Monsoon

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘A small craft, lateen-rigged.’ Tom’s reply floated down. ‘Ah! She has seen us. She’s going about.’

  ‘Only a guilty man runs.’ Big Daniel had come on deck and stood by the helm.

  ‘Or a prudent one!’ said Ned Tyler.

  ‘I bet a guinea to a pinch of dung that she’s coming from al-Auf’s island,’ said Big Daniel.

  Hal looked back at them. ‘We’ll bespeak her, Mr Tyler. Clap on all your canvas, and lay the ship on a course to intercept her, whoever she is.’

  Trying to claw her way back to windward through the wind-chopped seas, the small dhow was no match for the Seraph. Within half an hour she was hull up, and the big square-rigged ship was bearing down on her remorselessly.

  ‘Give her a gun, Mr Fisher,’ Hal ordered, and Big Daniel hurried forward to the bow-chasers. Minutes later a single cannon shot thudded out. Hal watched through his telescope, and a few seconds after the shot he saw a brief fountain of white spray erupt from the surface half a cable’s length to one side of the fleeing dhow.

  ‘I think even the infidel will understand that language,’ he muttered, and was proved correct immediately as the dhow surrendered to the inevitable. She dropped her single sail and rounded up into the wind.

  ‘Have an armed boarding-party ready to send into her,’ Hal ordered Big Daniel, as they raced down on the tiny vessel.

  Big Daniel took his party across in the longboat. He jumped up onto the dhow’s deck and disappeared into her hold. In the meantime his men secured the vessel, and herded her small crew forward under the threat of their cutlasses. Within ten minutes Big Daniel was back on deck, and hailed the Seraph. ‘Captain, she has a full cargo of silk, all of the bales stamped with the seal of John Company.’

  ‘Pirate booty, by God.’ Hal smiled for the first time in days, then called back, ‘Leave Mr Wilson and five men to sail her. Bring the captain and all his crew back to this ship under guard.’

  Big Daniel brought the confused, frightened Arabs on board, while Alf Wilson put the dhow under sail and followed in the Seraph’s wake as she resumed her previous course close-hauled on the wind.

  The Arab captain needed little persuasion to talk. ‘I am Abdulla Wazari of Lamu. I am an honest trader,’ he protested, part defiant and part servile.

  ‘Where did you trade for your present cargo, Wazari?’ Hal asked.

  ‘I paid for it in honest coin and in good faith, as Allah is my witness,’ said the captain, becoming evasive.

  ‘No doubt it escaped your notice that the bales in your hold bear the chop of the English East India Company.’

  ‘I am no thief. I did not steal them. I purchased them in fair trade.’

  ‘Who sold them to you, then, O Wazari the Honest Trader? And where?’

  ‘A man named Musallim bin-Jangiri sold them to me. I had no way of knowing that they were the property of this English company.’

  ‘Nothing except the evidence of your own eyes,’ said Hal drily in English. Then he went on, in Arabic, ‘And where did you meet Jangiri?’

  ‘On the island of Daar Al Shaitan.’

  ‘Where is this island? When did you sail from there?’

  ‘It is fifty leagues distant, perhaps.’ Wazari shrugged. ‘We sailed with the dawn wind yesterday.’

  This estimate of the island’s position agreed with the co-ordinates from his father’s log book. Hal turned away and paced back and forth slowly while he pondered this fresh intelligence. It seemed apparent that al-Auf was conducting an open market on the island of Flor de la Mar, selling off his booty. Probably Arab traders from all the western seas were flocking to him to fill their holds with stolen goods at bargain prices. He came back to Wazari. ‘You saw Jangiri himself, not one of his lieutenants?’

  ‘I saw him. He was freshly returned from a terrible battle with an infidel ship. His own vessel lies in the bay, and it is pitifully damaged—’ Wazari broke off as the possibility dawned upon him that he stood on the deck of the very same infidel ship he was describing. His expression became shifty.

  ‘Did Jangiri tell you he had taken any infidel prisoners in this battle?’ Hal asked. Wazari shook his head. ‘He did not boast to you and you heard no talk that he had taken a Frankish child as slave? A boy of eleven or twelve summers?’ Hal tried to make it seem a casual question, but saw a sudden flash of interest in Wazari’s expression, which the man masked quickly as a good trader should.

  ‘I am an old man and my memory fails me,’ said Wazari. ‘Perhaps some act of hospitality or kindness might restore my memory.’

  ‘What kindness?’ Hal asked.

  ‘That you, my lord, allow me and my ship to go on our way without further let. That would be a kindness that would be written against your name in the golden book.’

  ‘One kindness deserves another,’ Hal said. ‘Be kind to me, Wazari, then perhaps I shall be kind to you. Did you hear of a Frankish child when you were with Jangiri, who is also known as al-Auf?’

  The Arab tugged at his beard indecisively, then sighed. ‘Ah, now, I do recall something of that nature.’

  ‘What do you recall?’ Hal demanded, and instinctively touched the hilt of the dagger on his belt.

  It was a gesture not wasted on the Arab. ‘I recall that two days ago Jangiri offered to sell me a slave, a Frankish child, but one who spoke the language of the Prophet.’

  ‘Why did you not buy from him?’ Hal leaned so close to him that he could smell Wazari’s last meal of sun-dried fish on his breath.

  Wazari laughed. ‘His price was a lakh of rupees.’ He repeated, in wonder, ‘A lakh of rupees for one slave-boy!’

  ‘That is a ransom for a prince, not a slave,’ Hal agreed. ‘Did you see the boy?’

  ‘At one lakh?’ Wazari looked incredulous. ‘He said I must show him the gold before I may see the boy. I am a poor man, and I told Jangiri that. Where would I find a lakh?’

  ‘How could he dare to ask such a price?’ Hal insisted.

  ‘He said that it was the child of the prophecy of Taimtaim,’ Wazari said.

  ‘I do not know of this prophecy.’

  ‘The saint prophesied that a child with strange-coloured hair would come from the sea.’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘Red!’ said Wazari. ‘The Red Crown of the Prophet. Jangiri says that this child of his has hair the colour of the sunset.’

  Hal felt his heart leap as though to be free of his chest, and his spirit soared. He turned away so that Wazari should not see it on his face and went to the weather rail. He stood there for a long while and let the wind tangle his dark hair around his face. Then he smoothed it back with both hands and returned to face Wazari. ‘You have been kind indeed,’ he said, and when he turned to Ned Tyler he was smiling. ‘Take this man and all his crew back to the dhow. Let them go on their way.’

  Ned was startled, ‘Let them go? Begging your pardon, Captain, but what about the stolen silk?’

  ‘Let him keep it!’ Hal laughed aloud, and every man within earshot gaped at him. They had not heard his laughter in many days. ‘It is small reward for what he has given me.’

  ‘What has he given you, Captain?’ Ned asked. ‘Though it’s none of my business.’

  ‘Hope!’ said Hal. ‘He has given me hope.’

  The pinnace crept in around the south point of Flor de la Mar during the night. The moon would not rise for another hour, and it was very dark. Hal could judge his approach only by the phosphorescence of the breaking surf on the beach. He had lowered the sail, for even though the canvas was stained black he had to minimize the chances of being spotted from the shore.

  Hal had kept the Seraph below the horizon during the hours of daylight so as not to alert al-Auf. She had come in to drop the pinnace only after the sun had set and was waiting for them now two miles off-shore. Hal had arranged a series of rocket signals with Ned Tyler. If they should run into trouble, the Seraph would stand in to take them off. So far they had encountered no difficulty, and the south end
of the island seemed deserted, although they had seen the wavering lights from lanterns and cooking-fires at the north end as they sailed past.

  If his father’s drawings were accurate, Hal expected to find a sheltered cove tucked away behind the southern tail of the island, and he steered for it now. There were twenty men in the pinnace, but he intended to take only the smallest party ashore with him. He did not plan an attack on the fort or the shipping anchored in the bay: this was a scouting foray, to assess the strength of the Mussulman corsairs and to try to find where Dorian was being held. He hoped to slip ashore and get away again without alarming the garrison, or giving them an inkling of his presence.

  He heard the splash of the lead, then moments later the whisper from the bows, ‘By the mark four.’ Big Daniel was taking the soundings himself, trusting no other with this vital task. The bottom was shelving sharply. A big swell passed under the boat, lifting them high, and Hal wished he had more light to guide them in. The breaking surf was close ahead.

  ‘Ready for it now, lads,’ Hal told the rowers softly, and then, as he felt the stern start to lift on the next swell, ‘Heave away!’ The pinnace caught the wave and sped forward. Delicately Hal coaxed her to stay on the wave with small adjustments of the tiller. The crest burst all around them, but on she raced in the creaming waters until suddenly she ran onto the sand.

  The three leaped out waist-deep and, holding their pistols, waded ashore. Behind them, Big Daniel took the pinnace out into the deeper water beyond the surf-line to await their return.

  They halted above the high-water mark. ‘Aboli, leave the rockets here,’ Hal said, and Aboli set down the heavy canvas-wrapped packet. ‘We must hope we never need them,’ he grunted. ‘Now look to your priming.’

  There were metallic clicks and snaps as Tom and Aboli reprimed their pistols. The long row into the beach and wading through the surf would have given the sea-water ample opportunity to degrade the priming. They had not armed themselves with the long-barrelled muskets, which were heavy and awkward to carry, and of little advantage in the night.

  ‘Are you all right, Tom?’ Hal dropped his voice even lower. He had agonized over the decision to bring the lad ashore with him.

  ‘All right,’ Tom whispered back. Hal wished he had not taken that oath in Tom’s company. His son used it against him whenever he tried to shield him from danger. He had not been able to deny Tom a place in this shore party, but Hal consoled himself now with the fact that Tom’s night vision far surpassed his or even Aboli’s. They might be thankful for those sharp young eyes before this night was done.

  ‘Take the lead,’ he ordered Tom now, and they moved forward in Indian file, with himself in second place and Aboli bringing up the rear. The ground was open, devoid of any shrub or sea grass, but they had to follow carefully in Tom’s footsteps. The nests of the sea birds were set so close together on the coral sand that there was scarcely space to step between them, and the birds’ backs were sooty black, which made them almost invisible. They cackled and squawked irritably as the men stepped over them, but this noise was absorbed by the low susurration of the vast colony. Occasionally one pecked painfully at a bare ankle, drawing blood, but there was no general outcry and at last they reached the palm grove at the far end of the colony.

  Tom led them on at a faster pace, keeping in the cover of the grove but just above the white coral sands of the beach. Within half an hour he had stopped them again and when Hal went to his side he pointed ahead. ‘There is the horn of the bay,’ he whispered. ‘I can just make out the ships lying in the anchorage, though I cannot be certain which is the Minotaur.’ To Hal’s eyes, the darkness ahead was unrelieved. However, Wazari had assured him that the Minotaur had been in the bay four days ago and, with the damage that the Seraph had inflicted upon her, it seemed unlikely that she would have sailed since then.

  ‘The moon will be up very soon,’ Hal murmurmed. ‘We will be able to make certain of her then. But, in the meantime, take us closer.’

  They crept forward through the dense jungle beneath the trees. The ground was littered with fallen palm fronds, dry and noisy underfoot. They had to rely on Tom to steer them through this hazard. Hal wrinkled his nose as he smelt the smoke from the cooking-fires and the other less pleasing odours of the corsair’s encampment, of rotting fish-heads and offal, of refuse and uncovered dung-heaps. Then he stopped again as he smelt the unmistakable stench of decomposing human corpses. He had been on too many battlefields not to recognize it. Immediately he thought of Dorian, and made an effort to put the thought of his son’s vulnerability out of his mind, and instead to concentrate on the task in hand. They went on slowly.

  There was the sparkle of lights through the trees, and when they paused again they could hear the faint murmur of voices. Someone began to chant an Islamic prayer, and someone else was chopping firewood. Mingled with these sounds was the tapping and soft clatter of shrouds and spars, the clank of an anchor chain from the ships lying in the bay. They reached the edge of the grove and could make out the dark curve of the bay before them.

  ‘That’s the Minotaur,’ Tom said softly. ‘No mistaking her.’ To Hal she was merely a darker blob in the darkness.

  ‘The moon rises very soon,’ he said, and they settled down to wait.

  Eventually it came softly in its silver radiance, and the shapes of the craft in the bay materialized before them until they could make out the Minotaur’s bare yards against the stars. Hal saw that there were three other square-rigged vessels in the anchorage, which was as Wazari had described it to him. All these vessels had been captured by al-Auf.

  ‘Tom, you stay here,’ Hal whispered.

  ‘Father—’ he protested.

  ‘No arguments!’ Hal said firmly. ‘You have done your job well, but you will stay here out of harm’s way until we return.’

  ‘But, Father—’ Tom was outraged.

  Hal ignored him. ‘If anything happens – if we become separated, you must head back to the beach where we landed and call in the pinnace.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Tom demanded.

  ‘Aboli and I are going to get a closer look at the shipping in the bay. There is nothing more you can do to help.’

  ‘I want—’ Tom began again, but Hal cut him off.

  ‘Enough! We will meet you back here! Come, Aboli.’

  The two rose quietly and, within seconds, had disappeared, leaving Tom alone at the edge of the forest. Tom was not afraid – he was too angry for that. He had been cheated, treated like a child when he had proved many times over that he was not.

  ‘I am oath-bound,’ he fumed. ‘I cannot sit here while there is the least chance that I can help Dorry.’ Still, it needed all his courage to defy his father, deliberately to flout his direct orders. He rose hesitantly to his feet. ‘It’s my duty.’ He steeled himself. He did not follow directly behind his father and Aboli. Instead, he circled away from the beach. His father had shown him the chart of the island and the drawings of the old fort that his grandfather had made fifty years before, so he had a good idea of the ground ahead and where he was going.

  The moon was above the trees by now so he moved swiftly. He saw its light reflected from the pale battlements of the fort ahead, and when he started towards it he struck a path leading in the same direction. As he went forward the odour of decaying human flesh became stronger, until at last he stepped out into an opening in the forest and stopped in alarm.

  A field of dead bodies lay before him. Naked human corpses hung suspended from a series of crude gallows, weird and chilling in the moonlight. He felt a chill of superstitious dread and could not bring himself to walk out among the dead men. Instead he skirted the opening, keeping among the trees. It was as well he did, for before he was halfway round a file of robed figures came along the path through the forest from the direction of the fort. Had he remained on the path he would have run straight into them.

  After they had passed, he kept to the cover of the palm grove, an
d within minutes he was crouching below the thick moon-silver walls of the fort. By now his anger had subsided and he felt very much alone and unprotected. He knew that what he should do now was admit his stupidity and sneak back to the rendezvous, before his father found out that he was missing. It won’t take long. He rationalized his disobedience. Cautiously he started to circle the fort, until he came almost opposite the main gates, which stood open, but guards were huddling under the arch. It looked as though they were asleep but he could not take the chance of approaching any closer. He crouched in the shadows a few minutes longer. A torch was burning in a bracket to one side of the opening of the gateway. By its light he could make out the massive, sturdy timbers of the door.

  He turned back and started to retrace his steps around the perimeter of the walls. On the eastern side the moonlight played full upon the pale coral blocks, and Tom could see that in places the walls were in ruins: some of their outer cladding had collapsed and the jungle growth was taking over. The ficus trees had probed their roots deep into the joints between the blocks, and the stems of wild lianas crawled up the walls, looking like monstrous black pythons in the moonlight.

  A preposterous idea struck him: he would climb up into the fort, using a liana as a ladder, to search for Dorry. He was considering this when suddenly he heard a soft cough. He shrank back into the trees, looking for where the sound had come from. Then he saw the shape of a man’s turbaned head in a corner of the battlement. He realized that guards were posted at intervals along the top of the walls and his heart tripped when he realized how close he had come to climbing up into disaster. He moved on stealthily around the outside of the fort and turned the corner at the north-western extremity.

  He noticed that along this section there were loopholes in the outside of the walls, set high up, too narrow for any but a child to squeeze through. Most of these slits were dark, but behind one or two the soft yellow light of an oil lamp or lantern showed. There were cells or rooms behind those windows.