Harvest Of The Sun

Book 3: Retallick Saga

by E.V. Thompson

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

It is 1846: the ship was bound for Australia. Aboard were Josh Retallick and Miriam Thackeray, prisoners destined for the convict settlements . . . until the random hand of fate wrecked their vessel on the Skeleton Coast of South West Africa. Far from the brooding Bodmin Moor, Josh and Miriam are strangers in a strange and hostile land, an alien world of Bushmen and Hereros, of foraging Boers and greedy traders, of ivory tusks and smuggled guns . . .

Release date: July 5, 2012

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

Pride of Liverpool, Australia-bound from England, struck a reef off the coast of south-west Africa at 11 p.m. on the twenty-third day of February in the year eighteen hundred and forty-six. The tragedy occurred during the death throes of one of the most violent storms ever experienced in the region.

For three days the captain and his crew had tried to keep the ship bows-on to the hurricane wind that blew from the south and the waves that fought each other and threw themselves angrily upon the creaking ship. The captain had seen three of his ship’s five masts snapped off close to the leaking deck by a combination of water and wind. He had watched, helpless, as five of his crew were washed overboard whilst attempting to repair a smashed hatch-cover. The battle to save his ship had been lost long before the sharp teeth of unseen rocks sank into her belly.

Below decks Josh Retallick was squatting on the floor of a cabin when the violent pitching of the ship came to a shuddering, timber-splintering stop. He had one arm about an iron stanchion, the other holding Miriam, who lay on a bunk, their three-year-old son Daniel clutched tightly in her arms.

‘My God! What’s happened?’

Miriam struggled to a sitting position as a thousand-ton wave fell upon the stricken ship and ground it farther on to the jagged rocks of the reef. The screams of the steerage passengers trapped in a holed compartment rose above the thunder of the sea and the shrieking of the wind, and it did not need the cries of a seaman in the passageway outside the cabin to tell Josh the ship was going to sink.

‘Quick! We’ve got to get up top.’

Josh pulled Miriam to her feet and snatched the complaining Daniel from her. He reached for the door and pulled it open. Over his shoulder he called, ‘Take hold of my belt – and don’t let go. Our lives depend on staying together.’

‘Josh, there are some things we need—’

‘There’s no time. We’re going to be hard put to save ourselves.’

Pride of Liverpool added emphasis to his words by writhing on the rocks as they stumbled out into the passageway. The ship was doomed. Even as they cleared the cabin water burst through the bulkhead at the far end of the passageway and swirled knee-deep about them. There was no light to guide Josh to the companionway, and beyond the hatchway to the deck there was only an unknown wild darkness.

A wave attacked the ship and sent Josh and Miriam staggering drunkenly about the passageway, but the rocks did not relinquish their hold. They had the stem of the vessel fast in their teeth and held on with the tenacity of a bull-baiting terrier, pulling the ship down.

The passageway was a scene of panic and confusion. The occupants of the other cabins all had the same instinctive aim – to get up to the deck. To achieve it they clawed and screamed as they fell over fellow-passengers.

Josh could afford to behave no better when he reached the foot of the ladder only to find it jammed with men and women fighting for a place on the steps. Unceremoniously he forced a way through them, flinging aside those who were incapable of climbing up to the deck but would not move forward or back. Once Miriam slipped and Josh had to reach back to grasp her wrist, hauling her up behind him, saved from falling by the others jamming the ladder.

They made the deck and were nearly swept over the side as a wave struck the bow and washed the length of the ship. The water took with it all those passengers and crew who had reached the deck before them.

Now he was here, Josh was uncertain which way to go. All was blackness and confusion, the howling of the wind and the crashing of the sea loud enough to numb the mind.

Another wave poured over the bows of the ship, but this one smashed in a hatch-cover and the water tumbled into a forward hold. It acted as ballast, and the ship righted herself temporarily. Moving out on to the level platform of the deck Josh could hear indistinct voices shouting near the stem. It was here he had seen two of Pride of Liverpool’s boats and he cautiously made his way in their direction.

He reached the shattered stump of the mainmast and clung to it while another wave rushed past them, its cold waters swirling waist-high. There were screams in the angry night, and Miriam gasped as the water tore at her, but she never loosened her grip on Josh’s belt. Daniel’s cries had by now died away to a frightened whimper and his arms gripped tight about his father’s neck. Josh could do no more than give him a quick reassuring hug as he listened for sounds in the stormy night.

He heard the voices again-and heard something more. The creaking of a pulley. A boat was being swung out on its davits over the ship’s side. Straining his eyes into the night Josh thought he could make out its shape no more than twelve feet away.

He would have to make his move now, before the next wave swept the ship’s deck.

‘Now, Miriam! With me!’

He lunged towards the outline of the boat, dragging Miriam with him. As Pride of Liverpool gave another dying shudder he reached it, his hand gripping its clinkered side.

‘Inside. Quickly!’

Handing Daniel to Miriam he heaved them both into the boat.

There was a curse of surprise from inside; but the boat was already slipping outwards away from the ship’s side, and Josh barely had time to scramble in himself before it was dangling clear of Pride of Liverpool.

‘Who’s that?’ The startled call came from the other end of the boat. ‘Are you crewmen or passengers?’

‘Passengers.’

‘This is a crew boat. We can’t take passengers.’

The boat swung inwards, crashing against the side of the ship, and the ropes that held it creaked in protest.

‘If you don’t keep it away from the side, you’ll have no boat.’ Josh called back.

The wind carried most of his words away, and Josh sensed rather than saw the seaman edging towards him. Then another wave pounded the passenger ship and ground her farther on to the rocks of the reef.

‘Isaiah! Help me free this rope. If it jams, the boat’s lost.’

A voice shouted from the darkness as the bow of the boat swung into the ship’s side with considerable force.

The sailor who had been moving towards Josh went back to help his companion.

Pride of Liverpool was breaking up fast now, the rocks tearing great holes below the waterline. The small boat had its troubles too. It was buffeted repeatedly against the side of its mother ship with ever increasing force. While the two seamen struggled with the fall-rope Josh made Miriam and Daniel crouch in the bottom of the boat, then he moved forward to try to keep the bow from smashing to pieces.

A spar and sail from one of the remaining masts were part of the tangled wreckage caught against the davit, and Josh was able to free some of the heavy sodden canvas and stuff it between the boat and the ship.

As he worked he could hear shouts and screams from farther away along the deck of the ship. It was too dark to see, but he gained the impression of activity around another boat on the far side of the deck.

Another wave was thrown up over Pride of Liverpool, and a wall of water raced from stem to stern at the very moment that some of the crew were leading a large party of steerage passengers along the deck. More than twenty people were swept off their feet by the sea and carried away into the night, their screams lost in the wind.

Helpless, Josh heard them passing only feet away from him. The same wave lifted the boat up and away from the ship, and as Josh leaned out to hold the canvas in position there was a bump against the clinkered planking not a yard from him.

Josh plunged his hand over the side into the water and as something brushed past he grabbed at it. His fingers took a hold on a thin dress. He held his grip against the pull of the water as two tiny hands clawed their way over his clenched fist and gripped his wrist.

Slowly, his muscles cracking against the relentless pull of the greedy sea, he began to bring the unseen little girl in towards the side of the boat.

Suddenly the whole world went topsy-turvy. The boat tilted dangerously, its stern dropping four feet in a breathtaking fall. Miriam screamed as she and Daniel began sliding uncontrollably down the boat. Then the bow slipped too. For a split second the boat hung level before falling twelve feet to the sea. It landed with a crash that would have burst the seams of a lesser-built vessel.

Josh still had his fist closed, but the girl had gone in the first moment of the fall. As the boat bounced and pitched he crawled to where he had left Miriam and Daniel.

‘Miriam …?’

‘We’re here, Josh. We’re here. …’ Her voice broke. She had thought him lost in the sudden awful plunge to the sea and now she reached out for him.

‘Thank God!’

He bruised his shoulder on a thwart as he crawled beneath it to take Miriam and Daniel into his arms. Then they all three crouched huddled together in the bottom of the boat, drenched by the sea and spray but sheltered from the howling wind.

Not until then did Josh open his right hand and release the fragment of calico cloth torn from a small girl’s dress. It dropped to the floor of the boat and was washed away by the water that lay inches deep there. Outside in the vastness of the great ocean a ship perished and a little girl went to meet her creator wearing a torn dress.

All through that weary night Josh, Miriam and Daniel clung together in the bottom of the boat as cold water slopped about them and the storm raged above. Daniel was sick. He was sick until the spasms completely exhausted him and then he lay motionless in his mother’s arms. He was so still that Miriam frequently pressed her head to his chest to satisfy herself his heart was still beating.

More than once during that long darkness the feet of the two crewmen stumbled over the trio, and once one of them tried none too gently to kick them aside in the restricted space. Josh knew they were unwanted and resented, but he felt too ill to do more than accept the crewmen’s curses and try to keep out of their way.

When dawn finally arrived wrapped in a cold grey shawl it found the small family group huddled together in the bow of the boat. The two seamen were bent over heavy creaking oars, pulling at them in ragged unison. Looking at the sea that heaved about them Josh thought their efforts were totally futile. Nevertheless, they were still afloat.

One of the seamen, as tall and thin as his companion was short and stocky, had been watching the small family group since it was light enough to see. When he spoke Josh recognised the voice of the man who had tried to make them leave the boat the night before.

‘Can you pull an oar?’

Josh shook his head wearily and licked salt-caked lips before replying.

‘I’ve never had to – but I’ll try if it will be any help.’

‘Trying won’t help none in this sea. It’d most likely turn us over. You can either row or you can’t.’

‘You’d best do some bailing and get rid of the water in the boat,’ said the other seaman. ‘There’s a bucket in the locker just by you.’

The locker was built into the bow of the boat, and Josh had been leaning against the door. Unfastening it with difficulty against the movement of the sea he saw a metal-bodied bucket amongst a jumble of other things. Pulling it clear he began bailing. A great deal of water had been shipped during the night, and Josh scooped up bucketful after bucketful and flung it over the side.

The waves still heaved themselves high above the boat but they no longer fought with each other. They were now long swollen rollers, each following its precedessor, undefeated and hugely powerful, vast muscles of the sea. It was almost as though the sinking of Pride of Liverpool had been the sole objective of the fierce storm. Now it had been accomplished nature was relaxing. Only occasionally did the wind ruffle the creamy crests of the waves, and already the sky was lighter than it had been for days.

When Miriam raised her head to him Josh was shocked by her appearance. There was a great weariness in her eyes, and fatigue had etched deep lines on her face, but easing the sleeping Daniel to a more comfortable position in her arms she mustered a wan smile.

‘We’re safe now, Miriam. The storm is nearly over.’

‘And the ship? Has it gone?’

It was the sailor who had suggested Josh begin bailing who answered her.

‘The ship wouldn’t have lasted more’n five minutes after we got away, missus.’

‘What about all the others …?’

Miriam did not complete her wide-eyed question.

The seaman shook his head. ‘It’s a miracle any of us is here. There were times during the night when I didn’t expect to see the light of day again. Aye, it’s a miracle right enough.’

He leaned on an oar that was thicker around than his own brawny arm.

‘Seeing as how we’re likely to be in each other’s company for a while, we’d best introduce ourselves. Sam Speke from Kent, missus. A sailor all me life.’

He inclined his head towards the man on the seat behind him. ‘And that’s Isaiah Dacket.’

‘I’m Josh Retallick. This is Miriam and my son Daniel.’

Sam Speke nodded acknowledgement, and the other man whose eyes had not left Miriam since she woke now shifted his gaze to Josh.

‘You’re the one who came aboard as a convict at Falmouth.’

For a moment Josh was genuinely startled by the words. The events of the night had cast away thoughts of everything else. Now he remembered and his spirits sank.

‘Yes.’

‘You was leading a riot in which some soldiers got killed, so I heard.’

‘Then you heard wrong. I was trying to stop a riot, not lead one.’

Josh did not expect the seaman to believe him. Why should he? The jury at the Assize Court in Bodmin Town had not believed him. They had found him guilty. But it was no longer of any real significance. The fury of the storm, its power and destructive capability had shown the decisions of man to be trivial by comparison.

Yet Josh wished his past life might have sunk with Pride of Liverpool and allowed him to emerge from it a free man.

The son of a Cornish copper miner, Josh had received an exceptional education from the local Wesleyan preacher, William Thackeray. As a result he had been able to serve an apprenticeship and become an engineer in the mine where his father worked.

The same preacher had also schooled Miriam, who had been Josh’s girl-friend since she was a barefooted girl running wild on the Cornish moor. When her father had been tragically killed at the hands of a group of vengeful miners led by Josh’s father, Thackeray had married Miriam – even though she was carrying Josh’s child.

But William Thackeray taught more than reading and writing, and it was a mutual interest in a union of miners that brought the three of them together again – for a brief while. It was not long before the preacher caused a violent confrontation between soldiers and miners – after ensuring that Josh would arrive on the scene in time to take the blame for the disturbance.

Josh’s only share in the riot was an eighteen-inch sabre-slash across his back and a musket-ball through his arm. It was enough to earn him a sentence of transportation for life.

Only the determination and influence of Josh’s former employer had secured for Josh the status of ‘privileged prisoner’ travelling on a passenger ship with a cargo of mine-engines to be installed in an Australian copper mine. It was this same man who had also arranged for Miriam and Daniel to travel on the same ship after she had left her husband. It was to be their chance to begin a new life together. Miriam had joined Pride of Liverpool as Miriam Retallick, and Josh had the satisfaction of knowing that this part of their secret at least would be safe.

‘It doesn’t matter, Josh. It doesn’t matter.’

His mind came back to the present to find Miriam grasping his hand and whispering urgently to him.

‘Whatever crime he was supposed to have committed couldn’t have been so bad, I reckon,’ put in Sam Speke. ‘Otherwise they’d never have let him roam free on the ship.’

‘Not unless he’s got some friends in high places,’ retorted the scowling Isaiah Dacket.

Josh had been looking at Miriam. Now he turned his head and raised his eyes to Isaiah Dacket’s face. The sailor held his gaze defiantly for a few moments before his resolution wavered and he looked away. Angrily, he pushed the heavy oar an arm’s length away from him as though it was to blame for his sudden discomfort.

Isaiah Dacket was deeply resentful of Josh’s privileged treatment for a reason unknown to the others. The tall seaman had himself suffered the rigours of imprisonment – but with no one ready or able to help him. Isaiah Dacket had been taken prisoner when he was involved in the sale of other human beings, a willing crewman on a French slave-ship.

An orphan, Isaiah Dacket had been placed in the Royal Navy by the Parish when he was eleven years of age. Eight years later he was a deserter. It was then he discovered the money to be made by a seaman with no principles. He had no qualms about being part of such a trade. Indeed, he enjoyed it. For the first time in his life Isaiah discovered men whose lot in life was more wretched than his own – and they had with them women who were there for the taking.

But such a way of life could not last. More and more countries were outlawing slavery and making determined attempts to stamp it out. One morning, a day out from west Africa, the slave-ship was surprised by a French man-of-war. Isaiah spent two years in a stinking French prison where his suffering owed as much to his attitude towards the authorities as to his slaving activities.

Released under the terms of an obscure amnesty, Isaiah immediately returned to the sea on an English merchantman. He carried with him a hatred of Frenchmen and enough dark memories to bring him awake in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.

Isaiah Dacket could never forgive Josh for not having suffered as he had – or for having a woman of his own. One who had not been bought for a specified time, cash in advance. There had been no love in Isaiah’s life, and, though he would have poured scorn on anyone who put it into words, he was fiercely envious of any man who had the love of a woman.

‘If we stay out here talking and glaring at one another, we won’t reach land until nightfall,’ said Sam Speke.

‘Land? Where?’ Their tiredness suddenly forgotten, both Josh and Miriam scrambled to their knees in the bottom of the boat and peered out over the bow. The sudden movement woke Daniel. He sat upright in Miriam’s arms, clinging tightly to her as his eyes sought something familiar in these extraordinary surroundings.

Josh and Miriam were eager for a first sight of land, but as each wave carried them upwards they looked into the sunrise in vain.

It was some minutes before Josh realised that what they could see on the horizon was not the gold of a tropical sunrise but a high bank of sand rising from the water’s edge and extending for as far as could be seen.

Excitedly he pointed it out to Miriam and their son. Daniel was unimpressed.

‘I’m hungry!’ he exclaimed, with all the indignation of a three-year-old.

‘If we got rid of some of this water in the bottom of the boat, we’d reach shore a lot sooner and find something to eat,’ grumbled Isaiah Dacket.

Josh had already decided he did not like the surly Dacket. He would never be able to forget his attempt to prevent them from embarking in the boat during those last terrifying minutes on board Pride of Liverpool. He wondered how many others had been turned away from sanctuary in the boat.

Miriam could have been reading his thoughts.

‘Do you think any other boats got away?’

Josh shrugged. ‘Perhaps-but I doubt whether many passengers were in them.’

They might never know. In this sea a boat could be a mere hundred yards away and remain hidden.

Josh’s glance went back to the tall swarthy sailor, and Miriam saw it.

‘Don’t let him rile you, Josh. We’re alive. What was said last night is past. If it hadn’t been for the sailors, we should have drowned.’

Josh remembered the tiny fingers slipping from his wrist. He fell silent and resumed bailing with excessive vigour.

It was early afternoon before they reached the shore. The fickle wind seemed reluctant to release them and veered round to westward, blowing from the shore. It was infuriating because the land was so tantalisingly close that grit blown from the sand dunes stung their faces and ground between their teeth.

Not until the ebbing tide turned did the boat begin to move in towards the beach again. By now the two seamen were near to exhaustion, their shirts soaked with the perspiration caused by pulling at the heavy oars in the heat of the fierce midday sun.

But the long delay in landing gave Josh ample opportunity to examine the strange and forbidding coastline in some detail. What he saw was not reassuring. The beach was a wide strip of sand heavily studded with rocks and long dark reefs. Behind it the sand dunes they had first sighted rose to great heights, their rounded slopes chiselled into concentric patterns by the wind.

The boat was only yards from the beach when Josh looked out over the side and suddenly saw a low barrier of glistening black rock protruding from the sea immediately ahead of them.

‘Look out! Rocks!’

Sam Speke instantly dug his oar into the water in an attempt to slow the boat. His companion was less quick to react. Isaiah Dacket gave one more powerful stroke, causing the boat to slew sideways on to the beach. It was picked up by the next breaker, and seconds later the small party suffered their second shipwreck in the space of twenty-four hours.

The boat was dashed sideways against the reef, and with the sound of splintering wood ringing in their ears the occupants were flung into the water.

Held by the rocks the boat lay on its side for a moment or two until the next wave turned it upside down and carried it in towards the shore.

Josh floundered towards Daniel, who was choking and screaming a few feet from him. As he caught the boy and lifted his head clear of the water Josh’s feet touched solid sand. He reached out a hand for Miriam and they waded ashore coughing and choking from the salt water they had swallowed.

Behind them the two seamen fought to drag the boat in through the surf that pounded heavily against the shore. Handing the badly frightened Daniel to Miriam, Josh went to their aid.

The three men righted the boat and, helped by the breakers, dragged it on to the beach. Waiting for the water to drain out through a foot-wide hole punched in the bottom, they heaved the boat up beyond the highest line of sun-dried seaweed.

As well as the hole, half a dozen of the planks had sprung apart. The longboat would never put to sea again.

‘You should have seen those rocks,’ exclaimed Isaiah Dacket angrily. ‘Look at the bloody boat now – smashed.’

‘It got us ashore safely,’ retorted Josh. ‘That’s the main thing.’

‘Is it? You don’t know where we are. This is the place called the Skeleton Coast – and you’ll soon see why. There’s been many a fine ship wrecked here, and you’ll find the bones of hundreds of good seamen picked clean by the crabs and bleached by the sun. Ashore we may be. Safe? I doubt it.’

Spitting scornfully on to the sand, Isaiah Dacket strode away to wade into the sea and recover an oar that was floating close inshore.

‘Don’t take no notice of Isaiah, Mr Retallick,’ said the more affable Sam Speke. ‘He’s not the happiest of men but he’s as fine a seaman as you’ll find anywhere.’

‘He’s going to have to learn to be a good landsman,’ commented Josh. ‘Otherwise he’ll be even more miserable.’

Turning away, he walked over to where Miriam was stripping the clothes from Daniel. After wringing the water from them she laid them out on the sand to dry. The sun beating down on them was so hot that steam began rising immediately.

‘He’s not worried, anyway.’ Miriam smiled, nodding in Daniel’s direction. His recent ducking and protested hunger already forgotten, the small boy sat enjoying his nakedness. Picking up handfuls of dry sand, he allowed it to escape between his fingers. All the drama of the shipwreck and the storm were already fading in his memory.

‘You’d best put some clothes about the boy’s shoulders, missus. This sun’s fierce enough to peel the skin off an orange.’

As Miriam hurriedly put Daniel’s wet shirt about his shoulders, Josh helped Sam Speke to pull the wet canvas sail from the holed boat’s locker. It was stiff and heavy, but with it they could rig a shelter that would keep the sun off and allow the breeze to pass beneath it and help cool them.

When it was done Miriam put Daniel in its shade.

‘What now, Josh?’ she asked quietly.

Standing beside him, her hair hung damp and lank about her shoulders and her eyes appeared abnormally large in her tired face, but she was still able to stir feelings inside Josh that had no place here at this time.

‘I want to go up to the top of those dunes and see what’s on the other side.’ Josh looked along the empty shoreline. ‘We might even see some more survivors – or perhaps a boat.’

Miriam knew as well as Josh that no others had escaped from the ship with their lives, but it was not a thought to put into words just yet. The memory of their own skirmish with death was too cose.

‘I’ll come up there with you,’ Sam Speke said to Josh. ‘It’ll be better if there are two of us; there’s no telling what might be about. It looks empty enough from here, but this is a strange land.’

‘I’d rather you stayed with Miriam and the boy,’ Josh said pointedly.

‘Isaiah’ll do that,’ replied the seaman. Then he caught Josh’s expression.

‘Oh, don’t you worry about him. He’ll have plenty to do.’ Securing a loose rope on the canvas, he called to the tall seaman.

‘Me and Mr Retallick’s climbing up to the top of the dunes to see if there’s anything about. While we’re gone you can get a fire going and catch some fish for our supper. There’s a good hook and line in the boat’s locker.’

‘You giving the orders now, Sam Speke? Fancy yourself as the bos’n of this party, perhaps?’

‘All I fancy is fish for supper.’

‘How can Isaiah get a fire going?’ asked Josh as he paused to look back on the first gentle slope of the dunes.

‘The same way as any sailor lights his pipe on a wet and stormy night,’ replied the burly sailor, pulling a pigskin pouch from inside his shirt. ‘A seaman learns on his first trip how to keep his baccy dry and the way to light it whatever the weather. By the time we get back there’ll be a good fire going and fish to eat.’

After the first slope the going became harder. The soft coarse sand slid away beneath their feet and they sank ankle-deep with every step.

They struggled upwards but arrived at the ridge only to find a higher one beyond it. It was the same picture when they conquered that one. There was always one more that was higher. By now Josh’s legs felt as though they had weights attached to them. Two months on board ship had done nothing to tone up his leg muscles. The two men climbed for an hour, yet when Josh turned around he was still close enough to the beach for Miriam and Daniel to return his wave.

The two men rested for a while on the next ridge. Sand dunes stretched on either side like a vast crumpled blanket, and they could see the narrowing ribbon of beach curve away until it was lost in the shimmering haze of distance. Beyond it was the sea. Calm now, it was coloured a deep dark blue with here and there a patch of light-green shallows, or a white-fringed black reef. In other circumstances Josh would have looked at it and thought it incredibly beautiful.

In the whole of the vast panorama the three people on the beach below them provided the only sign of life. In the burning heat of the tropical afternoon not even a bird stirred.

‘Do you think anyone else got off the ship?’ Josh asked the question, seeking confirmation of his own belief.

The seaman shook his head slowly. ‘No. There wasn’t a chance for any of ’em. We had but four boats on the whole ship, and I saw two of them smashed myself. I reckon the other one went the same way. Even if it had been lowered it would have gone straight down on to the rocks. No, Mr Retallick, there’s only us left alive from the old Pride of Liverpool.’

‘Then why didn’t we try to get more people off with us in our boat? It would have held twenty or thirty others.’

Sam Speke looked everywhere but at Josh’s face. ‘It was the only way, Mr Retallick, believe me it was. In a shipwreck you’ve got to act quick. Them as is there gets away with their lives. Them as isn’t don’t. I’ve seen it all before and so has Isaiah. I was wrecked once on the Scillies and once on the coast of Jamaica. It was off the Scillies where I saw a brave captain make the crew of his boat stay close to the ship until they’d picked up so many survivors the boat became top heavy and capsized. All of ’em was drowned.’

He looked at Josh now. ‘I don’t expect you to understand, Mr Retallick, but you and your family are on land and alive. You remember that whenever you get to thinking we should have done something else.’

There was a note of aggressiveness in Sam Speke’s voice that told Josh far more than the se