Into Uncharted Seas

by E. C. Williams

  Landry, standing by the 25 mm rifle now mounted on the stern rail, heard Dave's laughter and came over to him. “What's funny, Skipper?” he asked. “Let me in on the joke – I could use a giggle right now.”

  Dave explained, and Landry too laughed aloud. But their amusement didn't last long. The pirates' blunder had only put off the inevitable for a while.

  Dave's eye fell on the one-incher mounted to the stern rail. He wondered momentarily why it looked so odd, then remembered that it had been adapted from single-shot, bolt action, to semi-automatic fire. French Port had provided kits for each one-incher in the squadron, along with detailed instructions to the gunner's mates for making the modification. “How's the mod to the one-incher working out, Chief?”

  “Great. I worried about jams at first, but it seems at least as reliable as the old bolt action. Only problem is overheating – you could melt her right down if you fired at the max rate for long enough. Still, even at a moderate rate of fire, it's like having an extra three or four of the old model.”

  “Is that what the bucket's for – overheating?” Dave had wondered why Landry's loader had showed up at his station with a bucket of seawater.”

  “Right. Not normally a recommended procedure, though – seems that cooling it down too fast is almost as bad as letting it get too hot. Warps the barrel, or something. We'll have to do that sparingly.”

  “How many rounds to a magazine?”

  “Five. Wish it was more, but there you are.”

  “It's enough to make it hot for them,” Dave said grimly.

  He gazed at the enemy squadron, considering his next move. The three dhows were sailing in a line-ahead formation. On the port tack, they were almost broadside to the Scorpion, and had fallen off a bit as the wind continued to veer a little more to the east. Normally, Dave would stay on the starboard tack and fall off as necessary, certain that the wind would eventually back around to blow from its normal south-easterly direction. But he wondered if it might be possible to distract the pirate commander for a while, lead him off the shortest course to Nosy Be … ? It was worth a try.

  “Tack,” he ordered. The Scorpion came up into the wind, and the crew swiftly shifted the boom while the sail was luffing, with the smooth precision that came with many drills. This procedure, which required split-second timing and speed of execution, meant that the vessel was never on the bad tack: the boom was on the lee side of the mast by the time the dhow settled on her new course.

  Landry looked at him questioningly. “Dangling a shiny object in front of the pirate commodore, Chief. Maybe he'll keep chasing us for a while, even after the wind shifts back. Trying to buy the island a bit of time.”

  “Gotcha, Skipper,” Landry said, nodding approvingly.“

  “Fall off a point,” Dave ordered, and the helmsman acknowledged and let the dhow slip off the wind. The Scorpion was now on the same course as the pirate squadron.

  The chase continued for two hours and more, the pirate squadron slowly, almost imperceptibly gaining on the Scorpion. As Dave had anticipated, the wind backed into the south-east, and then the south-south-east as the afternoon wore on, heading both pursuers and pursued until they were sailing due south. Dave was content: every hour on this course meant an hour the Zanzibari vessels weren't getting closer to Nosy Be.

  It was, of course, too good to last: the enemy's squadron commander eventually became wise to this ruse, and Dave saw a flutter of flag signals as orders were transmitted and acknowledged.

  “Oh, well,” Dave muttered to himself. “At least we cost 'em some time.” And put off our own deaths by an hour, but he didn't verbalize that last sentence.

  The order must have been “tack in succession”, because the lead dhow, presumably the flag, tacked first; then, after an interval, the second followed suit. Dave watched and waited for the third dhow, which appeared to be the smallest of the three, to tack in her turn. Long minutes passed, and he finally realized that the third dhow wasn't going to tack. She had presumably been tasked with chasing down the Scorpion.

  Chief Landry, at his side, gave voice to Dave's thoughts. “Looks like that one's coming after us while the other two go on to Nosy Be.”

  “Right, Chief. That's the second best thing we could hope for. The pirate commodore has divided his force. Now, if we can delay this one long enough – God willing, inflict enough damage on her – so she can't rejoin in time, we'll have cut the odds the islanders will face by a third.”

  Dave quickly drafted and sent off a radio message to Nosy Be, updating them on the position of the enemy squadron and the fact that one dhow had been detached to chase the Scorpion, and that he was going to try to lure it away to the south.

  He then focused on wringing the last hundredth of a knot of speed out of the Scorpion. While it was a race he couldn't win – the pirate dhow, with more sail area and a longer waterline length, was naturally faster – the longer he could prolong it the greater his chances of preventing the enemy vessel from rejoining her force in time to make a difference in the attack on Nosy Be.

  The Scorpion had one great advantage in the race: she could tack much faster than the pirate dhow. So Dave settled down to a tacking duel. He would come about, then watch the pursuing vessel go through the onerous task of tacking. Then, as soon as the pirate dhow had settled on the new tack, the Scorpion tacked again. After several repetitions of this maneuver, the frustrated pirate captain apparently decided not to fall for this again, and stayed on a port tack after the Scorpion had come about to bring the wind across her starboard side. In response to this, Dave fell off onto a broad reach – his vessel's fastest point of sailing – causing the two dhows to settle on widely divergent courses. The pirate captain was then faced with a choice of either tacking or watching his prey eventually vanish over the northern horizon: he gave in and tacked. Dave again waited until the enemy dhow had settled on her new course, and then tacked again.

  This tactic was no doubt frustrating to the pirate captain, and it was putting off the inevitable moment when the enemy would come within the range of her guns, but it had one disadvantage: the Scorpion's small crew would soon become exhausted. The quick-tacking method Dave and his bosun had worked out was an all-hands evolution, requiring speed and split-second timing. It wasn't something any crew could keep up every quarter of an hour indefinitely. He decided to give them a rest, at the cost of some gain by the pirate dhow, and ordered the helmsman: “Fall off a point. Ease the sheet a fathom.” As the wind came abaft the beam, Dave could sense the increase in speed as the Scorpion found her favorite groove.

  “Take a break, Scorpions,” Dave called out to his men. “Drink lots of water. Sit down – or, hell, lie down, for a while. I'll wait forty-five minutes or so before tacking again.”

  The seamen slumped gratefully to the deck, glad of a chance to catch their breath. Cookie darted below and returned with a can of water and a mug, and circulated with it, giving everyone a generous drink. In these latitudes, dehydration was insidious; it could sneak up on a man and lay him low before he even realized he was thirsty.

  Dave paced the quarterdeck restlessly, glancing alternately at his watch and at the pursuing pirate dhow. Of course, her men would get tired from frequent tacking, as well. But he guessed that the pirate, anticipating a landing on Nosy Be, had many more men aboard than necessary to sail and fight her.

  Midshipman Chen had been told off to check the change in range of the pirate vessel by vertical angle. He stood patiently gazing through his sextant scope and reported every time the enemy had gained another tenth of a mile, as instructed. Now he said, “Another tenth, Captain.” Since they could only roughly approximate the height of mast of the other dhow, Dave didn't bother having him estimate distance off by Table 16. He could eyeball it as closely. When the range had closed enough that there was an appreciable difference in angle between the waterline of the enemy dhow and the sea horizon, they could get a more accurate distance with Table 17.

  Dave had
promised his men forty-five minutes, and he gave them that – but not a minute more. As the minute hand of his watch touched that point, he shouted, “Stand by to tack.” He was gratified that the hands jumped up on the word and raced to their stations with no groans, no muttered protests.

  The sun was now low on the western horizon. Dave began to hope for a chance to give the enemy vessel the slip in the darkness – if he could only keep clear until then. The almanac in his head that kept him always aware of the state of the tide and the phase of the moon told him that it was nearly new, and would not rise earlier than midnight.

  He walked forward, and said to his crew, “Boys, we're gonna tack like mad until it's full dark, and then maybe we can slip away from her. Can you hold out?” A chorus of enthusiastic shouts in the affirmative answered him. Dave had to swallow a lump that rose up into his throat: not a man of his crew could fail to be aware of the likelihood that the Scorpion would be sunk and every one of them killed before another day was out, yet they were as carefree as if this were one of the impromptu races that often arose spontaneously between homeward-bounders in Morbihan Bay.

  Now began a couple of hours of the most intense concentration of Dave's seagoing career. Because the Scorpion could point a bit higher than the enemy two-master, as well as tack faster, Dave chose to beat into the southerly breeze. This heading led the pirate dhow at ninety degrees from the direct course to Nosy Be. Scorpion tacked, and settled on her new course; the pirate vessel tacked in response, more slowly, and settled on a new heading not quite as high as that of the Scorpion. Then Dave ordered another tack, and the dance continued. His men were soon on the verge of exhaustion again, chests heaving and pouring with sweat, but they persevered without complaint.

  “Captain, we've gained a tenth!” Chen exulted, and Dave laughed out loud. “Hear that, boys?” he shouted. “We're gaining on 'em!” In spite of their fatigue, this raised an enthusiastic cheer from the crew.

  The sun was now settling below the western horizon; when it vanished, darkness came with the usual tropical suddenness. When the Caliphate dhow vanished into the darkness, Dave reckoned the pirates could no longer see the Scorpion, and settled onto a close reach on the port tack. He hoped the pirate dhow would assume that the tacking duel continued, but he couldn't count on that. His last glimpse of her showed her to be on the starboard tack, which was encouraging. If the enemy stayed on this tack all night, the two vessels would have diverged by many miles before dawn. But this assumed that the pirate captain wouldn't spot them by the faint light of a nearly-new moon, once it had risen high enough.

  “Splice the mainbrace,” Dave said, an order that met with the usual enthusiastic approval of the crew. “Cookie, whip up a hot meal. Chief, we'll have to stay closed up to action stations through the night, but half the crew at a time can sleep for an hour or so on-station.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Landry replied, rising with a slight groan, stiff from crouching behind the one-inch rifle at the stern rail for all these hours. The cook soon had a meal of rice balls, containing fish and cabbage, ready to serve out to the men while they remained at their stations, all they could eat. They wolfed it down, then half the crew lay down on deck and were immediately sound asleep.

  “Chief, you and Chen take a nap. I'll call you in an hour or so and you can relieve me and Devan.”

  “I'm not tired, Skipper,” Landry insisted. “You go first.”

  “No, I need to be fresh at moonrise. Go ahead and grab forty winks.”

  Silence soon fell over the dhow, with half the crew asleep and the other half talking in whispers if at all, in order to avoid disturbing their shipmates. Silence, except, of course, for the sounds of the wind in the rigging and the sea against the hull.

  Dave stared astern, as if his eyes could penetrate the darkness by sheer force of will. The night sky was ablaze with stars, and this reminded him that they hadn't fixed the vessel's position for eighteen hours or so – maybe they should have tried to grab a star fix right after sunset. Then he shrugged his shoulders: only a lubber could be lost in the Mozambique Channel, where one had only to reach east or west to sight the coasts of Madagascar or the African main, respectively, and get a fix from a coastal feature.

  The first part of the night passed without incident. Dave woke Landry and Chen, and he and Devan lay down on the deck for a nap. Dave left orders to be called just before moonrise. It felt as if he had just fallen asleep when Landry shook him gently and said, “Moonrise in five minutes, Skipper.” He rose from the deck with an involuntary groan, stiff and sleepy. But the his steward appeared immediately with a mug of hot coffee for him, and Dave said, with fervent appreciation, “Bless you, Best; thou art well named. May you have many children.”

  “Already got five that I know of, Skipper,” the AB replied with a chuckle. “Don't need no more.”

  Dave gazed astern intently, while sipping his coffee. Although the sky was cloudless and ablaze with stars, he could not find the horizon, nor the pursuing enemy vessel. A sliver of almost-new moon appeared, but shed little light, making moonrise something of an anti-climax; he could still make out no sign of the pirate dhow. He nevertheless kept searching the northern horizon. Caliphate vessels used sails of Indian cotton canvas, which soon bleached in the sunlight to a brilliant whiteness that caught and reflected any ambient light, unlike the muddy brown Kerguelenian canvas of unbleached linen. With diligence, the Scorpion should be able to detect the pirate long before she herself would be visible.

  Hours passed, and the moon climbed higher without revealing any other vessel, and Dave began to wonder if he might reasonably hope he had lost her. Then the masthead lookout called down quietly, “Deck, there. Something on the horizon astern – might be a sail.”

  Dave raised his telescope and had a long look. Was it just a small cloud? No, it was a sail – there was the pirate dhow, much further astern than she had been at dusk, but still hanging stubbornly on Scorpion's tail. In a low voice, he passed the word to the half of his crew who were awake. “That's the enemy, all right. No need to wake the sleepers yet, but be alert.”

  Duiwel hom, Dave swore to himself. The enemy commander indeed had the luck of the Devil, finding just the right course to chase him in the dark. Still, the Scorpion had gained miles on the pirate dhow during the night – she was hull-down now, and far out of range. It would be many hours before she could catch up to within range of her guns, and Dave, of course, could still resume the tacking duel, to put off the evil hour. He consoled himself with the thought that he had already succeeded in reducing the enemy force attacking Nosy Be by a third. There was no longer any possibility that the pirate dhow could catch up with the rest of the pirate force in time to be of any use at all.

  The situation remained unchanged for more tense hours. Then the dawn came with tropical suddenness: one moment the sky was ablaze with stars, the next only the moon, Venus, and Sirius remained visible in a gray sky over a sharply defined horizon. Dave decided that, if the pirate had not spotted them before he almost certainly could see them now. And indeed, the dhow, which because it could not point quite as high as the Scorpion was on a slightly divergent course, now came up into the wind and fell off onto the starboard tack. Through his telescope, Dave could see that she was now on the “bad tack” for a dhow, with both spars on the windward side of their respective masts. Not all the pirate captains had yet mastered the Scorpion's trick of flipping the spar into a vertical position just as the sail luffed in the eye of the wind, then quickly dipping it abaft the mast before the vessel came about onto the opposite tack. Or perhaps it was just too difficult to shift her spars quickly enough, they being so much longer and heavier than the Scorpion's. At any rate, while the pirate's crew were engaged in shifting the spars one at a time, by lowering the sails partially and luffing up, the Scorpion gained on her appreciably.

  By now, the Scorpions were all awake and at their battle stations, finishing their spartan breakfast of cold rice balls (again) and coffee.
“Stand by to tack,” Dave ordered.

  It was time to resume the game.

  - 17 -

  “Oh, no!” shouted the master of the schooner Saint Denis. “I'm headed south! I've got a duty to my owners to do everything I can to save this vessel!”

  “No, Captain,” Hank Dallas said evenly, trying to keep his temper. “This is a copy of the governor's declaration of a state of emergency – it gives the Dominion authority over all vessels in Nosy Be waters.” He tried once again to present the document to the irate captain, who again refused it.

  “I don't give a good God-damn what that piece of paper says!” the captain shouted again, his voice rising in volume even more. “This is a Kerguelenian schooner, not subject to your naked savage of a king, who by the way nobody ever sees! I'm doing what I think best for the Saint Denis!”

  “He's not my king, Captain Favre – I'm an officer of the Kerguelenian Navy seconded to the Nosy Be militia,” Dallas said, his voice rising. “But you will submit to having your vessel towed to a new berth. Lieutenant Rakotomala” – the lieutenant, standing at Hank's elbow, bowed stiffly from the waist – “is authorized to use any means, up to and including deadly force, to carry out his orders. If you don't want to cooperate, he'll have and you and your crew put in shackles and move the vessel himself, with his squad. Your choice.”

  Favre tore off his hat, threw it onto the deck, and stomped on it, all the while emitting a stream of expletives in French, English, Afrikaans, Fukien, and patois remarkable in both volume and originality. But he knew he had no option. Finally, reluctantly, he ordered his crew to make fast the tug waiting alongside to shift his vessel to a position in front of the floating drydock where the RKS Joan of Arc lay.

  Hank imagined a similar scene taking place across the harbor, on the deck of another schooner. He had picked out the two largest vessels then in port, big three-masters, and ordered them shifted to a position from which they would block or interfere with shellfire directed at the Joan. Meanwhile, the yard workers were frantically nailing temporary patches on all her through-hull openings in preparation for a partial flooding of the drydock, in order to bring her afloat, and thus lower her profile by a fathom or so. These were desperate measures that Hank was taking entirely on his own initiative, and he didn't know if or to what extent they would work. he did know that it would eventually raise a storm of furious protest by the owners of the two vessels thus commandeered, a storm that would blow through French Port, the government of Nosy Be, and the highest ranks of the Navy, possibly ending his career.