The Cruise of the Albatros

by E. C. Williams

  Their briefing completed, Lyons and Bacon crawled around the bend in the creek bank and disappeared from Kendall's view. LPO Landry remained at that end of the now-reduced defensive line, rifle trained across the clearing toward the forest.

  Kendall was startled when firing broke out upstream, far sooner than he had expected. He could only assume that the pirate commander, not as patient as Kendall had given him credit for, had filtered men down the left bank of the creek to take the Kergs in the flank, and they had immediately encountered Lyons and Bacon moving to meet them. Almost simultaneously, there was a burst of fire from the bush, the rounds whizzing close overhead or kicking up spurts of dirt on their front – and scoring at least one hit, by the cry of pain which came from up the line -- and a score of pirates burst out of the undergrowth, shouting their incomprehensible war-cry and waving those wicked curved blades they wielded with such deadly effect.

  “Fire!” shouted Landry and Kendall almost in unison, and a volley from the seamen knocked down a third or more of the attackers. They reloaded and fired again and again, until all of the pirates had fallen except for a couple of laggards who were able to turn and dash to the cover of the bush. The rush had come perilously close to succeeding – a half-dozen of the enemy had made it to within a blade's length of the defenders before being shot down, and lay bleeding immediately to their front. Full of terror and adrenaline, several seamen kept firing into the bush, although no targets were visible. “Cease fire! Cease fire, you ânes!”

  Kendall heard a few more rounds fired in the upstream direction, both the sharp crack of the Kerg rifles and the duller report of the pirate smooth-bores, then silence except for the groans of the wounded and dying. Everyone remained frozen in position, rifles trained across the clearing, for long moments. Kendall caught movement to his left, and saw Landry crawl around the bend in the creek, obviously going to check on Lyons and Bacon.

  A man upstream called for PO Martin, who crawled in that direction and then began frantically pounding the chest of a wounded seaman. Kendall watched from the corner of his eye, not daring to take his full attention from their front, and saw Martin stop, shoulders slumped in defeat; his patient had clearly died. Landry, out of sight around the bend, shouted for Martin, who crawled in that direction.

  More waiting, while the forest gradually became alive again with bird and insect noises, interrupted at intervals by the groans and incomprehensible cries of the wounded pirates. Kendall supposed that some of the enemy wounded might survive, if given immediate medical attention, but he wasn't feeling much in the way of Christian charity at the moment, and at any rate his own wounded came first.

  He remembered, too, the wounded prisoner held in the schooner's sick bay after the first battle of Pirate Creek who had seized a knife, wounded one of his attendants, and then slashed his own throat. If he was not too atypical, then many of the pirates would literally rather die than accept help from the enemy. Kendall had no intention of putting PO Martin, their only medic, at risk in order to treat them.

  LPO Landry crawled along the creek bank to Kendall to report. “OS Meeks is dead – a round through his right eye. Amazingly, he was conscious to the end, but Martin couldn't save him. Lyons and Bacon are both wounded, not too seriously but enough to put them out of action.

  “They'd only gone fifty meters or so when they met a party of the enemy wading downstream to take us in the flank while the attack across the clearing distracted us. They kilt four pirates – I saw the bodies – and said a couple more got away into the bush.”

  Kendall absorbed this information while gazing to their front.

  “I make it sixteen dead or wounded in the clearing,” he said after a moment. “So the pirates have lost twenty men in this attack.”

  “Plus however many they lost during the fight along the trail,” Landry said. “To be on the safe side, say, half a dozen.”

  “So what's their effective strength now? They can't have left too many behind to guard the prisoners – they knew they were sailing out to do battle with us, and would want both their vessels fully manned. How many armed men does it take to control unarmed captives, mostly women and children? That's assuming, of course, that they have captives. And I think that's obvious now – why else leave anyone behind?”

  “Reckon they left two men behind to guard the prisoners when they chased us back to the clearing. With the four we saw get away just now … we could be facing no more'n half-a-dozen, sir!”

  “While we're down to only twelve effectives, ourselves.” After a brief silence, Kendall added, “Let's wait until we can be fairly sure another attack won't develop. Then we'll make a move.” He didn't specify what that move would be, because he didn't know yet.

  “Aye aye, sir,” Landry replied, and crawled along the creek bank in the upstream direction, exhorting the hands to remain alert.

  Kendall pondered the tactical situation for an hour, while every rifleman remained alert for another attack. The tide rose until the men were submerged to their waists, with a fierce tropical sun beating down on their upper bodies.

  Petty Officer Martin wriggled through the mud to Kendall and said, “Sir, I really need to get our wounded onto drier ground, where I can keep their wounds clean. I'm afraid this creek water will infect them.”

  “Very well, PO. Pass the word for LPO Landry for me, will you?”

  Kendall and Landry between them devised a plan of defense. Two men were sent to dash across the clearing and a hundred meters up the trail, there to take cover and watch and listen for the enemy. Two more were sent to retrieve the body of their dead shipmate, Dunn. Several more were stationed along the edge of the clearing, taking cover in the fringes of the bush, to do the same. Most of the rest were set to gathering half-burned logs and saplings from the destroyed pirate stockade, to use in erecting a low fortification behind which the wounded could be tended on dry land.

  LPO Landry set two men to the task of digging graves for Able Seaman-Gunner Dunn and Ordinary Seaman-Gunner Meeks. The men only had their mess tins, sheath knives, and sharpened sticks for tools. Luckily, the ground was soft, because Landry insisted on a depth of the customary full fathom, to preserve the bodies from scavenging animals.

  Once the grave was finished, all hands knocked off work just long enough for a brief funeral. Kendall recited as much of the service for burial at sea as he could recall, and a small, ugly, fierce-looking OS named Kruger, Meeks' best friend, sang the “Ave Maria” in an astonishingly pure tenor. AB Dunn and OS Meeks, wrapped in rain capes, were then reverently lowered into the pit, and it was filled in by their shipmates. No one seemed to know what religion either espoused, but the odds were that they were, if only nominally, Christian, so a crude cross was fashioned and erected at the foot of the double grave.

  After the brief service was concluded, Landry approached Kendall and said, “The hands' water bottles are mostly empty now. I caught several of 'em drinking from the creek, and I stopped that, 'cause I don't know if the creek water's wholesome. What do you think, Skipper?”

  “No clue, LPO,” Kendall was forced to admit. “Pass the word for Martin – we'll ask him.”

  PO Martin snorted derisively when asked if he thought the creek water was safe to drink. “Just look at it, sir!” And indeed, the creek flowed a particularly vile-looking greenish-brown.

  “The locals apparently drink it.”

  “They're accustomed to it, sir – over generations, their intestinal flora have evolved to deal with it. But if we drank it, we'd most likely all come down with serious dysentery – massive diarrhea with consequent dehydration.”

  “Well, do you have anything in your bag of tricks to purify it, Martin?”

  Martin considered this. “If we filtered it first, to strain out the grosser organisms and most of the muck, a few drops of disinfectant in each bottle will probably make it safe enough for healthy men to drink.”

  “Sounds good. Make it happen, PO.”

  Martin showed e
ach hand how to make a filter from his handkerchief by doubling it, then securing it very tightly around the neck of his water bottle with a bootlace or a bit of string. Then, once they had refilled their bottles through this filter, they lined up and the medic put a few drops of disinfectant in each bottle. He instructed them to shake their bottles well, and let sit for a few minutes before drinking.

  They complained of the nasty taste, but were so thirsty that they drank their first bottles dry, and lined up to repeat the process.

  “Lesson learned, Lieutenant,” said PO Martin ruefully. “Pack more disinfectant for missions ashore. I don't have much left now.”

  “I'll have Landry enforce strict water discipline, to conserve what you have,” Kendall said. He thought a moment, then added, “Would rum work just as well, PO?”

  “Well, yes sir, but you'd have to use more – a lot more.”

  “Enough more to make them drunk?”

  “Don't know, sir .. maybe, but I don't think so. Not that much.”

  “Maybe we should bring a small supply of rum with us, next time we have a shoreside mission. It would lift their spirits as well as purify the water. And they wouldn't bitch so much about the taste!”

  “Good idea, Lieutenant. I'll make a note to talk to the Professor about it.”

  Once the little fortified aid station was completed to Kendall's satisfaction, he called LPO Landry over.

  “Here's my intention, LPO,” he said. “We'll leave one rifleman here with PO Martin and the wounded. A rifle for Martin, too. Then we'll go back up that trail to search for the captives. Any observations?”

  “Just one, sir – give me ten minutes to inventory our ammo, and share it out equally. And have all hands clean their weapons.”

  “Good idea. Do it, LPO.”

  Kendall was exhausted, and he knew that the hands were, too. But they would just have to push through it – they had been sent to rescue the captives, and while there was daylight left, they had to press on.

  They proceeded single-file up the trail, with a reliable AB named Dubose on point, followed by Kendall and Andri, and LPO Landry bringing up the rear.

  Kendall noticed that Andri kept rubbing his right shoulder.

  “Are you injured, Mister Andri? Were you hit? If so, we should have PO Martin look at it.”

  “No, Lieutenant. My shoulder is bruised from the recoil of the rifle.” Kendall suppressed a smile at this; the kick of the 6.35 mm rifle – .25 caliber by nautical measure -- was hardly brutal. “You have to nestle the stock very firmly against your shoulder, Mister Andri – then the recoil is hardly noticeable. And your fire is more accurate.”

  “I'm afraid my fire could not have been less accurate, Mister Kendall,” replied Andri, with a rueful smile. “However hard I tried, I couldn't help closing my eyes just as I pulled the trigger – I may have killed a bird, but I never hit a pirate!” Both men laughed.

  “Well, you added to the volume of fire, Mister Andri – and that had to help.”

  A moment or two later, the seaman just behind Kendall hissed, “LPO Landry just passed the word – keep the noise down at the head of the column.” Suitably chastised, Kendall and Andri fell silent.

  After an hour or more of marching, Kendall felt weariness dragging at his legs as if he were wading through molasses. He had never been so tired in his life, not even after twenty-four hours straight on deck during a storm in the Forties. The tropical heat seemed to drain a man of strength after only minutes of exertion. He hoped the hands, younger and fitter, were bearing up better than he was.

  Andri whispered, “The bush is becoming less dense, Lieutenant. I think we're approaching more open country.” Kendall glanced around; the undergrowth did indeed seem sparser.

  Presently they emerged into a natural clearing, stony soil with a few low bushes and clumps of grass. Across the open space, to his shock, Kendall saw a huddle of crude huts and a group of people sitting and standing among them. On sighting Kendall's party, several men advanced in open order across the clearing, holding what appeared, at first glance, to be rifles, but which proved to be crude spears – saplings with points produced by rubbing against a rock and fire-hardened. All were dressed in rags and thin to the point of emaciation.

  They had found the captives.

  CHAPTER 7

  Sam and Bill ran forward. “Ease the sheets – let her fall back out of range!”

  Sam shouted to the watch officer.

  When they reached the bow, they recoiled in horror. Every man was down, and pools of blood sloshed around with the rolling of the vessel. The one-inch rifle had been not only dismounted by the hit, but the mount was destroyed and the breech looked seriously damaged to Sam.

  And their only skilled gunsmith was one of the men who lay bleeding on the foredeck.

  Doctor Girard and her two mates, along with a couple of SBAs, were already on deck, attending to the wounded and performing triage. Sam wanted to ask her about Mr. Du Plessis, the Gunnery Officer – how seriously he was hurt, how soon he would recover – but knew better than to distract her at this point.

  And he had another serious problem: the Albatros was essentially defenseless for the moment – her firepower had been reduced to a half-dozen 7.62 mm rifles. Once the enemy schooner figured that out, their roles would be reversed and Albatros would have to run for it.

  He ran back aft and shouted to Munro, “Recall the motor sloop!” Soon, three red rockets soared skyward – the signal for “rejoin now!”

  He now had another agonizing decision to make. To preserve the illusion that the Albatros still had claws, he could continue pursuit, staying just out of range of the pirate schooner's guns while pretending to chase as fast as he could.

  But, in the present breeze, this would mean the motor sloop would have a speed advantage of a knot or less, and would take many hours to catch up. The sloop didn't have enough fuel to motor that long.

  On the other hand, if he hove to, or turned to meet the sloop, he risked losing the pirate schooner – or worse, having her commander suspect the truth, and sail down on the Albatros, guns blazing, and sink her before the motor sloop could rejoin. His marksmen could perhaps harass the enemy gunners, but would that be enough to save them? The pirates' bronze muzzle-loaders might be crude, but their three-inch iron balls could smash the Albatros to matchsticks at close range.

  May as well get it over with, he thought, and said to Munro, “Tack and make all sail on the reciprocal course to rendezvous with the motor sloop.”

  Munro shouted orders, and the square topsail came down in preparation for tacking. The schooner then swung to port into and through the southwesterly breeze and reset her sails for a southerly beat on the starboard tack back toward the mouth of Pirate Creek.

  To the north, Captain John Lisi, late of the Kerguelenian merchant marine and now commander of the Sea Falcon (ex- Marchande Austral), gazed aft as the Albatros abandoned the chase and turned away. He had been given a new name on his conversion to Islam, but he found it difficult to pronounce, or even to remember, except for the “Mohammed” part, which seemed to be part of nearly everyone's name.

  Jean Petit said “That were a lucky hit, Skipper.”

  Petit was nominally first officer of the Sea Falcon, but in Lisi's opinion not even a very competent AB. Lisi had promoted him mainly in order to have someone to talk to in the patois, since his Arabic was still very limited.

  “Dieu maudit lucky – right at the max range of our cannons. Those gunners are finally improving their aim.”

  “Are we going to turn and chase her?”

  “And face those damned one-inch rifles again? Not a chance. We have to have guns as good as theirs if we're going to defeat the infidels. If God wills it,” he remembered to add piously.

  “No. If the conversion of the peoples of the southern Indian Ocean is a priority with the Mahdi, he'll have to give us more resources.”

  Midshipman Peltier was obeying his orders to the letter: staying just out
of range of the enemy schooner's three-inch smooth bores and maintaining a steady fire. Hemmed as she was between the motor sloop and the shore, the pirate vessel could only remain on a broad reach, on the port tack, and try to rejoin her consort – if she tacked, she would be heading directly toward the sloop. She fired steadily at the sloop, experimenting with heavier charges of powder to increase the range of her guns. But Peltier, terrified of losing his little command – more afraid of his captain's wrath than of the pirates – stayed well out of range.

  Peltier and his gunner decided on a conservative strategy of continuing to punch holes in the pirate schooner's hull at the waterline. A one-inch hole does not let in much water, and it can be quickly closed by banging in a wooden plug with a mallet. Two jets of water from the lee side of the schooner showed that the pirates were manning the pumps, ridding their vessel of the water taken on.

  But the sloop's one-inch gun inexorably banged away at the same general area on the schooner. Peltier theorized that every solid shot from their gun produced a cloud of splinters, wounding or killing members of the damage-control party who had just plugged the previous hole. Or so he hoped. Too, most hits were through-and-through shots, producing holes in both sides of the schooner. It was a deadly race, and one the motor sloop could only win, given enough time.

  “Mister Peltier! Signal from the Albatros”, shouted one of the sloop's hands. Peltier looked northward in time to see a third red rocket join the two already soaring skyward from the Albatros, nearly hull down but clearly now on a southerly heading.

  Merde! De grands tas de merde! Peltier cast one last longing glance at his prey, rescued by this signal from certain sinking, and said, “Steer for the Albatros, Babin. Full ahead, please, Mister Yeo.”

  On the Albatros's quarterdeck, Sam gazed astern through his telescope at the schooner he presumed to be the captured Marchande Austral. Would she turn and pursue her late pursuer? Not so far – she was still sailing northward with all sail set.

  He turned forward to see the motor sloop obediently heading directly for the Albatros, and the ex-Lac Marville in the process of tacking, then settling on a reach to the south-east. She was taking advantage of the motor sloop's recall to try to escape on her best point of sailing. Was she a bit lower in the water, with a somewhat sluggish roll? Hard to tell at this range. He looked back at the Marchande Austral: no change in her heading.