“I won’t stay here and drown if we’re sunk!” cried Wanna. And then she began to cry.
Tiger looked out through the stern ports. He took a stride and opened them. He thrust the heavy table into the gallery and lashed it there so that when the lashings were cut it would fall into the sea. He came back and gave her a knife.
“If we’re lost, saw that table loose. You’ll float until you’re picked up. Use the knife on any survivors that try to haul you off to save themselves. Now—”
“You are abandoning me,” she wept logically. “You mean me to be cast up adrift on some foreign shore, alone, friendless and hungry, prey to anyone who—”
“Stow that,” said Tiger. He stood perplexed and then glanced around. Old Thunderguts had had booty aboard. Tiger had never been interested enough to look for it. But now he took in the iron chest against the wall, the ship’s safe, and with the keys which had come to him, opened it and reached in to grab some gems of value or a little gold she could tie into her girdle against need. He started to reach and then, open-mouthed, he stopped.
“What’s the matter?” said Wanna, alarmed at his expression.
Tiger didn’t answer her. Before his eyes lay the Two-World Diamond slowly materializing but already glittering brightly in the sunlight from the ports. He swallowed hard, so close had he felt his luck being crowded by the imminence of that powerful fleet. He grinned a grin of relief then and reached for the beckoning stone.
His hand closed.
But it closed on empty air!
The diamond, an instant before he touched it, had disappeared!
Tiger swore and made ineffectual snatches at the place it had been. But the diamond had thoroughly vanished. He sank back on his haunches and passed a trembling hand through his tawny locks. He collected his shattering thoughts. The diamond had not been there the instant he opened the chest. It had been arriving there, for less than half of it had been visible and even that was somehow nebulous. Had his own reaching for it made it disappear? He thought not.
Vague half-memories were stirring in him, memories of his life in another world, thin things like dreams. He seemed to be able to touch those memories up to the instant he looked at them, when they vanished as had this diamond. He harked back to the action of the Graceful Jinnia. In the boarding, a grizzled ifrit had swiped at him with the butt of a pike, landing a blow which would have split the average skull. That injury had done him the service of laying him out long enough for the Jinnia to be taken without his being killed. He had revived when the marid marines had picked him up to heave him over the side after the other dead, and the conquering officers of Arif-Emir had grudgingly taken him prisoner.
As he thought back, things had shifted at that instant of the blow. Just before that he had been aware of something he could not now locate. It was as if he dwelt without sleeping, as if he lived in another existence. Something was missing from his personality. Legends and sailor hearsay stirred uneasily in him. Another world, a world where humans ruled and the jinn were not. The Two-World Diamond which bestowed immortality on ifrits— He was Tiger, yes. But he was also an entity elsewhere, somehow.
The Two-World Diamond. Why was it called that? Did it dwell in another world and this? Did it pass from one to the other? And had it been passing, almost in reach to save him by some miracle he knew it would possess, when somebody in another world snatched it back? Had it come to this chest before?
The thought that it might have been in this chest before made him angry. He got up and booted the chest. Then he remembered Wanna and, stopping, scooped up some of Old Thunderguts’ loot, a few emeralds and rubies, and thrust them at Wanna. He slammed the lid.
“Put them out of sight and if we’re sunk, do as I say,” he commanded. “And stow the gab. I’m busy.”
She nodded submissively and he swung back up to the deck. He was out of humor, a strange thing for Tiger, always so strong and sunny.
“Claw up to windward, you swab!” he snapped at the steersman. “Are you steerin’ a washtub?”
“Lot of ships up there, Tiger,” said Ryan, nodding to the north. “You really mean to attack?”
“We’ll attack!” said Tiger. “We can’t outrun them. We can at least take a few of them along to hell. I overplayed a hand, Ryan. I was counting on that diamond. It almost came back.”
“What do you mean, almost?”
“Sir,” said a youngster who served the cabin and whose eyes were sharp, “if you keep on this course, you’ll hit Frying Pan Shoals. Beggin’ pardon, sir. But I was just aloft.”
Tiger looked at the child interestedly and suddenly smiled. The sight of the young face, the sound of such interest beyond his duties, brought Tiger to himself. “Well done, lad. You’ll teach Ryan navigation yet. How’s it you know so much about shoals?”
“My father was the sea artist for the buckaroons,” said the serving lad. “They haven’t another, you know, sir, since my father was killed in an attack. They don’t know much about navigation, sir, the buckaroons; my father was the assistant astrologer once to Arif-Emir, sir, before he predicted something wrong. He run away with me and became the buckaroon sea artist and he never run aground.” He added the last with great pride.
“And you’re a cabin boy, aren’t you?” said Tiger.
“I didn’t mean impertinence, sir. Old Thunderguts, he said he’d kill me if my father ever run them aground and these be treacherous waters, sir. I’m still alive even if my father be dead—but not by shipwreck, sir.”
“Enemy hull up and coming fast!” said the lookout far aloft.
“How old are you, lad?” said Tiger, unperturbed.
“Thirteen and I can write, sir, and read the charts and take pelorus sights and take meridian altitude shots and forecast coming events, sir.”
“His nickname’s Mister Luck,” interjected the Terror’s bosun, unasked, passing with a work party which was padding the rails with hammocks against the flying of splinters. “And it ain’t a complimentary name, Skipper. He’s been in bad ever since he read stars for Old Thunderguts and said he’d die by necromancy. Get along, sonny.”
“Hold up,” said Tiger. “I’m giving the orders here. Tend to your hammocks and boarding nets. Now there, Mister Luck, you say you know your charts?”
“All my father ever taught me was stars and charts, sir.”
Tiger ran a big hand through the boy’s blond hair. “How do you read the coming battle, Mister Luck?”
“How do you want it read, sir?”
“What’s the width and breadth of Frying Pan Shoals, lad?” said Tiger. “And how much water in any channel through them?”
“Four channels through, sir. The deepest draws thirty-one feet. The shoals run thirty leagues east and west, sir, and five leagues north and south. Fine fishing grounds. My father could tell you more, sir. We fished there many a time. That was when we had a yacht, sir.”
“And how did your father get in wrong with Arif-Emir?” said Tiger.
“Enemy on a broad reach, gun ports down!” cried the lookout high aloft.
“Why, he read the stars to say, sir, that Arif-Emir would die in a fit without any soul, sir. And it got worded around the palace, sir. And you’re damned near aground, sir.”
“Lad,” said Tiger, “scamper up to the crosstrees of the fore. Take this brass trumpet. You can call steering orders? Very good, sir. Take us through the main channel of Frying Pan Shoals and your head if we go aground!”
“They’re called Allah’s Revenge by the ifrits, sir, and if the lunk on the wheel can steer, sir, we’ll not go aground!”
“Wait!” said Ryan to Tiger but the boy was already gone.
“Well?” said Tiger, looking to port where the ships from Tarbutón had grown very tall and very splendid in the bright sunlight against the fleecy clouds.
“Thirty-one feet!” said Ryan. “That will take us through all right. But it’ll take the men-o’-war through as well. They don’t draw more’n thirty, any one
of them.”
“Pass the signal astern,” said Tiger to Walleye, “to follow close in line. We’re going through the shoals.”
“It’s a tricky channel but they can follow!” said Ryan. “You’ll get nothing out of it but fifteen miles of uneasy sailing and only six points off the wind in this old hooker at the turns. And that youngun! How d’you know he’ll be able to?”
“Old Thunderguts died by necromancy,” said Tiger. “And anyone with nerve to forecast that has nerve enough to tell the truth. Old cowards brag, laddie. Walleye, soon as we enter the channel have the ships up sprit to poop. The water’s smooth in there if the wind is brisk. I want them close. I’m passing aft to the rear guard as soon as we’re strung out.”
The thin voice of the child in the fore crosstrees, made bell-like by the brass trumpet through which he yelled, began to send his orders back. Ryan at first had been much discontented, for it is hard to understand how a child may know anything so intricate. But Mister Luck had obviously been conning and charting since he was old enough to shed diapers, such was the confidence of his tones and the accuracy of his commands. Indeed, under the guiding of an indulgent father whom he dearly loved, Mister Luck had started spinning astrolabes when most boys start on tops, and if Mister Luck was short on everything but navigation, a master could have found no fault with his piloting that morning. He was up there looking down from an angle which made “Allah’s Revenge” an undersea relief map to him, a chart in itself glassed over by the incredible blueness of the deeps and greenness of the shallows.
“Down a spoke!” came the piping voice up amongst the vast spread of tautened sail. “Ease her! Meet her! Steady as you go! Mr. Ryan, the main ry’l’s luffing!”
“The upstart,” growled Ryan. But it was true.
To port and starboard the breakers of the main channel were creaming white on reefs. The black ribs of a long-lost ship jutted from the niggerheads on the port bow; the carcass of another was combed by the swell.
The channel entrance was faced to the westward. Far to either side the seas were breaking and the Terror, for some distance inside, still lifted in a swell. But soon the channel twisted into a southerly course and the swell was gone, broken by the expanses of shoals and shallows. The water became an absinthe green and flat but the wind was brisk and steady at fifteen knots. Ryan leaped about and bawled his commands to trim and brace, scared at the nearness of the fangs of rock at each twist and turn. All they needed, he swore to himself, was a shift of wind and they’d be gallows birds. Ryan allowed he could have run that channel himself but immediately shuddered over the next jagged shelf which came so close it seemed to graze their skin.
“Up, up!” came the bell-like voice from the crosstrees. “Up three spokes. Steady her. Up two more! Ease her. Meet her!”
The brown and mildewed sails slatted and spilled, too close to the wind. Another spoke and they’d be taken aback.
“Down! Down! Down! Down six spokes. Ease her. Ease her. Down another spoke. Ease her! Meet her. Steady as she goes!”
The Terror thrust around a channel bend, keeping near the windward bank of the channel. She was doing five knots, foul of bottom as she was, but Ryan and the crew, seeing the closeness of the menace in the murky green shallows and the sharpness of the outcrops lapping white, were absolutely certain she was doing thirty at the very least.
Ryan looked around for Tiger for permission to shorten sail. But Tiger was gone. By orders, four of the other vessels had drawn tightly into a line astern. Their various speeds and sailing and steering difficulties made them jockey and open and close their intervals, now almost overriding the next, now letting a wide gap appear which gave helmsmen an uneasy time in following the Terror’s precise wake. All of them on every ship had watched the maneuvers of the Tarbutón fleet with stunned forebodings.
It had been very well to talk about actually fighting men-o’-war but when they were there, tall mountains of canvas out of black hulls, studded with the brass of polished guns, alive with marine sharpshooters, the stouter hearts skipped a few beats. Twenty-seven ships in that fleet, eight of them first-raters, the rest of them frigates. And the buckaroons recognized the difference between fighting merchantmen and men-o’-war with a shock. They were heavy and sluggish as men-o’-war will be and the buckaroons at first hoped that they could outspeed them and get by these reefs and with a windward gauge show them clean heels. There had been a chance to do that and it was with dismay that the buckaroons had found Tiger headed into the long and twisting channel of Frying Pan Shoals, for it was obvious that the Tarbutón fleet could follow and just as obvious that at the far end, only three hours’ sail, their position would be no better and probably worse than before entering. Further, a grounding would leave a ship to the mercy of the ifrit might.
One vessel had not elected to obey Tiger’s order. She had plunged out like a hare from the line as soon as her captain read the intent and, setting everything from stuns’ls to the cook’s underwear, she had raced seaward, using her weather gauge. Her anxiety was much appreciated by the rest. They followed Tiger but their hopes inclined toward the escaping brig. They watched her staggering forward under her press of sail; they watched her draw ahead and almost cross the bows of the two frigates detached to take her. And then they saw her masts go by the boards like saplings, their rottenness unable to take the strain. The frigates swiftly came up to her and overran her and their gun ports thundered white smoke and scarlet against the helpless brig. The acrid mist hid the action but the rolling broadsides told the fate. The Tarbutón fleet was murdering a ship already vanquished and the thin sharp barks of musketry might have been heard thereafter as her survivors, one by one, were picked off the jetsam to which they had clung. The temper of the Tarbutón fleet against the buckaroons sent a quiver of despair through the remaining five vessels and they threaded close and hot through the tortuous channel.
The Tarbutón fleet, not expecting this but supposing that the buckaroons would flee and trust to the weather gauge and lighter foot, were thrown badly out of formation when Tiger passed into the channel. The Tarbutón vessels, commanded by ifrits, were not bright, only batteringly stubborn and merciless. It took them long enough to recognize what had happened to lose any advantage of an early tack. The entire line of battle went on by, well downwind of the entrance. Signal flags jumped high to their yards and fluttered there, commanding sparks of color. The van wore ship and passed the rear guard and came up on a port tack for the entrance. Like a coiling snake, the line of battle followed, the rear guard completing the ware just as the vanguard entered the channel mouth. This channel had no terrors for the jinn. It was thirty-one feet minimum depth and in most places hundreds of yards wide, narrowing only at three turns where it would still admit a large vessel. A league, because of the overshoot, separated the vanguard of the jinn from the last of the buckaroon vessels, the lugger Tiger and his mates had first stolen from Arif-Emir at Balou Bay.
Tiger, while Ryan acted as sailing master and the youth called Mister Luck conned from the Terror’s fore, called for a gig to be lowered and towed astern. As it went under the counter he dropped into it and was paid off until he could swing aboard the vessel next astern. He landed on deck, glanced around and gave a volley of orders. Then he was dropped over again and passed to the third ship where he once more boarded and made his orders known. He visited the fourth and then the fifth and on the fifth he stayed. In the vessels ahead there was much activity. Tiger could look astern down the tortuous length of the passage to the vanguard of the jinn. Gilded bows and gleaming sail, she rose tall and majestic, her bluff bows whitening the absinthe green of the water, her conning officer, brilliant in lace, insolent on her sprit. Behind her came the Tarbutón fleet, an orderly parade for whom this pass was routine, since often, homeward bound, they used it when it served.
Tiger looked ahead. A long bend was coming, a bend which would put the wind on their starboard quarter for a distance of almost three miles. He saw the T
error, with much gathering of speed, square away for the run of it. The brigantine behind her entered that portion of the passage. Then a brig and the two luggers of which Tiger’s was the last.
Tiger hand-over-handed into the rigging, a spyglass in his sash. He looked to the end of the downwind pass. After that the passage stretched for several miles, nearly all of it curved to make the run of it a starboard tack. But where the downwind passage turned there was a narrows not three ships’ breadth wide.
The last lugger entered the run. The vanguard of the jinn was a league and a half behind. Tiger swept them with his glass. The ifrits stood out in their gold lace, the marids in their green coats. The human crews, scampering to the pop of starters in the hands of marids, trimmed smartly at each order or stood by their guns, their matches smoking in tubs. How well Tiger knew those ships! How bitter were their crews! But they would shoot on orders and fight on no other ethic than that of high command.
Sliding down the run at increased speed, the Terror was shortly through the narrows, tacking sharply to keep from slipping when she had turned. Then, behind her, the brigantine negotiated the turn but hastily furled and got an anchor into the bank about twenty yards beyond the extreme end of the curve. She steadied herself with a kedge and then dropped back toward the narrows with her capstan. A smart sailor that, thought Tiger. One buckaroon would get his due if it all came out all right.
The brig and the next to last lugger had no such difficult maneuver to perform. The brig, at the narrowest part of the passage, simply went hard right and ground into the reefs with a shock and lunge. The lugger went hard left, bounced off the stern of the brig and bludgeoned into the opposite bank.
Tiger glanced back at the jinn. They were just entering the passage of the run and the vanguard was already picking up speed. At tight and proper battle interval behind them came the rest, twenty-six vessels besides the flag. They made, thought Tiger, a grand and beautiful sight.
With a swift drop down a halyard, Tiger reached the deck just before his own lugger struck. It pointed in toward a small gap which remained between the stern of the brig on the port and the side of the lugger on the starboard. The rendering and tortured squeal of wood and the snap of twisted pins was followed by the shuddering whisper of the masts as they began to fall.
Slaves of Sleep & the Masters of Sleep Page 26