Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  A fallen seaman was lying in the scupper, shot down by a Dutch murderer. His musket lay beside him, still unfired, the match spluttering and smoking in the lock. Hal snatched it up and raced back along the deck to head off Sam Bowles.

  He reached the whipstaff a dozen paces before the other man and rounded on him, thrusting the gun’s gaping muzzle into his belly. ‘Back, you craven swine! Or I’ll blow your traitor’s guts over the deck.’

  Sam recoiled, and the other four seamen backed up behind him, staring at Hal with faces still pale and terrified from their flight.

  ‘You can’t leave your shipmates. We’re going back!’ Hal screamed, his eyes blazing green with wild rage and fear for his father and Aboli. He waved the musket at them, the smoke from the match swirling around his head. His forefinger was hooked around the trigger. Looking into those eyes, the deserters could not doubt his resolve and retreated down the deck.

  Hal seized the whipstaff and held it over. The ship trembled under his feet as she came under his command. He looked back at the galleon, and his spirits quailed. He knew that he could never drive the Lady Edwina back against the wind with this set of sail: they were flying away from where his father and Aboli were fighting for their lives. At the same moment Bowles and his gang realized his predicament. ‘Nobody ain’t going back, and there’s naught you can do about it, young Henry.’ Sam cackled triumphantly. ‘You’ll have to get her on the other tack, to beat back to your daddy, and there’s none of us will handle the sheets for you. Is there, lads? We have you strapped!’

  Hal looked about him hopelessly. Then, suddenly, his jaw clenched with resolution. Sam saw the change in him and turned to follow his gaze. His own expression collapsed in consternation as he saw the pinnace only half a league ahead, crowded with armed sailors.

  ‘Have at him, lads!’ he exhorted his companions. ‘He has but one shot in the musket, and then he’s ours!’

  ‘One shot and my sword!’ Hal roared, and tapped the hilt of the cutlass on his hip. ‘God’s teeth, but I’ll take half of you with me and glory in it.’

  ‘All together!’ Sam squealed. ‘He’ll never get the blade out of its sheath.’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ Hal shouted. ‘Come! Please, I beg you for the chance to have a look at your cowardly entrails.’

  They had all watched this young wildcat at practice, had seen him fight Aboli, and none wanted to be at the front of the charge. They growled and shuffled, fingered their cutlasses and looked away.

  ‘Come on, Sam Bowles!’ Hal challenged. ‘You were quick enough from the Dutchman’s deck. Let’s see how quick you are to come at me now.’

  Sam steeled himself and then, grimly and purposefully, started forward, but when Hal poked the muzzle of the musket an inch forward, aiming at his belly, he pulled back hurriedly and tried to push one of his gang forward.

  ‘Have at him, lad!’ Sam croaked. Hal changed his aim to the second man’s face, but he broke out of Sam’s grip and ducked behind his neighbour.

  The pinnace was close ahead now – they could hear the eager shouts of the seamen in her. Sam’s expression was desperate. Suddenly he fled. Like a scared rabbit he shot down the ladder to the lower deck, and in an instant the others followed him in a panic-stricken mob.

  Hal dropped the musket to the deck, and used both hands on the whipstaff. He gazed forward over the plunging bows, judging his moment carefully, then threw his weight against the lever and spun the ship’s head up into the wind.

  She lay there hove to. The pinnace was nearby and Hal could see Big Daniel Fisher in the bows, one of the Lady Edwina’s best boatswains. Big Daniel seized his opportunity, and shot the small boat alongside. His sailors latched onto the trailing grappling lines that Sam and his gang had cut, and came swarming up onto the caravel’s deck.

  ‘Daniel!’ Hal shouted at him. ‘I’m going to wear the ship around. Get ready to train her yards! We’re going back into the fight!’

  Big Daniel flashed him a grin, his teeth jagged and broken as a shark’s, and led his men to the yard braces. Twelve men, fresh and eager, Hal exulted, as he prepared for the dangerous manoeuvre of bringing the wind across the ship’s stern rather than over her bows. If he misjudged it, he would dismast her, but if he succeeded in bringing her round, stern first to the wind, he would save several crucial minutes in getting back to the embattled galleon.

  Hal put the whipstaff hard alee, but as she struggled wildly to feel the wind come across her stern, and threatened to gybe with all standing, Daniel paid off the yard braces to take the strain. The sails filled like thunder, and suddenly she was on the other tack, clawing up into the wind, tearing back to join the fight.

  Daniel hooted and lifted his cap, and they all cheered him, for it had been courageously and skilfully done. Hal hardly glanced at the others, but concentrated on holding the Lady Edwina close hauled, heading back for the drifting Dutchman. The fight must still be raging aboard her, for he could hear the faint shouts and the occasional pop of a musket. Then there was a flash of white off to leeward, and he saw the gaff sail of the second pinnace ahead, the crew waving wildly to gain his attention. Another dozen fighting men to join the muster, he thought. Was it worth the time to pick them up? Another twelve sharp cutlasses? He let the Lady Edwina drop off a point, to head straight for the tiny vessel.

  Daniel had a line ready to heave across and, within seconds, the second pinnace had disgorged her men and was on tow behind the Lady Edwina.

  ‘Daniel!’ Hal called him. ‘Keep those men quiet! No sense in warning the cheese-heads we’re coming.’

  ‘Right, Master Hal. We’ll give ’em a little surprise.’

  ‘Batten down the hatches on the lower decks! We have a cargo of cowards and traitors hiding in our holds. Keep ’em locked down there until Sir Francis can deal with them.’

  Silently the Lady Edwina steered in under the galleon’s tumblehome. Perhaps the Dutchmen were too busy to see her coming in under shortened sail for not a single head peered down from the rail above as the two hulls came together with a jarring grinding impact. Daniel and his crew hurled grappling irons over the galleon’s rail, and immediately stormed up them, hand over hand.

  Hal took only a moment to lash the whipstaff hard over, then raced across the deck and seized one of the straining lines. Close on Big Daniel’s heels, he climbed swiftly and paused as he reached the galleon’s rail. With one hand on the line and both feet planted firmly on the galleon’s timbers, he drew his cutlass and clamped the blade between his teeth. Then he swung himself up and, only a second behind Daniel, dropped over the rail.

  He found himself in the front rank of the fresh boarding party. With Daniel beside him, and the sword in his right fist he took a moment to glance around the deck. The fight was almost over. They had arrived with only seconds to spare for his father’s men were scattered in tiny clusters across the deck, surrounded by its crew and fighting for their lives. Half their number were down, a few obviously dead. A head, hacked from its torso, leered up at Hal from the scupper where it rolled back and forth in a puddle of its own blood. With a shudder of horror, Hal recognized the Lady Edwina’s cook.

  Others were wounded, and writhed, rolled and groaned on the deck. The planks were slick and slippery with their blood. Still others sat exhausted, disarmed and dispirited, their weapons thrown aside, their hands clasped over their heads, yielding to the enemy.

  A few were still fighting. Sir Francis and Aboli stood at bay below the mainmast, surrounded by howling Dutchmen, hacking and stabbing. Apart from a gash on his left arm, his father seemed unhurt – perhaps the steel cuirass had saved him from serious injury – and he fought with all his usual fire. Beside him, Aboli was huge and indestructible, roaring a war-cry in his own tongue when he saw Hal’s head pop over the rail.

  Without a thought but to go to their aid, Hal started forward. ‘For Franky and St George!’ he screamed at the top of his lungs, and Big Daniel took up the cry, running at his left hand. The men from
the pinnaces were after them, shrieking like a horde of raving madmen straight out of Bedlam.

  The Dutch crew were themselves almost spent, a score were down, and of those still fighting many were wounded. They looked over their shoulders at this latest phalanx of bloodthirsty Englishmen rushing upon them. The surprise was complete. Shock and dismay was on every tired and sweat-lathered face. Most flung down their weapons and, like any defeated crew, rushed to hide below decks.

  A few of the stouter souls swung about to face the charge, those around the mast led by the Dutch colonel. But the yells of Hal’s boarding-party had rallied their exhausted and bleeding shipmates, who sprang forward with renewed resolve to join the attack. The Dutchmen were surrounded.

  Even in the confusion and turmoil Colonel Schreuder recognized Hal, and whirled to confront him, aiming a cut, backhanded, at his head. His moustaches bristled like a lion’s whiskers, and the blade hummed in his hand. He was miraculously unhurt and seemed as strong and fresh as any of the men that Hal led against him. Hal turned the blow with a twist of his wrist and went for the counter-stroke.

  In order to meet Hal’s charge the colonel had turned his back on Aboli, a foolhardy move. As he trapped Hal’s thrust and shifted his feet to lunge, Aboli rushed at him from behind. For a moment Hal thought he would run him through the spine, but he should have guessed better. Aboli knew the value of ransom as well as any man aboard: a dead enemy officer was merely so much rotting meat to throw overboard to the sharks that followed in their wake but a captive was worth good gold guilders.

  Aboli reversed his grip, and brought the steel basket of the cutlass hilt cracking into the back of the colonel’s skull. The Dutchman’s eyes flew wide open with shock, then his legs buckled under him and he toppled face down on the deck.

  As the colonel went down, the last resistance of the galleon’s crew collapsed with him. They threw down their weapons, and those of the Lady Edwina’s crew who had surrendered leapt to their feet, wounds and exhaustion forgotten. They snatched up the discarded weapons and turned them on the beaten Dutchmen, herding them forward, forcing them to squat in ranks with their hands clasped behind their heads, dishevelled and forlorn.

  Aboli seized Hal in a bear-hug. ‘When you and Sam Bowles set sail, I thought it was the last we would see of you,’ he panted.

  Sir Francis came striding towards his son, thrusting his way through the milling, cheering pack of his seamen. ‘You deserted your post at the masthead!’ He scowled at Hal as he bound a strip of cloth around the nick in his upper arm and knotted it with his teeth.

  ‘Father,’ Hal stammered, ‘I thought—’

  ‘And for once you thought wisely!’ Sir Francis’s dark expression cracked and his green eyes sparkled. ‘We’ll make a warrior of you yet, if you remember to keep your point up on the riposte. This great cheese-head,’ he prodded the fallen colonel with his toe, ‘was about to skewer you, until Aboli tapped his noggin.’ Sir Francis slipped his sword back into its scabbard. ‘The ship is not yet secure. The lower decks and holds are crawling with them. We’ll have to drive them out. Stay close to Aboli and me!’

  ‘Father, you’re hurt,’ Hal protested.

  ‘And perhaps I would have been more sorely wounded had you come back to us even a minute later than you did.’

  ‘Let me see to your wound.’

  ‘I know the tricks Aboli has taught you – would you piss on your own father?’ He laughed, and clapped Hal on the shoulder. ‘Perhaps I’ll give you that pleasure a little later.’ He turned and bellowed across the deck, ‘Big Daniel, take your men below and winkle out those cheese-heads who are hiding there. Master John, put a guard on the cargo hatches. See to it there is no looting. Fair shares for all! Master Ned, take the helm and get this ship on the wind before she flogs her canvas to rags.’

  Then he roared at the others, ‘I’m proud of you, you rascals! A good day’s work. You’ll each go home with fifty gold guineas in your pocket. But the Plymouth lassies will never love you as well I do!’

  They cheered him, hysterical with the release from desperate action and the fear of defeat and death.

  ‘Come on!’ Sir Francis nodded to Aboli and started for the ladder that led down into the officers’ and passengers’ quarters in the stern.

  Hal followed at a run as they crossed the deck, and Aboli grunted over his shoulder, ‘Be on your mettle. There are those below who would be happy to stick a dirk between your ribs.’

  Hal knew where his father was going, and what would be his first concern. He wanted the Dutch captain’s charts, log and sailing directions. They were more valuable to him than all the fragrant spices and precious metals and bright jewels the galleon might be carrying. With those in his hands he would have the key to every Dutch harbour and fort in the Indies. He would read the sailing orders of the spice convoys and the manifest of their cargoes. To him they were worth ten thousand pounds in gold.

  Sir Francis stormed down the ladder and tried the first door at the bottom. It was locked from within. He stepped back and charged. At his flying kick, the door flew open and crashed back on its hinges.

  The galleon’s captain was crouched over his desk, his cropped pate wigless and his clothing sweat-soaked. He looked up in dismay, blood dripping from a cut on his cheek onto his silken shirt, its wide fashionable sleeves slashed with green.

  At the sight of Sir Francis, he froze in the act of stuffing the ship’s books into a weighted canvas bag, then snatched it up and rushed to the stern windows. The casements and glass had been shot away by the Lady Edwina’s culverins, and they gaped open, the sea breaking and swirling under her counter. The Dutch captain lifted the bag to hurl it through the opening but Sir Francis seized his raised arm and flung him backwards onto his bunk. Aboli grabbed the bag, and Sir Francis made a courteous little bow. ‘You speak English?’ he demanded.

  ‘No English,’ the captain snarled back, and Sir Francis changed smoothly into Dutch. As a Nautonnier Knight of the Order he spoke most of the languages of the great seafaring nations, French, Spanish and Portuguese, as well as Dutch. ‘You are my prisoner, Mijnheer. What is your name?’

  ‘Limberger, captain of the first class, in the service of the VOC. And you, Mijnheer, are a corsair,’ the captain retorted.

  ‘You are mistaken, sir! I sail under Letters of Marque from His Majesty King Charles the second. Your ship is now a prize of war.’

  ‘You flew false colours,’ the Dutchman accused.

  Sir Francis smiled bleakly. ‘A legitimate ruse of war.’ He made a dismissive gesture and went on, ‘You are a brave man, Mijnheer, but the fight is over now. As soon as you give me your word, you will be treated as my honoured guest. The day your ransom is paid, you will go free.’

  The captain wiped the blood and sweat from his face with his silken sleeve, and an expression of resignation dulled his features. He stood and handed his sword hilt first to Sir Francis.

  ‘You have my word. I will not attempt to escape.’

  ‘Nor encourage your men to resistance?’ Sir Francis prompted him. The captain nodded glumly. ‘I agree.’

  ‘I will need your cabin, Mijnheer, but I will find you comfortable quarters elsewhere.’ Sir Francis turned his attention eagerly to the canvas bag and dumped its contents on the desk.

  Hal knew that, from now on, his father would be absorbed in his reading, and he glanced at Aboli on guard in the doorway. The Negro nodded permission at him, and Hal slipped out of the cabin. His father did not see him go.

  Cutlass in hand, he moved cautiously down the narrow corridor. He could hear the shouts and clatter from the other decks as the crew of the Lady Edwina cleared out the defeated Dutch seamen and herded them up onto the open deck. Down here it was quiet and deserted. The first door he tried was locked. He hesitated then followed his father’s earlier example. The door resisted his first onslaught, but he backed off and charged again. This time it burst open and he went flying through into the cabin beyond, off balance and skidd
ing on the magnificent Oriental rugs that covered the deck. He sprawled on the huge bed that seemed to fill half the cabin.

  As he sat up and gazed at the splendour that surrounded him, he was aware of an aroma more heady than any spice he had ever smelt. The boudoir odour of a pampered woman, not merely the precious oils of flowers, procured by the perfumer’s art, but blended with these the more subtle scents of skin and hair and a healthy young female body. It was so exquisite, so moving that when he stood his legs felt strangely weak under him, and he snuffed it up rapturously. It was the most delicious smell that had ever set his nostrils a-quiver.

  Sword in hand he gazed around the cabin, only vaguely aware of the rich tapestries and silver vessels filled with sweetmeats, dried fruits and pot-pourri. The dressing table against the port bulkhead was covered with an array of cut-glass cosmetic and perfume bottles with stoppers of chased silver. He moved across to it. Laid out beside the bottles was a set of silver-backed brushes and a tortoiseshell comb. Trapped between the teeth of the comb was a single strand of hair, long as his arm, fine as a silk thread.

  Hal lifted the comb to his face as though it were a holy relic. There was that entrancing odour again, that giddy woman’s smell. He wound the hair about his finger and freed it from the teeth of the comb, then reverently tucked it into the pocket of his stained and sweat-stinking shirt.

  At that moment there came a soft but heartbreaking sob from behind the gaudy Chinese screen across one end of the cabin.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Hal challenged, cutlass poised. ‘Come out or I’ll thrust home.’

  There was another sob, more poignant than the last. ‘By all the saints, I mean it!’ Hal stalked towards the screen.

  He slashed at the screen, slicing through one of the painted panels. At the force of the blow it toppled and crashed to the deck. There was a terrified shriek, and Hal stood gaping at the wondrous creature who knelt, cowering, in the corner of the cabin.

  Her face was buried in her hands, but the mass of shining hair that tumbled to the deck glowed like freshly minted gold escudos, and the skirts spread around were the blue of a swallow’s wings.