Monsoon

by Wilbur Smith

  At the door he stopped Dorian. ‘We can never call you a baby again,’ he said. ‘You proved tonight that you are a man in everything but size. You saved all our lives.’ Dorian’s smile was so radiant, and even with his sea-wet locks dangling in his face he looked so beautiful, that it twisted Hal’s heart.

  Soon he heard the two brothers chattering away in the tiny cabin beside his, which had been vacated by the Beatty daughters, then their running footsteps in the passageway as they went off to importune the cook.

  Hal lit two candles and placed them on the lid of his father’s coffin. Then he knelt on the deck in front of it and began the long vigil. Sometimes he prayed aloud, for the peace of his father’s soul and the forgiveness of his sins. Once or twice he spoke quietly to him, remembering incidents from their life together, reliving the frightful agony of Sir Francis’s death. Though the night was long, and he was exhausted and cold, his vigil ended only when the dawn light, grey with the storm, crept through the stern windows. Then he roused himself and went on deck.

  ‘Good morrow, Mr Tyler. Call both watches to get the ship under way,’ he bellowed above the wind. The watch came tumbling up on the heaving deck. The forecastlemen manned the capstan and the pawls clanked as they recovered her anchor cable. In the meantime the topmen poured into the rigging and manned the yards.

  Hal ordered the foresail spread for a moment to give the ship way to break out the anchor flukes from the sandy bottom, then furled the sail again as she came up hard. He listened to the capstan pawls: clank, then clank again, silence for a long moment, then clank and clank, coming faster until it became a rattling chorus as the anchor broke out and the cable slithered in through the hawsehole.

  ‘Head sails!’ Hal roared, and as they broke out the storm snatched them drum-tight. The Seraph quivered eagerly, and as Hal ordered the helm put over she spun on her heel and frolicked away. The men in the rigging let out a spontaneous cheer. A moment later Tom’s voice hailed from the masthead, ‘On deck there! A boat!’

  ‘Where away?’ Hal shouted back.

  ‘Putting out from the beach. Now there are two of them – no, three!’

  Hal crossed to the lee rail, and raised his telescope. The sea was dreary grey, flecked with whitecaps. Low cloud scudded across the sky and obscured the mountain-top. He picked out the three longboats battling the wind and the tide, throwing bursts of spray over their bows, heading towards the Seraph.

  ‘Visitors, Captain,’ said Ned at his elbow.

  Hal grunted and focused his telescope. He could pick out the Dutch uniforms and the glint of bayonets. ‘I do not think they have anything to tell us that we want to hear, Mr Tyler.’ He shut it with a snap. Clearly, they were troops from the castle. Last night’s fracas on the beach had stirred them up. He turned his back on the distant flotilla and smiled as he gave the next order. ‘Lay the ship on a course to pass the Yeoman of York close to leeward, if you please, Mr Tyler.’

  Half a cable’s length from the Yeoman, the Seraph hove to, and launched the longboat. The teak chest was lowered into her as she danced alongside, then Hal dropped down the ladder and took the tiller before he gave the order to pull across to the anchored Yeoman. Anderson was at the rail, and Hal stood in the stern sheets and hailed him. ‘I have the cargo for you.’

  ‘I’m ready to receive it,’ Anderson shouted back, and his crew lowered a tackle from the main yard. The longboat crept in under it and, working swiftly and deftly, they secured the teak chest to it.

  ‘Hoist away!’ Hal called, and his father’s coffin was raised and swung in onto the Yeoman’s deck.

  ‘I am greatly obliged to you, sir,’ Hal cried to the deck high above.

  ‘My great pleasure, sir,’ Anderson answered. ‘I wish you a fair wind.’ He touched the brim of his cocked hat in salute.

  ‘Until we meet again,’ Hal said.

  Then Guy’s head appeared at the rail. He looked pale, as if the first throes of seasickness had already overtaken him. Nevertheless, he smiled bravely and waved his cap over his head. ‘Farewell, Father, until we meet in Bombay.’

  ‘Farewell and farewell,’ Hal replied, and felt a sharp pang of sorrow at this parting. Would that our fates had treated us all more kindly, he thought, but he smiled encouragingly at Guy, trying to convey a message of love and hope to him, until he was forced to give his whole attention to bringing the longboat back alongside the Seraph.

  Although the whipping pendulum action of the Seraph’s foremast in this wind and sea had made the climb both hazardous and frightening, Tom and Dorian were at last secure in the crow’s nest. They could look down from there onto the Yeoman’s deck as they passed the anchored ship so closely that they could clearly make out the expressions of the passengers and crew looking up at them.

  ‘There’s Guy!’ Dorian whipped off his cap to wave at his brother. ‘Guy! Ahoy there, Guy!’

  Guy raised his head and looked up at them. But his hands remained clasped behind his back, and no smile relieved the severity of his expression.

  ‘Why does he not answer me?’ Dorian asked plaintively. ‘I have not given him offence.’

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself, Dorry. It’s not you he hates, it’s me,’ Tom said quietly, and returned his twin’s cold glare.

  Behind Guy, the Beatty family stood in a small group together. With him, they had come on board the Yeoman days before from their lodgings in the settlement, ready for the sailing of the ship to Bombay. Caroline stood a few paces separated from the rest of her family, and Tom picked her out. She made a pretty picture in these surroundings, her skirts and petticoats rippling and flirting in the wind, holding her bonnet on with one hand, her curls dancing on cheeks pink from the wind’s touch, eyes sparkling as she looked across at the other tall ship.

  ‘Caroline!’ Tom yelled. ‘Up here! Ahoy!’ The devil was in him, and he called her more to infuriate his twin than for any other reason. Caroline raised her eyes and saw him high in the crow’s nest. She did a little impromptu dance of excitement, and waved with her free hand.

  ‘Tom!’ The wind whipped her voice away, but Tom’s sharp eyes could read her lips. ‘God speed!’

  Guy spun round when he heard her voice, then strode across the deck and stood close by her side. He did not touch her, but his posture was possessive and belligerent as he stared across at his brother.

  The Seraph broke out more sail, and she heeled sharply and flew away on the wind. The figures on the Yeoman’s deck dwindled in size and then were lost to sight. From the crow’s nest they stared back at the other ship until she was a distant shape on the horizon, almost lost beneath the dark mountain and the towering ranges of sullen, bruised cloud.

  ‘Now it’s just you and me,’ Dorian said sadly.

  Tom did not answer. He could think of nothing to say.

  ‘You won’t ever forget the oath you swore to me?’ Dorian insisted. ‘You won’t ever leave me?’

  ‘I won’t forget it,’ Tom said.

  ‘It was a dreadful oath,’ Dorian reminded him. ‘The very strongest kind.’

  ‘I know,’ said Tom, and repeated, ‘I won’t forget it.’ He rubbed the tiny white scar at the end of his thumb.

  After leaving Table Bay the Seraph was twenty-three days without glimpse of land or the sun. They ran into torrential downpours of rain, so copious that it seemed the very ocean had been upended and was crashing down on the deck. The rains lasted days and nights without cessation. In such conditions, even Hal’s navigation was sketchy and without substance, relying entirely on the traverse board and dead reckoning of each day’s run.

  ‘This is usually a placid, sunny ocean,’ Aboli remarked, looking up at the tumbling clouds low overhead. ‘The sea devils have turned it on its head.’

  ‘There is some great disturbance out there in the east,’ Ned Tyler agreed. ‘The wind turns over us like a wheel, always altering the direction of its thrust.’

  ‘We have met these winds before,’ Big Daniel reminded them. ‘T
hey spin around like a child’s top. I have heard that they are not uncommon in these latitudes at this season of the year. But we are not at the centre—’ He broke off as a mountainous swell even taller than all the others marched down upon the ship with ponderous dignity. It was so high as to dwarf the Seraph and its crest reached above her foretop yard. The yawning trough between this one and the swell that had preceded it was over a league wide.

  Hal left his position by the lee rail and crossed quickly to the helm. ‘Bring her up two points,’ he ordered quietly. ‘Meet her!’ he said. As the wave crashed down, they wallowed in the trough for a long moment. The men around the wheel held their breath, then released it together as the Seraph kicked up her head.

  ‘Mr Fisher is right.’ Hal nodded at him. ‘These storms spread out from their centre for hundreds of sea miles. They will sweep the entire ocean from end to end. But give thanks to God that we are not at the centre of this one. The strength of the wind there could probably rip out the main mast, though we flew not a scrap of canvas upon her.’

  Big Daniel spoke again. ‘In the Mascarene Islands I have seen one of these devil winds tear out the largest palm tree by its roots and carry it a mile out to sea, flying as though it were a kite.’

  ‘Pray for a sight of the sun,’ Ned Tyler looked up at the looming overcast sky, ‘that we might at last be able to fix our latitude.’

  ‘I have given us a wide berth of the land.’ Hal glanced at the binnacle, then looked into the west. ‘We should be at least two hundred miles clear of the African mainland.’

  ‘But Madagascar is one of the largest islands in the world, almost ten times the size of Ireland, and it lies right across our path,’ Ned pointed out quietly, so that the helmsman could not hear him. There was nothing to be gained in alarming the crew by discussing the hazards of navigation in their hearing.

  At that moment there came a hail from the masthead. ‘Deck! Flotsam! Fine on the port bow!’

  The group of officers peered ahead, and Hal shouted, through the hailing trumpet, ‘Masthead! What do you make of it?’

  ‘Looks like the spar of a ship, or the—’ The lookout broke off, then went on excitedly, ‘No! It’s a small boat, but almost swamped. There are men in her.’

  Hal hurried up to the bows, and jumped onto the bowsprit. ‘Yes, by God,’ he said. ‘Castaways, by the look of them. Alive too – I can see one of them moving. Stand by to launch a boat and pick them up.’

  Bringing the Seraph down on the small boat was difficult, dangerous work in these conditions of sea and wind, but at last Hal could lower a boat and send Big Daniel and a crew to the rescue. There were only two men in the battered craft, which Big Daniel abandoned, for it was not worth the labour of salvaging it. They brought the two survivors up in a boatswain’s chair, for they were far too weak to climb the ladder.

  Dr Reynolds was there to meet them, and he examined them as they lay on the deck. They were both only semiconscious. The salt had flayed the skin off their faces. Their eyes were swollen almost shut, and their tongues were blue and bloated from thirst so that they filled their mouths and protruded between their lips. ‘Water is their first need,’ he grunted. ‘Then I will bleed them both.’

  Their tongues were so swollen that they could not drink, so Reynolds introduced a brass syringe into the back of their throats and squeezed sweet water into them. Then he smeared mutton grease thickly over their salt-scalded lips, faces and arms. The effect on the younger of the two was miraculous: within two hours he had recovered sufficiently to be able to speak lucidly. However, the older man was still unconscious and seemed to be sinking fast. At Dr Reynolds’s summons, Hal went down to the corner of the gundeck where they were lying on straw pallets. He squatted beside them and watched the surgeon bleed the younger patient. ‘I should take another pint,’ he told Hal as he finished, ‘but this one is rallying strongly, and I have always been a conservative physician. One pint will do for now.’ He closed the wound with a dab of tar and bound it up with a clean cloth. ‘The older man is not faring as well. I shall take two pints from him.’ He began work on the still figure on the other pallet.

  Hal observed that the younger man indeed seemed brighter after this treatment, and leaned over him to ask, ‘Do you speak English?’

  ‘Aye, Captain. That I do,’ the sailor whispered. The Welsh lilt was unmistakable.

  ‘What is your name, lad, and what ship?’

  ‘Taffy Evans, begging your pardon, Captain. From off the Company’s ship Nile, God have mercy on her.’

  Slowly and gently Hal drew his story out of him. As a precaution against piracy, the Nile had been sailing in a convoy with two other ships, outward-bound from Bombay to England, with a cargo of cloth and spices, when they had run full into this terrible cyclonic storm a hundred leagues north of the Mascarene Islands. Battered by the ferocious winds and gigantic seas, the Nile had become separated from the other ships of the convoy and taken on water. On the fifth day, during the second dog-watch, she had been hit by a monstrous swell. Heavy with the water in her bilges she had capsized and gone under. So swift had been her end that only a handful of men had got away in a boat, but they had neither water nor food with them and most had perished swiftly. After twelve days only the two remained alive.

  While he was talking, Dr Reynolds had bled two pints from the other patient. He had just sent away his assistant to empty the blood-filled bowl overside, when he exclaimed, with chagrin, ‘Devil take it, the poor wretch is dead. I had hoped to save him.’ He turned his full attention back to Taffy Evans. ‘I think we will get this one through, though.’

  ‘When you are fully recovered there will be a berth for you on full pay, and with a share of the prize money.’ Hal stooped under the low deck. ‘Will you sign the watch-bill?’

  Taffy touched his forehead with a weak grin. ‘Right gladly, Captain. I owe you a life.’

  ‘Welcome aboard, sailor.’ Hal ran up the ladder to the deck, and paced easily against the heavy roll and pitch of the ship. Finding these castaways had been fortuitous, as was the storm that was now gradually dissipating its power. They gave him the excuse for which he had been seeking. When he had the details of his plan firmly in mind, he called his officers down to his cabin. They gathered around the chart spread on his writing-desk.

  ‘All of you know that for two hundred years the centre of all trade and commerce on the Fever Coast has been here,’ he said, and touched the tiny cluster of islands marked on the chart. ‘Zanzibar. Logically that is where our search for Jangiri must begin.’

  They nodded in agreement. Every one of them had sailed this ocean before and they knew well how the three small islands of the Zanzibar group were situated ideally for India, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and only a few leagues off the African mainland. The islands lay full in the track of the monsoon winds, which reversed themselves with the change of the seasons. The south-easterly monsoon carried shipping from India to Africa, and when the season changed, the north-westerly monsoon facilitated the return voyage. Added to this, Zanzibar had a secure harbour on the main island of Unguja, and even in the worst season of the rains, it was relatively free of the dreaded malarial fevers that turned the African mainland into a death-trap. Since as far back as the rise of Islam it had always been the entrepôt to Africa and the Ocean of the Indies, and the market where the produce of Africa – slaves, gold, ivory, gum arabic, the precious frankincense – was traded.

  Alf Wilson spoke up diffidently. ‘While I was their captive, I heard the pirates speak often of Zanzibar. I formed the impression that they visited it regularly to trade part of their booty, to sell their captives in the slave market and to refit and revictual their fleet.’

  ‘Did it seem to you that Jangiri used Zanzibar as his main base?’ Hal asked him.

  ‘No, Captain, it did not. I believe that he would not place himself in the power of the Omani sultan by doing so. I believe that Jangiri has another secret hideaway, but that he uses Zanzibar as his
trading port.’

  ‘It has been my intention ever since our quest began to call at Zanzibar. However, what has troubled me is to explain what business an English ship of force is doing in these waters, so far from the regular trade route between India and Good Hope.’ Hal looked around the circle of their intent faces and saw both Big Daniel and Ned Tyler nod. ‘Indeed, if we sail into Zanzibar the word will spread down the coast within a week that a squadron of pirate hunters has arrived, and Jangiri will take fright. We will never bring him to battle unless we can give good, innocent reasons for being in these waters.

  ‘The storm has given us that reason,’ Hal told them, ‘and the castaways we found have suggested the excuse we lacked.’ They looked at him curiously.

  ‘What story will you tell the consul in Zanzibar?’ Ned Tyler asked.

  ‘I shall tell him that we were part of the convoy from Bombay that included the luckless Nile. My story will be that we are laden with rich cargo. I will dream up the details of a treasure so fabulous that it will have Jangiri salivating in his beard when he hears of it.’ They all laughed delightedly at the thought. ‘We ran into the heart of the great storm and were battered by it just as the Nile was.’ Hal looked across the desk at Ned Tyler. ‘We have already concealed the greater part of our armament, but now I want you to send down some of our yards and spars to give the appearance of storm-damage to rigging and hull that will convince a watcher from the shore of the truth of our story. Can you do that, Mr Tyler?’

  ‘Indeed I can, Captain,’ Ned said, with relish.

  ‘Such damage will give us the excuse to linger in Zanzibar roads, while the news of our plight is carried by every spy and trading dhow up and down the coast.’ Hal enlarged on his plan. ‘By the time we leave port again, every corsair and rover from the coast to Jiddah will be drawn to us like wasps to a pot of honey.’