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The situation was far from ideal.
“Here you go!” James tossed the chest at one of the — his mind refused to supply a coherent word — the creatures — with a hysterical exclamation and shot off into the trees as fast as his legs could carry him, snagging his already threadbare jacket on countless unfriendly bits of foliage as he went but thinking of nothing, nothing but putting as much space as possible between himself and his pursuers. His legs burned; his lungs burned. He didn’t dare look behind him.
He made it several hundred yards to the edge of the canopy until the trees thinned out into distressingly sparse cover and he forced himself to stop and crouch in the undergrowth, straining to listen over the pounding of his blood in his ears. He clapped a hand over his mouth and made himself breathe through his nose.
There was nothing. No twigs snapping under an incautious foot; no birds suddenly taking flight in alarm. They hadn’t followed him. He could hardly believe it.
James stayed where he was, on all fours in the damp earth for a good few minutes just to make sure. The afternoon sun threw shadows from the tallest trees out to the shore; this was the east of the island. The two ships were moored to the west: at last, he thought, something had gone his way.
Slowly, much more cautiously than before, he made his way back the way he’d come until he found a wide track of flattened brush. He shook his head disbelievingly, gazing down at it. Perhaps he’d drunk himself to death on Tortuga after all. At least that blow to the head he’d received in the tavern brawl must have been much worse than he’d thought, for surely he and Turner hadn’t fought atop that wheel all the way down to the beach?
“Teach me to start tavern brawls,” he muttered under his breath as he followed the track up the hill. The mad energy of his earlier exertions was ebbing out of him now, leeching strength from his muscles, and it was with great effort that he hauled himself up almost to the top.
He moved in a crouch along the side of the hill in front of the church, careful not to show his outline against the sky. Perhaps he need not have worried, for he could see the Pearl just offshore, moving away at a very creditable speed with every scrap of her black sails spread, and the Dutchman — he gaped, open-mouthed — the ghastly, tattered Dutchman put her nose down into the water and vanished, simply vanished.
He stared a few moments more, uncomprehending. Had she sunk? Perhaps Sparrow had managed to fire a broadside into her? James dismissed the notion; surely he had not been so distracted that he could have missed the sound of cannon fire less than a mile away. But how could she have gone down so quickly, and in the relatively shallow shoal here? And bow first to boot?
Unbidden, he thought of his poor old girl Dauntless, smashed to pieces on a lee shore in that terrible storm. The damage they’d taken had been catastrophic, her back broken against jagged rocks — his heart ached still to think of them, unseen in the dark until it was too late. And yet, the ship had taken the best part of an hour to sink fully beneath the waves. James had watched in an agony of impotent, disbelieving rage from the battered cutter as his shivering men pulled desperately for the shore. The memory stung him like seawater in a wound; he mentally shook himself and pushed it away.
The Dutchman was of a size with the Dauntless. It was inconceivable that she could have sunk so quickly.
James pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. It was much more likely that he was hallucinating, he thought grimly. He realised now that his hands were shaking; he felt suddenly drained and weak. He’d had far too much alcohol lately, followed by not enough alcohol, and now too much exertion in the hot sun. He felt around the back of his head where his unknown assailant had cracked him very hard with something very unyielding not two days ago; the lump which had initially come up the size of a hen’s egg had mostly gone down now but the spot was still tender and warm.
An actionable thought, at last: James shuffled sideways until he was sitting in some shade. He was covered with sweat, sticky and uncomfortable — and he had no water, he realised with a sudden shock of dread. God, to think that a few minutes ago he’d been congratulating himself on something going well. He was the worst kind of fool.
He groaned aloud, pressing his hands against his face again. Alright, think. Just think. He needed water. He would need food and shelter soon enough as well. But before all that — he looked down at the beach again, where the blue water lapped gently at the shore.
If the Dutchman had wrecked herself down there, there might be salvageable supplies. And he had to, he just had to know what had happened.
There might also, of course, be survivors, somehow as yet unseen. James decided he would deal with that crisis if and only if it arose.
A downhill scramble of another half an hour found him on the beach. It took much longer not having a giant wheel to convey him down, but James felt he much preferred the walk. The broken water wheel lay there on its side in the surf, so he was unmistakably in the right place.
He left his boots on the sand and waded out until he was thigh-deep in the warm water. The sea was calm and clear; the pale sand below would not have concealed the tiniest piece of debris. He could see the bottom for fifty yards in all directions; there was no trace of the Dutchman.
In the distance, the Pearl had already shrunk noticeably. James was alone.
His heart suddenly gave a horrid lurch, a hard thump which felt almost as if it were external to him — oh.
He almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of the situation. He’d managed to forget the reason he’d marooned himself here in the first place. Now that it had recalled itself to him, he really wasn’t sure he wanted to get too intimately involved.
He splashed his way back to the beach and fell down onto the hot sand. Alright, he thought. This is what it was all for. He gingerly reached into his coat pocket: his fingertips brushed the dry leather case of the letter of marque, and then something warm and gelatinous. It was very different touching it now in cold blood, compared to hurriedly snatching it from Sparrow’s jar in a hot panic while Jones’s undead crew tried to kill them. He swallowed against a wave of nauseous disgust, took a deep breath, then grasped the thing fully in his hand and withdrew it into the dazzling sunlight.
It was a heart. A human heart, strangely unbloodied — ought not a heart be full of blood? It seemed to be pumping away nevertheless. As he watched, it contracted itself in a slow but definitive movement. There was a noticeable odour: not of blood or dead bodies as he might have expected, but like a butcher’s shop. The smell of fresh meat.
Good Christ, what was he to do with this? Its value was incalculable; he could hardly leave it alone. Any roving bird might come to peck at it. But the thought of carrying it around in his bare hands was too much. He shucked his jacket, then put the heart back into the breast pocket and wrapped the coat around it, as if he were swaddling an infant.
He retreated further back up the beach to where a line of trees cast some shade, bearing the bundle gingerly. In the distance, the Black Pearl was a smudge on the horizon; she’d soon be lost to his sight. Again.
He gave a heavy sigh, and considered what he held in his hands. It was not inconceivable, he supposed, that the ship of a captain who was walking around without his heart could also have its own supernatural powers of disappearance.
How long would it be before Jones discovered the chest his crew had retrieved was empty? Would they realise he had kept the heart and return for him? Or would they first pursue the Pearl?
There was only one hope for his own survival, and that was that another ship picked him up before Jones did. James blew out a long breath. In the meantime, all he had to do was stay alive.
*
A search of the jungle yielded half a dozen coconuts in varying stages of ripeness. James broke them open carefully and tipped their thin, sour liquid into his mouth, and then scraped the flesh from the husks with his teeth. It wasn’t enjoyable, and even after he’d consumed them he still felt both parched and hungry, but needs must. After carefully backtracking again for an hour or so he’d also found the sword he’d plucked from Elizabeth’s belt, left by his assailants where he’d dropped it. God only knew what he thought he’d need it for, but he felt better for having it at his hip.
The sun was low in the sky now; James heaved himself to his feet to climb up the hill once more. Someone else’s sword, the bloodless heart, and the papers of dubious legality. The sum total of all his worldly possessions, and it wasn’t much, he reflected as he staggered along on aching legs. The problem with the letter of marque was that it represented a pardon for crimes against the crown, and he hadn’t actually committed one of those.
(“That’s more what you’d call a technicality, mate,” the voice of Jack Sparrow seemed to murmur in his ear. James irritably waved him away).
No, he’d been court-martialled for the loss of the Dauntless — rightly so — and subsequently dismissed his position — rightly so. A pardon was not strictly what he required. With any luck, Beckett would be so desperate to have the heart itself that James would be able to negotiate.
He’d reached the church. Now that there was no need to fear being seen, he ascended to the top. The structure was crumbling in a way he hadn’t noticed when he was recklessly chasing Sparrow in a self-righteous fury earlier: he placed his feet carefully now, testing that each of the stone blocks would take his weight before committing to each step.
The sky was fading into orange as he found a perch on what had once been the roof. He strained his eyes to peer in all directions, but there was nothing to be seen on any horizon. Well, it would have been too much to ask to be rescued on his very first day as a castaway.
*
He awoke with the sun in his eyes to a pounding head and a throat like sandpaper. To a man who had lately been spending his days drinking himself sick in seedy bars, this was not a new experience. What was more novel was that seemingly every muscle in his body hurt, and also he was cradling his coat in a bundle which occasionally emitted a thump.
He sat up gingerly, groaning as he became aware of a griping pain low down in his belly on top of everything else. Please God there was something else to drink on this island aside from unripe coconuts, he thought grimly.
There were no sails on the horizon. James turned to look at what was left of the village. Had Sparrow said that this was Isla Cruces? James rather thought he had, although he himself had been only newly sober and very much suffering from it at the time.
Once again, this was very far from ideal. The reason Isla Cruces was so devoid of life was that everyone there had died of the plague. James vaguely remembered hearing the story some years back: it had been abandoned before he’d even been born. Fifty, sixty years ago? Christ, he couldn’t remember now. And how much later could one still catch the plague from dead bodies? He had no idea.
But he’d already scoured the jungle and he didn’t think there was much untapped potential there. There was nothing else on this tiny island. His mouth was horribly dry. His head throbbed in the unrelenting sunlight.
The village probably hadn’t been much even before it had fallen down. A dozen buildings clustered around the main square in varying states of decay. There was a deep well in the middle; he tossed a few stones down into it more in hope than in expectation and heard them scrape and clink against the bottom. It was dry as a bone.
He slowly approached the house in the best condition. It had half a roof and most of its door. On the rotting wood were remnants of paint, bleached and weathered now but James would have bet his life (ha! Any takers?) that it had once shown a warning cross.
He nudged the door with his foot; it promptly fell off its hinges. “Perfect,” he said aloud. “Anybody home?”
There was somebody home, but James wouldn’t be having a chat with them any time soon. In the corner of the room on the dusty remains of a straw mattress lay two bodies. James stepped closer carefully. Under his feet, something crunched; he crouched down to see what it was. The floor was littered with tiny bones. Rodents, or perhaps birds.
Whoever the human occupants were, they’d been dead for a good long while. It was impossible to tell age or even gender; they were little more than skeletons draped in rags. Part of James wanted to take them out to the churchyard, give them a decent burial — but a larger part warned him not to touch them.
He turned around, scanning the room for anything which might be useful. A bench along the opposite wall held cooking supplies; he poked around amongst the dusty pile, wondering if he ought to take the risk of taking the pots to collect water later.
Four brown bottles sat amongst the mess, as dusty as everything else. It was impossible to tell what was in them, but they had the distinct feel of booze. James looked at them for a long moment. He could really go for a drink right about now.
No. Don’t touch anything, he decided. He left the sad little hut behind, and spent the rest of the morning in a mostly fruitless search for more coconuts.
*
On his third day on the island, James sat against the wall of the ruined church keeping a watch for ships and feeling very ill indeed. His head felt like it would split in two; the bright noonday sun directly overhead was torture to squint against. His stomach was clenched with hunger, or was it nausea? He could no longer tell the difference.
He had nothing to hand with which to signal a ship if one had appeared; distantly he thought he ought to gather some dry brush to start a fire with if the time came, but summoning the energy to get up seemed completely unattainable. His tongue felt swollen, and dry as leather in his parched mouth. His eyeballs itched. He was so hot, but perversely he’d stopped sweating.
The churchyard in which he sat was studded with gravestones, and also for some reason several open, empty graves. Perhaps the last inhabitants had died before having the chance to bury their neighbours.
Down among the dead men, his brain supplied. It was a drinking song; he’d heard it often enough in taverns ashore. Down, down, down, down.
His first lieutenant Gillette had never allowed the men to sing it on board. Too bawdy, he’d said. Unchristian.
Gillette had gone down with the Dauntless off Tripoli. One moment he’d been there on deck, shouting orders for the boats to be lowered, and the next — James had stared stupidly at the space where he’d been for several long moments before a flash of lightning had struck the topmast and he’d recalled himself to the terrible danger they were all in.
Down among the dead men, let them lie.
There was no sail on the horizon. He was going to die, he realised, and sooner rather than later.
(”No less than you deserve, former commodore,”) came Jack Sparrow’s hateful voice in the back of his head.
“Maybe it is,” James said in reply. His voice came out as a hoarse croak. Yes, perhaps it was no less than he deserved after all his failures, to die here alone, today. But damn it all, he wanted to live. The vehemence of the feeling surprised him. What had he gone through all of this for, anyway, if just to lie down and die of thirst?
He heaved himself to his feet with some difficulty. His head span and bright little stars bloomed in his vision; he had to bend over with his hands on his knees until it cleared. Slowly, shakily, he staggered across to the remains of the village, to the hut with the mystery bottles.
They might harbour the plague. But he’d exhausted all his other options. He took all four of them, and headed back out to shelter in the lee of the dry well to uncork the first one.
He could tell instantly from the smell it was some kind of spirit. Hell, it might have been turpentine for all he cared. He took a tentative sip; it burned his cracked lips and desiccated throat and he spluttered in a coughing fit. It was horrible. He thought it had probably once been rum. Well, that was fitting: he’d acquired a taste for rum lately.
Come, let us drink while we have breath, for there’s no drinking after death.
He drank a little more from the bottle, managing not to cough quite so much this time. It was strong; it would surely be a mistake to drink too much of it. But he had such a powerful thirst that it was hard to resist gulping it down.
Rum was surely mostly water. He was in desperate need of water. He brought the bottle to his lips again and finished half of it before his stomach gave a warning lurch; he made himself take a pause. The liquid would do him no good at all if he brought it straight back up.
There was, of course, a reason he’d been trying to drown his sorrows for the last few months, and the memories came pricking at his mind again now. He shoved them away furiously, shaking his head rapidly like a dog. His mind turned instead to Gibbs, who long before he’d been Sparrow’s first mate had been one of James’s petty officers. Before he’d met him again in Tortuga he hadn’t thought of Gibbs in years.
How many times had James had him lashed for drunkenness on duty? Three, four? Each time he’d thought: surely this will drive it out of the man. Instead, Gibbs had been driven out of the navy: he’d deserted almost at the first opportunity and James had made only a cursory effort to have him found. A drunkard like that? Hardly worth the resources, he’d said at the time.
Gibbs was certainly doing better in life than James himself was now. He drank some more of the appalling rum. How low he’d fallen, he thought in disgust at himself. Down, down, down, down.
Gillette had been a fine lieutenant. But more than that, he’d been a friend. Down among the dead men, let him die.
James finished the bottle, and started on a second.
*
He hadn’t realised he’d fallen asleep. But three things dawned rather slowly on James when he awoke: he had not yet died of the plague, he had an absolutely hellish hangover, and he was cold and wet.
Why was he wet? He scrubbed a hand over his face and cracked open his gritty eyes.
Rain. It was raining! “God,” he croaked aloud. “Thank God!”
All the foliage nearby was dripping. He crawled over to the nearest large-leafed shrub and lapped up the water pooling on the leaves; it felt heavenly against his dry tongue. After the first few minutes of desperate relief his head cleared a little and he felt a little more strategic: he stripped off his shirt and left it spread out on top of a bush, then stumbled back to where he’d woken up to check on the bundled-up heart. It was still there; when he pressed it close to his ear he heard the thump. He tucked it under the bush where his shirt lay for safekeeping.
He glanced up at the sky: leaden. The rain would surely last a while; work itself up into a storm even. There was only one sensible course of action, so he took it: he dashed into each of the ruined houses in turn and grabbed anything which might possibly be used to contain water. Pans, kettles, a cracked mug. He spread out his meagre treasures in the main square and watched in satisfaction as the rain drummed around him.
His shirt was sodden already; he wrung it out into his mouth and replaced it back on its frame. After a few minutes enough water had collected in the biggest pan for him to decant it into one of the empty rum bottles. He swirled it around and drank this too; it was much more palatable diluted.
There were two brown bottles unopened; he looked at them warily. He ought to pour out the alcohol and refill them with rainwater, he knew. That would be the most sensible thing. He left them untouched.
*
He was scavenging for crabs along the sodden beach when he saw a sail.
He’d been brooding upon Elizabeth. More of that damned song had come back to him, and it seemed intent on rattling around his head whether he welcomed it or not.
May confusion yet pursue —
That selfish woman-hating crew.
Perhaps that was him. Elizabeth seemed to be a very abstract concept to him now, though he’d seen her just a few days ago. The feelings he’d once had — Christ, they had been so ardent, he was sure; so sincere. He found he couldn’t call them up at all now. It all seemed like another life.
He glanced up, and suddenly there — there it was.
“Hey!” he shouted, nonsensically, for the ship must have been two or three miles off. It was hard to tell with any certainty, for the sky was dark and rain still drummed all around him.
He squinted, shielding his eyes from the rain with both hands. The sails were white: it was neither the Pearl nor the Dutchman. It was salvation!
But quick on the heels of that thought came another: everything was sodden and there was no chance of starting a signal fire. The agony of helplessness, of defeat once again on this desolate beach, seemed to snatch the breath from his lungs.
The strange sail was travelling on a parallel course to the island, not heading towards it — of course it was, he thought bitterly. Why would anybody be coming here?
“Ship!” he shouted through the shrieking wind. He waved his arms above his head. “Ship ahoy!”
But it was no use. He shouted himself hoarse for half an hour to no effect whatsoever, until the ship had thoroughly disappeared amongst the dark clouds and tossing waves. To have the prospect of rescue so close like this only to be snatched away was unbearable. He let out a series of furious oaths which culminated in an entirely pointless kick to a rock.
He sat down on the wet sand, foot throbbing, throat sore, and told himself that if one ship had come this way then others surely would also. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and tried to breathe deeply. His stomach growled and clenched with hunger. Someone else would come.
*
That evening, after a meagre meal of a handful of whelks, he crawled into the cottage which had the most roof left, tucked the heart under his arm, and tried to sleep.
The weather had indeed worked itself up into a storm; it was a very loud night. The wind howled as it whipped through the trees and the unrelenting rain continued to drum all around. Every so often a flash of lightning illuminated the hut.
He was so tired, but each time he dropped into sleep the irregular sounds of wind and thunder jerked him back into wakefulness. He drifted uneasily in a half-awake, half-asleep state between the flashes and the drumming. The air seemed as though it were a wall of cold water, the spray and the rain together stinging his face.
A terrible, shuddering jolt. They’d hit the rocks, unseen in the darkness. He ran to the rail, but could see nothing in the black night aside from the white foam roiling around the side of the ship. The Pearl had vanished long minutes before; he suspected they’d extinguished all their lamps to escape him under cover of the hurricaine.
Another man was at his elbow; he looked up and found Gillette. A flash of lightning illuminated his face briefly; James had no time to process the sight before a huge wave roared over both of them. Gasping at the shocking cold, James bent almost double, trying to wipe the saltwater from his stinging eyes.
Down in the waist men were shouting and swearing, making quite the din even over the shrieking wind. A flukey gust caught what little of the Dauntless’s sails were spread and she rolled alarmingly to starboard; James’s feet skidded on the soaking planks and he snatched at the rigging to catch himself.
Hand over hand he staggered down the quarterdeck to see what the matter with the men was. He saw at once — the main topgallant had split along its length and half of it had fallen forwards over the foremast, dragging a terrible mess of sheets with it. Now that he was expecting to find it, he could just detect a whiff of smoke; the mast must have been struck by lightning.
“Axes!” He bellowed, cupping his hands to his mouth to make himself better heard. “Get it over the side!”
“Oh, God preserve us,” Gillette groaned in despair, having come to see for himself what was happening. “The weight will roll us clear under if we get another wave like the last.” James didn’t answer. Gillette was not wrong.
“Sir!” A breathless midshipman squeaked, hurrying over to him and Gillette as best he could on the heaving deck. “Sirs, Mr White’s respects, and there’s four feet of water in the well.” The lad held up four fingers to ensure his message was understood.
James felt a chill which had nothing to do with the storm. They were taking on entirely too much water, too fast; this was too much to recover from. The ship could not be saved. The best he could do was try to preserve his crew.
He and Gillette looked at each other. “Abandon ship,” James said flatly. He felt suddenly numb. The wind whipped his words away, but Gillette had understood his meaning well enough. Gillette hesitated only for a moment in the face of such an appalling command before nodding.
“Abandon ship!” he repeated loudly. “Bosun, belay the axes! Sway the boats out!”
Another huge wave washed over the deck; the Dauntless rolled, sluggish, and did not right herself again. She listed to starboard and stayed there, wallowing.
James felt the slope of the deck beneath his feet. Good Christ, she might go down before they’d even got the boats out. If only, if only he could have brought Sparrow into range of the carronades. He felt sick with longing and rage and despair.
“Braces!” Gillette was shouting nearby. “Hands to —” A block came flying through the air, appearing out of nowhere and disappearing just as quickly — but it had struck Gillette on the back of the head — with a peculiar, useless clarity James saw clearly its trajectory and the blow and the stunned look on Gillette’s face, but there was no way he could react quickly enough to do anything about it. Gillette lost his footing on the soaking, sloping deck; as another wave crashed over them it swept him up in a fury of foam and then Gillette was thrown to the rail and over it.
James stared stupidly for several seconds at the space where his friend had just been, disbelieving the evidence of his own eyes — surely, surely there must be some mistake, this couldn’t be —
A bolt of lightning struck very nearby with a deafening crack, making James jump even above the shrieking of the wind. “All hands!” he shouted. “All hands to the braces!”
His voice had gone. He yelled as hard as he could but no sound was coming out. “All hands!” he tried to shout again, but it was no use. The storm swirled and crashed, and his men slipped beneath the churning black sea —
A crash of thunder jerked him awake, and he found himself on the dirt floor of a ruined little hovel, his heart pounding horribly in his throat and his head and his stomach. He scrambled upright, gasping for breath.
Thirty five of his men had been lost that night. Thirty five dead, all for a hopeless chase which James should never have led them on in the first place! He was the worst kind of fool to try to sail through the hurricane. He should have hanged Sparrow when he’d had the chance, damn his eyes.
James pressed his trembling hands over his eyes. Thirty five men, including Andrew Gillette. All dead and gone, because James had been blinded by his own damned ambition and — he could admit it now in the privacy of his own mind — his vanity.
If James wept that night there on the dirt floor, bitter tears of anger and self-pity and guilt, well. It hardly mattered. There was nobody there to see it.
Down among the dead men, let them lie.
*
Days passed. Days in which James anxiously ran down his cache of water, though he did not touch the two remaining bottles of rum. He watched the horizon. He watched the heart.
At nights, he dreamed of steak and fresh bread and coffee. He dreamed of the Dauntless. He dreamed of home, and that was almost worse. He awoke with a vague sense that Sparrow was just over his shoulder, and were he to turn around he’d see a flash of gold in an insolent smile.
His breeches became loser around his waist each day. His ribs began to stand out. The skin on his nose and forehead burned in the sun.
He tried to think about other songs. He tried not to think about the possibility that nobody would come.
He’d lost count of the days when he saw the second sail.
His heart leapt into his throat when he first saw the smudge on the horizon. He ran up to the church and made the ascent to the crumbling roof to get the best view, and after a few minutes the smudge had resolved itself into a definite shape.
This time he was prepared: he dashed to the pile of dried leaves and wood he’d gathered and set to making a spark with feverish energy. After a few attempts he managed to produce a glow; he blew on the embers gently to encourage them, his heart pounding in his throat.
Please, he prayed desperately to any god who happened to be listening. Please let them see it. He snatched up one of the two remaining bottles of alcohol and poured it into the pile, and suddenly he had a conflagration on his hands.
He stumbled back from the heat of the fire, squinting at the vessel on the horizon although his eyes stung with smoke. The column of smoke grew, and drifted straight up in the calm air. Please.
Was it his imagination, or was the ship growing larger? After a few minutes, he was sure. He could have wept again with relief.
He was so weak with hunger that the effort of climbing the ladder was almost too much, although there was surely less of him to manoeuvre up there than there’d ever been. Mercifully, two burly sailors on the deck seized him under the arms and hauled him over the side; he dropped gracelessly onto the deck, shaking in every limb.
The officer on the schooner failed to recognise him. James considered that fair enough under the circumstances. It would have been a simple matter to put right, for Commander McMurdo — James had known him right away — was an officer on the Jamaica station and they had met several times. But both the lingering shame of his dismissal and the thought of how he’d explain his presence on the island made him hold back. And there was certainly no way he could reveal the horrid item concealed in his jacket.
Instead James tried his best to soften the edges of his accent, and gave his name as “James Benson, sir, hand on the Dolphin. We were scuppered in the storm. All drowned, aside from me.” The pained weakness in his voice was only partly an act.
McMurdo looked rather put out at being lumbered with a rescue. “I’d hoped to replenish our water,” he said. “My men tell me there was none to be found on your little kingdom.”
“No, sir,” James croaked. He was reluctant to speak too much, for surely his disreputable hair and beard would only go so far towards concealing who he really was. He hunched his shoulders to take an inch off his height. “I had only a very little rainwater.”
McMurdo made a dissatisfied sound. “Hm. Well, we shall be heading back to Jamaica, then. I hope that suits you,” he said rather dismissively.
James felt his breast pocket give a thump. “Very much so,” he said sincerely.