“It's a dhow! It is a dhow, by God! A single-master,” exclaimed Dave.
As they watched, both the yawl and the dhow released their sheets and luffed, approaching one another very slowly until alongside. This meant that the Scorpion came down on them with startling rapidity, and shouts from either the dhow or the fisherman, or both, indicated that she had been spotted.
“Fire on the dhow!” Dave shouted, and a sharp crack in response came from the one-inch rifle almost simultaneously with his last word, and was then repeated. The crew opened up with small arms, as well. The dhow did not reply, but instead sheeted in enough to get some way on, then spun on her heel and ran away on a northerly heading. Dave shouted to the helmsman to steer for the dhow as the Scorpion fired with all her feeble armament at the Arab vessel.
“The yawl, Dave, for Christ's sake, catch the yawl!” Dallas bawled in his ear while tugging violently at his sleeve.”
“Why, Pete? We have the yawl, anytime we want her!”
“There's one man on that yawl who can help me roll up the entire Caliphate network on the island, Dave, and if he once slips ashore, I'll have lost him and this entire effort will be wasted! I'll bet you anything you like the yawl's crew are pawns who know nothing, not even the agent's real name! You've got to catch the yawl!” Reluctantly, Dave ordered the Scorpion put about and beat up into the wake of the fishing vessel.
The little yawl had no hope of outrunning the bigger dhow, but nevertheless persisted on her course even after the Scorpion had come up alongside and shouted for her to heave to. Quickly running out of patience, Dave grabbed a shotgun from a seaman and fired it into the yawl's little mizzen-sail, just aft of the man at the tiller, whom he guessed was her skipper. The sail was shredded, as was, apparently, the skipper's nerve, for he immediately let fly his sheets and then raised both hands in surrender.
A figure then came out of the yawl's small midships cabin, raced forward, and dived overboard. Dave shouted for the dory to be launched. If the man intended to swim ashore – an ambitious attempt, given that they were still several miles out to sea – the dory would soon fish him out.
“He didn't come up!” growled Landry, who kicked off his shoes and dove overboard himself, then swam around the bow of the yawl to the point where the man entered the water. He was then hidden by the fisherman's hull, and Dave and Peter lost sight of him, hearing only a great deal of splashing. Then Landry re-appeared, towing the body of a man by the hair.
“A line!” Landry shouted. “Somebody throw me a line!” Somebody obliged, and Landry quickly tied a water bowline under the man's armpits. Landry's catch was alive after all, for he began to struggle feebly. But when several hands on the Scorpion's deck tailed on the other end of the line and heaved way, the loop came tight around his chest, cutting off his air and effectively calming him right down. He was hauled up onto the deck, where a seaman pounded enthusiastically on his back to drive the water from his lungs.
“Now somebody throw me a line!” Landry sputtered, treading water alongside. Best, the AB, quickly freed the victim on deck of the water bowline and dropped it over the side for the warrant officer. Landry came up the line hand over hand, needing no assistance, and stood dripping in front of Dave and Hank.
“Bastard was trying to drown hisself,” he growled. “Woulda done it, too, if he'd thought to grab something to weigh him down.”
“Well done, Chief. That was quick thinking,” Dave said. “It never occurred to me that he was attempting suicide – he would have surely succeeded in the time it took us to launch the dory.”
“Tie his hands and feet, in case he makes another try,” Dallas said to Best, who complied in such a seamanlike fashion that the man was absolutely immobilized.
Dave looked over the side at the yawl. He saw the pale face of her skipper, looking anxiously up at him. “Stay right here,” he growled. “Don't touch a sheet or the helm. If you try to sail away, I'll catch you and blow you out of the water!” The yawl's skipper began to protest his innocence, but Dave silenced him with another threat.
“Fall off,” Dave then ordered his helmsman. “Steer due north. Ease the main sheet.” The Scorpion came around in a smooth circle until it was headed north on a broad reach.
“I gather you intend to chase the Arab dhow?” Hank asked.
“Absolutely. Got a head start on us, but she's a single-master, like us, and much the same size, I'd guess. We have a chance, if we crack on.” And if I don't lose her in the dark, he thought, but didn't say aloud. For the strange dhow was already no more than an indistinct dark blur.
The Scorpion ran on into the darkness. There was silence on her decks for awhile, except for the creaks and groans of a wooden- hulled sailing vessel underway. Dave glanced towards the dark shape of their prisoner, lying bound on the deck, and said to Hank, “Aren't you going to question him, or something?”
“Not now. I'll let him simmer awhile. And I don't want to miss the fun.”
“In that case, ask Chief Landry if he's got a spare pistol or shotgun for you, and you can take an active part in the fun. We're short an officer.”
“With pleasure,” Hank replied, and went forward to find Landry – in the moonless pre-dawn darkness it wasn't easy to tell men apart from more than a few steps away. After a few moments, Dallas re-appeared, pistol belt round his waist.
The two officers stood in silence for a while, peering intently into the darkness, trying not to lose sight of the faint blur that was all they could make out of the enemy dhow. Then the blur became a distinct silhouette, then they could see it clearly, a single-masted dhow that might have been Scorpion's twin – it was dawn.
Morning twilight didn't last very long in the tropics, and soon after the sun appeared on the eastern horizon. It was a lurid red, as was the entire eastern horizon. As always, this prompted the ancient weather rhyme to pop into Dave's head: Red sky at night – sailor's delight; red sky at morning – sailor take warning. That bit of doggerel wasn't infallible, of course, but Dave resolved to check the barometer as soon as he got a chance to duck below. He didn't want to lose his prey – and perhaps his command – because one of the vicious little squalls sometimes encountered at this time of year caught him unprepared.
Dave spared a glance for their prisoner. In the pre-dawn darkness he had been only a dark figure; now he was revealed to be an utterly ordinary-looking man, a Kerguelenian of the usual mixed ancestry; in his case, apparently European and Chinese.
“How the Hell could you betray your own people?” Dave asked him, revulsion in his voice.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” the prisoner replied, no expression on his face. “I'm just a fisherman. You've made some mistake.”
“Don't bother, Dave,” Hank interrupted. “We'll soon get the truth out of him, once we get him back to Hell-ville.”
Bastiaans, the Scorpion's radioman, appeared on deck with his clipboard. “Pardon, Skipper, but I intercepted this transmission just before sunrise. It was repeated three times. The signal was so strong it had to have come from the chase. It looks like gibberish, but every group came through clear as a bell – no chance of a reception error.”
Dave took the board and looked at the message. As Bastiaans had said, it made no sense at all, just apparently-random numbers and letters.
Dallas, peering over his shoulder, said, “That's Arabic, transliterated into Roman letters. It'll take me a minute or two to translate, but I'll bet a month's pay it's the enemy dhow passing on the bad news to Zanzibar.”
Dave handed the board to Dallas. “Okay, Pete – go below and break it.” Dallas scurried below with the message board.
Dave called Landry aft, and said, “D'you think you can hit the dhow with the one-inch rifle, Chief? At this range?”
Landry peered forward at the chase. “I think she's just within range of the rifle. I can give it a try.”
“Then blaze away, Chief.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Landry went forward, shoutin
g for the one-inch gunner. The gunner and his loader followed Landry forward all the way to the bows, where Landry, using the bulky tripod with its integral recoil mechanism designed for shoreside operations, rather than the rail mount more often used on shipboard, set up the gun on deck and stretched himself prone behind it, peering from underneath the sail. Then, using the two-power scope he took slow and careful aim at the pirate dhow. At the moment when Dave began to wonder if he was ever going to fire, he squeezed off a round, the sharp and distinctive crack of the rifle making everyone start, even though they were expecting it. Dave saw the splash of the round in the wake of the enemy dhow, right in line and just short.
Landry made a minute adjustment to his sights, reloaded deliberately, and again took his time over his next shot. This one was a hit, low on the stern. Dave saw the burst of smoke and splinters – Landry had loaded with HE. The charge in a one-inch round was necessarily pretty small, but Dave guessed that Landry was using HE primarily to provide visual confirmation of a hit.
“I was right, Dave – that message was the pirate dhow, reporting the failure of her mission.” Dallas's voice at Dave's elbow made him jump – he was so focused on Chief Landry's attempts to hit the enemy vessel he hadn't notice Peter's approach.
“We need to turn back now, and return to Hell-ville,” Dallas continued. “I want to start interrogating the prisoner.”
“Interrogate him all you want right here on the Scorpion,” Dave retorted. “I'm going to sink that dhow.”
“Come on, Dave, we've accomplished our mission. I need to get my prisoner back where I'll have the right environment to question him.”
“Why can't you question him right here?”
“I've developed a certain protocol for interrogating prisoners. I need the right setting, and I need the help of my colleagues in the Special Detail. Be reasonable, Dave – the information this prisoner can give us is worth any number of little pirate dhows.”
Dallas was interrupted by another report from the one-incher. Dave looked forward just in time to see it fall in the pirate's wake, this time a bit further astern. He abruptly turned and went below.
“Where are you going,” cried Hank in exasperation.
“To get my sextant.”
Dave returned quickly, carrying his sextant. He shot a vertical angle between the enemy vessel's masthead and her waterline.
“Dave, are you listening? We need to turn back – return to Hell-ville.”
“Mister Dallas, may I remind you that I command this vessel? I'll take your recommendation under advisement. In the meantime, please let me get on with my job!”
Hank opened his mouth, then shut it again. Pale with anger, he stalked over to the lee rail.
Dave raised his sextant to his eye. No change in the vertical angle yet – not that he had expected a measurable change so soon. He looked at the Scorpion's sail and the angle the ensign flying from the masthead made with the hull, and ordered the main-sheet slacked off a foot. He paced awhile, impatiently, then checked the angle again. His spirits fell: the angle had diminished very slightly, less than a tenth of a minute of arc. But it had definitely diminished. Which meant that the enemy dhow was slowly out-distancing the Scorpion.
Nevertheless, Dave stubbornly persisted. Landry might make a lucky hit on the pirate's rudder, disabling her. But Landry didn't score another hit. All his carefully-aimed rounds either fell in the dhow's wake or went wide. Dave knew that the rounds that looked like wild misses weren't the fault of Landry's marksmanship – the warrant officer was acknowledged to be the best shot in the squadron with the one-inch rifle – but were due to the fact that, at this extreme range, the projectiles began to lose their spin and start to tumble.
Dave raised his sextant and checked the vertical angle again. The result made his spirits plummet: the angle was very definitely smaller now. There could no longer be any question that the pirate dhow was the faster vessel. At first, Dave was determined to follow on regardless until the enemy was out of sight, in the hope that some accident to her rig, or mistake by her helmsman, would allow the Scorpion to come up within range. But on second thought, he rejected this option. His orders were, first, to support Dallas's intelligence operation, and second, to patrol the northern shore of Nosy Be in support of the militia.
“Come up on to a beat,” he said to the helmsman.
“Aye aye, sir. Come up on to a beat. Helm's a-lee, sir.”
The dhow swung around to port until she was on a southerly heading, the main-sheet hands heaving the big sail in flat and taut. On the bow, Landry calmly dismounted the rifle and ordered a couple of hands to carry it and the mount below to the arms locker. He had known for his last five rounds that the chase was fruitless. When he came aft to the little raised poop that served the dhow as a quarterdeck, Schofield snapped, “You have the conn, Chief. I'm going below.”
Dallas appeared to be about to speak, but a baleful glare from Schofield caused him to decide instead on a prudent silence.
His Serene Highness Sayyid Barghash bin Said al-Busaid, Sultan of Zanzibar, Pemba, and Zanj, was in a vile mood. For one thing, he had been awakened far too early – the sun was barely up, and HSH preferred to stay in bed until mid-morning, especially when he had spent the evening with his favorite and youngest wife, as he had last night. For another, the proximate cause of this too-early rising had been that infidel dog Mohammed al-Kergi.
As the dog's name suggested, he wasn't actually an infidel. But he was a convert – his barbarous birth name had been John Lisi – and the Sultan had his doubts about the sincerity of the conversion. Of course, Lisi would hardly be the first infidel to prefer a change of religion to slavery or worse, but in this case, as his name also suggested, he had been of that particular race of infidels that was giving him so much trouble. Sayyid was determined to add the Mascarene Isles to his domain, and the thrice-damned Kerguelenian infidels had so far thwarted him at every turn – and al-Kergi was one of them, however much he professed adherence to the true faith and allegiance to the Sultanate.
Nevertheless, al-Kergi had been of considerable assistance in the war against the sea-going infidels. Which was why, when his steward had aroused him with the news that al-Kergi urgently craved an audience with His Serene Highness, he had resisted his original urge, which was to have both steward and al-Kergi flogged, and had instead risen and called for coffee. He was now having that coffee – very strong, black, and sweetened to the consistency of syrup – in his study. From his window, he could look out on Stone Town and beyond to the harbor. He was taking his time over the coffee. He had condescended to rise from his bed, but al-Kergi could damned well wait a few minutes longer.
Finally, he waved a hand at his steward, who was in a corner of the room, trying to look as much as possible like a statue. (He knew better than to run the slightest risk of further angering his master when he was in this mood.) The servant then went to the door and silently ushered al-Kergi into the room.
The Kerguelenian renegade entered and immediately prostrated himself on the carpeted floor. This was quite inappropriate -- according to the elaborate etiquette of the court as established by Sayyid's grandfather, the first Sultan, this posture of complete abasement was reserved for formal public occasions only. Under the present circumstances, al-Kergi need only have bowed deeply.
“Oh, do get up,” the Sultan snapped crossly. But he was somewhat mollified by this demonstration of a wholesome fear – as Lisi had intended. “And tell me immediately, in as few words as possible, why you've awakened me at this unholy hour.”
Knowing that the Sultan preferred his bad news straight, Lisi said bluntly, in his inelegant but by now fluent Arabic, “The Kergs have captured Falcon”. “Falcon” was the code name for their key agent on Nosy Be. “One of their vessels happened upon the rendezvous offshore”. There was a brief silence, during which Lisi held his breath in dread, then the Sultan asked, “How did you learn this?”
“By radio, Your Highness. The r
endezvous was scheduled for early this morning. Our vessel – a fishing dhow – escaped.”
“How much does the man know – the man they captured?”
“Too much, I'm afraid, Highness. As our main point of contact, he himself had a contact in every cell.”
A long and ominous silence followed, as the Sultan digested this news. Lisi knew from experience that HSH could react in either of two ways: a screaming and violent tantrum, during which he ordered everyone present to be flogged or worse; or rationally, with a reasoned, thoughtful response. No one could predict which way he would go. Trying to sugar-coat or withhold bad news was useless, because when the Sultan did eventually find out, a negative response on his part to any attempt to keep back adverse information was guaranteed. In that case, “negative” usually meant “death by torture”.
To Lisi's enormous relief, the rational Sayyid won out over the homicidally-insane Sayyid, and the Sultan merely remarked calmly, “The master of the dhow should have taken our man aboard his vessel when the infidel warship appeared, at whatever risk. Or if that was impossible, he should have shot the agent. Anything to prevent his capture. The man is a fool. Have him arrested when his vessel returns to port.”
“As Your Highness commands,” Lisi answered. He felt relief mingled with fear. Relief that he had apparently escaped the Sultan's wrath for the moment; fear because the dhow's skipper was of course under Lisi's command, in his position as Pasha of naval forces, and the Sultan might eventually decide that Lisi had somehow failed in a duty to properly instruct the man.
“The timing could hardly be worse. There have been rumors of a planned infidel raid on Zanzibar. Now we have no way of getting any advance warning,” the Sultan went on. “You must get another agent in place as soon as possible.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” Lisi replied. Inside, he was raging: with the Nosy Be islanders alerted to the existence of an intelligence network on the island, how the hell could he safely insert another agent? Not to mention the fact that he had only a limited number of men who could pass without undue notice on Nosy Be – the handful of captured Kerg seamen who had converted to Islam as an alternative to slavery – and few of them were suited to secret intelligence work.
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