Monsoon

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Is it worth anything, Captain?’ Big Daniel asked lugubriously.

  ‘Worth anything?’ Hal laughed at him. ‘Probably more than its own weight in silver bars, Danny.’ He flipped through the ledger to the final tally of the manifest. ‘To be precise, it was worth one hundred and twenty-three thousand six hundred and ninety-two guilders on the quay at Jakarta, twice as much in London. Say thirty thousand guineas as a rough estimate. More than the Lamb, herself.’

  At noon that same day Hal called all his officers on board the Seraph to receive their orders.

  ‘We are going to be stretched to the limit for men to work all three ships,’ he told them, as they assembled in the stern cabin. ‘I’m sending the Minotaur and the Lamb with skeleton crews south to the Glorietta Islands to make the rendezvous with Captain Anderson in the Yeoman. Mr Fisher will have the Lamb and overall command.’ He glanced at Big Daniel, and thought, By God, I shall miss him. ‘Mr Wilson will have command of the Minotaur.’ Alf Wilson bowed his gypsy-dark head in acknowledgement.

  ‘Grand Glorietta is two hundred and thirty sea miles from here. Not too far. There is a safe anchorage at the south end of the island, and fresh water in the creek there. I will give you four of the carpenters to undertake the repairs to the Minotaur and to get her back into fighting trim. That will be your first concern.’

  ‘Aye, Captain.’ Big Daniel nodded.

  ‘By my calculations, the Yeoman should arrive at the rendezvous within the next three weeks. As soon as she does, you are to leave the Lamb anchored at Grand Glorietta with a skeleton crew aboard, and if the Minotaur is repaired by then you will bring her and Captain Anderson back here to take part in the assault on Flor de la Mar.’

  ‘I understand, Captain,’ Big Daniel answered. ‘When do you want me to leave, sir?’

  ‘As soon as you possibly can, Mr Fisher. Captain Anderson may already be waiting at the rendezvous. With Dorian a prisoner on Flor de la Mar, every day is precious. I shall remain here to keep al-Auf blockaded.’

  Standing alone on the quarterdeck of the Seraph, while the sunset incarnadined the western sky, Hal watched the Minotaur and the Lamb detach and head off into the south. As the shapes of the two ships dwindled with distance and were at last engulfed by the gathering shades of dusk, Hal gave the order to take the Seraph back to her station off Flor de la Mar.

  In the first rays of the next day’s sunrise Hal sailed his ship boldly across the entrance to the bay, just out of range of the guns on the walls of the fort. His purpose was to warn al-Auf that he was under blockade, and at the same time to survey the island thoroughly. Through the lens of the telescope, the consternation in the Arab camp was clear to see. A throng of corsairs abandoned the huts and lean-to shelters among the palms and swarmed up to the shelter of the fort. The great teak doors swung shut before all had passed through and those left outside clamoured and beat at the door with fists and muskets. Hal was pleased to see how undisciplined they were; their lack of training and control had been just as apparent in their wild gunnery.

  Hal could make out the turbaned heads of the gunners above the top of the wall as they rushed to man the cannon. The first shot boomed out, and the ball struck the surface of the sea halfway between the shore and the Seraph. It skipped along the surface, slowing with each bounce until it was quite clear to the eye. Half a cable’s length from the Seraph it plunged below the surface and disappeared.

  Then the rest of the battery opened up. Soon the walls of the fort were hazed with a fog of gunsmoke, and plumes of sea-water rose like a forest between the shore and the ship. The Seraph was still well out of range – Hal had overestimated the range of the Arab ordnance.

  He switched his attention to the anchorage. No ships were left lying in the bay, not even the smallest fishing dhow. Their attack had swept it clean. Charred wreckage littered the surface and lay thickly along the high-water mark of the beach. The burned-out hull of the three-masted ship lay high and dry, canted over to expose her bottom, the masts burned out of her.

  ‘She’ll never go to sea again,’ Ned Tyler remarked with satisfaction. ‘You’ve got the rat bottled up in his hole, Captain.’

  ‘Our next trick is to winkle him out,’ Hal declared. ‘Send Master Tom to me.’ Tom came sliding down the backstay of the foremast and hobbled across on his injured foot. It seemed to be healing more speedily than Dr Reynolds had predicted. Hal watched him come down the deck with a critical eye. Tom was taller now than most of the other men on board, with the wide shoulders and brawny arms of a swordsman. His hair had not felt the scissors since they had sailed from England and it hung down his back, thick and curling, dark like a horse’s tail. Recently Hal had given him a straight razor, so his cheeks were clean but darkly tanned. He had the Courtney nose and piercing green eyes. A likely lad, Hal thought. It seemed that since he had lost Dorian, his paternal feelings had become sharper, more intense, and he had to dam back the flood of sentiment that threatened to overwhelm him. He handed the telescope to Tom, and said gruffly, ‘Point out to me the exact spot where you climbed the walls of the fort, and the opening of Dorian’s cell.’

  They gazed across the water at the island. The barrage of cannon-fire still raged, and the thick bank of drifting gunsmoke resisted the efforts of the monsoon wind to sweep it aside.

  ‘The north-western corner.’ Tom pointed. ‘Do you see the clump of three taller palms? Directly above them there is a notch in the wall with the green bushes growing out of it, and it’s the first loophole to the left of that. I think that’s the one, though I cannot be absolutely certain.’

  Hal took back the telescope and gazed through it at the fortifications. With the early sunlight slanting across the walls, the slits formed by the loopholes were in shadowy contrast to the coral white blocks. He gazed at the one Tom had indicated, and felt that his loss was almost too painful to be endured.

  ‘If you put me back on the island again, with Aboli and a small party of good men—’ Tom began earnestly.

  Hal cut him off with a curt shake of the head. ‘No, Tom.’ He had lost one son, he would not chance losing another.

  ‘I know exactly where to find Dorry,’ Tom pleaded. ‘There are any number of places where we would be able to climb the walls.’

  ‘They would be expecting you.’

  ‘We can’t just do nothing.’ Tom’s voice rose passionately. ‘God alone knows what will become of Dorry if we don’t get him out of their clutches.’

  ‘We will go in as soon as we are certain of success. In the meantime, al-Auf will not hurt Dorian. It seems some religious legend is protecting him, a prophecy by an Islamic saint.’

  ‘I don’t understand. A prophecy and Dorry? How do you know that, Father.’

  ‘From Wazari, the Arab captain we intercepted. It’s Dorian’s red hair. Legend has it that the Prophet Muhammad had red hair. It’s rare among the peoples of the East, and they hold it in superstitious esteem.’

  ‘We can’t rely on the colour of Dorry’s hair!’

  ‘That’s enough now, Tom. Go back to your battle station.’ Hal’s expression was not unkind, and it took all his good sense and determination to resist the lad’s entreaties.

  The Seraph drew away from the fort and gradually the guns fell silent, while smoke drifted away on the wind. Hal put her on the other tack, and they rounded the north point, slowly beginning a circuit of the island. He scrutinized every feature of the shore, coming in as close as was prudent to the edge of the reef.

  Hal had made a fair copy of Sir Francis’s old chart and it was now spread out beside the binnacle. On it he made notes of his own observations beside those noted by his father fifty years previously. He put a leadsman in the chains to take the soundings, and once he launched the longboat and sent Aboli inshore to investigate a lead through the coral. Aboli almost reached the beach on the far side of the lagoon before a party of a hundred or more Arabs appeared out of the palm forest and from close range opened a heavy musket fusillade on the lon
gboat. One of the rowers was wounded in the shoulder before Aboli could bring them out through the passage again.

  By the time he had completed the circuit of the island, Hal had picked out a dozen places where he could put a landing-party ashore, and he marked them carefully on the chart. When they came opposite the bay once more, he hove to, and made a detailed examination of all he could see of the fortifications, and the outworks that the Arabs had thrown up around the foot of the walls.

  He tried to make some estimate of the number of men that al-Auf had under his command. Finally he decided that it was at least a thousand, but knew that the true figure might be twice that.

  Every few minutes the telescope in his hands seemed to take on a life of its own and swivel back to the loophole in the thick white walls Tom had pointed out to him. ‘It’s going to be a long, weary wait until Edward Anderson gets here,’ he predicted gloomily, and every man on the Seraph settled down into the monotonous routine of blockade.

  Hal tried to keep the men alert by constant drilling, with musket and cutlass and cannon, but still the days dragged by. Four times, during the weeks that followed, the monotony was broken when they spotted vessels approaching Flor de la Mar from the west. Each time the Seraph piled on all sail and, the monsoon behind her, raced down to intercept them.

  Three proved easy prey, and were overhauled and boarded without any loss. However, the fourth vessel was a beautiful 130-foot dhow, not much smaller than the Seraph herself. She led the Seraph on a glorious chase, showing a startling turn of speed, and was handled adroitly by her terrified crew. The Seraph almost lost her when darkness fell. However, Hal outguessed the dhow’s captain, and in darkness doubled back towards the island. At daybreak the dhow was discovered trying to sneak into the bay at Flor de la Mar. The Seraph pounced and cut her off only half a mile short of her goal. Her crew put up a stout fight, and one of Hal’s men was shot dead while three others were wounded before they carried her decks. It turned out that she was owned by Prince Abd Muhammad al-Malik.

  The Prince was not on board but his personal cabin was furnished like the throne room of an Oriental potentate. Hal had the carpets and furniture stripped from the bulkheads and taken to his own cabin in the Seraph.

  The Prince’s name was familiar to Hal. He recalled clearly the other ship they had hailed on the night they had cut out the Minotaur and the Lamb from the bay of Flor de la Mar, and that he had deliberately let go. She had belonged to the same man, and now that Hal was presented with such evidence of great riches he doubted the wisdom of that decision. He ordered a rope reeved at the masthead and the noose placed over the head of the dhow’s captain. Standing at the condemned man’s side Hal questioned him at length.

  ‘Yes, effendi,’ the man was terrified for his life, and answered freely, ‘al-Malik is a rich and powerful man. He is the younger brother of the Caliph in Muscat. He has more than one hundred trading vessels in his fleet. They ply to every port in Africa and India and the lands of the Prophet. We call regularly at Daar Al Shaitan to trade with Jangiri.’

  ‘You know full well that al-Auf is a corsair, that all the goods you buy from him have been stolen from Christian ships, that many innocent seamen have been slaughtered by the corsair to win them, and those who survive are sold into slavery?’

  ‘I know only that my master has sent me to trade with Jangiri because the prices for his goods are favourable. As to how he obtained them, this is not my concern or that of my master.’

  ‘I shall now make it your concern,’ Hal told him harshly. ‘By trading with the corsair in stolen goods, you have put yourself in equal guilt.’ He turned to Aboli. ‘Search the ship carefully.’ The three dhows they had captured earlier had all been intent on trading with al-Auf, just as was this captain. It seemed that the news of the magnificent bargains to be had on Daar Al Shaitan had spread from the Persian Gulf to the Coromandel Coast. The three other ships had been carrying coin and specie to pay for the wares they expected to obtain. ‘Let’s see if this ruffian can make a further contribution to the expense of maintaining the blockade of the island.’

  Hal paced the deck while his men ransacked the dhow. Within half an hour they had uncovered the hiding-place of the captain’s money chests. The captain tore at his beard and ripped his robe with anguish when the four chests were dragged onto the deck of the dhow. They were too heavy to carry.

  ‘Have mercy, effendi,’ the captain wailed. ‘That does not belong to me. It belongs to my master.’ The man fell to his knees. ‘If you take it from me then you condemn me to my death.’

  ‘Which you deserve well enough,’ Hal told him drily, then turned back to Aboli. ‘Is there anything else of value in her holds?’

  ‘She is empty, Gundwane.’

  ‘Very well, take the booty across to the Seraph.’ Hal faced the wailing dhow captain. ‘These chests are the price of your freedom and that of your ship. Warn your master that this is but a small part of the price I will extract from him if ever again he is foolish enough to traffic with corsairs. Now, go with God, and thank him for your deliverance.’

  From the deck of the Seraph he watched the dhow scudding away, back towards the African mainland. Then he went down to his cabin where Aboli had stacked the captured chests against the bulkhead.

  ‘Open them,’ Hal demanded, and with a crow-bar Aboli ripped away the locks.

  The three vessels Hal had captured earlier had yielded rich pickings, but those were insignificant in comparison to what was revealed when the lids of the four chests were thrown back.

  The coin they contained was packed into small canvas bags. Hal slit one open with his dagger and a stream of glittering gold poured out onto his desktop. He saw at once that most of the coins were mohurs, each punch-stamped with the three mountains and the elephant of the Mogul empire. But other coinage was mixed in with them: gold dinars of the Islamic sultans covered with religious script, a few ancient tetradrachms of the Persian satraps, whose rarity value far surpassed the intrinsic value of the metal.

  ‘It would take ten men a week to count this hoard,’ Hal said. ‘We’ll weigh it instead. Have Mr Walsh bring down the ship’s scales and give him two men to help him.’

  Walsh laboured the rest of that day and half the night before he could bring Hal the final tally. ‘It is difficult to obtain a true measure in a moving ship,’ Walsh told him primly, ‘the arms of the balance can never come to rest.’

  ‘I shall not hold you accountable for an ounce or two each way,’ Hal assured him. ‘Give me your honest tally, and I will be content with that until we weigh it at the court of assizes in England.’

  ‘The weight is six hundred and five pounds to be precise – or, rather, to be imprecise.’ Walsh chuckled at his own joke, while Hal stared at him in astonishment. He had not expected so much. By God, that was very close to a lakh of rupees. A vast fortune in any coinage. To that must be added the gold and silver coin he had taken from the three other dhows he had captured. It’s total value far outstripped the value of the two tall ships he had taken as prizes.

  ‘A lakh of rupees,’ Hal mused aloud, and his eyes went back to the four chests with their broken seals standing along the bulkhead. There was something about that particular amount that jogged his memory. ‘A lakh of rupees! That’s the price that Wazari said al-Auf had placed on the red head of the child of the prophecy. Dorian’s slave price.’

  The more he pondered it, the more it seemed feasible. The gold was the purchase money for Dorian. The pleasure this thought gave him far outweighed the gold itself. If al-Malik was sending gold to al-Auf to buy Dorian, that proved that his son was still on the island and still contained within his blockade.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Walsh. You have done good work.’

  ‘I never thought to find the sight of so much gold distasteful.’ Walsh contemplated the labour of counting it, and Hal went back on deck to resume the endless vigil.

  ‘Please, God, let Anderson come soon,’ he whispered, as he looked acr
oss sparkling blue waters at the emerald green island rimmed with white coral sands. ‘Or at least give me the strength to contain myself.’

  Another week dragged by. Then, one dazzling morning when the sea lay oily and quiescent under the stinging assault of the sun, heaving to a slow rhythm as though it were making love to itself in the breathless heat, there was a joyous cry from Tom at the masthead. ‘Sail ho!’

  Too impatient to wait for the reports from the lookout, Hal clambered up the rigging and squeezed into the crow’s nest beside Tom.

  ‘There!’ Tom pointed to the south. For many minutes Hal thought he must have been mistaken for the horizon was deserted, then he picked out an ephemeral speck that disappeared again immediately. He trained the glass on the spot and suddenly it was there again, a tiny snowy pinnacle.

  ‘You’re right,’ he rejoiced. ‘A square-rigged ship.’

  ‘Two!’ Tom corrected him. ‘Two ships. They can only be the Yeoman and the Minotaur.’

  ‘We’ll go down to meet them, and bid them welcome.’

  Swiftly the approaching ships resolved into the Yeoman and the Minotaur. Hal examined them eagerly through the telescope and hardly recognized the Minotaur. Big Daniel had worked wonders in the short time he had been given to refit her. She was resplendent under a new coat of paint, and even when she drew closer there was no sign of the shot damage to her hull or her rigging. On the other hand, the old Yeoman was sea-weary and showing all the telltale signs of her long voyage.