by Wilbur Smith
Quickly she followed his gaze, and for the first time noticed a tiny shred of white on the horizon that did not fade like the white caps of the waves, but stood constant and bright in the sunlight, though even as she watched it seemed to alter its shape slightly and – was it her imagination, or was it a thin dark wavering line that seemed to appear behind it and spread slowly away in the direction of the wind?
‘Mr Tippoo, what do you make of that sail?’ She heard the timbre of concern and alarm in Mungo St John’s tone, and her heart leapt wildly, with hope and a Judas dread.
For Clinton Codrington it had been a desperate run down the eastern coastline of southern Africa, long days and sleepless nights of unceasing strain, when hope and despair pendulumed against each other. Each shift or change in the wind either alarmed or encouraged him, for it would either aid or hinder the tall clipper ship he was racing to head. The calms elated him, and the revival of the south-easterly prevailing winds sent his spirits plunging.
On the last days there was another worry to plague him. He had burned his coal like a spendthrift on the long thousand-mile run southwards, and his engineer came up on deck, a small red-headed Scot with the grease and coal-dust etched into his skin so that he seemed to be suffering from some debilitating and incurable disease.
‘The stokers’ shovels be hitting the bottom of the bunkers already,’ he told Clinton with mournful relish. ‘I warned ye, sir, that we’d not make it if you—’
‘Burn the ship’s furniture if you must,’ Clinton snapped at him. ‘You can start with my bunk, I’ll not be needing it.’
And when the engineer would have argued further Clinton added, ‘I don’t care how you do it, Mr MacDonald, but I want a full head of steam on your boiler until I reach Cape Point, and another full head of steam when I bring this ship into action.’
They raised the Cape Point lighthouse a few minutes after midnight the following night, and Clinton’s voice was hoarse with fatigue and relief as he stooped over the voice pipe.
‘Mr MacDonald, you can let your fires damp down, but keep your furnaces warmed and ready to stoke. When I ask for steam again, I’ll need it in a hurry.’
‘You’ll be calling at Table Bay to take on fresh bunkers, of course, sir?’
‘I’ll let you know when,’ Clinton promised him, and snapped the lid of the speaking tube closed and straightened up.
The Cape naval base, with all its amenities lay only a few hours steaming away. By dawn he could be filling Black Joke with coal and water and fresh vegetables.
However, Clinton knew that within minutes of dropping anchor in Table Bay, Admiral Kemp or one of his representatives would be on his way out to the ship, and Clinton’s term of independent command would be over. He would revert to being a very junior commander, whose recent actions needed a great deal of explanation.
The closer that Clinton drew to Admiralty House, the louder the warnings of Sir John Bannerman rang in his ears, and the more soberly he was forced to review his own position. The excitement of storming Arab barracoons and of seizing slave-laden dhows on the high seas had long ago cooled, and Clinton realized that once he entered it he would not be able to escape again from Table Bay for weeks, or possibly months. It would not even suit his immediate plans to be seen and recognized from the land, for a boat would immediately be sent out by Admiral Kemp to order him in to face judgement and retribution.
Clinton felt not the least trepidation about the Navy’s ultimate judgement, he was so indifferent to the threat hanging over his career that he surprised even himself. There was only one desire, one object in his mind, that overshadowed all else. He must have his ship in position to intercept Huron as she rounded the Cape, if she had not already done so. Nobody and nothing must prevent him from doing so. After that he would face his accusers with complete equanimity. Huron and Robyn Ballantyne first, beside them all else was pale and insignificant.
‘Mr Denham,’ he called his Lieutenant across the dark deck. ‘We will take up night patrol station ten miles off Cape Point, and I am to be called immediately the lights of any ship are sighted.’
As Clinton threw himself down, fully dressed and booted, upon his bunk, he experienced the first peace of mind since leaving Zanzibar harbour. He had done all that was in his power to reach Cape Point ahead of Huron, and now the rest was in the hands of God – and his trust in God was implicit.
He fell asleep almost instantly, and his steward woke him again an hour before dawn. He left the mug of coffee to grow cold beside his bunk and hurried on deck, reaching it a few seconds ahead of Lieutenant Denham.
‘No ships during the night, sir.’ Ferris, who had the watch, saluted him.
‘Very well, Mr Ferris,’ Clinton acknowledged. ‘We will take up our daylight patrol station immediately.’
By the time the light was strong enough for a watcher on the shore to make out any details, Black Joke had retreated tactfully below the horizon and it would have taken a sharp eye to pick out the occasional flash of her topsails, let alone to identify the gunboat and to speed a report to Admiral Kemp that his prodigal had returned.
From Black Joke’s masthead the land was a low irregular distortion of the horizon, but a ship rounding the Cape would be many miles closer than the land. Huron’s mainmast was almost one hundred and fifty feet tall, her sails would shine like a flaming beacon and as long as the fog did not come down, which was unlikely at this season of the year, Clinton was confident that she could not slip by him.
The only disquiet that scratched him like a burr as he paced his deck, and the gunboat settled down into the regular four-sided box-patterned legs of her patrol, was that Huron had long ago flown northwards on this fine wind that at last bore steadily out of the south-east at almost gale force, and that she was already lost in the endless watery green wastes of the southern Atlantic Ocean, leaving Black Joke to guard the gate of an empty cage.
He was not left long to brood, the first sighting was called down to the deck from the look-outs in the crow’s nest at the main peak, and Clinton’s nerves jumped tight and his expectations flared.
‘What do you make of her?’ he called up through the voice trumpet.
‘Small lugger—’ and his expectations plunged. A fishing boat out of Table Bay, there would be many of them, but each time he could not control the wild surge of excitement when another sail was sighted, so that by nightfall his nerves were ragged, and his body ached with exhaustion as he gave the order for Black Joke to take up her inshore patrol station for the night.
Even then he could not rest, for three times during the night he was called from his bunk, and he stumbled owl-eyed on deck as Black Joke went down to investigate running lights that winked ruby red and emerald green out of the darkness.
Each time the same leap of expectation, the steeling of nerves for instant orders and swift action, and then the same let down as the lights proved to belong to small trading vessels, and the gunboat sheered away quickly, lest she be recognized and her presence off the Cape be reported in Table Bay.
In the dawn, Clinton was on deck again, as the gunboat moved further offshore to take up her daylight patrol station. He was distracted by the sighting reports as his masthead look-out picked up the first sails of the fishing fleet coming out for the day’s business, and by the lugubrious report of his coal-stained Scottish engineer.
‘Ye’ll not last out the day, sir,’ MacDonald told him. ‘Even though I am burning just enough coal to keep the furnace warm – we’ve not more than a bucket or two left.’
‘Mr MacDonald,’ Clinton interrupted him, trying to keep his temper under control and to disguise his exhaustion. ‘This ship will stay on station until I give the order, I don’t care what you burn, but you are to give me steam when I ask for it – or kiss good-bye to the fattest bundle of prize money that will ever come your way.’
Despite this brave promise and threat, Clinton’s hopes were sinking swiftly. They had been on station for more than a day an
d a night already – he could not bring himself to believe that he had beaten the swift clipper to the Cape by that margin, not unless she had been somehow miraculously delayed, and every hour increased the certainty that she had run clear away from him, taking her cargo and the woman he loved out of his life for ever.
He knew he should go below to rest, but his cabin was stifling in the rising summer heat, and in it he felt like a trapped animal. He stayed on deck, unable to keep still for more than a few moments at a time, poring over the chart table and fiddling with the navigational instruments before throwing them down and resuming his nervous pacing, shooting quick glances up at the masthead, and then roaming the ship so obviously intent on finding fault or criticizing the ship’s running that his officers followed his lanky figure with troubled expressions, while the watch on deck was silent and subdued, not one of them daring to glance in his direction until Clinton’s voice rose in a coldly furious cry that froze them all.
‘Mr Denham,’ the Lieutenant almost ran to the summons, ‘this deck is a pig sty. What animal is responsible for this filth?’
On the white holystoned deck planking was a brown splash of tobacco juice, and Denham stared at it for an instant before wheeling away to bellow a series of orders that had a dozen men scampering. The activity was so intense, the atmosphere electric, as Captain and Lieutenant stood over four men on their knees scrubbing furiously at the offending stain while others carried buckets of sea water and still others rigged the deck pump, that the hail from the masthead was almost ignored,
It was left to Ferris to acknowledge it, and to enquire through the voice trumpet,
‘What do you make of her?’
‘She’s hull down, but she’s a four-masted ship, square rigged—’
The activity on the deck ceased instantly, every head lifting as the look-out went on elaborating on his sighting.
‘She’s on a course to weather the Cape, now she’s coming round on to a heading of north-north-west or thereabouts.’
Clinton Codrington was the first to move. He snatched the telescope out of Lieutenant Denham’s hand and ran to the ratlines. With the telescope tucked in his belt he began to climb, hand over hand.
He went up steadily, never pausing nor faltering, not even when he reached the futtock shrouds and for a few moments hung over backwards one hundred feet above the swaying deck. However, when he reached the crow’s nest at the main peak and tumbled into it thankfully, his breath was sawing dryly in his throat and the blood sang in his ears. He had not climbed like that since he had been a midshipman.
The look-out tried to make himself as small as possible, for they were crowded together in the canvas bucket, and he pointed out the ship to his Captain.
‘There she be, sir.’
Black Joke’s roll was emphasized up here on the tall pendulum of the mast, and the horizon swung giddily through the field of Clinton’s telescope as he tried to keep it focused. It was an art that he had never completely mastered, but that was of little consequence for the first time the little regular white pyramids popped up in the field of his glass the last doubts were dispelled, and Clinton felt his heart leap fiercely against his ribs.
His voice was strangled with triumphant emotion as he shouted down at the tiny foreshortened figures on the gleaming white quarterdeck far below.
‘Bring her round to due east, Mr Denham. Order a full head of steam on the boiler—’
Though he had not yet fully recovered his breath, he threw himself out of the crow’s nest and scrambled down faster than he had climbed. In his haste he slid the last fifty feet down the backstay and barely noticed the rough hempen rope scorching the palms of his hands.
By the time his feet hit the deck, Black Joke was coming around on to her new heading, and in anticipation of Clinton’s next order, Denham had already called the watch below, and they came boiling out on to the deck.
‘And we will clear for action, Mr Denham, if you please,’ gasped Clinton, his face dark with blood under his deepwater tan and the sapphire eyes alight with battle lust.
All Black Joke’s officers carried swords on their belts, only Clinton had selected a cutlass, for he preferred the stouter and heavier weapon, and he fiddled with the hilt even now as he spoke to them quietly and seriously.
‘Gentlemen, I have documented proof that the ship ahead of us has a cargo of slaves aboard her.’
Denham coughed nervously and Clinton forestalled him. ‘I am also aware that she is an American vessel, and in ordinary circumstances we would be helpless to oppose her passage.’ Denham nodded with relief, but Clinton went on remorselessly, ‘However, I have received an appeal from one of Her Majesty’s subjects, Dr Robyn Ballantyne whom you all know well, who is being abducted aboard the Huron against her will. I am certain what my duty is in these circumstances. I intend to board her, and if she resists me, I intend to fight her.’ He paused and their faces were shocked, strained. ‘Those of you who have objections to this course of action should immediately note them in the ship’s log, and I will sign them.’
Their relief and gratitude was immediate, few other captains would be so lenient.
He signed his name neatly beneath the entry in the ship’s log, and then returned the pen to its holder.
‘Now that the formalities have been seen to, gentlemen, shall we get on with earning our hire?’ And Clinton was smiling for the first time since they sailed from Zanzibar harbour as he indicated the pile of snowy white sails that was now clearly visible from the deck ahead of Black Joke’s bows, and as he spoke there was an eruption of dark tarry-smelling smoke from the tall single stack above them, and the engine telegraph clanged sharply as the pointer moved to ‘Engine Standing By’ position on the repeater. Black Joke had steam in her boiler.
Clinton stepped to the telegraph, thrust the handle fully around the dial to the ‘Full ahead’ position, and the deck vibrated under his feet as the propeller shaft began to spin and Black Joke lunged forward eagerly, breaking the swells off her shoulders in explosions of white spray.
‘By God, he’s got us pinned against the land—’ Mungo drawled the words out nonchalantly, even smiling slightly at Tippoo as he lowered the glass from his eye for a moment and polished the lens on his shirt sleeve. ‘We’ll have to run like the very devil to get round him, and make the open sea. Mr Tippoo, will you be good enough to shake out every last reef and crack on all the sail we can carry right up to the sky sails?’ He lifted the glass to his eye again as Tippoo began bellowing the orders. ‘It’s a little bit too much luck for any one man,’ Mungo murmured aloud. ‘It’s too much coincidence that the one man I would not wish to meet be lying in the one place on all the oceans where I would not wish to meet him.’ Again he lowered the glass and strode to the poop rail to look down on to the maindeck.
Robyn Ballantyne was at the ship’s side, staring out across the indigo blue waters at the sail and the smear of dark smoke, still far out to sea, but every moment converging on them, headed to a point far ahead of Huron’s elegant bows where the courses of the two ships would meet. She sensed Mungo’s eyes upon her, and she lifted the shawl off her head so that her dark russet hair tumbled out and snapped and danced around her cheeks. Her skirts were flattened against her legs by the wind, so that she had to lean slightly forward to balance herself.
She lifted her chin and stared up at Mungo, her expression defiant and she watched him as he carefully bit the end off one of his long thin black cheroots and cupped his hands around the sulphurous flare of the Vesta match and lit the cheroot without once breaking the steady gaze that held her own.
Then he sauntered easily down the poop-ladder to her side.
‘A friend of yours, Doctor Ballantyne?’ The smile was on his lips alone. His eyes were frosty.
‘I have prayed every night for him to come. Ever since I sent the letter that summoned him.’
‘You do not deny the betrayal?’
‘I am proud I was able to perform my Christian duty.�
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‘Who carried your letter?’
‘No member of your crew, sir. I sent it by the master of the Omani buggaloo.’
‘I see.’ His voice was low, but stinging as dry ice. ‘And what of Tippoo’s illness, would a physician, per chance, stoop to poisoning a patient?’
She dropped her eyes, unable to meet that accusation.
‘Will you be so kind, Doctor Ballantyne, as to return to your cabin immediately and stay there until I give you permission to leave it. There will be an armed guard at the door.’
‘I am to be punished?’
‘No man would blame me for dropping you over the side, and leaving you to be picked up by your countrymen. However, it is your safety I am thinking of. This deck could become an unhealthy spot in the very near future, and we will all be too much occupied to care for you.’
His attention left her, and he was staring ahead, and then glancing back at Black Joke’s smoke, judging speeds and angles with a seaman’s eye. Then he smiled.
‘Before you go, I would like you to know that all your efforts have really been a fine waste of time – look there!’ He pointed ahead along the sheer and mountainous coastline, and following his arm she saw for the first time that ahead of them the sea was as black and broken as new coal cut from the face, glittering with wild jumping wavelets, each flecked with pretty white crests.
‘There is the wind,’ Mungo said. ‘That’s where it comes through the mountains, and we will be into it before you are safely tucked up in your cabin.’ He chuckled now comfortably, confidently. ‘Once we get on that wind, there are few ships on all the oceans, either steam or sail, that would match Huron for a moment, and God knows, there are none who could run her down.’ He gave her a small mocking bow, parody of gracious southern manners. ‘Take a good look at that ugly little steam packet, before you go, ma’am, you’ll not be seeing her again. And now, if you’ll be good enough to excuse me—’