Blue Horizon

by Wilbur Smith

  “Turn the hourglass and mark the traverse-board,” he ordered the helmsman. Perhaps he could intercept her on dead reckoning. Then he snapped at Kumrah, “Put two good men on the wheel.”

  He hurried to the bows, and through the sheets of blinding rain tried for a glimpse of the stern lantern of the Revenge. He took little comfort from the fact that he could see and hear nothing.

  “God grant that Father is aware of the danger, and that he has doused the lantern. Otherwise it might guide Sir Guy to him, and he could be taken unawares.” He considered firing another gun to emphasize the urgency of the danger, but discarded the idea almost at once. A second gun would confuse the warning. His father might be led to believe that the Sprite had already engaged an enemy. It might alert the Arcturus and bring her down upon them. Instead he sailed on into the darkness and the torrents of blood-warm rain.

  “Send your sharpest lookouts aloft,” he ordered Kumrah grimly, “and have the gunners ready to run out on the instant. We will not have much warning if we come upon the enemy.”

  The hourglass was turned twice, and still they sailed on in darkness, every man aboard straining all his senses for some warning of the enemy ship. And the rain never let up.

  The enemy might have sailed on without spotting us, Mansur thought. He pondered the chances and the choices that were open to him. Or she might have turned to intercept us, and have passed us close at hand. She might even now be creeping up on the unsuspecting Revenge.

  He reached a decision, and called to Kumrah, “Heave the ship to, and warn every man to keep his eyes peeled and his ears open.”

  They lay dark and silent, and another hour passed, measured by the soft slide of the sand in the hourglass. The rain abated, and the freshening breeze veered into the north, bringing with it the spicy odour of the desert, which was still not far off. The rain ceased. Mansur was about to give the order to set sail again, when a flickering glow lit the darkness far over their stern. It played like candlelight on the underbelly of the lowering cloud masses. Mansur held his breath and counted slowly to five. Then came the sound, the unmistakable rumbling roar of the guns.

  “The Arcturus has slipped by us and she has found the Revenge. They are engaged,” he shouted. “Wear ship and bring her round on to the port tack.”

  With the night breeze on their quarter the Sprite tore through the darkness, both Mansur and Kumrah straining to coax every knot of speed from her. Ahead of them the flickering light and rumble of gun salvos grew brighter and louder as they sailed towards them.

  “God grant we are in time,” Mansur prayed, and as he stared ahead the wind of their passage in his face brought tears to his eyes, or it may have been some other emotion. The two persons he loved most were caught up in that maelstrom of shot and flame, and he was still powerless to intervene. Even though the Sprite lay well over and ran before the breeze like a stag hard pressed by the hounds, she was still too slow for Mansur’s heart.

  Yet the distance between them narrowed steadily and, standing in the bows, balancing to the ship’s urgent motion, Mansur was at last able to make out the shapes of the two ships. They were locked in conflict, lit by the muzzle flashes of their cannon.

  Mansur saw that they were on the opposite tack to the Sprite, crossing their bows at an acute angle, so he yelled to Kumrah to bring the Sprite round two points on to an interception course. Now the range began to close more rapidly, and he could make out the more intimate details of the battle.

  In the Revenge, Dorian had somehow wrested the weather gauge from Captain Cornish, and was holding him off, frustrating his efforts to bring the Arcturus alongside and to board her. But Cornish was blocking any effort that Dorian might make to bring the Revenge before the wind on to her best point of sailing and to run away from his superior adversary. In this formation the two ships were almost perfectly matched for speed, and the Revenge could not evade the bigger ship for much longer. In a duel of attrition like this the heavier weight of cannon must tell in the end.

  However, the Sprite was closing rapidly, and soon she would throw her own weight into the unequal contest. The balance then would swing in their favour—if Mansur could reach them before the Arcturus grappled and boarded the smaller ship.

  Closer and closer Mansur edged the Sprite towards the two ships. Even though his impulse was to rush in recklessly and hurl himself at the Arcturus, he restrained his warlike instincts, and manoeuvred across the wind.

  He knew that he was still shrouded in the night, invisible to the captains and crews of either ship. He must take the utmost advantage of the surprise element. There were many minutes still before he was in position to put up his helm and charge out of the darkness, to cross the Arcturus’s stern, then to grapple and board her from across her port quarter. Mansur watched the development of the conflict through the lens of his spyglass.

  Although the guns were firing steadily, the range was still too long for them to inflict telling damage on each other. He saw that a number of the Revenge’s shots had smashed holes in her opponent’s hull above the waterline. The shattered timbers were bright with fresh splinters. There were rips and holes in some of her sails, and a few spars had been knocked away in her rigging, but all her guns were firing steadily.

  Opposite her the Revenge was in no worse a case. In the light of the cannons, Mansur could pick out his father’s figure in the distinctive green robes as he directed his gunners. Batula stood beside the helm, endeavouring to milk the last turn of speed from his ship.

  Then Mansur turned his glass back on the quarter-deck of the Arcturus. With dread he searched for a glimpse of Verity’s tall slim figure. He felt a small lift of relief when he could not find her, although he guessed that Sir Guy had confined her below decks where she would have some protection from the screaming round-shot.

  Then he picked out Captain Cornish’s face, red and angry in the glare of gunfire. He was pacing his deck with ponderous dignity, occasionally shooting a glance at his adversary, then turning back to harangue his gunners through the speaking trumpet he held to his lips. Even as Mansur watched, a lucky shot from the Revenge took away a spar in the Arcturus’s rigging and her main course came billowing down across the quarter-deck, smothering officers and helmsman under its heavy canvas folds.

  There were a few moments of pandemonium as the crew rushed to hack away the flapping canvas. The fire from her batteries dwindled, and the blinded helmsman allowed her head to pay off a point before the wind as he tried to struggle out from under the sail. Then, from the far side of the quarter-deck, Mansur saw Sir Guy Courtney run forward into Cornish’s place, and take command. Mansur heard faintly his shouts and saw that order was being swiftly restored. He must act at once to take advantage of the moment. He called an order to Kumrah, who was already poised for it. The Sprite turned like a polo pony and charged out of the darkness. She passed close under the stern of the Revenge and Mansur jumped up in the shrouds and called across the narrow gap of water to Dorian, “Father!” Dorian spun round with a startled expression as the Sprite appeared miraculously out of the darkness so close at hand. “I will cross his bows and rake him. Then I will board him from his port side. Do you close from the other hand and split his force.” Dorian’s features lit with the old battle madness and he grinned at Mansur as he waved acknowledgement.

  Mansur ordered the guns run out as he steered boldly across the Arcturus’s bows. For almost five minutes, which seemed a lifetime, he came directly under her fire, but her gun-crews were still in disarray and only three balls crashed into the Sprite’s upper deck. Although they ripped open the heavy planking and the splinters buzzed like a swarm of hornets, not a single man of the Sprite’s crew was struck down. Then he was under the Arcturus’s bows and screened from her fire by her own hull.

  Mansur ran forward as his guns began to bear, then walked back along his battery, making certain that each one was aimed true before he gave the order to fire. One after the other the huge bronze weapons bellowed fl
ame and shot, then crashed back against their tackles. Every ball struck home.

  Mansur had cut his attack a shade too fine, and he passed so closely under Arcturus’s bows that the larger ship’s bowsprit snagged in the Sprite’s mizzen mast shrouds and snapped off, but the hulls missed each other by only an arm’s length before the Sprite was past.

  Immediately he was clear Mansur spun the Sprite round and laid her neatly alongside the Arcturus. The lids of the gunports on her port side were still closed, for the Arcturus was unprepared for an attack from this quarter. As the grappling irons were hurled over the Arcturus’s bulwarks and the two hulls were lashed together, Mansur fired another point-blank salvo from his starboard battery, then led his men across in a howling berserker rush. The gun-crews of the Arcturus turned to face them, but no sooner were they locked in the desperate hand-to-hand fighting than the Revenge took advantage of her weather gauge and came gliding in to grapple on to her starboard side. The Arcturus’s batteries on that side had not been reloaded after the last discharge, and the crews had abandoned them to meet Mansur’s attack. The Arcturus was caught in the jaws of the barracuda.

  The fighting raged back and forth across the main deck, but the combined crews of the two schooners outnumbered that of the larger Arcturus and slowly they began to wrest the upper hand. Mansur sought out Cornish and the two locked blades. Mansur tried to drive him back across the deck, and pin him against the shrouds. But Ruby Cornish was a wily old dog sailor. He came back at Mansur hard and fast, and they circled each other.

  Dorian killed a man with a quick thrust, then looked around for Guy. He was not certain what he would do if he found him. Perhaps, deep in his heart, he longed for a battlefield reconciliation. He could not see him in the ruck of fighting men, but he realized that the battle was swinging in their favour. The crew of the Arcturus were giving up the fight. He saw two throw aside their weapons and, quick as rabbits, scuttle down the nearest hatchway. When a crew ran below decks they were beaten.

  “In God’s Name the battle is ours,” he exhorted the men around him. “Have at them!” His voice filled them with fresh strength and they threw themselves at the enemy. Dorian looked for Mansur, and saw him on the far side of the deck. He was heavily engaged with Cornish. There was blood on his robe but Dorian hoped that it was not his own. Then he saw Ruby Cornish break off, and run back to attempt to rally his fleeing men. Mansur was too exhausted to follow him and rested on his sword. In the light of the battle lanterns, sweat shone on his face and his chest heaved with the effort of breathing. Dorian shouted across the deck to him, “What happened to Guy? Where is my brother? Have you seen him?”

  “No, Father,” Mansur shouted back hoarsely. “He must have run below with the rest of them.”

  “We have them beaten,” Dorian cried. “It will take one last charge, and the Arcturus is ours. Come on!”

  The men around him gave a ragged cheer and started forward, but then they came up short again as Guy Courtney’s high-pitched yell cut through the hubbub of the battle. He stood at the rail of the poop deck. In one hand he carried a burning length of slow-match and on the other shoulder he balanced a keg of black powder. The bung had been knocked from the keg and a thick trail of powder poured from it to the deck at his feet.

  “This powder trail runs to the ship’s main powder magazine,” he shouted. Though he spoke in English his meaning was clear to every Arab seaman aboard. The fighting ceased and all stared at him, aghast. A deathly silence fell over the Arcturus’s deck.

  “I will strike this ship, and blow up every one of you with it,” Guy screamed, and lifted the smoking, spluttering slow-match high. “As God is my witness, I shall do it.”

  “Guy!” Dorian shouted up at him, “I am your brother, Dorian Courtney!”

  “I know it well!” Guy yelled back, and there was a bitter, hard edge to his voice. “Verity has confessed her deceit and complicity to me. That will not save you.”

  “No, Guy!” Dorian cried. “You must not do it.”

  “There is naught you can say to dissuade me,” Guy shouted back, and hurled the powder keg down on to the deck at his feet. It burst open. Gunpowder spilled across the deck. Slowly he brought down the flaring slow-match and a wail of fear went up from the crowded main deck. One of the men from the Revenge turned and raced back to the ship’s side. He sprang across the narrow gap, to the illusory safety of the deck of his own ship.

  His example was infectious. They fled back to the smaller ships. As soon as they were aboard they hacked with their swords at the grappling lines that held them bound to the doomed Arcturus.

  Only Kumrah, Batula and a few other staunch sailors stood their ground beside Dorian and Mansur.

  “It’s a ruse! He will not do it,” Dorian told them. “Follow me!” But as he ran to the foot of the ladder that led up to the poop deck, Guy Courtney hurled the slow-match into the powder trail. In a dense, hissing tail of smoke the gunpowder ignited and ran back swiftly along the deck until it reached the open hatchway and shot down into the interior of the ship.

  The pluck of even the stalwart captains and their officers deserted them, and they turned and ran. The last of the grappling lines were parting, popping like cotton threads. In a moment the two smaller ships would be free of the Arcturus and drift away into the night.

  “Even if it is a ruse, we shall still be stranded here,” Mansur called to his father. There were hostile sailors all around them. Their predicament would prove fatal.

  “Not a moment to lose,” Dorian shouted back. “Run for it, Mansur.”

  Both of them turned and leaped across to the decks of their own ships, just as the last grappling lines parted and the hulls drifted apart. On the poop deck Guy Courtney stood alone. The powder smoke swirled in clouds around him, giving him a satanical appearance. The sparks of burning powder and debris took hold in the rigging and ran up the shrouds.

  The first cannon salvo had jarred the timbers of the hull and startled Verity awake. The Arcturus had come to battle stations so silently that in her barred cabin she had not realized what was happening on deck until this moment. She scrambled from her bunk and turned up the wick on the lantern that hung on gimbals from the deck above. She reached for her clothing and pulled on a cotton shirt and the breeches she preferred to skirts and petticoats when she needed freedom of movement.

  She was busy with her boots when the hull heeled sharply to the next broadside of cannon. She ran to the door of her cabin and beat upon it with her fists. “Let me out!” she screamed. “Open this door!” But there was no one to hear her.

  She picked up the heavy silver candelabrum from the table and tried to break open the door panels so that she could reach the locking bar on the outside, but the sturdy teak timbers resisted her efforts. She was forced to give up and retreat to the far side of her cabin. She opened the porthole and peered out. She knew that escape by this route was hopeless. She had considered it many times during the weeks of her captivity. The surface of the sea creamed by close below her face, and it was six feet to the rail of the deck above her. She gazed out into the night and tried to follow the battle by the flare and flicker of gunfire. She caught glimpses of the other ship that was engaging them, and recognized it at once as the Revenge. She could see no sign of Mansur’s ship.

  She winced every time the cannon salvos roared out from the deck above her cabin, or when an enemy ball crashed into their hull. The battle seemed to rage interminably, and her senses were dulled by the uproar. The stench of burnt powder permeated her cabin like some dreadful incense burned to the god Mars, and she coughed in its acrid fumes.

  Then, suddenly, she saw another dark apparition appear silently out of the darkness, another ship.

  “The Sprite!” she whispered, and her heart bounded. Mansur’s ship! She had thought never to see it again. Then it began to fire upon them, and she was so excited that she felt no fear at all. One after another the iron round-shot smashed into the Arcturus, and each time she sh
uddered to the strike.

  Then, abruptly, Verity was flung to the deck as a ball ripped through the bulkhead beside her doorway, and the cabin was filled with smoke and wood-dust. When it cleared she saw that the door had been shot away. She jumped to her feet, clambered through the wreckage and forced her way out into the open passageway. She heard the hand-to-hand fighting on the deck above her as the crew of the Sprite boarded the ship over her port rail. The shouts and cries mingled with the clash of steel blades and the report of pistols and muskets. She looked about her for a weapon but there was nothing. Then she saw that her father’s door stood open. She knew he kept his pistols in the drawer of his desk, and hurried to it.

  Now she stood directly below the skylight, and her father’s voice carried clearly through the opening: “This powder trail runs to the ship’s main powder magazine,” he shouted. A deathly silence fell over the Arcturus’s deck, and Verity froze. “I will strike this ship, and blow up every one of you with it,” her father screamed again. “As God is my witness, I shall do it.”

  “Guy!” Verity recognized the voice that answered him. “I am your brother, Dorian Courtney!”

  “I know it well!” Guy yelled back. “Verity has confessed her deceit and complicity to me. That will not save you.”

  “No, Guy!” Dorian cried. “You must not do it.”

  “There is naught you can say to dissuade me,” Guy shouted back.

  Verity listened to no more. She dashed out into the passage and immediately saw the thick trail of black powder running down the treads of the companionway and along the passage to the lower deck and the magazine.

  “He is telling the truth,” she cried aloud. “He truly means to strike the ship.” She acted without hesitation. She seized one of the fire buckets that stood at the foot of the companionway. The ship’s wooden hull was a mortal fire hazard, and the buckets filled with seawater were placed at every convenient point whenever the ship went into battle. Verity sloshed the water across the powder trail, washing a wide gap in it.