by Wilbur Smith
The noosed heads of the eight men swung back and forth as they followed the argument. Their expressions were abject, but their eyes held a faint glimmer of hope.
Sir Francis fingered his chin. "I don't know." His face was still ferocious. "What would we do with them? Turn them loose into the wilderness to serve as fodder for wild beasts and cannibals? It would be more merciful to string them up."
"You could swear them in as crew to replace the men we have lost," Hal pleaded.
Sir Francis looked still more dubious. "They would not take an oath of allegiance, would they?" He glared at the condemned men who, had not the nooses restrained them, might have fallen to their knees.
"We will serve you truly, sir. The young gentleman is right. You'll not find better men nor more loyal than US."
"Bring my Bible from my hut," Sir Francis growled, and the eight seamen took their oath of service with the nooses round their necks.
Big Daniel freed them and led them away, and Sir Francis watched them go with satisfaction. "Eight prime specimens to replace some of our losses," he murmured. "We'll need every hand we can find if we are to have the Resolution ready for sea before the end of this month." He glanced across the lagoon at the entrance between the headlands. "Only the good Lord knows who our next visitors might be if we linger here."
He turned back to Hal. "That leaves only the drunken sots who lapped up the Buzzard's rum. Do you fancy another flogging, Hal?"
"Is this the time to render half our crew useless with the cat, Father? If the Buzzard returns before we are fit for sea, then they'll fight no better with half the meat stripped off their backs."
"So you say let them go scot free?" Sir Francis asked coldly, his face close to Hal's.
"Why not fine them their share of the spoils from the Standvastigheid and divide it among the others who fought sober?"
Sir Francis stared at him a moment longer, then smiled grimly. "The judgement of Solomon! Their purses will give them more pain than their backs, and it will add a guilder or three to our own share of the prize."
Angus Cochran, Earl of Cumbrae, stepped out on the saddle of the mountain pass at least a thousand feet above the beach where he had come ashore from the Gull. His boatswain and two seamen followed him. They all carried muskets and cutlasses. One of the men balanced a small keg of drinking water on his shoulder, for the African sun speedily sucks the moisture from a man's body.
It had taken half the morning of hard hiking, following the game trails along the steep and narrow ledges, to reach this lookout point, which Cumbrae knew well. He had used it more than once before. A Hottentot they had captured on the beach had first led him to it. Now as he settled comfortably on a rock that formed a throne-like seat, the Hottentot's white bones lay at his feet in the undergrowth. The skull gleamed like a pearl, for it had lain here three years and the ants and other insects had picked it clean. It would have been foolhardy of Cumbrae to allow the savage to carry tales of his arrival to the Dutch colony at Good Hope.
From his stone throne Cumbrae had a breathtaking panoramic view of two oceans and of rugged mountain scenery spread out all around him. When he looked back the way he had come he could see the Gull of Moray anchored not far off a tiny rind of beach that clung precariously to the foot of the soaring rocky cliffs where the mountains fell into the sea. There were twelve distinct peaks in this maritime range, marked on the Dutch charts he had captured as the Twelve Apostles.
He stared at the Gull through his telescope but could see little evidence of the fire damage she had suffered to her stern. He had been able to replace the mizzen yards, and furled new sails upon them. From this great height and distance she looked lovely as ever, tucked away from inquisitive eyes in the green water cove below the Apostles.
The longboat that had brought Cumbrae through the surf was still drawn up on the beach, ready for a swift departure if he should run into trouble ashore. However, he expected none. He might encounter a few Hottentots among the bushes but they were a harmless, half-naked tribe, a pastoral people with high cheekbones and slanted Asiatic eyes, who could be scattered willy-nilly by a musket shot over their heads.
Much more dangerous were the wild animals that abounded in this harsh, untamed land. The previous night, from the deck of the anchored Gull, they had heard terrifying, blood-chilling roars, rising and falling, then ending in a diminishing series of grunts and groans that sounded like the chorus of all the devils of hell.
"Lions!" the older hands who knew the coast had whispered to each other, and the ship's company had listened in awed silence. In the dawn they had seen one of the terrible yellow cats, the size of a pony, with a dense dark mane of hair covering its head and reaching back behind its shoulder, sauntering along the white beach sands with a regal indolence. After that it had taken the threat of the lash to force the boat crew to row Cumbrae and his party to the shore.
He reached into the leather pouch that hung in front of his plaid and brought out a pewter flask. He tipped its base to the sky and swallowed twice, then sighed with pleasure and screwed the stopper back into the neck. His boatswain and the two seamen watched him intently, but he grinned at them and shook his head. "It would do you no good. Mark my words, whisky is the devil's own hot piss. If you have no pact with him, as I have, you should never let it past your lips."
He slipped the flask back into the pouch, and lifted the telescope to his eye. On his left hand rose the sphimshaped mountain top that the earliest mariners had named Lion's Head, when viewing it from the sea. At his right hand stood the sheer cliff that towered up to the flat top of the mighty Table Mountain that dominated the horizon and gave its name to the bay that opened out beneath it.
Far below where he sat, Table Bay was a lovely sweep of open water, nursing a small island in its arms. The Dutch called it Robben Island, for that was their name for the thousands of seals that infested it.
Beyond that was the endless wind-flecked expanse of the south Atlantic. Cumbrae scrutinized it for any sign of a strange sail, but when he could pick out nothing he transferred his attention below to the Dutch settlement of Good Hope.
There was little to make it stand out from the wild and rocky wilderness that surrounded it. The roofs of the few buildings were of thatch and blended into their surroundings. The Company gardens, which had been laid out to grow provisions for the VOC ships on their passage to the east, were the most obvious sign of man's intrusion. The regular rectangular fields were either bright green with crops or chocolate brown with new-turned earth.
Just above the beach was the Dutch fort. Even from this distance Cumbrae could see that it was unfinished. He had heard from other captains that since the outbreak of war with England the Dutch had tried to speed up the construction, but there were still raw gaps in the defensive outer walls, like missing teeth.
The fort, and its half-completed state, were of interest to Cumbrae only in as much as it could afford protection to the ships that lay at anchor in the bay, under its guns. At this moment three large vessels were there, and he fastened his attention on them.
One looked like a naval frigate. She flew the ensign of the Republic, orange, white and blue, from her masthead. Her hull was painted black, but the gun ports were picked out in white. He counted sixteen on the side she presented to him. He judged that she would outgun the Gull if it ever came to a set-piece engagement with her. But that was not. his intention. He wanted easier pickings, and that meant one of the other two vessels in the bay. Both were merchantmen, and both flew the Company ensign.
"Which one is it to be?" he mused, as he glassed them with the closest attention.
One looked familiar. She rode high in the water, and he reckoned that she was probably in ballast and on the eastern leg of her voyage, heading out to the Dutch possessions to take on valuable cargo.
"No, by God, I recognize the cut of her jib now," he exclaimed aloud. "She's the Lady Edwina, Franky's old ship. He told me he'd sent her back to the Cape with his ransom
demand." He studied her a while longer. "She's been stripped bare even the guns are out of her."
Losing interest in her as a possible prize, Cumbrae turned his telescope on the second merchantman. This ship was slightly smaller than the Lady Edwina but she was heavy with her cargo, riding so low that her lower ports were almost awash. Clearly she was on her return voyage, and stuffed with the treasures of the Orient. What made her even more attractive was that she was anchored further off the beach than the other merchantman, at least two cables" length from the walls of the fort. Even under the best conditions that would be impossibly long cannon-shot for the Dutch gunners on the shore.
"A lovely sight." The Buzzard grinned to himself. "Fair makes one's mouth water to behold her."
He spent another half-hour studying the bay, noting the lines of foam and spindrift that marked the flow of current along the beach and the set of the wind as it swirled down from the heights. He planned his entry into Table Bay. He knew that the Dutch had a small post on the slopes of Lion's Head whose lookouts would warn. the settlement of the approach of a strange ship with a cannonshot.
Even at midnight, with the present phase of the moon, they might be able to pick out the gleam of his sails while he was still well out at sea. He would have to make a wide circle, out below the horizon and then come in from the west, using the bulk of Robben Island as a stalking horse to creep in unobserved by even the sharpest lookout.
His crew were well versed in the art of cutting out a prize from under the shore batteries. It was a special English trick, one beloved of both Hawkins and Drake. Cumbrae had polished and refined it, and considered himself the master of either of those great Elizabethan pirates. The pleasure of plucking out a prize from under the enemy's nose rewarded him far beyond the spoils it yielded. "Mounting the good wife while the husband snores in the bed beside her so much sweeter than tipping up her skirts while he's off across the seas with no danger in it." He chuckled, and swept the bay with his telescope, checking that nothing had changed since his last visit, that there were no lurking dangers such as newly em placed cannon along the shore.
Even though the sun was past its noon and it was a long journey back to where the longboat waited on the beach, he spent a little longer studying the rigging of the prize through the glass. Once he had seized her, his men must be able to get her sails up speedily, and work her off the lee shore in the darkness.
It was after midnight when the Buzzard, using as his landmark the immense bulk of Table Mountain which blotted out half the southern sky, brought the Gull into the bay from the west. He was confident that, even on a clear starry night like this with half a moon shining, he was still well out of sight of the lookout on Lion's Head.
The dark whale shape of Robben Island rose with startling suddenness out of the gloom ahead. He knew there was no permanent settlement on this barren piece of rock so he was able to bring the Gull close into its lee, and drop his anchor in seven fathoms of protected water.
The longboat on deck was ready to launch. No sooner had the cat ted anchor splashed into the easy swells, than it was swung outboard and dropped to the surface. The Buzzard had already inspected the boarding-party. They were armed with pistol and cutlass and oak clubs, and their faces were darkened with lamp-black so that they looked like a party of wild savages with only their eyes and teeth gleaming. They were dressed in pitch-blackened sea-jackets, and two men had axes to cut the anchor cable of the prize.
The Buzzard was the last man down the ladder into the longboat, and as soon as he was aboard they pushed off. The oars were muffled, the row locks padded, and the only sound was the dip of the blades, but even this was lost in the breaking of the waves and the gentle sighing of the wind.
Almost immediately they crept out from behind the island they could see the lights on the mainland, two or three pinpricks from the watch fires on the walls of the fort, and lantern beams from the buildings outside the walls, spread out along the se afront
The three vessels he had spotted from the saddle of the mountains were still anchored in the roads. Each showed a riding lantern at the masthead, and another at the stern. Cumbrae grinned in the darkness. "Most obliging of the cheese-heads to put out a welcome for us. Don't they know there's a war a-raging?"
From this distance he was not yet able to distinguish one ship from, the others, but his boat-crews pulled eagerly, the scent of the prize in their nostrils. Half an hour later, even though they were still well out in the bay, Cumbrae was able to pick out the Lady Edwina. He discarded her from his calculations and switched all his interest to the other vessel, which had not changed position and still lay furthest away from the batteries of the fort.
"Steer for the ship on the larboard side," he ordered his boatswain in a whisper. The long-boat-altered a point, and the beat of the oars picked up. The second boat was close astern, like a hunting dog at heel, and Cumbrae peered back at its dark shape, grunting with approval. All the weapons were covered, there was no reflection of moonlight off a naked blade or pistol barrel to flash a warning to the watch on board the chase. Neither was there a lit match to send the reek of smoke down the wind, or a glow of light ahead of their arrival.
As they glided in towards the anchored vessel Cumbrae read her name from her transom, De Swael, the Swallow. He was alert for any sign of an anchor watch. this was a lee shore, with &e sou'-easter swirling unpredictably around the mountain, but either the Dutch captain was remiss or the watch was asleep for there was no sign of life aboard the dark ship.
Two sailors stood ready to fend off from the side of the Swallow as they touched and mats of knotted oakum hung over the longboat's side to soften the impact. A solid contact of timbers against hull would carry through the ship like the sounding body of a viol and wake every hand aboard.
They touched with the gentleness of a virgin's kiss, and one of the men, chosen for his simian climbing prowess, shot up the side and immediately made a line fast to the shackle of a gun train and dropped the coil back into the boat below.
Cumbrae paused long enough to lift the shutter of the storm lantern and light the slow-match from the flame, then seized the line and went up on bare feet hardened by hunting the stag without boots. In a silent rush the crews of both boats, also barefoot, followed him.
Cumbrae jerked the marlin spike from his belt and, his boatswain at' his side, raced silently to the bows. The anchor watch was curled on the deck, out of the wind, sleeping like a hound in front of the hearth. The Buzzard stooped over him and clipped his skull with one sharp blow of the iron spike. The man sighed, uncurled his limbs and sagged into an even deeper state of unconsciousness.
His men were already at each of the Swallow's hatches, leading to the lower decks, and as Cumbrae ran back towards the stern they were quietly closing the covers and battening them down, imprisoning the Dutch crew below decks.
"There'll not be more than twenty of a crew on board her," he muttered to himself. "And, like as not, de Ruyter will have taken most of the prime seamen for the Navy. They'll be only boys and fat old fools on their last legs. I doubt they'll give us too much trouble."
He looked up at the dark figures of his men silhouetted against the stars as they raced up the shrouds and danced out along the yards. As the sails unfurled, he heard from forward the soft clunk of an axe blow as the anchor cable was severed. Immediately the Swallow came alive and unfettered under his feet as she paid off before the wind. Already his boatswain was at the whipstall.
"Take her straight out. Due west!" Cumbrae snapped, and the man put her head up into the wind as close as she would point.
Cumbrae saw at once that the heavily laden ship was surprisingly handy, and that they would be able to weather Robben Island on this tack. Ten armed men waited ready to follow him. Two carried shuttered storm lanterns, all had match burning for their pistols. Cumbrae seized one of the lanterns and led his men at a run down into the officers" quarters in the stern. He tried the door of the cabin that must open out onto
the stern galleries and found it unlocked. He went through it swiftly and silently. When he flashed the lantern, a man in a tasselled night cap sat up in the bunk.
Wic is dit?" he challenged sleepily. Cumbrae swept the bedclothes over his head to smother any further outcry, left his men to subdue and bind the captain, ran out into the passageway and burst into the next cabin. Here another Dutch officer was already awake. Plump and middle-aged, his greying hair tangled in his eyes, he was still staggering groggily with sleep as he groped for his sword where it hung in its scabbard at the foot of his bunk. Cumbrae shone the lantern in his eyes, and placed the sharp point of his claymore at the man's throat.