Assault on Zanzibar

by E. C. Williams

  “I’ll be sure it’s done smartly.” With that the Captain turned on his heel and walked quickly forward to confer with the Mate. It was done smartly; Sam doubted that a Navy gun crew could have done it quicker. In a matter of minutes, the Lyle gun was on the stern, having been smartly un-loaded, for safety’s sake, muscled aft by a half-dozen seamen, and was being as smartly re-loaded.

  “Want to have a go, Mister Misseldine?” Sam asked.

  “I doubt she’s in range yet, Commodore.”

  “Not for direct fire, no. But here’s something I’ve always wanted to try with a Lyle gun: pitch her up high, as high an angle as her carriage will allow. Then try a shot, just as an experiment.”

  “Okay, Commodore. Ball?”

  “Of course.”

  The Mate did as Sam suggested, then sighted carefully, shifting the gun in tiny increments to put it in line with the target. Then he fired.

  The ball soared high in the air, visible in flight, and seemed to pause momentarily at its apogee and dropped just a cable’s length in front of the dhow.

  “Génial!” shouted Sam. “Terrific shot, Mate! Try another – by the time you’ve re-loaded she may be in range.”

  Misseldine did so, and this time the shot fell just feet off the starboard bow of the Pirate vessel, showering her gun’s crew with spray. This provoked a fury of activity on the dhow. A man – perhaps an officer – ran headlong from the stern to the gun, gesticulating frantically. Apparently because of his exhortations, the crew raised the barrel of their three-incher to its maximum elevation. The Pirates were nothing if not quick learners.

  Sam glanced at Allard. He had ceased firing, apparently fascinated by the duel of the big guns.

  “Allard! Keep firing, man, keep firing! Make ‘em keep their heads down!” Startled from his reverie, Allard brought up his rifle and resumed firing.

  The dhow’s gun crew lowered its barrel and fired again. This time the shot plunged along the starboard side of the Amour, smashing the rail, and striking down a sailor who had been leaning on it. Maddie gave a cry, and ran toward the man as if to help him, but stopped short at the realization that he was clearly dead. Sam could see from his position on the stern that the ball nearly decapitated the poor man.

  Captain Woodham shouted a string of orders, and sailors rushed to heave the dead man over the side and clean up his blood. It seemed heartless, but Sam knew it was necessary for morale – one couldn’t just leave the body there, to discourage the man’s shipmates. Later – if there was a later for the Amour – there would be time to mourn his death. Now the fight for survival had to take first place.

  When Maddie turned to face Sam, he saw that she had gone quite pale, but seemed still resolute. He tried again: “Maddie, please, please go below before the Pirate comes alongside, I beg you.” She drew closer, and spoke for his ears alone. “Sam, my place is by your side. We’ll live or die together, because I surely can’t live without you.”

  At a loss for words to express his feelings, Sam could only stare at her. She kissed him quickly on the cheek, and then said, “Go aft, Sam. The Captain needs you. We all need you.”

  Sam obediently turned his attention back to the defense of the schooner. The Pirates were now firing at the Amour’s rig, hoping to disable her. The only advantage a Kerg merchant vessel had in a fight with a Pirate dhow, if a fight it could be called, was the Pirates’ strong economic incentive to take the schooner intact and the crew alive. But when faced with a stubborn defense, they would sink the vessel and kill its crew rather than give up. The only hope, then, for the merchantman’s crew lay in a quick surrender – and a life of slavery. Whether a lost schooner’s crew had chosen to surrender or to fight to the end could not be known with any certainty; Sam hoped that for most it was the latter.

  If Captain Woodham made any move to surrender Sam had already decided to take charge of the schooner, and to shoot the Captain if necessary: it was certain what form Maddie’s slavery would take.

  The Wasp was coming up as fast as she could, but it was clear that the dhow would be alongside the Amour well before her arrival. One chance, now, was for the Wasp to dismast the dhow with a lucky shot as soon as she was in range.

  The dhow was still beyond the direct-fire range of the stubby Lyle gun, so the Mate was firing high-angle plunging shots. The dhow was chasing shell splashes, altering her course slightly to head toward each one. Clearly, too, they were watching each ball as it reached its apogee and guessing where it would fall. Sam prayed for the dhow’s conning officer to misjudge. For once, God obliged; the dhow steered right into the path of a Lyle gun four-inch round, and everyone cheered as it plunged through the dhow’s deck, right amidships and thence certainly through her tween-deck and bottom. Sam knew that if the dhow’s damage control crew was even halfway competent they would plug the leak quickly, but it was heartening to be able to strike back.

  The dhow now tried a ranging shot with case, more effective than round shot against rigging and personnel, but the effort petered out in a gentle rain of shrapnel falling into the schooner’s wake. But the range was now closing so fast that it was only a matter of minutes before the Pirates would be able to shoot the Amour’s sails and rigging to ribbons while still well out of effective range of the Lyle gun’s equivalent of handfuls of nails, screws, and broken crockery. Sam raised his telescope to check on the progress of the Wasp. He was just in time to see her fire on the dhow for the first time, a ranging shot that fell well aft, in her wake – clearly still well out of range of her 37mm rifle. At the same time, a cheer went up from the Amours on the stern. Sam thought at first they were cheering the Wasp’s shot, but then Allard shouted: “I got one, Commodore! I got one!” Sam focused again on the dhow, just in time to see a body tossed overboard from her bow and a hand rushing forward to take the dead man’s place at the gun.

  “That’s the way, Allard! Keep it up!” Sam shouted back. He had a fleeting thought that Chief Landry would love to have Allard as one of his gunners; the man was clearly a natural marksman.

  The dhow was drawing inexorably closer. Another round of case shot just peppered the lower part of the Amour’s mizzen full of holes and severed the sheet. The mizzen boom swung violently outboard, and the schooner yawed off course. Sailors sprang to knot the severed line, but the end was now certain.

  Allard fired another round, but retaliation was swift: a blast of case shot struck down Allard and every other man on the schooner’s stern – Master, Mate, helmsman, and Lyle gun crew. Sam looked around wildly for Maddie, and with relief found her unhurt by his side. Sam then grabbed the wheel to bring the schooner back on course, and shouted for the second mate and a relief helmsman.

  The schooner’s quarterdeck was a-swim in blood, the wounded moaned piteously – a single blow put fully one third of her crew out of action.

  This second moment of uncontrolled yawing allowed the dhow to forge up onto the schooner’s starboard quarter. A man took the wheel from Sam, and he took the opportunity to try a round from his shotgun, which had no visible effect.

  Maddie rushed aft to tend the wounded. “Maddie, for God’s sake, keep low!” Sam shouted at her.

  Ely, the cadet, came aft, ashen and trembling. “Mister Marin’s wounded, Commodore. He sent me instead.”

  “Well, you’re acting master now, Gadget. Get a grip – take charge of sailing the schooner.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  At that moment, another blast of case shot severed the halyard of the mainsail, which came down with a crash. The boom and gaff mercifully spared all on deck under it, but the sail covered them, and they struggled to get free of it. The cadet raced back forward to try and sort out the chaos.

  The Pirate dhow surged up alongside, her rail crowded with would-be boarders, howling and waving blades and pistols. Sam shouted, “Shot-gunners, open fire!” and did so himself, gratified to see a couple of Pirates go down. Maddie, at his side, was methodically firing and re-loading her revolver, her face pa
le but set in an expression of fierce determination. But neither of the other two hands armed with shotguns responded; dead or wounded or still trapped under the mainsail, Sam supposed. The Pirates opened a hail of small arms fire.

  Two things happened then so nearly simultaneously that they were forever after associated in Sam’s mind: a lucky shot from Wasp, at extreme range, scythed along the starboard rail of the Pirate dhow, striking down a score of the would-be boarders; and he heard a faint, startled, “Oh!” from Maddie, at his elbow. Sam turned and caught Maddie as she began to collapse, a spreading patch of bright red blood on her breast.

  He eased her down to the deck, saying “Maddie! Maddie!” over and over. Her eyes focused briefly on Sam’s face, and he saw her lips forming the words “dearest Sam”, but making no sound. Then the life went out of her eyes as if turned off by a switch.

  Eleven

  Sam neither saw nor heard nothing of what happened in the hour after that. He knelt on the deck, cradling Maddie’s lifeless body in his arms, rocking back and forth like a mother soothing a fretful child, blinded by his own tears.

  He learned later that the dhow had sheered off, and turned to deal with the threat of the Wasp; that the Wasp had stood off out of range of the dhow’s gun and methodically shot her to pieces, alternating explosive shell to her topsides and solid shot to her hull until there was nothing visible left of her but floating wreckage and bobbing heads of Pirate survivors.

  Lieutenant Commander Bernie Low, CO of Wasp, then crossed by boat to Amour, and when he saw that Maddie was dead stammered his condolences to Sam, unheard and unacknowledged. For a long time, Sam refused to leave Maddie, until gentle persuasion by Low convinced him that her body must be prepared for burial.

  Sam’s wits returned with the solemn burial at sea, with full naval honors, of Maddie and the fallen Amour officers and crewmen (Wasp had some wounded but no dead). The entire scene was burned painfully and permanently into his memory: Bernie Murphy’s dignified reading of the service for burial at sea; the two vessels rigged for mourning, with their sails half-slacked and rigging loosened; the rifle salute fired by a party of gunners from Wasp; his last view of Maddie as her hammock-shrouded body slid over the side into the sea – none of this would he ever forget.

  After that practical issues occupied the forepart of his mind, but sleeping or waking, Maddie was always there.

  And the practical issues were many. The damage to Amour and her rig was repaired with the expert help of Wasp’s warrant officers and seamen. Then the question arose: since Sam still had to proceed to French Port and the Amour had to complete her voyage, how was this to be done with her only able officer a mere cadet, and half her original crew dead or incapacitated? Bernie Low wanted to escort her all the way to Kerguelen, an idea Sam stamped on firmly; the Wasp was to continue her shipping protection mission. Then Low wanted to give Sam fully half his officers and crew to help sail Amour homeward. Sam at first vetoed this notion, as well.

  But it was clear that Amour, undermanned and with but one of her officers surviving, and that one a second-voyage cadet, was in no state to tackle the Southern Ocean. Sam, remembering his ordeal with a similarly-undermanned Kiasu when he was still a merchant master, reluctantly agreed.

  Wasp lent to Amour her most senior midshipman and four experienced ABs who had reputations as competent heavy-weather helmsmen. Low also insisted, almost to the point, of insubordination, on escorting Amour to a point well south of Cape Sainte Marie, and there helping her in re-rigging for the Roaring Forties, before returning to her patrol station. Sam also reluctantly agreed to this, remembering all too well how arduous and even dangerous a task it was to convert a schooner’s rig; stowing all fair-weather sails below; sending down topmasts (each needing only one lapse by a tired or careless hand to become a potential spear right through the deck and hull of the vessel); rigging the storm Marconi sails; and setting up preventers to all shrouds, stays, and steering tackle. As much as he hated keeping Wasp from her cruise for a minute longer than necessary, he knew her help in this vital task was very much needed.

  And so finally Sam watched Wasp sailing northward, after firing a salute. Amour was beating southward into a gentle southwesterly breeze, a wind sure to strengthen and veer more westerly as she entered the Roaring Forties.

  “Have you made this passage often, Mister Kennedy?” Sam asked the midshipman formerly of the Wasp, now chief mate of the Amour.

  “Yes, sir, several times. Although I spent my cadet time, and some time as second mate, on round-the-worlders.”

  “You plan to sit for Master while in French Port, I understand.”

  “Yes, sir – Commodore – with my Navy watch-standing time I’m eligible. Captain Murphy said I’m ready for the lieutenant’s board, and, under the new rule, I could take the KBS exam under his proctorship, but this is an opportunity to get the civilian qualification.”

  “Is that an advantage?”

  “It could be in the future, Commodore. No one knows how civilian ship-owners will value the Navy version of a master’s ticket. And when this war ends, I’ll have my living to think of.”

  “Very true, Mister Kennedy. I hope the Navy will continue after that, but realistically we have to expect that peacetime will bring a significant down-sizing.”

  Kennedy excused himself for a moment to check the heading – an old Amour was at the helm, and the new second mate had clearly developed a subconscious bias that favored navy ABs over mere merchant seamen.

  When he returned to stand respectfully to leeward of the Commodore, as was only right, his mind had continued to run on the last conversational track.

  “How much longer will the war last, Commodore, do you think?”

  “Dieu seul sait, Gadge … I mean, Mister Mate,” Sam replied. “We can hardly hope, with the forces we have, to defeat Zanzibar, much less the entire Caliphate. Our strategy is to inflict enough pain on the Sultanate to make it agree to a negotiated peace, with neither party claiming complete victory.” Sam bit off the last word, wondering if he had been too pessimistic; if he infected this young officer with a fatalistic attitude, he might very well spread it to his future Navy shipmates.

  “Oh, of course, sir. But I’m quite certain the Council will agree to increase funding for the Navy, once they’ve heard your views. And this will hearten the rest of the Alliance to continue, and perhaps increase, their support, as well.”

  Sam did not share Kennedy’s cheerful optimism about Kerguelenian willingness to devote ever-increasing amounts of support to a Navy that was, after all, merely holding its own against the enemy. But the young soon-to-be lieutenant’s positive outlook heartened him.

  “Well, we’ll see, Mister Kennedy. We’ll see.”

  Sam stayed on deck all his waking hours – most of them, since being alone in his cabin left him prey to renewed bouts of grief, and sleep, when it came, was troubled by dreams of Maddie alive, which made waking an agony of sorrow as he experienced anew the truth that she was gone forever.

  His excuse for always keeping the deck was the inexperience of young Cadet Ely, who Sam felt, needed a steady, reassuring presence during his watch. He soon realized that this underestimated Ely, who, despite being only a second-voyager, had proved himself under the pressure of the attack on the schooner, and was promising to be a steady, capable officer. Still, he stayed topsides for twenty hours out of each day, going below to sleep only when at the point of dropping from exhaustion. He noticed that he was losing weight, due both to his routine of work, and his lack of appetite. He forced himself to eat, but all joy in the simple things of life had fled.

  Once the schooner was well into the Forties, he no longer needed any excuse to stay on deck. The vessel had only six seamen Sam rated as good heavy-weather helmsmen, and the strain of steering meant relieving them every fifteen minutes – half the usual duration of a trick at the wheel. And nearly every other man on board, officers included, took a trick as lee-helmsman, adding their physical stre
ngth to the helmsman’s, to control the vessel in the ferocious wind and towering seas.

  The south-easterly course to Kerguelen kept the vessel on a track relative to the wind varying between a broad and a close reach. The tactic used in these waters was to steer a broad reach along the wave tops, but then, in the trough, the mast-high waves momentarily becalmed the schooner, and the helmsman and sail trimmers, working together, had to keep enough momentum to bring her onto a close reach, to bring the wave onto the starboard bow, where she would again fall off to a broad reach, racing along the wave-tops until the next trough, when the evolution repeated.

  In addition to the challenge to the helmsman, the hands at the sheets had to keep the sharpest sense of timing and teamwork. One mistake, either in steering or trimming, could see the schooner pooped or broached-to; a misfortune instantly fatal to the vessel and all aboard her, as she would sink at once. The officers, including Sam, took a trick at the helm once in each cycle, to give the seamen-helmsmen a bit more time to rest. All aboard survived on cold rice balls and cold coffee, both prepared in huge quantities in advance while the Amour was still in the gentle thirties, because the galley fires were now out for the duration of the passage. A daily shot of rum, snatched in a quick gulp between duties, helped keep them going.

  No one spent more than an hour or two in their bunks or wildly swinging hammocks. Even the cook, when not handing out rations, served his trick as lee helmsman. The only mitigating factor was that this was a familiar ordeal to sailors in the north-south trades, undergone twice in every round voyage; every man aboard had experienced it before.

  This went on for six hundred or more weary sea-miles, no man ever warm or dry, never a hot meal. And, to cause Sam further worry, never a fix of the vessel’s position. Something always prevented taking sights, even on clear, bright days: the violence of the schooner’s motion and the jagged horizon caused by towering waves killed the opportunity to take even the most approximate noon latitude by the sun; morning and evening twilight, the time for taking star sights, were, when not absolutely prevented for the same reasons, made impossible by thick cloud cover inexorably rolling in from the west, even when they were having day after day of clear skies. One or two lucky azimuths of the sun showed the compass error unchanged, which laid to rest one worry.