He was crinkling his disordered face and baring his teeth in a smile by the light of the setting sun when Marcus asked, ‘What?’
‘Two things,’ the other man said. ‘There is a squall coming towards us, south-south-west, see its scurrying feet?’
Marcus followed the line of Roger’s eyes to the stern and saw the sea churning and boiling as if in it a million fish were competing for space.
‘It is a bad business, that wind,’ Roger said, whistling and smiling.
‘And the other thing?’ Marcus asked, impatient.
‘An English galley. She will not leave off without toll,’ he said, and turned to command his men to prepare to drop sail.
‘What toll?’ came Marcus’s irritated reply.
‘That would be this galley and every man upon her!’
As the sail was hauled in, the squall struck. Marcus took hold of a railing as the Eagle surged and pulled and tilted and water curled over the bulwarks.
‘This wind will oppose the swells that come from the north!’ Roger shouted. ‘It shall build us a steep sea! Those fools . . .’ He pointed behind them at the vague shape of a galley whose sails caught the waning light and made pearls of them. ‘They are coming to ram us so near to land in this treacherous sea!’ He laughed as if this were a most pleasant day. ‘We will let them come.’
There was a twitch at the corner of Marcus’s mouth that sent a shiver over his face. ‘We must outrun them!’ he said, tight with anger now. ‘Think of our cargo and our charge!’
‘See that weather?’ Roger pointed to a dark cloud over the seaward skyline. It stretched to the south with its long, ragged streamers, red and angry. ‘This old galley is weighed down, Marcus!’ Roger said. ‘She would be hard-pressed to outrun a dying mule! That other ship has half our draught . . . there is nothing for us to do but entice it to its doom upon the rocks. We shall take to our heels and see if they follow.’
‘But shall we escape the rocks ourselves?’
‘That is between God and his ocean!’
At that Roger drove the galley into a strait between the island and the mainland.
It was night when the English galley approached with the fierce wind in her sails. The lightning caught its image like a ghost ship with illuminated oar banks and a ruffle of foam under her belly.
The Eagle kept ahead through the mighty work of the slaves on the sweeps. They worked the galley between the forces of wind, tide and swell, which made her shake and pitch, grabbing at the water with a creaking of timbers and a dropping of her nose into the foam.
The wind veered sharply to the west. The current, on the other hand, sought to take the bow of the Eagle towards land, and her beam on to the steep seas.
‘Pull her up!’ shouted Roger, flinging himself onto the tiller as the galley was swept up by the thrashing water. ‘Pull her up!’
Around, above, beneath them there erupted a storm of sound, a thunderous roar, as the Eagle heeled sideways. Oarsmen were flung over one another, escaping the churning waters only through being shackled to the deck. Cordage flew in the air and coiled around the bodies of sailors who fell to the bulwarks or over the side. Beneath them the boards creaked and groaned and water lapped at their heels.
Roger’s work brought the galley under control and lazily she returned. He made a yell to the slave-master to unshackle what slaves had survived and to put them to their oars.
Marcus felt the tremble of this moving world of wood beneath his feet as a perilous thing, held together by hope and a prayer. He looked for a handhold and wiped his eyes of spray. Out in the turmoil of elements he saw the English galley being turned around by its nose, leaving her pitching, with her broadside exposed to the Eagle’s ram.
Roger de Flor saw it also. ‘Speed up the drums!’ he shouted to the overseer and he in turn called instructions to the bow. The wind strengthened and spears of rain cut into the eyes. ‘Get those oars moving! Ready the bowsmen!’
But at that moment St Elmo’s fire lit the night and the men saw a rising mountain of sea that seemed to Marcus’s untrained eye to have swept around the island and cut into the seas from the south. A moment later white water broke over the English galley and there was heard a great crack, a tearing asunder of heaven and earth, as it was gathered up and tossed with a snapping of her mast into the vast world of white foam that travelled a path towards them.
Roger cried out instructions but they were lost. ‘The tiller is gone!’ was the last thing he said, for at that moment a wall of black water full of splintered mast, cordage and enemy galley came hurtling towards the Eagle. Marcus made a grab for the rails and lost his footing, falling into a tangle of ropes and oars and mast and boom. The slaves gave out a wild chorus of yells and the world shook as a shudder was sent running down the length of the Eagle’s spine.