Into Uncharted Seas (Westerly Gales)

by E. C. Williams

  The Sultan then mused, as if reading Lisi's mind, “Perhaps you could mount a raid on Nosy Be as a distraction, during which you could insert your man. Such an operation might also serve to delay the infidel preparations for a raid on Zanzibar, and buy us a little time to further prepare.”

  Lisi replied, “Yes, Your Highness”, while his mind raced, evaluating the feasibility of this. It might work – under the right conditions. One of these conditions being a moonless night, to escape the notice of that God-damned balloon the Nosy Be militia sent up every day. Or, alternatively, a day too windy for the balloon to ascend safely.

  In any event, one rejected a “suggestion” from HSH only at one's peril. So when the Sultan dismissed him a few minutes later, to his enormous relief, he began immediately to plan the raid, and to consider which of the handful of reasonable candidates to select as Falcon's replacement.

  The Sultan dismissed Lisi with a wave of his hand, and he withdrew from the room, bowing deeply and walking backwards – one did not turn his back on the Sultan. Once safely on the other side of the door, Lisi heaved a profound sigh of relief, and continued thinking about how he would carry out the Sultan's orders.

  A raid on Nosy Be, as a distraction while another agent was landed – always assuming he could identify among the few candidates a man who could perform that role – wasn't a bad idea. While in one of his calm and rational moods, the Sultan could be quite logical, even incisive. The trouble was that Lisi didn't dare mount such a raid without precise intelligence of the Kerguelenian Navy squadron. But with his key man on Nosy Be in custody, he was deprived of any source of information.

  Well, maybe not any source. Nosy Be fishermen routinely fished the western coast of Madagascar, the Mozambique Channel side. If he could take one of those boats, the crew could provide him with some intelligence – at a minimum, whether or not the squadron was in port in Hell-ville.

  Of course, this plan faced another problem, that of persuading a captain to undertake such a mission. The Sultan's navy was actually a private enterprise, or rather as many private enterprises as there were vessels. Captains and sailors were not paid, but shared in any booty. And captains did not get rich by capturing fishing boats. But that could be resolved, if only as a last resort, by threatening a captain with the Sultan's wrath. If necessary, Lisi would undertake the mission himself, using his flagship.

  He walked faster. He had much to do, and needed to do it in a hurry.

  In French Port, Commander (I) Foch, RKN, was conducting a meeting with the home shore establishment of the Republic of Kerguelen Navy – a grand total of four officers, counting himself. Until recently, Foch's status had been RKNVR – “volunteer reserve” – which meant that he carried out his duties on his own time and without pay, while still holding down his civilian job as a Commandant in the French Port Police Service, as Chief of the Criminal Intelligence Division. As the Navy took up more and more of his time, he became overburdened with work, and Marie “Mother” Moreau, chair of the Council's merchant marine and fisheries committee, which also had cognizance of Naval affairs, persuaded him to retire from the police and accept a regular commission.

  The other three officers were Lieutenant Commander (E) Lyman Yeo, newly promoted and the Navy's senior staff engineer; and two young junior lieutenants (E) RKNVR, in civilian life employed in technical positions in the shipbuilding and repair industry. Also present, in an advisory capacity, was Captain Lee, Executive Director of the Kerguelenian Bureau of Shipping.

  “This is a hugely radical idea,” Foch said dubiously. “And of course we have to get Commodore Bowditch's approval before we go any further. His instructions to us were simply to explore the possibilities.”

  “But I think we can go ahead with acquisition, since it won't come out of the Navy's budget. Even if the Commodore nixes the project, we can still find a use for the vessel,” Captain Lee said.

  The “hugely radical” idea was the conversion of a twin-hulled round-the-worlder to an aircraft tender. The owner of the vessel they had in mind, Jean le Révélateur, had found her too small to earn her keep, given the increased competition in the round-the-world trades,and had patriotically offered her to the Navy on very favorable terms. In fact, her purchase involved no outlay by the government at all. In exchange for the vessel, the KBS had agreed to waive fees for classification, load-line assignment, and safety inspection for another of the owner's vessels for a specified period. The Bureau had then signed the Jean over to the Navy for “... the sum of one franc and other reasonable compensation”.

  The notion of a vessel which could support aircraft operations at sea had been suggested by the experiments conducted on Reunion and Nosy Be with both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air craft. The Kerguelenians had known from history that flying machines were feasible, and that they were not beyond the limits of Kerguelenian technology. But the high winds on Kerguelen made experiments with such craft impossibly dangerous; even before the Troubles, the island had never had air service for this reason. So interest in them had remained purely academic – until now.

  “The advantage of a double-hulled vessel for this purpose is the room on deck,” Yeo said. “Especially if we re-rig her with a single row of masts down the centerline and deck her over completely. That way, there'll be plenty of room for the sea-planes the Reunionnais describe to be carried on deck and to be serviced, and have their wings attached and detached. Or perhaps we could even dispense with detachable wings, and stick to fixed wings, which would be simpler. We could erect cranes to put them in the water and retrieve them.”

  Foch tried to visualize this. “Will the masts be secure enough if rigged on the bridge deck instead of the hulls?

  “Oh, yes, if properly stayed,” Lee replied. “The main problem will be that, so rigged, a catamaran type will be even less weatherly.”

  “Does that mean unstable? Not able to stand up to heavy weather?” Foch, no seaman, asked.

  “No, it means that she won't be able to sail as close to the wind as before,” Lee replied. “And, if she's like most of her type, she's not very weatherly to begin with. Most of the round-the-worlders can't sail much closer than a beam reach – that is, with the wind on the beam, at right angles to the long axis of the vessel.” He added the last on noting Foch's look of confusion.

  “She'll have to be fitted with waterjet auxiliary propulsion,” Yeo said. “Else she'll be easy meat for a pirate dhow.”

  “I don't see how she could operate alone, anyway,” Lee said. “She'll have to have the protection of an escort in order to launch and recover aircraft. The price Sam – Commodore Bowditch – will have to pay for this additional capability will be to have one, or more likely two, of his vessels tied to Jean's apron strings.”

  “But think of what additional capability he'll have!”, Yeo said enthusiastically. “Over the horizon reconnaissance! The ability to attack an enemy vessel before it can even know of his presence! The ability to attack enemy bases without endangering his squadron!”

  “Reconnaissance, yes,” Lee replied. “But attack capability will depend on finding ways to fit aircraft with the means of attacking – guns or bombs, or both.”

  Yeo gave a dismissive wave. “That's just engineering. The only real limitation will be the lift capacity of the aircraft. In any event, it's not our problem. The Reunnionais designers of the planes will have to come up with a solution. Without access to the airplanes themselves, we can't help.”

  Captain Lee thought for a moment, then said, “Well, if we're agreed, I'll go ahead and give the owner a call, tell him it's a deal. The sooner we get her in the yard for conversion the better. And I'll get messages off to Commodore Bowditch and the Reunionnais, bringing them up to date”

  A few kilometers away, in a French Port suburb, Mattie Dupree had just finished re-reading Sam's last half-dozen letters. She had recently changed from widow's black to normal dress, and having gone out to dinner with friends so attired had in effect announced the
end of her mourning period. Somewhat to her surprise (but to that of no one else who knew her) she had immediately after been invited by a series of single men to dinner, the theater, or various social functions.

  Sam's letters had remained as loving and affectionate as ever. But his occasional mentions of Marie Girard, each individually innocent, had been worrying in the aggregate. Maddie thought deeply about a course of action she had been pondering for some time.

  She came to a decision, and reached for the telephone, dialing a familiar number.

  “Dad? It's Maddie. Does your firm have an office on Nosy Be?”

  - 16 -

  Albatros and Roland beat into a moderate south-easterly wind, three or four miles apart, sweeping the wide expanse of sea between Madagascar and the longitude of Reunion. At long intervals, the signal “Tack” would appear at Albatros's masthead, stay two-blocked until acknowledged by Roland, and then be sharply lowered, indicating the moment to execute the maneuver. Then the two schooners would simultaneously swing up into the wind and across it, and settle on the new heading. In darkness, the signal was passed by flashing light.

  Sam Bowditch was soothed by the familiarity of the at-sea routine. He was always happier underway than in port. He spent most of the daylight hours pacing the windward side of the quarterdeck. And as usual when at sea, he had to suppress the urge to vary this routine by wandering around the vessel, since he was afraid this would be construed by Al Kendall as trespass on the XO's domain, or give the appearance that Sam was checking up on his ability to manage the internal workings of the schooner. The Sunday morning ritual of Captain's inspection was of course an exception.

  The only impediment to perfect contentment, for Sam, was the absence of Marie Girard. He missed their occasional conversations on the quarterdeck, missed seeing her chatting over a drink with the other officers after “up spirits” was piped each morning, missed her presence at his table when he entertained the officers to dinner the second day out.

  He did not consciously realize just what was bothering him, until he saw Dr. Cheah join the group of officers who enjoyed their daily rum-and-water on deck in their usual gathering place, just abaft the mizzenmast. He was particularly disturbed by this realization because he had just had an opportunity, the night before, to re-read at leisure the half-dozen letters from Maddie Dupree, received while in port. Affectionate, funny, and full of French Port news and gossip, they had renewed his conviction that he could be happy with no other woman.

  Why, then, did he miss Marie so much? Was it just a matter of friendship? Or simple lust? When he examined his feelings with brutal honesty, he had to confess that he rarely saw her without remembering that single night of intense passion when the Albatros was in drydock in French Port, and they were the only two officers aboard. The memory of her slim, pale body, naked, revealed by the dim light that filtered through the curtained porthole of his cabin as she rode atop him in wild abandon never failed to arouse him, sometimes to the point of embarrassment if he was not alone at the time of recall. The emotional dissonance of his feelings for the two women was deeply worrying.

  But there was nothing whatever he could do to resolve the situation now, so with an effort of will he pushed the subject from his mind and resumed his survey of the horizon.

  Below, sitting at the Commodore's mess table, now covered with charts and scribbled notes, Todd Cameron was experiencing a different kind of dissonance. He had a growing conviction that the task he had been set by Commodore Bowditch, to prepare a draft operations order for a raid on Stone Town, was impossible to complete.

  The details of the approach were not a problem. He had meticulously stepped off the distances involved and calculated transit time using a range of possible speeds of advance. He had traced outlines of the shores of Zanzibar and Mafia from their old charts, and then added major topographical features, plus only that navigational data that they had verified in the course of the Scorpion's intelligence-gathering mission; this, in order to avoid being distracted by information that was out of date.

  Where he was stuck was the attack itself. The insurmountable obstacle, it seemed, was the battery guarding the mouth of Stone Town harbor. Chief Landry, whose powers of observation Todd accepted unquestioningly, had said that the guns were of at least five inch caliber, and possibly six inch. This meant that their effective range was almost certainly greater than that of the Kerguelenian 37 mm rifles. Todd feared that the battery was capable of shooting the squadron to pieces before it could approach close enough to fire back. Since its guns also covered the harbor itself, a stealthy approach in darkness followed by a dash past the battery wasn't a viable solution.

  He considered a repeat of Landry's daring night time small-boat reconnaissance of the battery, this time attacking and overwhelming the battery's gunners and disabling the guns. But that feat depended on absolute surprise. And it was one thing for a single-masted dhow manned by what appeared to be Arab sailors to approach Zanzibar without arousing suspicion. A squadron of armed schooners was quite a different thing – tactical surprise would be nearly impossible to achieve. He had to assume that the Zanzibaris would have the benefit of as much as twenty-four hours' warning of the coming attack. He was, in fact, taking it for granted that the squadron would have two battles to fight – one against an unknown number of gun-dhows that would almost certainly sortie from Stone Town on warning of the squadron's approach, the other to achieve the degree of destruction they hoped to rain down on the town itself.

  He considered once again an option he had already rejected once: an amphibious landing near Stone Town followed by an overland assault by the landing party. One trouble with that was their total lack of up-to-date hydrographic knowledge of the island's shoreline. At least one covert reconnaissance mission would be essential to pick an appropriate beach. And there was no getting around the fact that the largest landing force they could possibly muster would be greatly outnumbered. They could perhaps approach the town under cover of darkness without being detected, but after the assault the force would have to conduct a fighting retreat to the beach, from which it would be lifted while under attack by an aroused enemy. No matter how he looked at it, this seemed a recipe for unacceptably heavy casualties at the very least, and total annihilation of the landing force at the worst.

  Todd sighed. There was nothing for it – he would have to confess defeat to the Commodore. He began to give some thought to the problem of how to phrase it so as to minimize his personal humiliation. He had made no progress on this problem, either, when the Commodore himself appeared.

  “How's it going, Todd? Got a first draft for me to look at yet?”

  “I'm stuck, sir,” Cameron blurted, then waited for lightening to strike.

  “The batteries, right?”

  “Yessir. I can't figure out how we can get past them, or neutralize them.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Bowditch said mildly, much to Todd's relief. “I didn't mention it because I wanted you to look at the problem without any preconceived notions.

  “Well, don't worry about it, Todd. I've got a possible solution up my sleeve, but it'll mean putting the assault off for a while longer. Now clear all this stuff away and go report to the XO. You can stand a few watches, let the sea breeze blow the cobwebs out of your head.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Todd busied himself putting away the charts and tidying his notes into a labeled file, all the while wondering what could possibly be the solution the Commodore had “...up his sleeve”. Unless they could somehow, magically, fly over the battery and bombard it from above, he couldn't imagine what it was.

  Sam returned to the quarterdeck and resumed his usual pacing. It was frustrating to put off the assault on Zanzibar once again, but there was no help for it. The battery was an insurmountable obstacle to a surface attack on Stone Town from seaward. He called to mind the latest message from Commander Foch, in French Port. He had encouraged the wild ideas coming from Yeo and his colleagues, and the expe
riments on Reunion, without really counting on them for practical results – at least not in this war. Now, with the round-the-worlder Jean le Révélateur on her way, and the Reunionnais apparently about to come up with a workable flying boat, a quantum leap in the military capabilities of the squadron seemed within their reach. For the first time, he could envision an end to the war.

  Two weeks later, Dave Schofield was entertaining Lieutenant Henry Dallas with rum and water in his stateroom aboard Scorpion, Dallas having come aboard just as “Up Spirits” was piped. Scorpion was anchored off Andilana to take on stores and water – the harbor was shoal and navigable only by small craft. Dallas had appeared without advance notice, having hired a small fishing vessel to take him out to the dhow. It was obvious that he had driven up from Hell-ville just that morning, because his clothing was still covered in road dust.

  “Okay, Hank – now what's so damned secret you couldn't tell me up on deck in the fresh air?” Dave said, tugging at his shirt, which was already damp with sweat. His tiny cabin was airless and stuffy, in spite of the open scuttle.

  “I'll be brief. A fishing vessel has disappeared, and I believe it was taken by pirates.”

  “Why? It could just be overdue. And fishing's a dangerous occupation, anyway. Why assume the pirates took her?”

  “It's been clear and fine in the Mozambique Channel, where she was fishing, for the whole time she's been at sea. She's a fine, seaworthy new ketch, and her skipper has the reputation of being an excellent seaman.”

  “But why would the pirates take a fisherman, when they never have before? They've always gone after ocean-going cargo vessels until now, as far as I know.”