A Falcon Flies

by Wilbur Smith

  The burning spill landed on the oil-soaked blanket, and pale blue flames fluttered over it as the evaporating gases flashed off, then a crumpled ball of paper caught and little orange flames peaked up and danced merrily over the blanket and the linen covering of the mattress. A rush of heat came up through the hatchway, scorching Robyn’s cheeks, and the sound of the flames was higher than that of the rushing seas along the outside of the hull.

  Using all her strength, Robyn swung the hatch cover over and let it drop back on to its seating with a thump that alarmed her anew, but immediately the sound of the flames was cut off.

  Panting with the effort and a savage excitement, Robyn backed away and leaned against the bulkhead to rest. Her heart was pounding so fiercely that the blood in her ears nearly deafened her, and suddenly she was afraid.

  What if Black Joke had abandoned the unequal contest, and there was nobody to rescue the eight hundred miserable souls chained below Huron’s decks before the flames reached them?

  That first wild assault of the wind, as it came boiling down off the mountains, had settled to a steady blast, not so furious, but constant and reliable.

  ‘There will be no flukes or holes in this gale of wind,’ Mungo thought with satisfaction, pausing in his pacing to look up at the small scudding wind-torn shreds of cloud that seemed to scrape the tops of his masts, and then turning to survey an indigo Atlantic that stretched to every corner of the horizon, dark with the wind rush and dappled with the prancing white horses that curled from every wave crest.

  His leisurely survey ended over Huron’s stern rail. The land was already out of sight, so swiftly had Huron run the great flat-topped mountain below the horizon, and Black Joke was hull down. Only her topsails showed, not a trace of furnace smoke.

  The absence of smoke puzzled Mungo a little and he frowned, considering it, and finding no plausible answer, he shrugged and resumed his pacing. Black Joke would be out of sight, even from Huron’s towering masthead, before sunset, and Mungo was planning the evolutions he would make during the night to confuse thoroughly any pursuit, before settling on to his final course to run through the doldrums and cross the equator.

  ‘Deck, masthead.’ A faint hail reached him, breaking his line of thought, and he stopped again, threw back his head and with both hands on his hips stared up at the masthead as it dipped and swung across the sky.

  Tippoo answered the hail with a bull bellow, and the look-out’s voice was strained, his anxiety evident even against the wind and at that remove.

  ‘Smoke!’

  ‘Where away?’ Tippoo’s voice was angry, the reply should have given both distance and bearing from Huron – already every man on Huron’s deck was twisting his head to sweep the horizon.

  ‘Dead astern.’

  ‘That will be the gunboat,’ Mungo thought comfortably. ‘She’s got her boiler going again – and much good may it do her.’ He dropped his fists from his hips and took one more pace before the look-out’s voice rang out again.

  ‘Smoke dead astern, we are trailing smoke!’

  Mungo stopped dead in his tracks, his foot still an inch from the deck. He felt the icy spray of fear chill his guts.

  ‘Fire!’ bellowed Tippoo.

  It was the one most dreaded word to men who lived their lives in the tinder hulls of wooden ships, whose seams were caulked with tar and pitch, and whose sails and rigging would burn like straw. Mungo completed that suspended pace, spinning on the ball of his foot as it struck the deck, and the next pace carried him to Huron’s rail. He leaned far out, peering back over the stern, and the smoke was a pale wisp, thin as sea fret, lying low against the dark blue sea, drifting away behind them, and dissipating even as he watched it.

  Dry oak planks burn with a fine clean flame and little smoke, Mungo knew that, he knew also that the first thing he must do was starve the flames of air, heave the ship to, to reduce the wind of her passage while the extent of the flames could be explored and the ship’s pumps—

  He turned again, his mouth opening to begin shouting his commands. The quartermaster and his mate stood directly ahead of him, both of them balancing easily before the massive mahogany and brass wheel. Larger than the driving-wheel on a steam locomotive, it required the strength of two men to hold Huron’s head in this wind and on this point of sailing, for the huge spread of her canvas was opposed by the massive oak and copper rudder under her stern.

  Down in the steering tunnel, the flames were being fed by the strong breeze that the canvas scoops on Huron’s foredeck were directing down into her own slave-decks in an attempt to keep them sweet.

  The draught forced its way through the companionways and ladderways, through the ports and cracks in Huron’s bulkheads, and this steady breeze at last found its way into the long narrow tunnel that housed her steering-gear.

  The bright rustling flames were almost smokeless, but intensely hot. They frizzled the loose fibres of hemp off the thick hairy rudder lines, and then swiftly blackened the golden brown cords, began to eat through them so that here a strand parted with a snap that was lost in the rising crackle of burning timbers and the strand unravelled, spinning upon itself and bursting in another tiny new explosion of light.

  The two quartermasters were ten feet from where Mungo stood, poised to give his commands, composing the orders in his head, when suddenly the massive wheel no longer resisted the thrust of the brawny men who held it over.

  Deep down in Huron’s hull, in the long wooden tunnel that had been turned into a raging blast furnace, the rudder lines had burned through, and as they snapped, they snaked and whipped viciously, smashing through the burning deck timbers, scattering flaming brands into the hold below, and letting in a fresh whistling gush of air that forced the flames higher.

  Under the helmsman’s hands the wheel dissolved in a spinning blur of glittering brass and the quartermaster was hurled the length of the deck, striking the bulwark with jarring force that dropped him to the planking wriggling feebly as a crushed insect. His mate was less fortunate, his right arm was caught in the polished mahogany spokes of the wheel and it twisted like a strip of rubber, the bone of his forearm breaking up into long sharp splinters whose points thrust out whitely through the tanned skin, and the head of the long humerus bone was plucked from its socket in the scapula and the whole upper arm screwed up in a twist of rubbery flesh.

  With the press of the rudder under the stern no longer controlling the rush of Huron’s hull through the water, the tremendous pressure of the wind in her sails took over unopposed, and Huron became a giant’s weather-cock. She spun in almost her own length, her bows flying up into the wind and every man on her deck was hurled to the planking with stunning force.

  The yards came crashing about, tackle snapping like cotton, one of the upper yards tearing itself loose, falling in a twisted web of its own canvas and rigging, and Huron was taken full aback, the neat geometrical pyramids of her sails disintegrating into flapping, fluttering chaos, wrapping around the stays and halyards, flogging against their own yards and masts.

  With the gale of wind flying fully into the front of the sails, from the diametrically opposite direction to that for which they had been designed, the tall masts flexed and arched dangerously backwards, the backstays drooping slackly, adding to the confusion of sail and rigging, while all the forestays were humming with unbearable tension – and one of them parted with an ear-jarring crack and the foremast shifted a few degrees and then hung askew.

  Mungo St John dragged himself to his feet and clung to the rail. The screams of the maimed helmsman dinning in his ears, he looked about him, and disbelief turned to bitter despair, as he found his beautiful ship transformed to an ungainly shambles. Wallowing drunkenly, Huron was beginning to make sternway, as the wind pushed her backwards and the waves came tumbling aboard her.

  For long seconds Mungo stared about him numbly. There was so much damage, so much confusion, and so much mortal danger, that he did not know where to begin, what his fir
st order must be. Then over Huron’s heaving bows, in the opposite direction to which he had last seen it, the distant but suddenly dreadfully threatening speck that was Black Joke’s topsails showed in a pale flash above the horizon, and it galvanized Mungo.

  ‘Mr Tippoo,’ Mungo called. ‘We’ll reef the mains and send down all her top hamper.’

  The logical sequence of orders began to arrange themselves in his mind, and his voice was calm and clear, without the strained and panicky timbre they had expected.

  ‘Mr O’Brien, go below and give me a fire report, quick as you like.’

  ‘Bosun, rig port and starboard pumps, and stand by to hose down the fire.’

  ‘Mr Tippoo, send a party to batten all her hatches and strike the air scoops.’ They must try to prevent air reaching the flames, he was sealing the hull.

  ‘Coxswain, have the whaler off her davits and launch her.’ He would attempt to tow the heavy boat astern, to act as a drogue, a sea-anchor. He was not sure that it would provide a solution, but he intended to work Huron’s bows around with the delicate use of her forward sails – and with the drogue holding her tail in place of the rudder, he might be able to run directly before the wind. It was not his optimum course, and it would be fine and dangerous work with the deadly risk of gibing and broaching, but at the least it would give him respite while he rigged the emergency steering tackle to her useless rudder, and get Huron under control once more.

  He paused for breath, but once more glanced forward. Huron was moving rapidly astern, dipping and staggering into the swells so they came flurrying aboard her in spray and solid green gouts of water, while over her bows the British gunboat was closer – so close that Mungo glimpsed a little sliver of her painted hull, and it seemed that her action through the water was more boisterous and cocky, like a game rooster erecting its coxcomb and ruffling its feathers as it bounces across the sandy floor of the cockpit.

  Unable to endure the company of his junior officers a moment longer, stifled and filled with a sense of helplessness by his inability to prevent the tall American clipper from romping away from him, desperate for some activity to help his nerves from fraying further, Clinton Codrington had taken his telescope and gone forward into Black Joke’s bows.

  Oblivious to the spray that splattered over him, soaking the thin linen shirt and chilling him so that his teeth chattered even in the brilliant sunlight, Clinton clutched for a hand-hold in the ratlines, balancing on the narrow bulwark and staring ahead through eyes that swam not only with the stinging spray and wind, but as much with humiliation and frustration.

  Just perceptibly, Huron’s tower of canvas was sinking below the irregular watery horizon, by sunset she would be gone. She and Robyn Ballantyne. His chance had come and he had missed it. His spirits could sink no lower.

  To add to his suffering, his streaming eyes were playing him false, and what he could still make out of the clipper became distorted, changing shape as he still stared after her. Then the hail from the look-out high above him broke the grip of his despair,

  ‘Chase is altering!’ Clinton could not yet believe the high-pitched shriek from the masthead. ‘She’s coming about!’ The hail was almost incoherent with excitement and surprise.

  Clinton whipped the telescope to his eye, and once again doubted his eyesight. Huron’s masts had been almost dead in line, but now they showed individually. She was coming about, already Huron was almost broadside, and Clinton stared. For a few moments more the orderly mass of sails retained their perfect snowy shape, and then the pattern began to break up. The ponderous belly of the mainsail wobbled and trembled, then began to flutter and shake like a pennant in the gale, it spilled its wind and collapsed like a bursting paper bag and lashed itself in a petulant fury around its own mainmast.

  Huron was a shambles. Through the glass Clinton could see her beginning to tear herself to pieces, sails ripping, yards tumbling – her foremast sagging out of true, and he still could not believe it was happening.

  ‘She’s taken full aback.’ He heard Denham’s triumphant yell, and other voices took up the cry.

  ‘She fast in irons!’

  ‘We’ve got her, by God, we’ve got her now!’

  Though his vision blurred and the wetness running down his cheeks was not all splattered spray, Clinton went on staring incredulously through the telescope.

  ‘There is smoke, she’s on fire!’ Denham again, and Clinton picked up the fine pale mist of smoke spreading away from her; and at that moment a fresh burst of spray over the bows drenched the lens of his telescope, and he lowered it.

  He took a silk bandanna from his hip pocket, and wiped his face and eyes of spray and the other wetness, then he blew his nose noisily, stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket, jumped on to his deck and strode back to his quarterdeck.

  ‘Mr Ferris,’ he said crisply, ‘please send up a flag hoist under Huron’s name and make the following “I am sending a boarding party to you.”’ The pale sapphire eyes shone with a zealot’s intensity. ‘“If you resist I shall fight you.”’

  It was a long message, and while Ferris called for the pennants from the flag locker, Clinton turned to Denham. His voice shook with passion.

  ‘Please clear the ship for action, Mr Denham – and we’ll run out our guns now.’

  Above the gale Clinton heard the clatter of the opening gunports, the rumble of the gun carriages, but all his attention was concentrated ahead upon the crippled slave ship.

  He saw and understood the desperate attempts that her Captain was making to get her before the wind. He knew what a feat it had been to take down that tangled mast of canvas and rope in such a short time, yet he felt no admiration, only cold fighting fury.

  Huron was showing only a storm jib.

  St John was clearly trying to break the grip of the gale upon her for she was fast ‘in irons’ – her bows to the wind, and he was attempting to bring her round, but the tall ship that was usually so compliant and obedient was baulking, resisting him, and every minute Black Joke was swarming down upon her, closer and still closer.

  ‘She’s got serious structural damage,’ Denham gloated aloud. ‘I’d hazard a guess that she’s lost her rudder.’

  Clinton did not answer him, he strained ahead, half exultant, half fearful that St John’s efforts would succeed and he would watch helplessly as Huron turned her stern to him once more, and went plunging away at the speed which Black Joke could never hope to match.

  Then, as he watched, it happened. Huron swung her long, low length nearly broadside to him, beam on to the wind once again, and hung there for infinite seconds, then she shuddered and shook herself free of the gale’s grip and went through the eye of the wind. Instantly the scraps of sail on her foremast snapped open, she came around presenting her stern to Black Joke and was sailing again.

  Even in his bitter chagrin, Clinton could at last feel admiration for that barely credible feat of seamanship, but beside him his officers were struck dumb, paralysed with disappointment to see their prey slipping away from them once more.

  More sails bloomed upon her tall bare masts, and the gap between the two ships was no longer narrowing; instead, it began to widen once more; slowly, infinitely slowly, Huron was forging away, and the night was coming.

  ‘She’s streaming a warp behind her,’ Denham lamented quietly.

  ‘It’s a small ship’s boat,’ Ferris corrected him. They were already close enough to make out such details, Huron was only three or four nautical miles ahead of them, all her hull was in plain sight and they could even make out the tiny human figures on her decks with the naked eye. ‘Damned clever, what!’ Ferris went on with professional interest. ‘Who would have believed it would work. Like as not the damned Yankee has the legs of us still.’

  Clinton’s chagrin turned to anger at his junior’s unnecessary commentary.

  ‘Mr Ferris, instead of chattering like a washerwoman, will you not read the signal Huron is flying?’

  Huro
n’s signal flags were blowing almost directly away from the watchers on Black Joke’s deck, making them difficult to spot and interpret, and Ferris, who had been fixing all his attention on the towing whaler, started guiltily, and then dived for his signal book and began busily scribbling on his slate.

  ‘Huron sends under our name, “Stay clear of me, or I will fire upon you.”’

  ‘Good.’ Clinton nodded and drew an inch of bare steel from the scabbard of his cutlass to make sure the weapon was free before thrusting it back to the hilt. ‘Now we all know where we stand!’

  But, slowly, inexorably, Huron, even partially crippled, and steering only by the sails on her foremast, was drawing away from them, and she was still far out of random cannon shot.

  ‘The fire has taken hold in the steering-gear under the doctor’s cabin.’ The third mate came hurrying back on deck to make his damage report. ‘I got her out of there.’ He jerked a thumb as Robyn came up on deck clutching her black leather valise into which she had hastily crammed her journals and other small valuables.

  ‘It’s got through into the cable tier and the lazaretto, it will be into the sternquarters in a minute.’ The mate’s arms and face streamed with oily sweat, and the soot had blackened them like a chimney sweep.

  ‘Put the hoses in through the poop companionway,’ Mungo told him calmly. ‘And flood the stern section abaft the main hold.’

  The mate hurried away and within seconds there was the tolling clangour of the pumps as a dozen men threw their combined weight on the handles and the canvas hoses filled and stiffened, ejaculating solid jets of seawater down the stifling ladderways where already the air was trembling with heat like a desert mirage. Almost immediately hissing clouds of white steam began to boil from the ports and stern lights.