Monsoon

by Wilbur Smith

  The Seraph had been lying at anchor for fifteen days before the Yeoman of York finally beat into Table Bay against the south-easter and dropped anchor a cable’s length astern of her. Edward Anderson had himself rowed across directly, and as he came up the ladder to the Seraph’s deck he greeted Hal. ‘I hardly recognized you, Sir Henry. The Seraph looks like a different ship.’

  ‘Then I have succeeded in my purpose.’ Hal took him by the arm and led him to the companionway. ‘What kept you so long?’

  ‘Foul winds ever since we parted company. I was carried down within sight of the coast of Brazil,’ Anderson grumbled. ‘But I am pleased we are together again.’

  ‘Not for long,’ Hal assured him, as he waved him to a chair, and poured a glass of Canary wine for him. ‘As soon as you have revictualled and refurbished the Yeoman, I am sending you on to Bombay alone, while I am going up the coast to seek out this Mussulman rover.’

  ‘That was not what I expected,’ Anderson spluttered into his wine, as he saw the chance of prize money snatched from him. ‘I have a good fighting ship and a crew—’

  ‘Perhaps too good,’ Hal stopped him. ‘From news that I have had since arriving here, it seems that our best chance of coming at Jangiri is to offer him a bait. Two fighting ships are likely to drive him off rather than suck him in.’

  ‘Ah! So that’s why you’ve changed your appearance?’ Anderson asked.

  Hal nodded, and went on, ‘Besides which, there are passengers, urgent mail and cargo for Bombay. Mr Beatty is in lodgings in the town, waiting for you to convey him and his family to Bombay. The trade winds will not stand fair much longer before the season changes and the winds turn foul for a crossing of the Ocean of the Indies.’

  Anderson sighed. ‘I understand your reasoning, sir, though it is of scant comfort. I am loath indeed to part company with you again.’

  ‘By the time you reach Bombay the monsoon wind will have changed. You will be able to discharge your cargo, and catch that wind to hasten your passage back across the Ocean of the Indies to the Fever Coast, where I will be waiting to rendezvous with you.’

  ‘That will take several months, the round trip,’ Anderson pointed out gloomily.

  Hal was pleased that he showed this eager spirit. Other Company captains would have been delighted to avoid danger, and were well content with the peaceable life of a trader. He tried to mollify him. ‘By the time we meet up again, I will have much better intelligence of Jangiri. By then I may have smelt out his lair. You can be certain that it will need both our forces to smoke him out, and that I will not attempt such an enterprise without the assistance of you and your crew, sir.’

  Anderson brightened a little. ‘Then I must make all haste to prepare myself for the next leg of the voyage to Bombay.’ He drained his glass and stood up. ‘I shall go ashore immediately to speak to Mr Beatty and have him prepare himself and his family to continue the voyage.’

  ‘I shall send Daniel Fisher, my officer, ashore with you to guide you to Mr Beatty’s lodgings. I would go with you myself, but for various reasons that is not prudent.’ He escorted Anderson up the companionway to the deck, and at the rail he told him, ‘I shall have all the cargo and mail for Governor Aungier loaded into my pinnaces and sent across to you tomorrow. I intend to hoist anchor three days from now, and set out to begin the hunt for Jangiri.’

  ‘My men will be standing by to receive your cargo. By the grace of God, I should be ready to sail myself within ten days, or less.’

  ‘If you would give me the pleasure of being my guest at dinner tomorrow, we can use the opportunity to agree the details of our future plans.’

  They shook hands, and Anderson seemed a great deal happier as he went down into the longboat, Big Daniel following him.

  Hannah sat on the top of one of the tall sand dunes above the beach, from where she could look out to the flotilla anchored in the bay. Two others were with her: Annetjie and Jan Oliphant.

  Jan Oliphant was Hannah’s bastard son. His father was Xia Nka, a powerful Hottentot chief. Thirty years previously, while she still had her looks and golden hair, Hannah had accepted from him the gift of a beautiful kaross, made from the pelts of the red jackal, in exchange for a night of her favours. Liaisons between white women and coloured men were strictly forbidden by the VOC but Hannah had never paid heed to the silly laws made by seventeen old men in Amsterdam.

  Although Jan Oliphant favoured his father in looks and skin colour, he was proud of his European ancestry. He spoke Dutch fluently, carried a sword and musket, and dressed like a burgher. He had earned the name Oliphant from his vocation. He was a famous elephant hunter, and a hard, dangerous man. By decree of the VOC none of the Dutch burghers was allowed to venture beyond the boundaries of the colony. By virtue of his Hottentot lineage, Jan Oliphant was not subject to these restrictions. He could come and go at will, free to range out into the trackless wilderness beyond the mountains, and return to sell the precious ivory tusks in the markets of the settlement.

  His swarthy visage was horrifically mutilated, his nose twisted and his mouth riven through by the shining white scars that started in the thick woolly mat of his hair and ran down to his chin. His shattered jawbone had set askew, giving him a perpetual gaping grin. On one of his first ventures into the interior, while lying by his camp-fire, a hyena had crept up on his sleeping form, and seized a mouthful of his face in its massively powerful jaws.

  Only a man of Jan Oliphant’s formidable physique and strength could have survived such an attack. The beast had dragged him away into the darkness, dangling him beneath its chest, like a cat with a mouse. It had ignored the shouts and stones hurled by Jan’s companions. Its long yellow fangs were sunk so deeply into his face that the bone of his jaw was crushed, and his mouth and nose were tightly sealed, so that he was unable to draw breath.

  Jan had reached for the knife on his belt, and with the other hand groped under the beast’s chest until he found the gap in its ribs through which he could feel the beating of its heart. He had placed the point of the knife carefully and then made a single, powerful upward stroke to kill the brute.

  He crouched now on the dune between the two women, and his voice was distorted by the damaged nostrils and twisted jawbone. ‘Mother, are you certain this is the same man?’

  ‘My son, I never forget a face,’ Hannah told him doggedly.

  ‘Ten thousand guilders?’ Jan Oliphant snorted with laughter. ‘No man living or dead is worth that much.’

  ‘It is true,’ Annetjie cut in vehemently. ‘The reward still stands. I have spoken to my sport at the castle. He says that the VOC will still pay the full amount.’ She grinned avariciously. ‘They will pay dead or alive, as long as we can prove that he is Henry Courtney.’

  ‘Why don’t they send the soldiers out to his ship and fetch him off?’ Jan Oliphant wanted to know.

  ‘If they arrest him, do you think they will give the reward to us?’ Annetjie asked contemptuously. ‘We have to catch him ourselves.’

  ‘He may have sailed already,’ Jan pointed out.

  ‘No!’ Hannah shook her head with certainty. ‘No, my lieveling. No English ship has set sail from the anchorage in the last three days. Another has arrived, but none has sailed. Look!’ She pointed out across the bay. ‘There they are.’

  The waters were flecked with white, curling waves, and the ships of the fleet danced a graceful minuet to the music of the wind, bowing and prancing at their moorings, with their banners and colours unfurling and waving in a shifting rainbow. Hannah knew the name of every one of them. She reeled them off, until she came to the two Englishmen that lay so far out in the bay that it was impossible to distinguish their colours.

  ‘That’s the Seraph, and the one further back, towards Robben Island, is the Yeoman of York.’ She mutilated the names with her heavy accent, then shaded her eyes. ‘There is a boat leaving the Seraph. Perhaps we are in luck, and our pirate is in it.’

  ‘It will take nearly half an
hour to reach the beach. We have plenty of time.’ Jan Oliphant lay back in the sun, rubbed his bulging crotch expansively. ‘I have a great itch here. Come, Annetjie, scratch it for me.’

  She bridled coyly. ‘You know it’s against the Company law for us white ladies to milk a pint from any of you black bastards.’

  Jan Oliphant chortled. ‘I won’t report you to Governor van der Stel, though I hear he likes a slice of dark meat himself.’ Jan Oliphant wiped the trickle of saliva that ran down his chin from between his twisted lips. ‘My mother can stand guard for us.’

  ‘I don’t trust you, Jan Oliphant. You bilked me last time. Let me see your coin first,’ Annetjie protested.

  ‘I thought we were sweethearts, Annetjie.’ He leaned over and squeezed one of her fat round tits. ‘When we have the ten thousand guilders from the reward, I might even marry you.’

  ‘Marry me?’ She screeched with laughter. ‘I wouldn’t even walk in the street with you, you ugly monkey.’

  He grinned at her. ‘It’s not walking in the street we are discussing.’ He grabbed her around the waist and kissed her on the mouth. ‘Come, my little pudding, we have plenty of time before the longboat reaches the beach.’

  ‘Two guilders,’ she insisted. ‘That’s my special price for all my best sweethearts.’

  ‘Here’s half a florin.’ He pushed the coin into her cleavage.

  She reached out and massaged his crotch, feeling it grow in her hand. ‘One florin, or you can dip it in the ocean to cool it off.’

  He snorted through his deformed nostrils and wiped the saliva from his chin as he scratched another coin from his purse. Annetjie took it from him, then tossed her head, throwing the wind-tangled mane of hair out of her face, and stood up. He picked her up in his arms and carried her down into the hollow between the dunes.

  Hannah watched them with disinterest from her seat on the top of the dune. She was worrying about her share of the reward money. Jan Oliphant was her son, but she had no illusions that he would not cheat her if he had the slightest opportunity. She would have to make certain that the reward money was placed in her own hands but, then, neither Annetjie nor Jan would trust her either. She puzzled over the dilemma as she watched Jan butting away at Annetjie, his belly slapping loudly against hers. He was snorting and exhorting himself to greater effort with loud cries. ‘Yah! Yah! Like a hurricane! Like Leviathan spouting! Like the father of all elephants tearing down the forest! Yah! Here comes Jan Oliphant.’ He let out a final bellow, slid off her and collapsed in a heap on the sand beside her.

  Annetjie stood up, rearranged her skirts and looked down at him disdainfully. ‘More like a goldfish blowing bubbles than a whale spouting,’ she said, and scrambled back up the dune to sit beside Hannah again. The longboat from the Seraph was close in to the beach now, its oars flashing and dipping, riding the crest of one of the swells.

  ‘Can you see the men in the stern?’ Hannah asked eagerly.

  Annetjie shaded her eyes with one hand. ‘Ja, two of them.’

  ‘That one.’ Hannah pointed out the figure in the stern sheets. ‘He was with Henry Courtney that night. They are shipmates, I could tell that.’

  A big man stood up and called an order to the rowers. In unison they shipped their long oars, and held them straight in the air, like the lances of a cavalry troop. The boat slid in over the sands, and came to rest high and dry.

  ‘He is a big bastard,’ Annetjie remarked.

  ‘That’s him for sure.’

  They watched Big Daniel and Captain Anderson step out of the longboat, and strike out along the beach towards the settlement.

  ‘I’ll go down and talk to the boatmen,’ Annetjie volunteered. ‘I’ll find out which ship our man is on and if he is truly the son of Franky the pirate.’

  Hannah and Jan Oliphant watched her saunter along the water’s edge towards the boat. The crew saw her coming and laughed and nudged each other, grinning expectantly.

  ‘Annetjie will have to be the one who collects the reward money for us,’ Hannah told her son.

  ‘Ja! I was thinking the same thing. It’s her boyfriend will be paying out.’

  They watched the girl laughing and bantering with the sailors. Then she nodded and led one of them into a small grove of dark green milkwood trees above the beach.

  ‘How much have you promised her as her share?’ Jan Oliphant asked.

  ‘Half.’

  ‘Half?’ He was shocked by such profligacy. ‘That’s too much.’

  The first seaman emerged from among the trees, rety-ing the length of rope that held up his breeches. His mates gave him an ironic cheer, and a second man jumped out of the boat and hurried into the grove, followed by a chorus of whistles and clapping.

  ‘Ja, it’s too much,’ Hannah agreed. ‘She’s a greedy bitch. You watch, she will serve every last one of those English pigs.’

  ‘Ja, she charged me two guilders. She is a greedy bitch. We will have to get rid of her.’ Jan shrugged philosophically.

  ‘You’re right, my son. She deserves it. But only after she has picked up the reward money for us.’

  They waited patiently in the warm sunlight, chatting idly, making plans to spend the great fortune that would soon be theirs, watching the procession of English seamen disappearing among the milkwood trees, and returning minutes later, sheepishly acknowledging the friendly jeers and hoots of their companions.

  ‘I told you she would fix every last one of them,’ Hannah said, with prim disapproval, as the last sailor returned to the longboat. A few minutes later Annetjie emerged from among the trees, brushing grains of sand out of her hair and clothing. She struggled up to where Hannah and Jan Oliphant sat, with a smug expression on her chubby pink face. She flopped down beside Hannah.

  ‘Well?’ Hannah demanded.

  ‘The captain of the English East Indiaman Seraph is Sir Henry Courtney,’ Annetjie announced grandly.

  ‘And you have the separate testimony of eight of his sailors to prove it,’ said Hannah sarcastically.

  Annetjie was unflustered, and went on, ‘It seems that Henry Courtney is a rich English Milord. He owns great property in England.’

  Jan Oliphant grinned. ‘As a hostage he may be worth even more than ten thousand. Me and my bullies will be waiting here on the beach to meet him when he comes ashore.’

  Hannah looked worried. ‘Don’t take chances by trying to hold him for ransom. He looks a slippery fish to me. Grab him, chop off his head and hand it over to the VOC. Take the reward and forget about the ransom.’

  ‘Dead or alive?’ Jan Oliphant asked Annetjie.

  ‘Ja, that’s what I said.’

  ‘My mother is right. A dead fish will not slip through our fingers. A fish with its throat cut,’ Jan mused.

  ‘I will wait with you until he comes ashore. I will point him out to you and then it’s up to you and your boys,’ Hannah told her son.

  ‘If he comes ashore a second time,’ Annetjie reminded her spitefully, and Hannah began to worry again.

  The cargo for Bombay had been taken out of the Seraph and ferried across to the Yeoman. The water-barrels had been scoured and refilled from the stream that meandered down from the slopes of Table Mountain. Stores of lamp-oil, salt, flour, biscuit and other dry goods, which had been depleted during the long voyage south, were replenished. Hal had retrimmed the ship to her best attitude for sailing. The crew were in good health and spirits, fat and happy on this diet of fresh fruit, vegetables and meat, and the twenty-six scurvy cases had recovered since Hal had sent them ashore to lodgings in the settlement. Now they came back aboard, cheerful and eager to continue the voyage.

  ‘I will sail with the dawn tomorrow,’ Hal told Captain Anderson of the Yeoman. ‘Do you also make all speed to get to sea again?’

  ‘Have no fear of that,’ Anderson assured him. ‘I will be waiting at the rendezvous on the first day of December.’

  ‘And I will have good employment for you then,’ Hal promised him. ‘The
re is one last matter in which I must ask your assistance.’

  ‘You have only to name it.’

  ‘I am going ashore tonight to attend to some business of importance to me.’

  ‘Pardon my impertinence, Sir Henry, but is that wise? As you have confided in me, and as I have myself ascertained by discreet enquiry to the Dutch authorities in the colony, they have unfinished business with you. If you fall into their hands, that will certainly redound to your disadvantage.’

  ‘I am grateful for your concern, sir, but my business ashore cannot be neglected. When it is done, I shall have a small chest for you to convey to Bombay on my behalf. From there I will be in your debt if you can consign it by the very next vessel leaving that port to my eldest son in Devon.’

  ‘You may have complete confidence that I shall do so, Sir Henry.’

  Tom and Dorian had watched the preparations for the shore expedition with mounting fascination. They had discussed it between themselves for several days. When Hal picked out the men who were to accompany him, and issued equipment and weapons to them, their curiosity overflowed.

  Gathering their courage, the two crept down to their father’s cabin when they knew he was safely closeted there with his officers. While Dorian played the cat on the companionway ladder, Tom sneaked to the door and listened at the panel. He could hear his father’s voice.

  ‘You, Mr Tyler, will have charge of the ship while I am ashore. We may be hard pressed by the Dutch, and in some haste when we return, so the boat crew waiting for us on the beach must be alert and well armed, ready to take us off at any instant. You must be ready to come to our assistance, Mr Tyler, and as soon as we are back on board to weigh anchor and set sail, even in the dark of night.’