Burton dived again and coming up saw Gwenafra’s face only a few feet before him. It was gray, and her eyes were dull. Then he saw the blood darkening the water around her. She disappeared before he could get to her. He dived down after her, caught her and pulled her back up. A hornfish tip was stuck into her back.
He let her body go. He did not know why the man had killed her when he could have easily taken her prisoner. Perhaps Alice had stabbed her and the man had figured that she was as good as dead and so had tossed her over the side to the fishes.
A body shot out of the smoke, followed by another. One man was dead with a broken neck; the other was alive. Burton wrapped his arm around the man’s neck and stabbed him at the juncture of jaw and ear. The man quit struggling and slipped down into the depths.
Frigate leaped out from the smoke, his face and shoulders bloody. He hit the water at a slant and dived deep. Burton swam toward him to help him. There was no use even trying to get back on the craft. It was solid with struggling bodies, and other canoes and dugouts were closing in.
Frigate’s head rose out of the water. His skin was white where the blood was not pumping out over it. Burton swam to him and said, “Did the women get away?”
Frigate shook his head and then said, “Watch out!” Burton upended to dive down. Something hit his legs; he kept on going down, but he could not carry out his intention of breathing in the water. He would fight until they had to kill him.
On coming up, he saw that the water was alive with men who had jumped in after him and Frigate. The American, half-conscious, was being towed to a canoe. Three men closed in on Burton, and he stabbed two and then a man in a dugout reached down with a club and banged him on the head.
15
They were led ashore near a large building behind a wall of pine logs. Burton’s head throbbed with pain at every step. The gashes in his shoulder and ribs hurt, but they had quit bleeding. The fortress was built of pine logs, had an overhanging second story, and many sentinels. The captives were marched through an entrance that could be closed with a huge log gate. They marched across sixty feet of grass-covered yard and through another large gateway into a hall about fifty feet long and thirty wide. Except for Frigate, who was too weak, they stood before a large round table of oak. They blinked in the dark and cool interior before they could clearly see the two men at the table.
Guards with spears, clubs, and stone axes were everywhere. A wooden staircase at one end of the hall led up to a runway with high railings. Women looked over the railings at them.
One of the men at the table was short and muscular. He had a hairy body, black curly hair, a nose like a falcon’s, and brown eyes as fierce as a falcon’s. The second man was taller, had blond hair, eyes the exact color of which was difficult to tell in the dusky light but were probably blue, and a broad Teutonic face. A paunch and the beginnings of jowls told of the food and liquor he had taken from the grails of slaves.
Frigate had sat down on the grass, but he was pulled up to his feet when the blond gave a signal. Frigate looked at the blond and said, “You look like Hermann Goring when he was young.” Then he dropped to his knees, screaming with pain from the impact of a spear butt over his kidneys.
The blond spoke in an English with a heavy German accent. “No more of that unless I order it. Let them talk.” He scrutinized them for several minutes, then said, “Yes, I am Hermann Goring.”
“Who is Goring?” Burton said.
“Your friend can tell you later,” the German said. “If there is a later for you. I am not angry about the splendid fight you put up. I admire men who can fight well. I can always use more spears, especially since you killed so many. I offer you a choice. You men, that is. Join me and live well with all the food, liquor, tobacco; and women you can possibly want, or work for me as my slaves.”