroked themselves intimately, in what seemed almost a parody of sensuality. As the rhythm continued to intensify, they begap to rip away their garments one by one, beginning with their parted waist wraps. Next their halters were thrown to the crowd, though their b.r.e.a.s.t.s had long since found release from whatever minimal containment they might have known at the beginning of the dance. Their earth-brown skin now glistened bare in the perfumed torchlight.
The dance seemed to Hawksworth to go on and on, incredibly building to ever more frantic levels of intensity. The drunken crowd swayed with the women, its excitement and expectation swelling. Then at last the women's trousers also were ripped away, leaving them adorned with only bangles and reflecting jewels. Yet the dance continued still, as they writhed onto their knees at the edge of the platform. Then slowly, as though by some unseen hand, the platform lowered to the level of the courtyard and they glided into the drunken crowd, thrusting b.r.e.a.s.t.s, thighs, against the ecstatic onlookers. The cheers had grown deafening.
Hawksworth finally turned away and walked slowly down the embankment to the river. There, in the first hint of dawn, bathers had begun to a.s.semble for Hindu prayers and a ritual morning bath. Among them were young village girls, swathed head to foot in bright-colored wraps, who descended one by one into the chilled water and began to modestly change garments while they bathed, chastely coiling a fresh cloth around themselves even as the other was removed.
They had never seemed more beautiful.