Birds of Prey c-1

by Wilbur Smith

  "I am yours to treat as you will, and I will be happier for it." She clung to him and kissed him. "Tell me what you have found. Is there a ship in the lagoon?"

  "A ship. A fine ship. A beautiful ship, but not half as lovely as you."

  With Hal urging them they broke the camp and moved out at once. He and Aboli scouted ahead to clear the path and to lead the band on towards the lagoon.

  When they reached the river and climbed down the gorge Hal left Big Daniel there and all the other seamen but Ned Tyler. They were unaware that the treasure cave was only a cable's length upstream. "Wait for me here, Master Daniel. I must take the others to a safe place. Hide yourselves well. I will return after dark."

  Aboli went with them, as Hal led the rest of the party up the far side of the gorge, then took them round the far side of the hills. They approached the sandbanks that separated the mainland from the island, on which they had built the fireships.

  By this time it was late afternoon, and Hal allowed them to rest there until nightfall. As soon as it was dark they all waded across the shallows, Hal carrying Sukeena on his back. As soon as they reached the island they hurried deep into the thick bush, where they were safe from observation from the pirate encampment.

  "No fires!" Hal cautioned them. "Speak only in whispers. Zwaantie, keep little Bobby from crying. No one to wander away. Keep close. Ned is in command when I am not here. Obey him."

  Hal and Aboli went on across the island, through the bush to the beach facing the lagoon. In the area where they had built the fireships the undergrowth had sprung up again thickly. They groped and searched beneath it until they located the two abandoned double-hulled vessels that had not been used on the attack on the Gull, and dragged them closer to the beach.

  "Will they still float?" Aboli asked dubiously.

  "Ned made a good job of them, and they seem sturdy enough," Hal told him. "If we unload the combustibles, then they will float higher in the water."

  They stripped the ships of their cargo of dry tar-soaked wooden faggots. "That's better," Hal said, with satisfaction. "They will be lighter and easier to handle now." They concealed them again, covering them with branches.

  "There is still much to do before daylight." Hal led Aboli back to where most of Althuda's party were already asleep. "Do not wake Sukeena," he warned her brother. "She is exhausted and must rest."

  "Where are you going?" Althuda asked.

  "There is no time to explain. We will return before dawn."

  Hal and Aboli crossed the channel to the mainland and then hurried back through the forest in the darkness, but when they reached the line of hills Hal stopped and said, "There is something I have to find."

  He turned back towards the flickering lights of the pirate camp, moving slowly and pausing often to get his bearings, until at last he stopped at the base of a tall tree.

  "This is the one." With the point of his cutlass he probed the soft loamy earth around the roots. He felt it strike metal, and fell to his knees. He dug with his bare hands, then lifted the golden chain and held it to catch the starlight.

  "Tis your father's Nautonnier seal." Aboli recognized it at once.

  "The ring also. And the locket with its portrait of my mother." Hal stood up and wiped the damp earth from the glass that had protected the miniature. "With these in my hands, I feel a whole man again." He dropped the treasures into his leather pouch.

  "Let us go on, before we are discovered."

  It was after midnight when, once again, they scrambled down the side of the gorge and Big Daniel challenged them softly as they reached the riverbank.

  "Tis me," Hal reassured him, and the others emerged from where they were hidden.

  "Stay here," Hal ordered. "Aboli and I will return shortly." The two set off upstream. Hal led the climb to the ledge and groped his way into the blackness of the cave. Working in the cahdle's feeble light, they tied the cutlasses into bundles of ten, then stacked them at the entrance. Hal emptied one of the chests of its precious contents, piling the gold bars disdainfully in a corner of the cave, and packed twenty pistols into the empty chest.

  Then they rolled the kegs of gunpowder, with the slow match out onto the narrow ledge, and set up the gantry and sheave blocks with the rope rove through. Hal scrambled back down the cliff. When he reached the riverbank he whistled softly. Aboli lowered the bundles of weapons and the kegs down to him.

  It was heavy work, but Aboli's great muscles made light of it. When they had finished Aboli climbed down to join Hal, and they began the weary porterage of the goods down to where Big Daniel and the other seamen waited.

  "I recognize these," Big Daniel chuckled, as he ran his hands over a bundle of cutlasses then examined them in the moonlight.

  "Here is something else you will recognize," Hal told him, and gave him two of the heavy powder kegs to carry.

  All of them carrying as much as their backs would bear, they toiled up the side of the gorge, dumped their burdens and then scrambled down again to bring up the next load. At last fully laden they struck out through the forest. Hal made only one detour to cache the two kegs of powder, a bundle of slow-match, and three cutlasses in the cave of the rock paintings. Then they went on again.

  It was almost morning when at last they joined Althuda and his band on the island. They ate the cold smoked venison that Sukeena and Zwaantie had ready for them. Then, when the others rolled in their karosses, Hal took Sukeena aside and showed her the great seal of the Nautonnier and the locket.

  "Where did you find these, Gundwane?"

  "I hid them in the forest on the day we were captured." "Who is the woman?" She studied the portrait. "Edwina Courtney, my mother."

  "Oh, Hal, she is beautiful. You have her eyes." "Give my son those same eyes."

  "I will try. With all my heart I will try."

  In the late afternoon Hal roused the others and assigned their duties to them.

  "Sabah, take the pistols out of the chest and draw the loads. Reload them, then pack them back into the chest to keep them dry." The other man set to work at once.

  "Big Daniel will help me load the boats. Ned, you take the women down to the beach and explain to them how to help you launch the second boat when the time comes. They must leave everything else behind. There will be neither space nor time to care for extra baggage."

  "Even my bags?" Sukeena asked.

  Hal hesitated then nodded firmly. "Even your bags," he said, and she did not argue, merely gave him a demure look from under her lashes before she and Zwaantie, carrying Bobby strapped to her back, followed Ned away through the trees.

  "Come with me, Aboli." Hal took his arm and they moved silently to the top end of the island. Then they crept forward on hands and knees until they could lie and look across the open stretch of water at the beach where the boats from the Gull and the Golden Bough were drawn up below the encampment.

  While they kept watch Hal explained the finer details and small modifications to his original plan. From time to time Aboli's tattooed head nodded. In the end he said, "It is a good and simple plan, and if the gods are kind, it will work."

  In the sunset they studied the two ships anchored in the channel and watched the activity on the beach. As it grew darker, the teams of men who had worked all day, digging the Buzzard's trenches, were relieved. Some came down to bathe in the lagoon. Others rowed out to their berths on the Gull.

  Smoke from their cooking fires spiralled up through the trees and spread in a pale blue haze across the waters. Hal and Aboli could smell grilling fish on the smoke. Sound carried clearly across the still water. They could hear men's voices and even make out something of what they were saying, a shouted oath or a boisterous argument. Twice Hal was sure that he recognized the Buzzard's voice but they had no further sight of him. just as darkness began to fall a longboat pulled away from the side of the Golden Bough and headed in towards the beach.

  "That's Sam Bowles in the stern," Hal said, and his voice was filled with loathi
ng.

  "Captain Bowles now, if what "Jiri tells me is true," Aboli corrected him.

  "It is almost time to move," Hal said, as the shapes of the anchored ships began to merge with the dark mass of the forest behind them. "You know what to do, and God go with you, Aboli." Hal gripped his arm briefly.

  "And with you also, Gundwane." Aboli rose to his feet and went down into the water. He made no noise as he swam across the channel, but he left a faint phosphorescent trail on the dark surface.

  Hal found his way back through the bush to where the others waited by the ungainly shapes of the two fireships. He made them sit in a tight circle around him while he spoke to them softly. At the end he made each repeat his instructions, and corrected them when they erred.

  "Now nothing remains but to wait until Aboli has done his work."

  Aboli reached the mainland and left the water quickly. He moved quietly through the &_)kforest, and the warm breeze had dried his body before he reached the cave of the paintings. He squatted beside the powder kegs and made his preparations as Hal had instructed him.

  He cut two fuses from the slow-match. One was only a fathom in length, but the second was a coil thirty feet long. The time delay was an imprecise calculation and the first might burn for ten minutes, but the second for almost thrice as long.

  He worked swiftly, and when both kegs were ready he tied the bundle of three cutlasses on his back, swung a powder keg up onto each shoulder and crept out of the cave. He remembered that the previous night when he had visited the hut in which Jiri and the other slaves were being held, he had observed that the Buzzard's men had become careless. The uneventful months they had been camped here had lulled them into a complacent mood.

  The sentries were no longer vigilant. Still he was not relying on their sloth.

  Stealthily he moved closer to the camp, until he could clearly make out the features of the men sitting around the cooking fires. He recognized many, but there was no sign of either Cumbrae or Sam Bowles.

  He set up the first keg in a patch of scrub on the perimeter of the camp, as close as he dared approach, and then, without lighting the fuse, moved away until he reached one of the trenches where the Buzzard's men had been digging for treasure.

  He placed the keg with the longest fuse on the lip of the trench and covered it with sand and debris from the excavation. Then he paid out the coiled fuse and took the end of it down into the trench. He crouched there and shielded the flint and steel with his body so the flare of sparks would not alert the men in the camp as he lit the slow-match. When it was glowing evenly he lit the fuse from it and watched it for a minute to make certain that it was also burning well. Then he climbed out of the trench and moved swiftly and silently back to the first keg. From the slow match in his hand he lit the shorter fuse.

  "The first explosion will bring them running," Hal had explained. "Then the second keg will go off in their faces." Still carrying the bundle of cutlasses, Aboli moved away swiftly. There was always the danger that the flame of one of the fuses might jump ahead and set off the keg prematurely. Once he was clear, and moving with more caution, he found the path that ran down towards the beach. Twice he was forced to leave the path as other figures came towards him out of the darkness. Once he was not quick enough but he brazened it out, exchanging a gruff "Good night!" with the pirate who brushed past him.

  He picked out the mud hut against the glow of the campfires and crept up to the back wall. Jiri responded immediately to his whisper. "We are ready, brother." His tone was crisp and fierce, no longer the cringing whine of the slave.

  Aboli laid down the bundle of weapons and, with his own cutlass, severed the twine that held them. "Here!" he whispered, and Jiri's hand came out through the crack in the mud wall. Aboli passed the cutlasses through to him.

  "Wait until the first keg blows," he told him, through the hole in the wall.

  "I hear you, Aboli."

  Aboli crept to the corner of the hut and glanced round it. The guard sat in his usual position in front of the door. Tonight he was awake, smoking a long-stemmed clay pipe. Aboli saw the burning tobacco glow in the bowl as he drew upon it. He squatted behind the corner of the wall and waited.

  The time passed so slowly that he began to fear that the fuse on the first keg had been faulty and had burned out before reaching it. He decided that he would have to go back to check it, but as he began to rise to his feet the blast swept through the camp.

  It tore branches from the trees and sent clouds of burning ash and sparks swirling from campfires. It struck the mud hut, knocking down half the front wall and ripping the thatch from the roof. It hit the guard by the front door and hurled him over backwards. He floundered about on his back, trying to sit up, but his big belly made him ungainly. While he struggled Aboli stood over him, placed one foot on his chest, pinning him to the earth, swung the cutlass and felt the hilt jar in his hand as the edge hacked into the man's neck. His whole body spasmed and then lay still. Aboli leaped away from him and grabbed the rope handle of the rough-hewn door to the hut. As he heaved at it the three men inside hurled their combined weight upon it from the far side, and it burst open.

  "This way, brethren." Aboli led them down towards the beach.

  The camp was in uproar. The darkness was full of men blundering about, swearing, shouting orders and alarms.

  "To arms! We are attacked."

  "Stand to here, they heard the Buzzard roar. "Have at them, lads!"

  "Petey! Where are you, me darling boy?" a wounded man screamed for his ship wife "I am killed. Come to me, Petey." Burning brands from the campfires had been carried into the scrub and the flames were taking hold in the forest. They gave the scene a hellish illumination, and men's shadows made monsters of them as they rushed about, startling each other. Someone fired a musket, and immediately there was a wild fusillade as panic-stricken sailors fired at shadows and at one another. More screams and cries as the flying musket balls took their toll among the scurrying figures.

  "The bastards are in the forest behind us!" It was the Buzzard's voice again. "This way, my brave boys!" He was rallying them, and men came rushing up from the beach to join the defence. They ran full into the musket fire of their nervous fellows among the trees and fired back at them.

  When Aboli reached the beach he found longboats drawn up, abandoned by their crews who had rushed away to answer the Buzzard's call to arms.

  "Where do they keep their tools?" Aboli snapped at Jiri. "There is a store over there." Jiri led him to it at a run. The spades, axes and iron bars were stacked under an open lean-to shed. Aboli sheathed his cutlass and seized a heavy iron bar. The other three followed his example, then ran back to the beach, and fell upon the boats lying there.

  With a few hefty blows they knocked in their bottom timbers, leaving only one unscathed.

  "Come on! Waste no more time!" Aboli urged, and they threw down the tools and ran to the single undamaged boat. They thrust it out into the lagoon and tumbled aboard, grabbed an oar each and began to pull for the dark shape of the frigate, which was now emerging from the darkness as the flames of the burning forest lit her.

  While they were still only a few oar strokes off the beach a mob of pirates poured out from the grove.

  "Stop! Come back! "one shouted.

  "It's those black apes. They're stealing one of the boats." "Don't let them get away!" A musket banged and a ball hummed over the heads of the men at the oars. They ducked and rowed the harder, putting all their weight into their strokes. Now all the pirates were firing and balls kicked spray off the water close at hand, or thumped into the timbers of the longboat.

  Some of the pirates ran to the boats at the water's edge and swarmed into them. They pushed off in pursuit, but almost immediately there were howls of dismay as the water poured in through the shattered floorboards and the boats swamped and overturned. Few could swim, and the yells of rage turned to piteous cries for help as they splashed and floundered in the dark water.