Free The Bombay Marines by Porter Hill

yardarm.
    Horne gestured to Jud to lead the way back down to deck.
    A wave crested as Jud reached the futtock shroud, Horne following a short distance behind. Jud cleared the lubber’s hole but Horne waited until the wash of the next wave exploded with a loud crash and diminished into foam.
    Continuing downward, Horne halted occasionally on the slippery ratlines as the gale thrashed him back and forth. Resuming his hand-under-hand descent, he stepped into mid-air with his left foot, felt his right foot slipping on the rope, and the next thing he knew his hand could not find support, and he was falling.
    * * *
    African spirits came through ancestors. But as Jud had never known his parents he prayed instead to the spirit of his dead son, asking the boy to help him save this Englishman who had risked his life rescuing him.
    Adam Horne’s motionless body lay heavy on Jud’s back as he inched his way across the canting deck from the spot where Horne had fallen from the ratlines.
    The waves crashed over the bulwark, washing the deck. Jud paused in the foamy wake, begging his dead son to give him strength to reach the hatch, then continued crawling on his hands and knees towards the coaming.
    Jud’s son had died in childbirth at Sheik All Hadd’s Castle of the Golden Sand, the fortress in Oman where Jud’s Nubian wife, Maringa, had been a household slave.
    Carrying Horne on his back, Jud promised his son that, if this ship reached Bull Island, he would work hard to prove himself a good man, a strong man, to make amends for having turned to crime after Maringa had died.

Chapter Seven
A BAD DREAM
    The Eclipse lay before the gale, the sea smothering her decks with iron-black waves as jagged spears of lightning cracked open the sky. The crash of water and thunder was cut by a rasp of rock tearing wood, beginning at the ship’s bow, shaking the frigate … shaking it … shaking it …
    ‘Captain sahib! Captain sahib! Wake up, Captain sahib! You’re having a bad dream!’
    Adam Horne sat bolt upright in bed. He stared at a young turbanned Asian shaking him by the shoulder.
    ‘Captain sahib, you fell and hit your head. You sleep and sleep and then you have, oh such bad dreams. Captain sahib.’
    Horne focused his eyes more clearly and recognized the small, neatly groomed Indian as the prisoner, Jingee, the young dubash who had stabbed an Englishman to death for blaspheming Hindi caste system. Looking round, he saw a food tray on the brass-bound sea chest next to his bed.
    Jingee began straightening the rumpled bed sheets. ‘I boiled you tea, Captain sahib. I cooked you cakes. Moong dal . Very good for you.’
    Horne pushed Jingee aside. ‘I can’t lie here sipping tea and eating cakes in a storm, boy.’
    ‘The storm’s over, Captain sahib.’ Jingee lifted a corner of the thin mattress. ‘We passed through the storm last night.’
    Naked, Horne paused, half-out of the narrow bed. Jingee continued tucking at the foot of the mattress. Horneglanced from Jingee to the stern windows. He noticed for the first time that sunshine poured through the mullioned panes, filling the cabin with bright, golden light.
    ‘We sailed far, far south while you slept, Captain sahib.’
    Horne’s hair was tousled from bed but his eyes were alert and quick, the eyes of a man unfamiliar with his bearings.
    He looked back to Jingee. ‘How long have I been asleep?’
    ‘Ten, twelve hours.’ Jingee shrugged. ‘Do not worry, Captain sahib. Mr Tin Hammer comes every two hours to see if you are awake. Mr Tin Hammer says everything – ship shape.’
    ‘Mr … who?’
    ‘Tin Hammer.’
    Horne was more confused. He remembered climbing the shrouds to the yardarm. He remembered untying the knot from Jud’s ankle. He had followed Jud down to deck but had fallen on the ratlines. He had obviously hit his head and lost consciousness. But what had happened since then? And who was ‘Tin Hammer’?
    Jingee bunched the tips of his small