Into Uncharted Seas

by E. C. Williams

  “They kept talking to us in their language, and seemed strangely surprised that we couldn't understand – why would we know their tongue? At any rate, we got along pretty well with signs and gestures, and the few words of Arabic I remembered from talking to our prisoners, when we had them aboard the Albatros.”

  “Is that what they speak? Arabic?” Dave interrupted.

  “No, sir – I would have recognized the sounds of Arabic, even if I couldn't understand it. No, it was a tongue entirely new to me. But they did understand and speak some Arabic, as well.”

  “Not too surprising, if they're slaves of the pirates, as we've guessed. But go on, Mr. Cameron.”

  “There's not much else, Captain, because we could only talk by signs, and not much info could be exchanged that way. We did figure out that they've heard of us and that we're enemies of the Caliphate, and that they hate the Arabs. And therefore see us as friends.”

  “So why is this young man here? Why did you bring him back to the dhow?”

  “Well, after a lot of signing and hand-waving, it became clear that Ajali, here – that's apparently his name – insisted on coming with us. The other man, who seemed to be a relative of Ajali, his father or uncle, was all for this, too.”

  “Are you telling me that you brought him back because he insisted, Gadget? You just didn't have the strength of will to say 'no'?” Dave said, with heavy sarcasm. Cameron blushed, but went on regardless.

  “No, sir. I mean yes, sir, I could have said 'no' – I could have forced him out of the dory at gunpoint. Because he had climbed out of his canoe and into our boat before we could stop him.

  “But I considered, sir, that the Commodore is thinking of taking Mafia for an advanced base. And I reflected that Ajali, as an inshore fisherman, would be a useful pilot – and as a native, a priceless source of intelligence about the island. But if I've done wrong, I can take him back in the dory and put him ashore, by force if necessary.”

  There was a long, tense silence while Dave reflected on this. At last he said, “Well, you make a good argument, Todd. Mr. Ajali could certainly be useful to us, if we can overcome the language barrier. And we can hardly put him ashore now – he may resent it to the extent of reporting our presence to the pirates.

  “No, it appears we're stuck with him for now.” Dave turned to the African and extended his hand. “Welcome aboard the Scorpion, Mr. Ajali. My name is Schofield.” Ajali smiled in relief. While unable to understand the words of Dave's and Todd's exchange, the sense of it was plain enough, and he had clearly been anxious about the outcome. He grasped Dave's hand and shook it vigorously. Dave reflected that it was interesting that the handshake was apparently a universal form of greeting.

  “Now, Todd, take Mr. Ajali around and introduce him to his new shipmates. See if you can find a spare hammock for him, too.”

  “Aye, aye sir,” Cameron said, happy to be “Todd” again, instead of the austere “Mister Cameron” – or, even worse, “Gadget”.

  “And then come back and brief me on what you found out today. You can submit a written report later.”

  When Cameron had led Ajali away, Landry approached Dave and said, “Well, Skipper, looks like it's 'mission accomplished' for us – may we head south now?”

  “Sure, Chief. Back to Nosy Be it is.”

  - 4 -

  Sam Bowditch stood in his day cabin in his underwear, intensely reading and re-reading the radio message just brought to him. Mr. Robert, the Albatros's comms officer, stood nervously waiting, apprehensive about having wakened the Commodore in the middle of the night. He had come himself rather than sending one of his mates because he was the sort of warrant officer who wouldn't order one of his men into a danger he wouldn't face himself. And the wrath of the Commodore constituted almost the equivalent of enemy fire.

  Finally, Sam said, “You did right to call me immediately, Sparks. Now go ahead and show it to the XO – don't wait 'til morning. And please ask him for me to come to the chartroom at his earliest convenience.” The latter phrase when uttered by the Commodore being naval politesse for “… on the double!”

  As Robert hurried away, Sam strode out of his day cabin and down the passageway aft to the tiny space that doubled as the Commodore's mess pantry and the berth of Ritchie, his steward. He banged on the door and shouted, “Coffee, Ritchie – the big pot, and extra strong. And bring two mugs to the chartroom as soon as it's done.” Sam then returned to his cabin, dressed quickly, and hurried topside to the quarterdeck.

  There he met Commander Kendall. “You read the message, Al?”

  “Yessir. But I don't see what we can do about it. Other than broadcast a general warning to shipping.”

  “Let's take a look at the chart, shall we?” The two officers stepped into the chartroom – or rather Sam did, while Al looked in over his shoulder, there being no room for two big men in the tiny space. Sam pulled out the planning chart for the southern Indian Ocean. “If we consider that those two dhows were off the southern point of Mafia Island when the Scorpion sighted them– close enough – and headed southeast and therefore intending to cruise off the northern coast of Madagascar, how long will it take them to get there?”

  The question was rhetorical. Sam was already stepping off the distance.

  “Call it six hundred sea miles or thereabouts. At their best speed, that's about four days – I don't think they'll be making best speed in the light airs we've been having, do you? How long will it take to get the Albatros ready for sea, d'you think?”

  Kendall stared aghast at his commodore. “Ready for sea? Surely you don't think we can get underway in time to intercept 'em! The schooner's a shambles, both of our one-inchers and half our small arms are gone, and we're less than half manned! Sir.” The “sir” tacked on when he belatedly remembered his manners.

  “We won't know 'til we try, will we?”Sam replied mildly. “We can take all of Joan's small arms, and strip her of hands except for a skeleton crew. We still have our 37 mm rifle, and the pirates have nothing to match her in either range or accuracy. If we can get under way in, say, twenty-four to thirty-six hours we should be in position to catch them. With luck.”

  Seeing the horrified look on Kendall's face, Sam said, “We can do it, Al. You can do it – you've done it before. Stop all work on the Joan and get the bulk of her crew over to work on Albatros. Same for the yard workers. With all those hands, we can get it done.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Al said in his raspy half-whisper, with as brave a face as he could muster. He didn't think it was remotely possible, but he had no choice but to try his damnedest, driving the crew right up to, but just short of, mutiny. Such was the fate of the Executive Officer.

  “Commodore, to get everything done, we'll have to start right now. I'll have all hands called at ...” here he paused and glanced at his watch, “Four bells in the morning watch – that's in about twenty minutes. There are some tasks we can begin before daylight.” Al hesitated, then added, “It would be a great help if you would address the hands when they're called, Commodore – explain the mission to them, and the urgency.”

  “Happy to do that, XO.”

  Everyone involved remembered the next thirty hours only as a confused blur of frenzied activity. When all hands were called, and the puzzled and sleepy crew had mustered by divisions, Sam had spoken to them briefly. He hadn't tried for a soaring, uplifting speech, merely told them the situation, and explained the possibility of catching the war-dhows at the very beginning of their cruise. This seemed to be motivation enough, because there was no shirking – or none that Al could detect, anyway – during that long, brutal day.

  The Joan was raided at first light for all of her crew except an anchor watch, a midshipman, her surgeon and SBAs – and, to his bitter disappointment, her executive officer, Mike Christie. Joan was also plundered of much of her stores and ammo, since Sam had no idea how long the Albatros would have to remain at sea, and had no time to wait for additional supplies to be ordered and
delivered from shore. So all day long and into the next evening, the motor sloop pulled trains of boats loaded with Joans, their sea bags and hammocks, and then on subsequent trips food and ammunition for small arms, as well as the arms themselves, to the Albatros, then back empty for another load.

  Sailors swarmed over the rigging, knotting and splicing, and replacing shattered booms with spars just roughed out, not yet sanded smooth and varnished navy-style. “They practically still got the bark on!” the Boatswain exclaimed in horror and disgust.

  So it went all through an endless day, the seamen continually harried by their petty officers, who in turn were persecuted by their warrant and commissioned officers.

  There were a few short breaks for hastily-gobbled meals, and, in rotation, one nap was allowed each man. The XO was of the opinion that forty-five minutes of sleep was enough to keep a man going for another eight hours, at least, so that was all the rest they got.

  Finally, at 0550 the following morning, the word “anchor's aweigh” was passed aft, and the motor sloop took up the strain on the towline to point Albatros out to sea. All sail was set to catch the gentle offshore breeze, the hands moving in slow motion, as if under water, so exhausted they were operating on ingrained habit rather than thought.

  Sam was concerned about the crew. He knew that accidents increased with fatigue, and a three-masted schooner being sailed in darkness was a hazardous work environment under the best of conditions.

  “Secure for sea as soon as you can, Al, so the hands can get some rest.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” And almost immediately the pipe was made, “Now secure the special sea and anchor detail. Dismiss the watch below.”

  There was some momentary confusion at that. Which is the watch below? And which one am I on? In snatched moments the XO and Boatswain had quickly devised a watch, quarter, and station bill that integrated the Joans into the Albatros's crew, but the word had been imperfectly passed. This confusion was soon resolved, and half the crew went below, to fall gratefully into their hammocks, fully clothed, asleep immediately.

  “If you have no objection, Commodore, I intend to dog the forenoon watch and put off daytime routine until noon, to give all hands at least a couple of hours sleep before they have to turn to again.”

  “No problem, Al. Good idea. In fact, you do the same – you're out on your feet. Turn in 'til noon. I'll keep an eye on the watch.”

  “Commodore, you must be tired, too ...”

  “I've been up, but I haven't been working my ass off for thirty hours straight, like you, Al. Go to bed. That's an order.”

  Once Kendall had gone below, Sam paced the windward side of the quarterdeck and pondered the gamble he was taking. He was proceeding on the assumption that the two war-dhows spotted by the Scorpion off the southern tip of Mafia Island were bound for the stretch of ocean between Madagascar and the islands of Mauritius and Reunion, to cruise for merchantmen bound to or from Hell-ville, Port Louis, Saint Pierre, or Saint Denis. This seemed the most likely possibility to him.

  But what if he was wrong, and the dhows were staging another raid on Nosy Be? They had done it once before, with the same size force: two big dhows crowded with armed men. They had been destroyed by the Albatros in a desperate night battle – the “moonlight battle” as it had come to be called.

  And if, instead of hitting Andilana, which had been their objective then, or some other coastal town, they sailed right around Nosy Be to bombard Hell-ville harbor, there was no force available stop them. They could sink the helpless, unarmed, and undermanned Joan of Arc at her moorings. This thought made Sam shudder in horror.

  At Andilana, the pirates had intended a landing, apparently to burn the town and take captives – who, judging by past experience, would most likely become slaves. The Nosy Be militia was then organized on a local basis, and in spite of a total strength of nearly a thousand, had only a handful of men available at Andilana to defend it, and no plan for concentrating rapidly at the point of threat. The pirates could have sacked and burned the town at their leisure and been long gone by the time help arrived.

  Militia staff officers had learned a lesson from the “moonlight battle”, and now copied the strategy of the Reunion Defense Force: a mobile unit of picked volunteers, on duty full-time at a central location and with the authority to commandeer all available motor transport. On a telephone warning from a coast-watcher post, they could speed to the threatened spot and oppose a landing with a credible force while the balance of the regiment mobilized.

  But, with the Albatros absent, the island was defenseless against shore bombardment. There were no shore batteries, because the Nosy Be militia did not yet have artillery – only small arms.

  Sam's sortie was based on his conclusion that the pirates would assume that both Albatros and Joan were still in Hell-ville harbor, fully manned, armed, and ready to defend the island, and that they had therefore chosen to cruise the east coast of Madagascar, hoping to snap up defenseless or lightly armed merchantmen.

  If he was wrong, Joan of Arc, as well as the town of Hell-ville, were at serious risk.

  He could only hope and pray that he was right. The Albatros was now committed to her present course.

  By eight bells in the morning watch the next day, the Albatros had drawn abeam of Cap d'Ambre. Sam's first intention had been to run south, heading for the most probable intended cruising grounds of the corsairs, the patch of water off the southeastern coast of Madagascar through which a vessel would pass whether bound to or from Nosy Be, Mauritius, or Reunion.

  But this was a tremendous breadth of water to patrol – at least 250 nautical miles. In theory, in clear weather, his lookouts could view a circle of ocean twenty miles in diameter, and spot the pirates' sails as they just nicked the horizon.

  In theory.

  Sam reflected that Caliphate masters, like Kerg sea-officers, would probably prefer the shortest distance between two points, other things being equal. So regardless of whether they intended to cruise the southernmost approaches, the east coast of Madagascar, or the waters off the Mascarene Islands, they would have to round Cap d'Ambre. If he chose to cruise off d'Ambre, he could catch the pirates – if they had not already sailed past the cape. And he would be close enough to Nosy Be that it was just conceivable that he could return in time to make a difference, if that turned out to be the pirates' objective.

  So Sam decided to cruise off Cap d'Ambre. And hope devoutly that this proved to be the right decision.

  The weather was clear, in fact a typically brilliant day in the southeast trades, with a fresh breeze, scattered clouds, and bright sun. The crew, somewhat recovered by a couple of watches below from the ordeal of getting the vessel ready for sea, worked busily at cleaning, which had been neglected in favor of those tasks essential to making the schooner seaworthy and battle-ready.

  “She could use a bit of tidying up, don't you think, Boats?” the XO said to the Boatswain.

  “XO sez the schooner's dirty, and he wants her cleaned up”, the Boatswain said to his mates.

  “The Commodore sez the Old Bird is disgustingly filthy, and you lot better get off your lazy asses and get her shipshape if you know what's good for you!” the bosun's mates shouted at the seamen.

  Thus the chain of command worked its magic, and the schooner was quickly restored to her state of pristine cleanliness, decks and rails scrubbed, all lines neatly coiled, running rigging overhauled and knots replaced with neat long-splices.

  After dinner, the Commodore decreed that all hands be exercised in the use of firearms. He wanted to refresh their skills after a long stay in port, of course, but also to integrate the Joans into the crew by making them feel a part of the team. He and Kendall had considered putting all or most of the Joans into one watch, with the Albatrosses in the other, thus allowing the hands to work with old shipmates to whose ways they were accustomed. After all, this manning was not expected to be permanent.

  But Kendall pointed out that as a practical m
atter he couldn't keep shipmates together at battle stations – the crews would necessarily be mixed. So they decided to fully integrate the two sets of seamen from the outset, thoroughly mixing them by watch, and thus messing and berthing, as well as by battle station. But before they encountered the pirates – if, they did, God behaag – the hands from two different vessels would have to be meshed into a single smoothly-functioning machine.

  All the morning, while everyone else was cleaning ship, the carpenter's crew had been assembling a floating target from odds and ends: empty drums, scrap timber and canvas. It took the form of a raft with a tripod mounted on it, about ten feet tall, and on the tripod, stretched over a wooden framework, a canvas target crudely painted with a bull's-eye.

  As soon as everyone had eaten the mid-day meal, the schooner took in all her canvas except for a couple of staysails for steerage way. The target was launched with a great splash, at the end of a cable marked to indicate range. It naturally drifted dead down-wind from the Albatros, so all the target practice would take place from the bows. For the first round of firing, it was tethered just five fathoms away, in order for the officers to try their hand with the 9 mm revolvers with which they were armed at battle stations. The Gunnery Officer, Mr. Du Plessis, now fully recovered from a serious wound but left with a permanent limp, took charge of the exercise. He demonstrated what he called the “police stance”: a crouch, holding the pistol with the dominant hand, steadying it under the grip with the other, arms at full extension. Then each officer emptied one cylinder, in turn, at the target.

  Sam, too, participated in this exercise. Al pointed out tactfully that, by Sam's own order, every officer was issued with a revolver and told to become proficient in its use. So Sam, unless he wanted to specifically exempt himself – as, of course, he could do if he liked – should take his turn. He reflected to himself that a battle in which he was forced to personally engage the enemy with a pistol was a battle as good as lost. But he wanted to set a good example for his officers, so he gamely stood up in the bows and blazed away. Sam had never fired a pistol before, and, in fact, had never before bothered to draw his from the armory when at battle stations, so he didn't expect to do very well. But to his shame and dismay every one of his rounds missed the target completely, except for one that just nicked the edge of the canvas. He consoled himself with the fact that only a few of the officers had done much better.