Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  Katinka shrugged off Zelda’s hand, but it was true. They had recognized her as a female. Even at this distance their excitement was almost palpable. Their antics had become frenzied and one strapping figure in the bows took a double handful of his own crotch and thrust his hips towards her in a rhythmic and obscene gesture.

  ‘Revolting! Come inside!’ Zelda insisted. ‘The Governor will be furious if he sees what that animal is doing.’

  ‘He should be furious that he cannot perform as nimbly,’ Katinka replied angelically. She pressed her thighs tightly together the better to savour the sudden moist warmth at their juncture. The caravel was much closer now, and she could see that what the seaman was offering her was bulky enough to overflow his cupped hands. The tip of her pink tongue dabbed at her pouting lips.

  ‘Please, mistress.’

  ‘In a while,’ Katinka demurred. ‘You were right, Zelda. This does amuse me.’ She raised one white hand and waved back at the other ship. Instantly the men redoubled their efforts to hold her attention.

  ‘This is so undignified,’ Zelda moaned.

  ‘But it’s fun. We’ll never see those creatures again, and being always dignified is so dull.’ She leaned further out over the rail and let the front of her gown bulge open.

  At that moment there was a heavy pounding on the door to her husband’s cabin. Without further urging Katinka fled from the gallery, rushed to her bunk and threw herself upon it. She pulled the satin bedclothes up to her chin, before she nodded at Zelda, who lifted the cross bar and dropped into an ungainly curtsy as the Governor burst in. He ignored her and, belting his robe around his protruding belly, waddled to the bunk where Katinka lay. Without his wig his head was covered by sparse silver bristles.

  ‘My dear, are you well enough to rise? The captain has sent a message. He wishes us to dress and stand to. There is a strange vessel in the offing, and it is behaving suspiciously.’

  Katinka stifled a smile as she thought of the suspicious behaviour of the strange seamen. Instead she made a brave but pitiful face. ‘My head is bursting, and my stomach—’

  ‘My poor darling.’ Petrus van de Velde, Governor-elect of the Cape of Good Hope, bent over her. Even on this cool morning his jowls were basted with sweat, and he reeked of last evening’s dinner, Javanese curried fish, garlic and sour rum.

  This time her stomach truly churned, but Katinka offered her cheek dutifully. ‘I may have the strength to rise,’ she whispered, ‘if the captain orders it.’

  Zelda rushed to the bedside and helped her sit up, and then lifted her to her feet, and with an arm around her waist, led her to the small Chinese screen in the corner of the cabin. Seated on the bench opposite, her husband was afforded only vague glimpses of shining white skin from behind the painted silk panels, even though he craned his head to see more.

  ‘How much longer must this terrible journey last?’ Katinka complained.

  ‘The captain assures me that, with this wind holding fair, we should drop anchor in Table Bay within ten days.’

  ‘The Lord give me strength to survive that long.’

  ‘He has invited us to dine today with him and his officers,’ replied the Governor. ‘It is a pity, but I will send a message that you are indisposed.’

  Katinka’s head and shoulders popped up over the screen. ‘You will do no such thing!’ she snapped. Her breasts, round and white and smooth, quivered with agitation.

  One of the officers interested her more than a little. He was Colonel Cornelius Schreuder, who, like her own husband, was en route to take up an appointment at the Cape of Good Hope. He had been appointed military commander of the settlement of which Petrus van de Velde would be Governor. He wore pointed moustaches and a fashionable van Dyck beard, and bowed to her most graciously each time she went on deck. His legs were well turned, and his dark eyes were eagle bright and gave her goose pimples when he looked at her. She read in them more than just respect for her position, and he had responded most gratifyingly to the sly appraisal she had given him from under her long eyelashes.

  When they reached the Cape, he would be her husband’s subordinate. Hers also to command – and she was sure that he could relieve the monotony of exile in the forsaken settlement at the end of the world that was to be her home for the next three years.

  ‘I mean,’ she changed her tone swiftly, ‘it would be churlish of us to decline the captain’s hospitality, would it not?’

  ‘But your health is more important,’ he protested.

  ‘I will find the strength.’ Zelda slipped petticoats over her head, one after another, five in all, each fluttering with ribbons.

  Katinka came from behind the screen and raised her arms. Zelda lowered the blue silk dress over them and drew it down over the petticoats. Then she knelt and carefully tucked up the skirts on one side to reveal the petticoats beneath, and the slim ankles clad in white silk stockings. It was the very latest fashion. The Governor watched her, entranced. If only the other parts of your body were as big and busy as your eyeballs, Katinka thought derisively, as she turned to the long mirror and pirouetted before it.

  Then she screamed wildly and clutched her bosom as, from the deck directly above them, there came the sudden deafening roar of gunfire. The Governor screamed as shrilly and flung himself from the bench onto the Oriental carpets that covered the deck.

  ‘De Standvastigheid!’ Through the lens of the telescope Sir Francis Courtney read the galleon’s name off her high gilded transom. ‘The Resolution.’ He lowered the glass and grunted, ‘A name which we will soon put to the test!’

  As he spoke a long bright plume of smoke spurted from the ship’s upper deck, and a few seconds later the boom of the cannon carried across the wind. Half a cable’s length ahead of their bows, the heavy ball plunged into the sea, making a tall white fountain. They could hear drums beating urgently in the other ship, and the gunports in her lower decks swung open. Long barrels prodded out.

  ‘I marvel that he waited so long to give us a warning shot,’ Sir Francis drawled. He closed the telescope, and looked up at the sails. ‘Put up your helm, Master Ned, and lay us under his stern.’ The display of false colours had won them enough time to duck in under the menace of the galleon’s crushing broadside.

  Sir Francis turned to the carpenter, who stood ready at the stern rail with a boarding axe in his hands. ‘Cut her loose!’ he ordered.

  The man raised the axe above his head and swung it down. With a crunch the blade sliced into the timber of the stern rail, the drogue line parted with a whiplash crack and, free of her restraint, the Lady Edwina bounded forward, then heeled as Ned put up the helm.

  Sir Francis’s manservant, Oliver, came running with the red-quartered cloak and plumed cavalier hat. Sir Francis donned them swiftly and bellowed at the masthead, ‘Down with the colours of the Republic and let’s see those of England!’ The crew cheered wildly as the Union flag streamed out on the wind.

  They came boiling up from below decks, like ants from a broken nest, and lined the bulwarks, roaring defiance at the huge vessel that towered over them. The Dutchman’s decks and rigging swarmed with frantic activity.

  The cannon in the galleon’s ports were training around, but few could cover the caravel as she came flying down on the wind, screened by the Dutchman’s own high counter.

  A ragged broadside thundered out across the narrowing gap but most of the shot fell wide by hundreds of yards or howled harmlessly overhead. Hal ducked as the blast of a passing shot lifted the cap from his head and sent it sailing away on the wind. A neat round hole had appeared miraculously in the sail six feet above him. He flicked his long hair out of his face, and peered down at the galleon.

  The small company of Dutch officers on the quarterdeck were in disarray. Some were in shirtsleeves, and one was stuffing his night-shirt into his breeches as he came up the companion-ladder.

  One officer caught his eye in the throng: a tall man in a steel helmet with a van Dyck beard was rallying a com
pany of musketeers on the foredeck. He wore the gold-embroidered sash of a colonel over his shoulder, and from the way he gave his orders and the alacrity with which his men responded seemed a man to watch, one who might prove a dangerous foe.

  Now at his bidding the men ran aft, each carrying a murderer, one of the small guns especially used for repelling boarders. There were slots in the galleon’s stern rail into which the iron pin of the murderer would fit, allowing the deadly little weapon to be traversed and aimed at the decks of an enemy ship as it came alongside. When they had boarded the Heerlycke Nacht Hal had seen the execution the murderer could wreak at close range. It was more of a threat than the rest of the galleon’s battery.

  He swivelled the falconet, and blew on the slow-match in his hand. To reach the stern the file of Dutch musketeers must climb the ladder from the quarterdeck to the poop. He aimed at the head of the ladder as the gap between the two ships closed swiftly. The Dutch colonel was first up the ladder, sword in hand, his gilded helmet sparkling bravely in the sunlight. Hal let him cross the deck at a run, and waited for his men to follow him up.

  The first musketeer tripped at the head of the ladder and sprawled on the deck, dropping his murderer as he fell. Those following were bunched up behind him, unable to pass for the moment that it took him to recover and regain his feet. Hal peered over the crude sights of the falconet at the little knot of men. He pressed the burning tip of the match to the pan, and held his aim deliberately as the powder flared. The falconet jumped and bellowed and, as the smoke cleared he saw that five of the musketeers were down, three torn to shreds by the blast, the others screaming and splashing their blood on the white deck.

  Hal felt breathless with shock as he looked down at the carnage. He had never before killed a man, and his stomach heaved with sudden nausea. This was not the same as shattering a water cask. For a moment he thought he might vomit.

  The Dutch colonel at the stern rail looked up at him. He lifted his sword and pointed it at Hal’s face. He shouted something up at Hal, but the wind and the continuous roll of gunfire obliterated his words. But Hal knew that he had made a mortal enemy.

  This knowledge steadied him. There was no time to reload the falconet, it had done its work. He knew that that single shot had saved the lives of many of his own men. He had caught the Dutch musketeers before they could set up their murderers to scythe down the boarders. He knew he should be proud, but he was not. He was afraid of the Dutch colonel.

  Hal reached for the longbow. He had to stand tall to draw it. He aimed his first arrow down at the colonel. He drew to full reach, but the Dutchman was no longer looking at him: he was commanding the survivors of his company to their positions at the galleon’s stern rail. His back was turned to Hal.

  Hal held off a fraction, allowing for the wind and the ship’s movement. He loosed the arrow and watched it flash away, curling as the wind caught it. For a moment he thought it would find its mark in the colonel’s broad back, but the wind thwarted it. It missed by a hand’s breadth and thudded into the deck timbers where it stood quivering. The Dutchman glanced up at him, scorn curling his spiked moustaches. He made no attempt to seek cover, but turned back to his men.

  Hal reached frantically for another arrow, but at that instant the two ships came together, and he was almost catapulted over the rim of the crow’s nest.

  There was a grinding, crackling uproar, timbers burst, and the windows in the galleon’s stern galleries shattered at the collision. Hal looked down and saw Aboli in the bows, a black colossus as he swung a boarding grapnel around his head in long swooping revolutions then hurled it upwards, the line snaking out behind.

  The iron hook skidded across the poop deck, but when Aboli jerked it back it lodged firmly in the galleon’s stern rail. One of the Dutch crew ran across and lifted an axe to cut it free. Hal drew the fletchings of another arrow to his lips and loosed. This time his judgement of the windage was perfect and the arrowhead buried itself in the man’s throat. He dropped the axe and clutched at the shaft as he staggered backwards and collapsed.

  Aboli had seized another grapnel and sent that up onto the galleon’s stern. It was followed by a score of others, from the other boatswains. In moments the two vessels were bound to each other by a spider’s web of manila lines, too numerous for the galleon’s defenders to sever though they scampered along the gunwale with hatchets and cutlasses.

  The Lady Edwina had not fired her culverins. Sir Francis had held his broadside for the time when it would be most needed. The shot could do little damage to the galleon’s massive planking, and it was far from his plans to mortally injure the prize. But now, with the two ships locked together, the moment had come.

  ‘Gunners!’ Sir Francis brandished his sword over his head to attract their attention. They stood over their pieces, smoking slow-match in hand, watching him. ‘Now!’ he roared, and slashed his blade downwards.

  The line of culverins thundered in a single hellish chorus. Their muzzles were pressed hard against the galleon’s stern, and the carved, gilded woodwork disintegrated in a cloud of smoke, flying white splinters and shards of stained glass from the windows.

  It was the signal. No command could be heard in the uproar, no gesture seen in the dense fog that billowed over the locked vessels, but a wild chorus of warlike yells rose from the smoke and the Lady Edwina’s crew poured up into the galleon.

  They boarded in a pack through the stern gallery, like ferrets into a rabbit warren, climbing with the nimbleness of apes and swarming over the gunwale, screened from the Dutch gunners by the rolling cloud of smoke. Others ran out along the Lady Edwina’s yards and dropped onto the galleon’s decks.

  ‘Franky and St George!’ Their war-cries came up to Hal at the masthead. He saw only three or four shot down by the murderers at the stern before the Dutch musketeers themselves were hacked down and overwhelmed. The men who followed climbed unopposed to the galleon’s poop. He saw his father go across, moving with the speed and agility of a much younger man.

  Aboli stooped to boost him over the galleon’s rail and the two fell in side by side, the tall Negro with the scarlet turban and the cavalier in his plumed hat, cloak swirling around the battered steel of his cuirass.

  ‘Franky and St George!’ the men howled, as they saw their captain in the thick of the fight, and followed him, sweeping the poop deck with ringing, slashing steel.

  The Dutch colonel tried to rally his few remaining men, but they were beaten back remorselessly and sent tumbling down the ladders to the quarterdeck. Aboli and Sir Francis went down after them, their men clamouring behind them like a pack of hounds with the scent of fox in their nostrils.

  Here they were faced with sterner opposition. The galleon’s captain had formed up his men on the deck below the mainmast, and now their musketeers fired a close-range volley and charged the Lady Edwina’s men with bared steel. The galleon’s decks were smothered with a struggling mass of fighting men.

  Although Hal had reloaded the falconet, there was no target for him. Friend and foe were so intermingled that he could only watch helplessly as the fight surged back and forth across the open deck below him.

  Within minutes it was apparent that the crew of the Lady Edwina were heavily outnumbered. There were no reserves – Sir Francis had left no one but Hal aboard the caravel. He had committed every last man, gambling all on surprise and this first wild charge. Twenty-four of his men were leagues away across the water, manning the two pinnaces, and could take no part. They were sorely needed now, but when Hal looked for the tiny scout vessels he saw that they were still miles out. Both had their gaff main sails set, but were making only snail’s progress against the southeaster and the big curling swells. The fight would be decided before they could reach the two embattled ships and intervene.

  He looked back at the deck of the galleon and to his consternation, realized that the fight had swung against them. His father and Aboli were being driven back towards the stern. The Dutch colonel was at t
he head of the counter-attack, roaring like a wounded bull and inspiring his men by his example.

  From the back ranks of the boarding-party broke a small group of the Lady Edwina’s men, who had been hanging back from the fight. They were led by a weasel of a man, Sam Bowles, a forecastle lawyer, whose greatest talent lay in his ready tongue, his skill at arguing the division of spoils and in brewing dissension and discontent among his fellows.

  Sam Bowles darted up into the galleon’s stern and dropped over the rail to the Lady Edwina’s deck, followed by four others.

  The interlocked ships had swung round ponderously before the wind, so that now the Lady Edwina was straining at the grappling lines that held them together. In panic and terror, the five deserters fell with axe and cutlass upon the lines. Each parted with a snap that carried clearly to Hal at the masthead.

  ‘Avast that!’ he screamed down, but not one man raised his head from his treacherous work.

  ‘Father!’ Hal shrieked towards the deck of the other ship. ‘You’ll be stranded! Come back! Come back!’

  His voice could not carry against the wind or the noise of battle. His father was fighting three Dutch seamen, all his attention locked onto them. Hal saw him take a cut on his blade, and then riposte with a gleam of steel. One of his opponents staggered back, clutching at his arm, his sleeve suddenly sodden red.

  At that moment the last grappling line parted with a crack, and the Lady Edwina was free. Her bows swung clear swiftly, her sails filled and she bore away, leaving the galleon wallowing, her flapping sails taken all aback, making ungainly sternway.

  Hal launched himself down the shrouds, his palms scalded by the speed of the rope hissing through them. He hit the deck so hard that his teeth cracked together in his jaws and he rolled across the planks. In an instant he was on his feet, and looking desperately around him. The galleon was already a cable’s length away across the blue swell, the sounds of the fighting growing faint on the wind. Then he looked to his own stern and saw Sam Bowles scurrying to take the helm.