The Cruise of the Albatros

by E. C. Williams

  “I see what you mean, Skipper. Another possibility I’ve thought of is Rodrigues Island – what do you think?”

  “I hadn’t considered Rodrigues – you may have hit on something there. Let’s take a look at the chart.”

  The two men stepped into the tiny chartroom, and pulled out the small-scale planning chart for the southern Indian Ocean.

  Rodrigues was the smallest of the three Mascarene Islands, and the only one not yet settled by Kerguelenians, although eventual settlement was considered highly likely. It had been completely de-populated by the cascading disasters of the Troubles, and so was a good candidate in that respect – there was no native population with a prior claim. It presented something of a navigational challenge, since it was completely surrounded by fringing reefs and shoals. There were only two safe anchorages for vessels of any size, one on the north coast and one on the south, and they were reachable only by narrow, shoal-edged channels. However, Kerg salvage expeditions in the last century had surveyed both, and they were certainly usable, if negotiated with care.

  “The main trouble with Rodrigues, now that I look at it” said Bill, tapping on the chart, “is that it’s due east of the other two Mascarene islands, as well as of Madagascar. That means that, in sailing between their cruising grounds and Rodrigues, one direction will always be a beat more or less to windward – which direction depending on the season, and the monsoon. That doesn’t rule it out completely, of course, but if I were them I’d choose a base north of Madagascar—north of our usual trade routes but not far away.”

  The two men pondered that statement for a long moment, staring at the chart. To Sam, that made perfect sense. And he knew what point north of Madagascar he’d pick.

  “Zanzibar,” he said.

  “That would be my choice,” Bill replied. “Or some harbor on the African mainland near there. The Comoros would be perfect, but they were almost completely depopulated during the troubles, and the Nosy Be people have explored them thoroughly – no sign of pirates.

  “The Seychelles would do, but Zanzibar, although more distant, has the advantage of being an easy reach in each direction during both monsoon seasons. It’s a fair-sized island – if there are farmers there, and fishermen, it could support a large population.”

  “And it’s well north of the region we’ve explored, so we know almost nothing of those waters. Nothing except what’s on copies of ancient charts that haven’t been updated in centuries. The pirates have the home-field advantage there.”

  “Guess the next cruise of the Albatros will be northward, then, Skipper.”

  “Too right. But first things first – we have to try to find and free the captives, if there are any and they’re still on Madagascar. That's Kerg women and kids the bastards have taken.”

  “Amen, Skipper.”

  Their informal strategy conference was interrupted at this point by the pipe “Up spirits”, with the accompanying cheers of the crew, and the XO departed to execute his solemn duty of overseeing the distribution of the liquor ration. Sam was not in the mood for a drink himself, nor for a big mid-day meal, and had Ritchie bring him an early dinner in the form of a cold potato and a mug of coffee, to be consumed without ceremony on the quarterdeck.

  While the crew was at their own dinner, Mr. Robert appeared on deck again, this time with a sheaf of message forms.

  “Not more bad news, I hope, Sparkie?”

  “Hard to tell if it’s good news or bad, or no news at all, Captain. Take a look.” Robert handed Sam three message forms.

  Sam read and re-read each of them with growing perplexity. “It’s just gibberish, Sparks,” he finally said in frustration. The “messages” consisted of groups of seemingly-random letters and numbers, of varying lengths, which made sense in no language Sam knew – or in any language, for that matter, since some of the strings of letters could hardly make words any human could pronounce. “Could your operator have been confused by static, or interference, or something?”

  “No, Captain. I listened in on two of them as they were transcribed – the transmissions were as clear as a bell, each group sent slowly and precisely.”

  “Then what the hell do they mean?”

  “I don’t have a clue, Skipper. But I’m guessing the message is either encoded, or not transmitted in Morse at all, but some other system. Although since every dot-dash sequence exactly corresponded to one of the letters in the Latin alphabet, maybe it is Morse, but adapted to a different alphabet than ours. There are numbers mixed in with letter groups – single digits, always either 1 or 2 – that may stand for letters not found in the Latin alphabet.”

  Sam noticed as well on one of the messages a group of numbers set apart that included numbers other than the first two digits, but no letters.

  Sam tried to recall something Midshipman Dallas had said about the Arabic script having more letters than the Latin alphabet. Was it twenty-eight? That sounded right.

  “So it could be Morse code used to transmit a message in, say, Arabic…?”

  Robert simply shrugged his shoulders at that. “I don’t know anything about Arabic, Captain – sorry.” Sam initialed the message forms, and Robert disappeared below again. As Sam expected, Bill appeared soon after, having seen the messages.

  “Could you decipher them, XO?” Sam asked, but without much hope of a positive answer. In response, Ennis looked bewildered and simply shrugged, in unconscious mimicry of the comms officer. “What do you think it means, Skipper?”

  “I think it means the God verdoem pirates have radio communications, Bill, and that’s bad news no matter how you look at it.”

  “Merde!”

  They considered this development in frustrated silence for a moment, and then Ennis said, “I didn’t think they were that technologically advanced.”

  “I didn’t think so, either. But they’ve demonstrated tremendous adaptability, a surprising knack for improvisation—copying our sailing techniques, for example. Remember how they re-rigged a dhow into a lugger, and quickly mastered sailing a captured schooner – the bastards are nothing if not clever. We know they’ve captured at least one Kerguelenian vessel that was radio-equipped.”

  “But Captain, to learn how to use radio from first principles, simply by having a transceiver fall into their hands, and so quickly – it just doesn’t seem possible!”

  “Well, either we’ve been wrong from the start about their level of technology, or…” Sam’s voice trailed off.

  Bill finished Sam’s thought. “Or they have Kerg renegades helping them.” Both were appalled at this possibility, but once spoken aloud, both saw how much it explained.

  “Dallas told me how our pirate prisoners kept trying to convert him to their religion. What if they succeeded with some of the Kerguelenian settlers or seamen they’ve captured?” Sam said.

  “And if some were seamen – especially if one was a mate or captain – that would explain how rapidly they were able to adapt the dhow’s sail rig, and learn to sail a schooner.”

  The two considered the scenario thus sketched during a long, depressed silence.

  “This really, really sucks,” the XO said finally.

  CHAPTER 3

  The brisk headwinds continued to slow their progress, and when sunset came without a landfall, Sam ordered sail reduced until the schooner’s speed, as estimated by her taffrail log, and her DR position as projected from a good noon fix, would allow them to approach the island at first light the next morning. This had the added advantage – greatly appreciated by those aboard whose duty stations were below decks – of easing the schooner’s motion.

  Not for the first time, Sam thought of a pre-Troubles technology he had read about, an almost-magical device called “radar” that allowed vessels to find their way in darkness, fog, heavy rain, or snow as safely as on a clear, bright day. He wondered when, or if, some Kerguelenian tinkerer would re-invent this useful tool.

  He was pacing his usual course, along the windward rail of
the quarterdeck, when the XO emerged from the chartroom.

  “Something’s been nagging at the back of my mind all day, Skipper – something about that garbled message. Then it struck me: those two number groups looked an awful lot like a lat-long. Come see where it plots on the chart.”

  Sam followed Ennis into the chartroom, where he had laid out a chart of the west coast of Madagascar. The XO tapped a point on the chart. “If it is a position, this is it.”

  Bill had penciled a neat “X” – right off the mouth of Pirate Creek.

  “Wah! A rendezvous point!” Sam exclaimed. “It’s almost too convenient!”

  “Unfortunately, those are the only number groups in the message – there isn’t another one that could indicate, say, time or date. So if it’s a geographic position, and if it’s a point of future rendezvous for two or more pirate vessels – not, say, just a reference to a past event, like our battle there – we still don’t know when the pirates will be there, or if they will have already been and gone by the time we arrive.”

  “Nevertheless, we need to get there as soon as we can. How we’ll weep if we just miss ‘em!”

  Now Sam had a decision to make – should he cancel the scheduled “show-the-flag” visit to Reunion? He mused aloud on the pros and cons.

  “We radioed ahead, so the islanders and the governor – no, Reunion has a ‘president’ – will be expecting us. And if they’re half as hospitable as our friends on Nosy Be, they’ll have prepared a big reception for us. Mother Moreau stressed to me before we sailed from French Port that we have an important political and diplomatic mission, too – to reassure the settler republics that we’re here to protect them, as well, not just the Rock’s narrow economic interests. We don’t want to appear to snub them.”

  Moreau, nicknamed “Mother” because of the improbable number of her progeny, was the Republic of Kerguelen governing council member who chaired the council's committee on maritime trade and fisheries. She was also the infant Navy's best friend on the council.

  “But we could plead operational necessity – the need to react quickly to actionable intelligence. Surely the Reunionnais couldn’t take offense if we stressed that” Sam continued.

  “It’s about 500 sea-miles from Reunion to Pirate Creek,” Bill said. “That’s more than two days’ sail at our best speed – even more if we keep encountering headwinds.”

  Sam weighed the conflicting goals involved. Reunion Island was the oldest and most populous of Kerguelen’s Indian Ocean settlements, and thus the most important, politically and economically. The first settlers had found a sizable remnant of the pre-Troubles population, a lively ethnic mixture of European, Indian, Chinese, and African ancestors, who had welcomed them. The patois the islanders spoke was derived from French, so the settlers and natives had quickly learned to communicate with one another. The Kerguelenian tongue, also referred to simply as the patois, was an amalgam of French and English, with a sprinkling of Afrikaans, Hakka, and Hokkien words and expressions, using simple Chinese grammar, with few verb tenses and neutral gender.

  The islanders had willingly abandoned their precarious Stone Age existence for the settled lifestyle based on fishing, intensive agriculture, and light industry that had evolved on Kerguelen. Reunion represented the most successful integration of settlers and a local remnant population in the history of Kerg exploration and settlement, a model for the further overseas settlements essential to the growth and spread of civilization as it had evolved on Kerguelen. And the cooperation and good will of the Reunionnais was important to the continued success of the Albatros’s operations in the southern Indian Ocean.

  “We can surely spare a few hours. I’ll go ashore in the motor sloop while you and Albatros stand off and wait for me. The President and the islanders will probably take it better if I explain our urgency in person, rather than in a radio message.”

  “Maybe we should radio ahead anyway – alert them to the shortness of your visit, at least.”

  “Good idea. Draft a message for me, will you? We’ll get it off now, and maybe the President will have it by morning. Tell Sparks to mark it “urgent”.

  At first light the next morning, the highest points of the island were clearly visible, rising out of the sea: the Piton de la Neiges, the tallest, and the Piton de la Fournaise, nearly as high and a still-active volcano (although, thankfully, it had not erupted in a long time). The schooner set all fore-and-aft sail and beat in on a port tack toward Saint Pierre, on the island’s southern coast.

  Near the entrance to the little harbor of Saint Pierre, the Albatros hove to and launched the motor sloop, Sam aboard her, which then made her best speed up the well-buoyed channel in toward the modern cargo terminal, easy to pick out from the ruins of the pre-Troubles port, and itself rebuilt from an ancient pier.

  On this pier could be seen a small group of people, presumably the islanders' reception party for the motor sloop. Willing hands among them received the sloop’s heaving lines, and drew in her mooring ropes until she was alongside and fast.

  Sam wasted no time getting ashore. “Please come with me, Mister Kendall. Mister Yeo, keep the engine ticking over for a quick getaway. I don’t know exactly how long we’ll be, but it won’t be more than an hour or so – less, if I can manage it,” Sam said in an undertone, as he climbed up onto the pier with the aid of a ladder helpfully produced by two of the line-handlers and held steady by them for his ascent.

  The official party then approached Sam and Kendall. A very tall, well-dressed gentleman among them was so obviously an Important Personage that Sam assumed he must be the president of the island.

  This assumption proved accurate when the tall gentleman introduced himself as Paul Petit – an ironic surname, and helpfully mnemonic, given his height – the President of the Republic of Reunion.

  “Welcome to Saint Pierre, and to Reunion, Captain Bowditch,” said President Petit. “We just received your most recent message a couple of hours ago. We’re sorry you can’t stay long – we had looked forward to entertaining you, and your officers and crew. We had assumed you’d stay for at least several days.”

  Sam had difficulty at first with the President’s Reunion accent – the patois had evolved on the island, and included many native Reunionnais words and phrases. But he soon got used to it, and even enjoyed its musical cadences.

  “I regret that I can only spare an hour, Mister President, but duty demands our presence elsewhere. We have intelligence of the pirates, and must follow it up.”

  “I understand. We gathered from your message that it was something like that. But can you at least spare the time for a cup of coffee in the harbor-master's office? We’d like to hear about your battles with the pirates off Madagascar and Nosy Be, if only the shortest summary. And, time permitting, we’d also like to brief you on the measures we’ve taken for the defense of Reunion, in the event the pirates attack us; we’d appreciate your professional opinion and criticism of our plans.

  “But where are my manners? Allow me to introduce Controller-General of Police James Hunter, the Republic’s senior police official and now commander of our defense forces, as well.”

  Hunter also had a mnemonically-helpful name, being a compact, muscular man with a predator-like air of alertness.

  Both Petit and Hunter were golden-skinned metis, mixtures of Kerguelenian and native Reunionnais blood. Sam knew that, over the couple of centuries of Kerguelenian settlement here, there had been extensive intermarriage.

  Sam, thus reminded of his own manners, introduced Kendall to the two Reunionnais officials, and the four walked up the dock to a small building just on shore. There they were introduced to the harbormaster, who personally served them coffee and then discreetly vanished. A large-scale map of the island was set up on an easel in one corner.

  Sam knew he couldn’t avoid relating the battles of Pirate Creek and Andilana, so he went through the high points of the actions as quickly as was consistent with politeness, omitting or abb
reviating many details.

  In each battle, Albatros had fought two enemy vessels. Off Pirate Creek, there had been a captured Kerguelenian schooner and a dhow, which the Albatros re-captured and sank, respectively. In the battle of Andilana, the Albatros, having been in port in Hell-ville, and alerted by a telephoned report from a Nosy Be militia coast-watch station of the appearance of two pirate dhows, had arrived off the coastal town of Andilana in the midst of a pirate landing operation against the settlement during hours of darkness. In a moonlight battle and subsequent stern chase, the Albatros had managed to sink the pirate boats as well as one of the dhows; Sam had been seriously injured in the combat with the first dhow when an enemy round carried away the Albatros's mizzen topmast and a piece of it had fallen on his head, giving him a severe concussion. The Executive Officer of the Albatros, Commander Bill Ennis, had then taken command and successfully concluded the battle, sinking the first dhow and chasing down the second one by “motor-sailing” – a combination of sail and towing with the motor sloop. When it became obvious that the Albatros would inevitably catch the dhow, the pirate cast off her sheets, slashed her halyards, and waited for the schooner to approach. Then she blew herself up, obviously hoping to destroy the Albatros as well. But she had either miscalculated the length of the fuse, or something else set off the charge prematurely; the Albatros, and the motor sloop, although damaged and suffering casualties from flying debris, survived the explosion.

  Once Sam had finished this brief narrative, his two listeners appeared satisfied, even impressed, with his narrative, and didn’t press him too much with questions, beyond sincere expressions of concern about his state of recovery from his wound, to his relief.

  “And now, I’ll ask Controller-General Hunter – in his role as just plain General Hunter, commander of the Reunion Defense Force—to outline our military stance. Your comments and criticisms will be much appreciated.”