A Falcon Flies

by Wilbur Smith

  He turned from her and ran lightly back up the poopladder.

  Tears of anger dimming her eyes, Robyn clutched the rail and stared across the narrowing strip of sea at the bustling, puffing little gunboat, already she could catch glimpses of the hull, and its painted chequer-board gunports. She began to hope that Mungo St John’s boast had been mere bravado, for Black Joke seemed to be keeping pace with the tall clipper, the wind was still a long, long way ahead.

  There was a respectful touch on Robyn’s shoulder, and old Nathaniel stood beside her.

  ‘Captain’s orders, ma’am, and I am to see you safe in your cabin.’

  Clinton leaned forward, all his weight on the balls of his feet, almost as though he were trying to urge his ship on by the balance of his body, the way a rider leans forward into the jump. He also had seen the wind pattern on the surface of the sea, and knew what it heralded.

  The tall clipper ship looked lazy now, indolent in her flounces and ruffles as a lady of high fashion, and Black Joke was snorting and snuffling busily down the short leg of the triangle. If they both maintained this speed and course they would meet about eleven nautical miles ahead. Clinton could visualize the exact spot clearly just beyond the spit of land marked on his chart as ‘Bakoven Point’.

  Huron was committed to her present course. She could not bear up for the land lay close under her weather rail, and the chart showed breaking shoals well offshore – there was one of them now, close on her starboard beam, showing its round black granite back and blowing like a whale. Huron was in a trap, and her only escape would be to find the extra turn of speed which would carry her away out of gunshot range – and there it was, the wind, less than three miles ahead of her.

  There was a loud banging from the deck below Clinton’s feet, and he glanced irritably at Ferris.

  ‘See what that is,’ he snapped, and turned his full attention back to the clipper. Three short miles she had to go, but even as Clinton stared at her through his glass he saw her huge square mainsail quiver and then shake gently as she luffed in the flukey airs below the mountains.

  ‘Please God!’ Clinton whispered, and Huron’s speed bled off perceptively, all her sails were losing their taut clean shape and she checked away, baulking like a weary animal.

  ‘She’s found a hole in the wind,’ Lieutenant Denham called exultantly. ‘We’ve got her now, by God!’

  ‘I’ll thank you not to blaspheme on this quarterdeck, Mr Denham,’ Clinton told him sharply, and Denham’s expression was instantly crestfallen.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir.’ At that moment Ferris arrived breathlessly back on deck.

  ‘The stokers, sir,’ he panted. ‘They are knocking out all the furniture from the officers’ quarters. Your bunk’s gone, sir, and your desk also.’

  Clinton barely glanced at him, he was studying the clipper, evaluating each yard of difference in their speeds, judging as finely as he dared the angle of his interception.

  Yes, he decided, with Huron’s loss of speed, he could edge in a touch more.

  ‘Bring her up a point to starboard,’ he told the helmsman, and then he glanced up at his own sails that were helping the big bronze screws under the stern to hurl Black Joke forward. The alteration of course had affected them.

  ‘Mr Ferris, see to the trim of your jib, if you please.’

  Ferris bellowed an order to the foredeck watch, and watched critically as they hardened up the long triangular sail.

  All Huron’s sails shivered, and then refilled, once more taking on their true shape, and she spurted away, a curl of white sparkling under her bows. The dark windswept water was much closer ahead of her.

  It had been Denham’s unnecessary blasphemy, Clinton was sure of it, and he glanced darkly at his Lieutenant, and then reluctantly gave the order.

  ‘Let her fall off a point.’ Huron was head-reaching again. If Black Joke held on she would be aiming to cut behind the clipper’s stern. The alteration was an acknowledgement of the advantage changing hands once again.

  The engine voice pipe squealed, and it was a relief to have even the small distraction.

  ‘Engine room, Captain,’ he snapped into the mouthpiece. ‘Coal long ago gone, sir. Pressure down to 100 pounds, sir – and falling.’

  ‘Burn everything you can find.’

  ‘Wood goes up like paper, sir. No body to it – and it chokes the flue.’ MacDonald seemed to relish the gloomy news, and Clinton felt his irritation turn to anger.

  ‘Do your best, man, nobody can ask more than that,’ and he snapped the voice pipe closed.

  Was he close enough yet to try a shot with his bow-chaser, he wondered? The long sixteen-pounder had almost twice the range of the big thirty-two pounders that made up Black Joke’s main armament. A lucky shot might carry away one of the clipper’s spars, might even bring down a yard – and at that moment he distinctly felt the change in the engine vibrations coming up through the deck, Black Joke was faltering, the steam in her boilers losing pressure.

  ‘Mr Ferris, break out the colours, if you please.’

  As the Ensign unfurled at the peak, spread gloriously against the pale blue sky, crimson and silky white, shouting a challenge on the wind, Clinton felt that tightness in his chest, that swell of pride which never failed him.

  ‘Huron’s replying,’ Denham muttered, and Clinton lifted his glass, and watched the American’s colours bloom like a flower high above her shimmering piles of white canvas.

  ‘And be damned,’ Denham interpreted the show of colours. Huron was scorning their challenge.

  ‘Mr Ferris, we’ll give her a gun now,’ Clinton decided grimly. ‘Put one over her bows.’ And Ferris scrambled away to the bows to supervise the loading and laying of the bow-chaser.

  The shot when it came was a puny little pop of sound, muted by the wind and the long spurt of grey powder smoke was whipped away almost before it could form. Though they were all watching avidly through the telescopes, not one of them could spot the fall of shot, and Denham spoke aloud for all of them.

  ‘She’s not altering. She’s ignoring us.’

  ‘Very well.’ Clinton kept his voice low. ‘We’ll try one into her rigging.’

  The sixteen-pounder banged again, like an unlatched door in a high wind, and this time they both exclaimed in unison. A pinprick of light appeared in one of the Huron’s studding sails, pierced by shot; it held its shape for an instant and then burst like a paper packet and was blown to tatters.

  Clinton saw the bustle of Huron’s seamen on the decks and yards, and before the bow-chaser could be reloaded, the ruined sail was hauled down and another clean new sail spread open in its place. The speed with which the sail change was made impressed even Clinton.

  ‘The devil is a good sailor, I’ll grant him that—’ And then he broke off, for Huron was turning boldly, seeming to aim to cut the gunboat’s bows, and Clinton realized what her Captain was doing. He was anticipating the rush of the wind, and as Clinton watched it struck her.

  It came roaring aboard the clipper, howling through her rigging, like a pack of hunting wolves, and the tall ship heeled and seemed almost to crouch, gathering herself like a blood stallion feeling the cut of the lash, and then she hurled herself forward and was away.

  The dark wind-scoured sea burst open before the long lithe knifing hull, and joyously Huron tossed the dashing white spray over her bows.

  ‘She’s making twenty knots,’ Denham cried with disbelief, as Black Joke seemed to come up dead in the water, a wallowing log when compared to the swift and lovely ship that cut daringly across her bows, just out of cannon shot, and dashed away into the open Atlantic Ocean.

  Through his glass Clinton saw that the seamen who lined Huron’s yards were gambolling and waving their caps, mouths wide open as they cheered and jeered, and then he focused the glass on Huron’s deck.

  There was a tall figure at Huron’s near rail, clad in a plain dark blue jacket. Clinton could not make out the man’s features at this d
istance, but he recognized the set of wide shoulders, the arrogant carriage of head, that he had last seen over the sights of a duelling pistol.

  The acid bile of hatred rose to scald his throat as the figure lifted a hand in a laconic salute, a taunting gesture of farewell, and then turned away from the rail unhurriedly.

  Clinton snapped his telescope closed.

  ‘Stern chase!’ he ordered. ‘We’ll keep after her!’

  He did not dare look at his officers’ faces, lest one of them wore an expression of pity.

  Lying on her bunk, her arms held stiffly at her sides and hands clenched painfully, Robyn heard the creak and squeal from the deck below her that meant Huron was altering course, and that the eight-inch thick rudderlines were running through their blocks as the helmsman spun the wheel. It was a sound she had long become accustomed to, and she braced herself instinctively as the rudder lines attached to the pintles trained around the enormous wooden rudder under Huron’s stern and the ship altered her action through the water.

  Seconds later there was a thunderous commotion from the deck above her, the blustering roar of the gale socking into the rigging, the crash of tackle coming up taut, the slam of the great sails as their awesome power was transferred into the hull, and Robyn was almost hurled from her bunk as Huron heeled wildly.

  Then the cabin was filled with the exultant thrumming of the hull through water, as though she were the body of a violin as the bow was drawn across the bass strings, and Huron trembled with life, lifting and dropping to the new urgency of her run.

  Very faintly Robyn could hear above it all the sound of men cheering. She jumped from the bunk and clutching for handholds crossed the cabin and pounded her fist upon the door.

  ‘Nathaniel,’ she called. ‘Answer me this instant.’

  ‘Captain says as how I’m not to talk to you.’ His voice was muffled.

  ‘You cannot torment me so,’ Robyn yelled back. ‘What is happening?’

  A long pause while Nathaniel considered his duty and then weighed it against his affection for this spirited young woman.

  ‘We are on the wind, ma’am,’ he told her at last. ‘And going like all the devils of hell with a crackerjack tied to their tails.’

  ‘What of Black Joke?’ she pleaded. ‘What of the British gunboat?’

  ‘Ain’t nothing will catch us now. Reckon the puffing Billy will be out of sight before nightfall. From here she looks like she’s dropped her anchor.’

  Slowly Robyn leaned forward until her forehead pressed against the planking of the door. She closed her eyes very tightly, and tried to fight down the black waves of despair that threatened to overwhelm her.

  She stayed like that for a long time until Nathaniel’s voice roused her. It was rough with concern.

  ‘Are you all right then, missus?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Nathaniel. I’m just fine,’ she replied tightly, without opening her eyes. ‘I’m going to take a little nap now. Don’t let anybody disturb me.’

  ‘I’ll be right here, missus. Ain’t nobody going to get past me,’ he assured her.

  She opened her eyes and went back to the bunk, and knelt before it and began to pray – but for once she could not concentrate. Jumbled images kept intervening, and, when she closed her eyes, the face of Clinton Codrington was there, with those pale beautiful eyes in the darkly tanned mahogany of his face that accentuated the sun-bleached platinum of his hair. She longed for him as she had never done before – he had become a symbol for her of all that was good and clean and right.

  Then her mind darted away and it was that distant mocking smile, the taunting gold-flecked eyes of Mungo St John. She trembled with humiliation, the man who had violated her and turned her own emotions traitor, who had dallied with her and allowed her to hope, nay, to pray that she could bear his children and become his wife. Her despair turned to hatred once again, and hatred armed her.

  ‘Forgive me, Lord – I’ll pray later – but now I have to do something!’

  She started to her feet, and the cramped little cabin was a cage, suffocating and unbearable. She hammered her fists on the door and Nathaniel replied immediately.

  ‘Nathaniel, I cannot bear it in here a moment longer.’ she cried. ‘You must let me out.’

  His voice was regretful but firm. ‘Can’t do that, missus. Tippoo would have a look at my backbone!’

  She flung away from the door, angry, confused, her mind in a turmoil.

  ‘I cannot let him carry me away to—’ She did not go on, for she could not imagine what awaited her at the end of this voyage unless – and she had a vivid mental image of Huron coming into dock, while standing on the quay was a beautiful tall and aristocratic French woman in crinolines and velvets and pearls with three small sons standing at her side waving up at the tall arrogant figure on Huron’s quarterdeck.

  She tried to close her mind to it, and she concentrated instead on the sound that Huron made as she bore away joyously on the wind, the drumming of her hull, and the pop and creak of her planking, the clatter of tackle and the stamp of bare feet on her deck as a party of seamen walked away with a fall, training one of the yards more finely to the wind. From beneath her feet came another muted squeal, like a rat in the cat’s jaws, as the helmsman made a small adjustment to Huron’s heading, and the rudder tackle ran protestingly through the blocks.

  The sound triggered a memory, and Robyn froze, trembling again, but this time with anticipation. She remembered Clinton Codrington describing to her how as a young Lieutenant he had been in command of a cutting-out party sent into a river estuary that was crammed with small slaving craft, buggaloos and dhows.

  ‘I didn’t have enough men to take them all as prize at once, so we jumped from one to the other, cut their rudder lines and left them drifting helplessly, until we could pick’em up later – those that hadn’t gone aground, that is.’

  Robyn roused herself from the memory and rushed to the corner of her cabin. She had to wedge her back against the bulkhead and push with both her feet to move her wooden chest into the centre of the cabin. Then she dropped to her hands and knees.

  There was a small trap-door in the deck, so neatly fitted that its joints were knife edges, but there was a small iron ring let flush into the woodwork. Once on the long voyage down the Atlantic, she had been disturbed by a very apologetic carpenter’s mate and she had watched with interest while he had dragged her chest aside and opened the hatch, to descend through it with a grease pot.

  She tried now to open it, but the hatch was so tight-fitting, that it resisted her efforts. She snatched a woollen shawl from her chest, and threaded it through the iron ring. Now she could get a fairer purchase. Once more she strained back, and the hatch moved inchingly and then abruptly flew open with a crash that she was sure must have alerted Nathaniel. She froze again, listening for a half minute, but there was no sound from beyond the cabin door.

  On her hands and knees again she peered into the open hatchway. There was a faint breeze of air coming up out of the dark square hole, and she could smell the thick grease, the reek of the bilges and the awful slave stink that not all the lye and scrubbing had been able to cleanse – her gorge rose at the taint. As her eyes adjusted, she made out the low and narrow tunnel that housed Huron’s steering gear. It was just high enough for a man to crawl along, running fore and aft along the hull.

  The rudder lines came down from the deck above, ran through heavy iron blocks bolted into one of Huron’s main frames, and then changed direction and ran directly astern down the narrow wooden tunnel. The pulley wheels of the blocks were caked with black grease, and the rudder lines were of new yellow hemp. They seemed as thick as a man’s leg, and she could sense the enormous strain on them, for they were as rigid as steel bars.

  She looked around for a means of damaging them, a knife, one of her scalpels, perhaps, and almost immediately realized the futility of anything so puny. Even a strong man with a double-headed axe would be hard pressed to hack his
way through those cables, and there was no room in which to swing an axe in that narrow tunnel. Even if a man had succeeded in severing one of them, he would have been cut to bloody tatters as the cable whiplashed.

  There was only one means, one sure means, and she quailed at the thought of what would happen if it got out of control, and if Black Joke was not very swiftly alongside to render assistance with her steam-driven pumps and hoses. She had once already rejected the idea of using fire, but now with help so close astern, with the last chance rapidly fading, she was ready to accept any risk.

  She reached across and pulled off the wooden bunk one of her grey woollen blankets and wadded it into a bundle, then she stood up and lifted the oil lamp from its gimbals in the deck above her. Her fingers were clumsy with haste as she unscrewed the cap of the oil reservoir in the base of the lamp.

  She soaked the blanket, and then looked round for anything else that was inflammable – her journals? No, not them, but she pulled her medical manuals out of the chest and ripped the pages out of them, crumpling them so they would burn more readily, and she made a sack of the oil-soaked blanket and wadded the paper into it.

  She stuffed it down the hatch and it fell across the straining rudder lines, and entangled itself in the iron pulleys.

  The mattress on the bunk was filled with coir, the dry coconut fibre would burn fiercely; she dragged it off the bunk and pushed it into the hatch. Then the wooden slats off the bunk followed it, then the navigational books from the narrow bookshelf behind the door. She looked about her swiftly, but there was nothing else in the cabin that would burn.

  The first Swan Vesta that she dropped burning down the hatchway flickered once and then went out. She tore the end sheet out of her journal and twisted it into a spill, when it was blazing strongly she let it fall into the dark square opening, and as it floated down it illuminated the gloomy recesses of Huron’s bilges, and the rough planking of her underbelly.