Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗

"Hold him, Aboli," Hal whispered. "Hold him still."

Aboli wrapped his arms around Daniel, like the coils of a great black python. "Do it," he said. "Do it swiftly."

Hal leaned in close to Daniel, as close as his chains would let him, his face a hand's breadth from the other man's back. Now he could see the swelling more clearly. The skin was stretched so tightly over it that it was glossy and purple as an overripe plum. He placed the fingers of his left hand on each side of it and spread the skin even tighter.

He took a deep breath, and placed the tip of the scalpel against the swelling. He steeled himself, counting silently to three, then pressed down with the strength of a trained sword arm. He felt the blade slide deep into Daniel's back, and then strike something hard and unyielding, metal on metal.

Daniel shrieked and then went slack in Aboli's enfolding arms. A spurt of purple and yellow pus erupted from the deep scalpel cut. Hot and thick as carpenter's glue, it struck Hal in the mouth and splattered across his chin. The smell was worse than all the other odours of the slave deck, and Hal's gorge rose to scald the back of his throat. He swallowed back his own vomits and wiped the pus from his face with the back of his arm, before he could bring himself to peer gingerly once more at the wound.

Black pus still bubbled from it, but he saw extraneous matter caught in the mouth of the fresh cut. He dug at it with the tip of the scalpel, and freed a plug of dark and fibrous material, in which bone chips from the shattered scapula were mingled with jellied blood and pus.

"It's a piece of Danny's jacket," he gasped. "The ball must have pulled it into the wound."

"Have you found the ball?" Sir Francis demanded. "No, it must still be in there."

He probed deeper into the wound. "Yes. There it is." "Can you get it out?"

For a few minutes Hal worked in silence, thankful that Daniel was unconscious and did not have to suffer during this crude exploration. The flow of pus dwindled and now fresh clean blood oozed from the dark wound.

"I can't get it with the knife. It keeps slipping away," he whispered. He put aside the blade and pushed his finger into Daniel's hot, living flesh. Breath rasping with horror, he worked in deeper and still deeper, until he could get his fingertip behind the lump of lead.

"There!" he exclaimed suddenly, as the musket ball popped out of the wound and dropped onto the planks with a thump. It was deformed by its violent contact with bone, and there was a mirror-bright smear in the soft lead.

He stared at it in vast relief, then snatched his finger from the wound.

It was followed by another soft rush of pus and lumpy foreign matter. "There is the musket wad." He gagged. "I think everything is out now." He looked down at his besmeared hands. The stench from them struck him like a blow in the face.

For a while they were all silent. Then Sir Francis whispered, "Well done, Hal!" "I think he is dead," Hal answered, in a small voice. "He is so still."

Aboli released Daniel from his grip, then groped down his naked chest. "No, he is alive. I can feel his heart. Now, Gundwane, you must wash out the wound for him."

Between them they dragged Daniel's inert body to the limit of his fetters and Hal half knelt above him. He opened his filthy breeches and dehydrated by the limited ration of water, strained to squirt a weak stream of urine into the wound. It was enough to wash out the last rotting shreds of wadding and corruption. Hal used the last few drops of his own water to cleanse some of the filth from his hands and then fell back, spent by the effort.

"Done like a man, Gundwane," Aboli told him, and offered Hal the red head cloth black and crackling with dried blood and pus. "Use this to staunch the wound. It is all we have."

While Hal bandaged the wound, Daniel lay like a corpse. He no longer groaned or fought against his chains. Three days later, as Hal leaned over to give him water, Daniel suddenly reached up, pushed away his head and took the mug from Hal's hands. He drained it in three long swallows. Then he belched thunderously and said, in a weak but lucid voice, "By God, that was good. I'll have a drop more of that."

Hal was so delighted and relieved that he handed him his own ration and watched him drink it. By the following day, Daniel was able to sit up as much as his chains would allow.

"Your surgery would have killed a dozen ordinary mortals, Sir Francis murmured, as he watched Big Daniel's recovery with amazement, "but Daniel Fisher thrives upon it."

The ninth day of their voyage Sam Bowles opened the hatch and sang out cheerily, to "Good news for you, gentlemen. Wind has played us false these last fifty leagues. His lordship reckons it will be another five days before we round the Cape. So your pleasure cruise will last a little longer."

Few had the strength or interest to rail at this dread news, but they reached up for the pewter water mug with frantic hands. When the daily ceremony of watering was done, this time Sam Bowles altered the routine. Instead of slamming the hatch closed for another day, he stuck his head down and called, "Captain Courtney, sir, his lordship's compliments, and if you have no previous engagement, he would be obliged if you would take dinner with him." He scrambled down into the slave deck and, with two of his mates to help him, unscrewed Sir Francis's shackles from his wrists and ankles, and withdrew them from the ring bolts in the bulkhead.

Even once Sir Francis was free, it took all three men to lift him to his feet. He was so weak and cramped that he swayed and staggered like a drunkard as they helped him climb painfully through the hatch. "Begging your pardon, Captain," Sam laughed in his face, "you ain't exactly no bed of roses, you ain't. I've smelt pig-sties and cesspools a sight sweeter than you, that I have, Franky me lad."