Into Uncharted Seas (Westerly Gales)

by E. C. Williams

  The boat came alongside, and the men climbed up over the gunwales of the dhow, Landry hissing obscene imprecations at every bump and rattle they made. Once everyone was aboard, the dory, towline made fast, was allowed to drift aft.

  Dave had never had any intention of heaving up the anchor, with the consequent clanking and rattling of the anchor windlass creating the risk of discovery at the last moment. A seaman stationed forward started sawing through the three-inch coir anchor rode with his sheath knife. A shipmate made a length of sail twine fast to the outboard end of the severed line and eased it into the water without a splash. Then the entire crew tailed onto the sail halyard and raised the sail gingerly, inch by inch. As the dhow gathered way, Dave whispered to the helmsman to fall off onto the port tack and reach westward out of the harbor. It was only when they were several miles out to sea that Dave dared to relax a bit, and let out the breath he realized he had been holding for what seemed like hours.

  Landry, who had been standing silently at Dave's side since returning aboard, murmured, “We did it, Skipper. Looks like we've gotten away clean.”

  “Ja, Chief – so far, so good,” Dave whispered back, and then laughed out loud. There was no longer any need for silence. “We did it!” he exclaimed in a normal voice, and the shadowy shapes of his crew echoed this, and congratulated their captain and one another.

  Once well out into the Zanzibar Channel, Dave came up into the wind and headed south toward Mafia Island for the second phase of their mission. He then ordered an extra liquor issue in celebration, to the great joy of the crew, and dismissed the watch below for a couple of hours in their hammocks before it was time to call all hands.

  Now, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, Dave said, “So, what'd you find, Chief? The Commodore will want a full written report, but I'd like to hear the highlights now.”

  Landry chuckled. “Actually, it was a piece of cake, Skipper. If there were any sentries posted, they were fast asleep. We pulled right round the breakwater, taking soundings, and got a good look up close at the battery.”

  “And...?”

  Landry laughed at Dave's obvious impatience. “Four guns, not two, just as you suspected. The pair we couldn't make out from seaward cover the inner harbor. Near as we could make out, they're on fixed mounts, not the mobile carriages they use at sea. The fortification itself is pretty crude: a rubble base and thick walls of stone salvaged from the ruins of the breakwater, with embrasures for the guns. There's a rickety little pier on the inshore side, just big enough for small boats. A couple of thatch huts for shelter.”

  “How big? The guns, I mean.”

  “Bigger than three inch, for sure. I'm guessing five or six inch caliber. They seem to be iron or steel tubes rather than bronze, with a reinforcing band around the breech. Couldn't tell in the darkness whether they're breech- or muzzle-loading.”

  “That's intell worth the trip right there. Now we know the Caliphate is capable of casting guns in iron or steel as well as bronze, and in larger calibers. Wonder how soon it'll be before we encounter one of those at sea?”

  “Take an awful big dhow to mount one of those, Skipper – they must weight two ton apiece or more.”

  “Don't underestimate the bastards, Chief. I don't doubt they can build war-dhows as big as they think they need. It's going to be a long war.”

  “A long war is fine with me, Skipper. Don't get me wrong – I'm not happy to see men die. But I like the Navy, and I like fighting, and I'd just as soon spend the rest of my working life on warships – more fun than sailing back and forth, point A to point B, on an undermanned merchant schooner or junk-cat, if you see what I mean. And seafaring's my only trade.”

  Dave stared at Landry in some surprise. The usually taciturn warrant officer had never opened up to him like this before. But although he would not have put it in quite the same way, Dave had to admit that Landry's feelings pretty much paralleled his own.

  There was a brief silence, then Dave said, “You know, I agree with you, Chief. I couldn't go back to being a mate on a merchantman, not after what we've seen and done. And I have no idea how I'd make a living ashore. I want the Navy to be permanent, so I'll always have a berth on a warship. I guess that means I'd be happy with a long war myself, God vergewe my.”

  The two men paced the little quarterdeck in silence for awhile, each lost in his own thoughts. Dave felt guilty about his own feelings – a long war meant more Kerg merchantmen taken or sunk, more Kerg seamen and colonists killed or enslaved, more disruption to the maritime trade that was the lifeblood of the economy not only of Kerguelen, but of all its colonies, including those in the Southern Ocean out of direct reach of the pirates. The intelligence they had gathered painted a picture of the Caliphate, and although that picture was still only a vague outline, full of blank spaces, it nevertheless portrayed a maritime civilization larger than Kerguelen and its colonies, with a totally alien religious ideology and an aggressively expansionist policy. There seemed little doubt that the Caliphate's long-range strategy was to either conquer and convert all the peoples of the Indian Ocean, or drive them away.

  But the only alternative to a long war was a Kerg capitulation – a withdrawal to below the Forties, perhaps an abandonment or evacuation of all its Indian Ocean colonies.

  And therefore a drastic decline in Kerg prosperity and the standard of living of ordinary Kerguelenians. As distasteful as men like Dave and Landry – and the Commodore – would find such a move, it still might be the most rational and humane thing to do. Kerguelenians had been poor before – desperately poor during the first couple of generations after the Troubles – and knew how to survive hard times.

  Except that the Commodore, and Dave, and every one of his brother officers with whom he had discussed the strategic situation, believed that it was only a matter of time before the pirates moved into the Southern Ocean. A strategic withdrawal to the high forties south latitude might bring Kerguelen as much as a generation of peace – but eventually the pirates would come, establishing colonies and bases and raiding Kerguelen shipping.

  And perhaps, emboldened by the Kerg retreat and strengthened by their own expansion, conquering Kerguelenian settlements – and the Rock herself.

  No, the only long-term solution was for the Kergs to fight on in the Indian Ocean, hoping through stubborn resistance to convince the pirates that the cost of driving them out exceeded the benefit. The total defeat of the Caliphate seemed to be beyond the realm of possibility, at least within the foreseeable future.

  Dave broke this chain of thought with, “Now we've just got Mafia Island to look at, then it's home to Hell-ville.”

  “So Hell-ville is 'home', now? May I respectfully suggest that the Lieutenant has been in the I. O. too long?”

  Dave laughed. “Well, it's as close to home as we're likely to get for a long, long time. I don't see another rest-and-refit call at French Port in our future.”

  “Actually, Hell-ville feels like home to me, too, now. The rum is cheap, the girls are pretty, and the weather suits me. O'course, it helps that I don't have any close relatives on the Rock any more. What about you, Skipper? Is there a girl waiting for you in French Port?”

  “Not any more. She gave me an ultimatum last time we were home – marry her or she'd keep looking. I couldn't blame her; you can't ask a woman to wait indefinitely, and I think her mother was putting a lot of pressure on her, too. I thought about it long and hard, because we had been “walking out” since I was a cadet, and I was very fond of her. But I finally decided that marrying just before I left for sea for an indefinite period – a period I might not survive – wasn't fair to either of us. So we parted with regrets but no hard feelings.” Dave didn't add that, on his part, the break also occasioned a great sense of relief. They had feared for a while that she was pregnant, a complication neither of them needed, given the situation. Learning that she wasn't seemed to be what precipitated her ultimatum.

  “Well, plenty of pretty women on
Nosy Be. You won't be lonesome for long.”

  The conversation then turned to Mafia Island, and just how to approach its reconnaissance. Since they had accomplished the primary phase of their mission without detection, it was important that they continue to preserve this advantage. This greatly complicated Dave's planning now, because while Zanzibar was an important enough target to justify considerable risk, now that they had gotten away clean he didn't dare take any risk at all in surveying Mafia.

  “Well, let's wait until I can study the chart,” Dave said, clearly ending the discussion, and Landry excused himself to take a short nap before it was time to call all hands.

  Later, after breakfast and morning sun lines, Dave pulled out their only chart of Mafia Island. It was, if anything, even more exasperatingly inadequate than the one of Zanzibar. It, too, was based mainly on surveys that had taken place nearly a century earlier than its publication date – itself centuries ago – and Dave knew that he could rely not at all on the soundings shown, and of course the charted aids to navigation would have vanished long ago. Nevertheless, it was all he had, and he studied it carefully.

  The chart showed that the principal town on the island, Kilindoni, was on the west coast, opposite the African mainland, but the most sheltered water was in Chole Bay, on the east coast, protected from every point of the compass by the main island and a smaller island called Juani, plus several islets. Kilindoni could be a bustling town still, or again, or it could be simply moldering ruins hidden by jungle growth. He couldn't know until he looked. Obviously, a preliminary telescope survey of the island, in the form of a circumnavigation, was called for again before any more detailed plan could be made.

  Mafia lay only about nine sea-miles from the African main, at the closest point. They would have to hug the coast to stay well away from Mafia and avoid the attention of any pirates who may be on the island – but what if there were also pirate bases or settlements on the mainland? Kerguelenians were prone to project their own cultural preference for islands over continents onto the Caliphate, but of course that wasn't necessarily the case. All they knew about their adversaries was that their civilization originated somewhere on the shores of the Red Sea, or perhaps the Gulf of Aden, and not necessarily on an island.

  The further north from the Kerguelenians' northernmost settlements one went, the vaguer their geographical knowledge. The entire Red Sea - Persian Gulf region was practically a blank spot on their mental globe. They knew it was there only from a few surviving maps of the world, which were necessarily not very detailed.

  Dave drew his mind back to the immediate problem. He decided that they would stand right down the center of the Mafia Island channel. Then he took a closer look at the channel with his magnifying glass and had second thoughts. This waterway, most of which the chart labeled a “marine park”, whatever that was – how could people enjoy a “park” that was entirely underwater? – was dense with shoals, coral reefs, and sandbars. On the chart there appeared to be a safe channel through all these dangers, buoyed in ancient times – safe, certainly, for the Scorpion, which needed no more than a fathom of water, if not for a larger vessel – but those buoys, of course, would have vanished long ago, and the channel almost certainly had shifted or silted up completely.

  A prudent mariner, if forced to navigate that channel, would do so creeping along, a boat pulling ahead to sound out a safe channel. But Dave feared that if the Scorpion did that she would present too unusual a sight from the shore … attract far, far too much attention.

  No. It wouldn't do. They would have to content themselves with surveying the east coast of Mafia from seaward. He consoled himself with the thought that if the Commodore, as a result of whatever the Scorpion found out about Mafia Island, decided to either raid it or establish a base there, he certainly wouldn't choose the west coast for a landing.

  He thought about it all morning while the little dhow stood southward toward Mafia. The noon sight and running fix supported a prediction that the island should come into sight sometime in the forenoon watch the next day. Dave left a reliable LPO in charge of the watch and called an officers' conference in his cabin.

  The three gathered around Dave's little mess table, on which the chart was spread out, and he described to them the navigational hazards of the western shore of the island.

  “So tomorrow we're going to do a visual survey of as much of the island's shoreline as we can without standing into shoal water. Depending on what we see, we may have to land a reconnaissance party tomorrow night.

  “But remember, now that we've gotten away clean with a look at Zanzibar, it's all the more important that we take no chances in being caught on Mafia. This will be a 'sneak and peek' with most of the emphasis on the 'sneak'.

  “Any questions or comments?”

  Cameron had none. Landry said, “Skipper, there's a contradiction in what you've said – if we have to go ashore there'll be some unavoidable danger of being detected, no matter how careful we are.”

  “Ja, I know. It'll be a calculated risk. We won't do it unless we absolutely have to, to accomplish our mission. My responsibility, of course.”

  After some further discussion of navigational issues, the meeting broke up. The rest of the passage south was uneventful, with no traffic within sight. As Dave had estimated, the northern tip of Mafia Island was reported by the masthead lookout at mid-morning of the next day.

  The Scorpion approached the shore as close as Dave dared, a seaman in the bows casting the lead, the radio operator standing by to begin transmitting the updated intelligence report if they were approached with hostile intent, all three officers scanning the coast intently through their telescopes.

  The lead showed plenty of water for the dhow almost to the surf line, so they got a good look at the northwest coast of the island from up close. They could see a narrow beach beyond the surf, and behind the beach, a green shore, densely vegetated, rising gently as they sailed south. There was no sign of human life until they came to a shallow indentation in the shoreline shown on the chart as “Forbes Bay”. On its shores they could clearly make out a small village with boats drawn up on the foreshore: a fishing settlement, certainly. The houses were merely grass huts, the boats crude dugouts, but these people had obviously advanced beyond a hunter-gatherer mode of living to a more settled lifestyle.

  They could see a few men, busy around their canoes and nets. At first glance they appeared to be dressed all in black. A more careful look revealed that it was their skin that was black – they were Africans, dressed comfortably for the heat in nothing but a scrap of cloth or animal skin around the middle for modesty.

  Another, different, figure approached: a man dressed in a long white gown with sash and a head cloth: a pirate. He gestured imperiously, and the black men bowed respectfully or fearfully and ran off on some errand. The Africans were obviously the servants – or slaves – of the Arab. Dave's smoldering anger at the Caliphate, never far below the surface, flared up at this sight.

  “Well, we've learned a lot from just that, Skipper,” Landry said. “The island's inhabited by mainlanders and the pirates, and the pirates are the bosses. I feel sorry for those poor black folks. They were probably just minding their own business, getting on as best they could, when those raghead bastards came along and made them slaves.”

  “Let's not jump to conclusions based on one look at the shore, Chief,” Dave replied. But he knew that Landry was probably right, and it galled him.

  Not least because he knew that, if they lost this war, the fate of the surviving Kerguelenians in the Indian Ocean. would be the same as that of those African fishermen.

  The rest of their survey of Mafia's east coast only confirmed the impression garnered from that first look. The island was populated with African fishermen and farmers – garden plots were also visible from time to time – who were in the majority. Caliphate authority, however, was apparent in numerous ways: the green banner of the pirates flying in front of the only subs
tantial building in one of the larger villages; dhows up to the size of the Scorpion drawn up on the beach among dugout canoes, or moored not far offshore; scenes similar to the one they had first witnessed, with Arabs in obvious roles of authority and Africans subservient.

  Although they could hardly have avoided being seen from the shore, their presence seemed to arouse no interest. They had seen several small dhows remarkably similar to the Scorpion, perhaps deep-sea fishing or freight vessels. This gave them confidence in their disguise.

  At the end of the day, with most of the east coast surveyed, the Scorpion hauled well off shore and hove to for the night, sail down and sea-anchor rigged. The three officers then gathered again in Dave's cabin to discuss what they had learned that day, and draw conclusions for their next step.

  “We've learned a lot today,” Dave began, gesturing toward the sheaf of notes they had accumulated. An AB named Tryon, better educated than most of his shipmates, had spent the day as Captain's writer, noting down the observations of the officers as they studied the shore. “Question is, have we learned enough to satisfy the Commodore, and, if not, what's the best way of learning more.”

  “What do you think, Skipper?” asked Landry. “You know the Commodore better than we do – will he be satisfied with what we have?”

  “In my opinion? Not a chance,” Dave said flatly. “Oh, he's fair-minded enough to recognize the dangers of continuing to hang around here, and I don't think he'd blame us for calling it a day at this point.

  “He made it clear that he has a very different type of operation in mind for Zanzibar than for Mafia. He contemplates a raid on Zanzibar's main port, which we have confirmed is Stone Town, to bring the war home to the pirates, and perhaps set back their anti-shipping operations. He shared with me that he's not considering a landing on Zanzibar, at least not at this point. We've learned just what we need to know to pull that off.