The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 60

me or divil take ye,” he said, shifting the boy on his shoulders. That was not a choice. I got the woman up, and we ran for it. We climbed, dodged, up above the town, back across to the cliffs. Germanicus was stalwart, not suspicious, though I doubt we could have overpowered him. He had the aura of the indomitable; if one has met such, one knows the effect is absolute. We rested at a vantage that showed the inlet. Black Crane was gone. Through the mist, we spotted a patrol in pursuit, shooting at us from great range. We got up to the peak of the cliffs, plunged to our fate. We slid the last fifty yards to a boulder-strewn shore. There were four long boats in the shallows, the same ones I had chanced to follow the night before. I cursed my luck. All happened quickly. We three were deliriously winded by our escape, clinging to each other, lost. Germanicus was alert and tireless, ordering the men in the boats to action. We handed over the boy and the hag to a boat already filled with wounded. Their attack had failed so badly that there were only enough left to man three of the craft. Germanicus was second-in-command; his captain was seriously wounded. The company, grizzly, sheepskin-wrapped, heavily armed, was, I would later learn, a guerrilla group from the South Atlantic island of South Georgia, calling themselves the South Georgia Volunteers.

Germanicus went over to his captain, then returned to us. “Be ye beasties?” he asked. I did not understand. (Beasties was their word for refugees without refuge, for the washed-up remnant of the so-called fleet of the damned.) I told him we had peopie back in the inlet and also way to the south, that we had to return for them. He said, “I understand ye, I do. And thank ye for yerr help. Know this, yerr folk’re done. I need ye more, short four oars in my boat. Frazer tells God’s truth. The Patties ha%‘e gunboats down the Sound, coming up, sartain.”

“We came up the Sound last night,” I protested, “from Mead’s Kiss.”

“It’s done!” he said, gesturing dismissively. I was a head over him, still he was my match. His anger was not directed, was more for his wasted men than our defeat. He looked to the three of us, said, “Ye’re drafted into the Volunteers. We shoot deserters. Get in the boat, lads.”

“We must go back,” I said. Lazarus and Otter Ransom gathered beside me.

Germanicus softened. “If they’re alive, they’ll make east for Stanley. Ye can too. I don’t want ye shot. Are ye good Chrisdans?”

I did not reply.

“Thank God ye got here. Help them that need it,” he said.

It was a fine, godly point. It carried us into Germanicus’s boat. We pushed out into the Sound, pulled hard northward against the wind to clear the tidal rip, making for the cover of the mist. There were many wounded in our boat. One throat-shot-man kept pulling wildly at my feet. More than once, Germanicus’s sergeant, a meaty, rough man named Motherwell, asked to lighten the boat by passing over the dead. Germanicus did not answer until, at one point when we came under nuisance artillery fire from the West Falkland shore, he scolded Motherwell, “E%reryone goes back with me!” The third boat, with the stricken captain, was too undermanned to keep pace with us. Germanicus had us slow down, but the captain signaled we should press on. We watched as the third boat fell farther back, until it was lost in the mist. Word was passed by signal from the eastern shore that there was a gunboat coming down the Sound to intercept us. Germanicus directed us closer to the East Falkland shore, berating us, “Pull, lads, we no quit!” We rowed, vomited, rowed, bled and wept and rowed. My hands were shredded; the cramps in my back and legs were so painful that I could relieve them only by pulling harder. By late afternoon we left the Sound for an East Falkland inlet with two forks, one back south, the other toward the mountains. How we got to shore I do not know. We were met by more guerrillas at a burned-out wharf before a row of shattered stone huts. They helped us up the hillside to a muddy plateau with a sandbag-built redoubt commanding a view of the Sound. There was also a tarpaulin-covered field hospital, where we collapsed.

I awoke with cramps in my legs and pushed myself to a crouch to ease the pain. As I did I noticed a tall, bent, sticklike man walking among we survivors of 2 de Diciembre. He was almost deformed with his twisted posture. He offered us small bits of fruit and some whiskey from a cup, then told us with a beautiful, tired voice more compelling than the wind that he was the chaplain—Longfaeroe, he said. He then began to sing above the groans and death rattles, “Hear our cry, Jehovah. From the end of the earth I call thee with fainting heart. Lift me up and set me upon a rock. For thou be my shelter, a tower of refuge from the enemy. In thy tent will I make my home for ever, and find my shelter under the cover of thy wings. For thou, Jehovah, hast heard my vows and granted the hope of all who revere thy name. To the true king’s life add length of days, keep him, keep him!”

He broke off with a gasp, then continued, finishing what is Psalm 61. I wondered what “king” he meant. I hurt too much to think hard. He did lighten my heart. Lazarus rolled over beside me, mumbled, “The end of the earth, did you hear him? They’re rugged, whatever they are.” Otter Ransom listened to my translation of the psalm, smiled for it. Iceberg lapped my face and, in her nursemaid way, comforted the three of us. I must have slept. It was