Monsoon

by Wilbur Smith

  The single lateen sail ballooned down behind it and covered the foredeck, smothering the men lying there under its stiff canvas shroud. The dhow’s motion altered drastically as she was relieved of all the pressure of her canvas. Her bows fell off into the wind and she began to roll viciously and wallow in the swells of the monsoon.

  For long seconds there was silence on board except for the banging and clattering of loose tackle and sundered rope ends. Then there came a chorus of startled shouts and the screams of injured men. Two sailors on the after-deck had been crushed and killed instantly, and three others were terribly mutilated, limbs shattered and bones crushed. Their cries were pitifully thin in the wind.

  Under the shouted orders of the dhow captain, the unhurt sailors rushed forward to hack away the tangle of ropes and canvas that covered the men on the foredeck.

  ‘Find the Prince!’ the captain shrieked, fearful for his own life if his master were hurt or, Allah forbid, killed under the massive weight of the boom.

  Within minutes they had ripped away the folds of the sail and, with exclamations of relief and expressions of thanks to God, lifted him out from under the wreckage.

  The Prince stood aloof in the pandemonium, ignoring the rapturous cries of thanks for his deliverance, and surveyed the remains of his dias. The boom had even sheared through the thick silk folds of the precious prayer rug on which he had been standing. The mullah rushed down the deck to his side. ‘You are uninjured, thanks be to Allah. He spread his wings over you, for you are the Beloved of the Prophet.’

  Al-Malik fended off his hands and asked, ‘Where is the child?’ The question triggered another frantic search under the mountains of canvas. At last they dragged Dorian out and stood him in front of the Prince.

  ‘Are you hurt, little one?’

  Dorian was grinning with delight at the devastation that surrounded them. He had not enjoyed himself so much since he had last been with Tom. ‘I am fine, sir.’ In the excitement of the moment he had lapsed into English. ‘But your ship is fairly buggered.’

  Tom knew that the men must be kept busy during the days and weeks that they had to wait for the return of Anderson from Ceylon. Idle seamen soon find mischief with which to occupy themselves; they become a threat to themselves and to each other.

  He also realized that, for his own well-being and peace of mind, he must find solace in work. Otherwise he would spend the long, tropical days brooding on Dorian’s fate and his father’s terrible injuries and slowly deteriorating state of health. He found himself torn between these two conflicting loyalties. He knew that, as soon as Hal was fit to travel, he must try to get his father home to the peace and security of High Weald, where he could be nursed back to health by English surgeons and cared for by a staff of loyal servants.

  On the other hand, this would mean leaving Dorian to his fate as a slave in an alien world. He felt the irresistible force of his oath to his brother summoning him towards that awful coast that was Africa.

  He went to Aboli to help him resolve this dilemma. ‘If my father would let me take command of the Minotaur, and gave me a small crew of good men, then you and I could go after Dorian. I know where to start to search for him. Lamu!’

  ‘Then what of your father, Klebe? Are you ready to desert him, now that he needs you most? What will you feel when the news reaches you when you are somewhere out there,’ Aboli pointed to the west where the mysterious continent lay beneath the horizon, ‘that your father is dead, and that perhaps you could have been there to save him?’

  ‘Do not even speak of it, Aboli,’ Tom flared at him, then subsided with a sigh of uncertainty. ‘Perhaps by the time Captain Anderson and the Yeoman return, my father will be strong enough to make the voyage home without us. I will wait until then before I decide, but in the meantime we must get the Minotaur ready for any call we make upon her.’

  Despite the work already done on her, she still showed the effects of her sojourn at the hands of al-Auf, and they both knew that her hull was probably heavily infested with ship-worm, the curse of tropical waters. That very day Tom ordered her to be careened. He had never had to do this before and knew he must rely heavily on the expertise of Ned Tyler and Alf Wilson. The ship was unloaded of all her cargo and heavy gear, including her cannon and water-barrels. All this was ferried to the beach and stored under thatched lean-to shelters in the palm grove and the guns arranged to protect the camp. Then the lightened hull was warped in parallel to the beach on the high spring tide.

  Lines were run through heavy sheave blocks from the top of all three masts to the shore, and secured to the largest, strongest palms above the beach. Then, with three fathoms of water under her hull, the Minotaur was hove over. Twenty men on each of the capstans and the rest of the men on the shore-lines strained and chanted and heaved. Gradually the ship took on a heavy list to starboard, and her planking on the opposite side was exposed until she was in danger of rolling clean under. But by this time the tide was in full ebb and the Minotaur settled on the sandy bottom with her entire port side exposed. Before the tide was fully out, Tom and Ned Tyler waded out to inspect her planking.

  The Minotaur had been in these waters for almost four years and her bottom was foul with weed and barnacles. Although these would affect her speed and sailing characteristics, they would not threaten her existence. However, when they scraped away the weed they found what they had most feared: everywhere ship-worm had bored their holes into the timbers of the hull below the waterline. Tom was able to thrust his forefinger full length into one of these burrows, and feel the worm squirm as his fingertip touched it. In some places the holes were so close together that the wood resembled a Swiss cheese.

  The carpenters had iron vats of pitch boiling over fires on the beach. Ned poured a ladleful, bubbling, into one of the worm-holes. The loathsome creature came writhing and twisting, in its death throes, out into the open. It was as thick as his finger, and when Tom seized its head and held it up as far as he could reach, the red serpentine body hung down as far as his knees.

  ‘The old lady would never have made it back home with this filthy crew aboard,’ Ned told him. ‘Her hull would have broken up in the first real gale she ran into.’ With an expression of disgust, Tom flung the parboiled worm far out into the lagoon, where a shoal of small silver fish churned the water white as they devoured it.

  The carpenters and their mates came wading out to join them in the work of ridding the hull of these vermin, and kept at it until the tide turned and the rising water drove them back to the beach. They worked through five successive low tides to scrape off the weed and shellfish, then cooked out the worms and plugged their holes with pitch and oakum. Those planks that were riddled and rotten past saving were cut out and replaced with bright new timbers. The scoured bottom was painted with a thick coat of pitch, covered with a mixture of pitch and tallow, then another two coats of pitch before Ned and Tom were satisfied.

  With the next high tide the Minotaur was floated off, and in deeper water turned round. Then she was brought back to the same spot on the beach and the whole process repeated, but this time with her starboard side rolled uppermost.

  When, finally, she was brought back to her moorings in the deeper waters of the lagoon, the topmastmen went aloft to send down her yards. These were carefully examined and any weak spot was repaired before being sent aloft again. Next, all the lines and sheets of her rigging were minutely inspected and the greater part replaced with fresh manila of the finest quality from the Seraph’s stores. The old black sails were in rags and tatters – most had been roughly patched and cobbled by al-Auf’s men. ‘We will replace them all,’ Tom decided, and sent Ned to rifle the lockers of the Seraph. The sail-makers squatted in rows on the open deck, making up new canvas and altering the sails from the Seraph’s lockers to suit the Minotaur’s masts and yards.

  The lower decks were in the same state of degradation as the Minotaur’s rigging. She was lousy with vermin and rats, and stank like a dung-heap.
Ned concocted a fearsome brew of gunpowder, brimstone and vitriol, and they placed pots of this in the lower decks and set them alight. As the noxious smoke and fumes billowed from the pots, they hurried out onto the deck and into the fresh air. Then they battened down all her ports and hatches, and let the smoke seep into every corner and cranny of the hull.

  Within minutes the rats began to desert the ship, wriggling out through the hawsehole and every crack in the gunports. Some were as big as rabbits. As they swam frantically for the beach, the crew had great sport shooting at them with pistol or musket and wagering on the bag.

  When the hull and the rigging had been taken care of, Tom turned his attention to the paintwork. This was faded and peeling. They rigged cradles over her sides and teams of men sanded her down, then gave her three coats of gleaming white down to the waterline. In a transport of artistic zeal, Tom had them pick out her gunports in a gay sky blue, and regild the horned figurehead and the carvings of the stern gallery. After six weeks of unrelenting work the Minotaur looked like a ship just off the builders’ slip. Her lovely lines and her sweet sheer were displayed to full advantage.

  Looking across at her from the stern windows over his sick bed, Hal Courtney smiled wanly with approval. ‘By Jesus, she’s as pretty as a bride on her wedding day. Well done, my boy. You have added five thousand pounds to her value.’

  His father’s words gave Tom the courage to make a request. Hal listened quietly as he asked for the Minotaur and an independent command. Then he shook his head. ‘I have lost one son,’ he said softly. ‘I am not yet prepared to lose another, Tom.’

  ‘But, Father, I gave Dorry my sacred oath.’

  Shadows of terrible pain, worse than those he had undergone on the grating when they took his legs, passed behind Hal’s eyes. ‘I know, Tom, I know,’ he whispered. ‘But the Minotaur is not mine to give you – it belongs to John Company. Even that would not stop me if I thought we could help your brother. But I cannot give you the ship and let you go off into terrible danger without a full crew to help you.’

  Tom opened his mouth to argue further, but Hal reached up from the rumpled sick-bed on which he lay and placed his hand on his son’s arm. ‘Listen to me, lad.’ His voice was husky and the pale bony hand on Tom’s arm was light as the wing of a bird. ‘I cannot let you go alone. This al-Malik is a man of power. He commands armies and hundreds of ships. On your own, you will not prevail against one such as him.’

  ‘Father—’ Tom broke in again, but his father stopped him.

  ‘Hear me out, Tom. We must see through this voyage together. I have a duty to my King and to the men who placed their trust in me. When we have discharged that duty, I will have you inducted into the Order. You will become a Knight Templar of the Order of St George and the Holy Grail, with all the power that gives you. You will be able to call on the assistance of your brother knights, men like Lord Childs and Lord Hyde.’

  ‘That will take a year,’ Tom cried, in physical pain at the prospect. ‘No, it may take two or three years.’

  ‘We will achieve nothing by rushing in unprepared against a powerful nobleman in a far country, a country that is alien and where we have no allies or influence.’

  ‘Years!’ Tom repeated. ‘What will happen to Dorry in the meantime?’

  ‘By then I will be recovered from these wounds.’ Hal looked down at his pitifully truncated legs. ‘We will sail together to find Dorian, you and I, in a fleet of fine, powerful ships, manned with good, fighting men. Believe me, Tom, this is Dorian’s best chance, and ours.’

  Tom stared at his father aghast. Since his injury Hal Courtney had turned into a frail old man, with silvering beard and crippled body. Did he truly believe that he would ever again command another squadron or fight another battle? It was a forlorn dream. Tom felt the tears rising behind his eyes, but forced them back.

  ‘Trust me, Tom,’ Hal murmured. ‘I give you my word. Will you give me yours?’

  ‘Very well, Father.’ Tom had to summon all his courage to make the oath, but he could not deny his own father. ‘I give you my word.’

  ‘Thank you, Tom.’ The hand dropped from Tom’s arm and Hal’s chin drooped onto his chest. His eyes closed and his breathing was so soft that it was inaudible. With a flare of dismay Tom thought he had lost him. Then he saw the gentle rise and fall of Hal’s wasted chest.

  Tom rose from the bedside and moved towards the door, walking softly so that he did not disturb his father’s sleep.

  The monsoon died away, and they lay for months in the torpid grip of the great calm between the seasons. Then the palm trees stirred their fronds and the clouds turned back upon their tracks across the heavens and marched away in the opposite direction.

  ‘These two mighty winds are the great wonder of all the oceans of the Indies,’ Alf Wilson told Tom, as they sat on the foredeck. He spoke in Arabic, for Hal still insisted that Tom practise this language every day, and Tom knew that it would stand him in good stead in his quest to find his brother. ‘From November to April they blow out of the north-east, and the Arabs call them the kaskazi,’ Alf went on. ‘From April to November they turn back upon themselves and blow out of the south-east. Then the Arabs call them the kusi.’

  It was the kusi that had brought Captain Edward Anderson back to Flor de la Mar in the bright dawn of another windswept day. While the crews of the other ships of the squadron manned the yards and lined the rails to cheer her in, Anderson brought the Yeoman of York through the passage in the coral and dropped anchor alongside the Seraph. Hardly had the ship snubbed up to her cable than Tom sent the longboat across to fetch Anderson to see his father.

  Edward Anderson came up the ladder looking mighty pleased with himself and his accomplishments, but his first words were to enquire after Hal Courtney’s health.

  ‘My father makes a strong recovery from his wounds,’ Tom gave him the white lie, ‘and I am most grateful for your concern, Captain Anderson.’

  He led Anderson to the stern cabin. Tom had seen to it that the linen on the bunk was freshly washed and ironed, and that Hal’s hair had been trimmed and combed by the surgeon’s mate. He was propped up on bolsters and looked healthier than he really was.

  ‘I give thanks to God to see you in such fine fettle, Sir Henry,’ Anderson greeted him, and took the chair beside the bunk to which Hal pointed.

  Tom served them each a glass of Madeira. ‘Do you wish me to leave you alone with Captain Anderson, Father?’ he asked, as he handed the twist-stemmed glass to Hal.

  ‘Of course not,’ Hal told him quickly, then said to Anderson, ‘My son has taken command in my stead, while I am indisposed.’

  Tom stared at him. This was the first time his promotion had been mentioned.

  However, Anderson showed no surprise. ‘He does you credit, Sir Henry.’

  ‘Enough of our doings here on the island.’ Hal tried to sit higher, but pain stabbed him. He winced and lay back on the pillows. ‘I’m eager to have a report of your exploits since we parted.’

  ‘All my news is good.’ Anderson was neither shy nor reticent. ‘The outward voyage to Ceylon was accomplished without mishap, and the loss of only a dozen of the captives. Van Groote, the Dutch governor in Colombo, was courteous in his reception, and most amenable in his desire to trade. It seems that our timing was most propitious, as a recent epidemic of smallpox in his barracoons had reduced his population of slaves most drastically. Fortunately I had been apprised of this prior to opening negotiations with him, so I was able to agree with him a very satisfactory price.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Thirty-seven pounds a head.’ Anderson looked smug.

  ‘My felicitations, Captain Anderson.’ Hal reached out to shake his hand. ‘That is considerably more than we expected.’

  ‘The good news does not end there.’ Anderson chuckled. ‘The smallpox plague and the predations of al-Auf in these oceans meant that van Groote had been unable to ship much of the last two years’ cinnamon crop. His
warehouses were filled to overflowing.’ Anderson winked. ‘Instead of taking a note on the VOC bankers in Amsterdam for the sale price of the slaves, I loaded my ship with bales of cinnamon at these bargain prices. I have no doubt that we will double our investment when we reach the Pool of London again.’

  ‘Again I must commend your good sense and acumen.’ Anderson’s news had visibly cheered Hal. Tom had not seen his father look so keen and vigorous since his injury. ‘The wind stands fair for Good Hope. We should sail as soon as you are ready to take your Yeoman back to sea, Captain Anderson. When will that be?’

  ‘I have a few cases of scurvy among my crew, but I expect them to recover quickly now that we are in harbour. I need only replenish my water-barrels and take on a load of coconuts. I will be ready to sail within the week.’

  Four days later the squadron weighed anchor, and tacked out through the passage in line astern. As soon as they reached the open sea they set all plain sail and headed down into the south, to pass through the Mozambique Channel and forge on to the south cape of the African continent.

  For the first few weeks the weather remained fair and the wind favourable. Hal’s health responded favourably to being at sea again in the fresh air and to the kindly motion of the Seraph. He spent time each day rehearsing Tom in the rites of the Order of St George and the Holy Grail, preparing him for his entry into the knighthood, and expressed pleasure at his son’s progress.

  After the first week, Tom ordered a day-bed set up on the deck, on the weather side of the quarterdeck, and had his father carried up and laid where he could once again feel the wind and sun on his face. Although Tom took full responsibility for the running of the ship, he made time each day to be with his father. During these days Tom felt himself growing closer to Hal than he had ever been before. Often their talk turned to Dorian and their plans to find and rescue him. They discussed Guy and his marriage to Caroline Beatty only once. To Tom’s astonishment his father spoke to him as to a man full grown. ‘You do realize, Tom, that the child might well be yours and not Guy’s?’