Birds of Prey (18 page)

Since the day of their arrival in the lagoon a shore party had been burning cordwood and leaching the ashes to obtain the lye, and Sir Francis had sent Aboli into the forest to search for those
special herbs that his tribe used to keep their huts clear of the loathsome vermin. Now a party of seamen waited on the foredeck, armed with buckets of the caustic substance.

‘I want every crack and joint of the hull scrubbed out, but be careful,’ Sir Francis warned them. ‘The corrosive fluid will burn the skin from your hands—’ He broke
off abruptly. Every head on board turned towards the distant rocky heads, and every man upon the beach paused in what he was doing and cocked his head to listen.

The flat boom of a cannon shot echoed from the cliffs at the entrance to the lagoon and reverberated across the still waters of the wide bay.

‘’Tis the alarm signal from the lookout on the heads, Captain,’ shouted Ned Tyler, and pointed across the water to where a puff of white gunsmoke still hung over one of the
emplacements that guarded the entrance. As they stared, a tiny black ball soared to the top of the makeshift flag-pole on the crest of the western headland then unfurled into a red swallow-tail. It
was the general alarm signal, and could only mean that a strange sail was in sight.

‘Beat to quarters, Master Daniel!’ Sir Francis ordered crisply. ‘Unlock the weapons chests and arm the crew. I am going across to the entrance. Four men to row the longboat and
the rest take up their battle stations ashore.’

Although his face remained expressionless, inwardly he was furious that he should have allowed himself to be surprised like this, with the masts unstepped and all the cannon out of the hull. He
turned to Ned Tyler. ‘I want the prisoners taken ashore and placed under your strictest guard, well away from the beach. If they learn that there is a strange ship off the coast, it might
give them the notion to try to attract attention.’

Oliver rushed up the companionway with Sir Francis’s cloak over his arm. While he spread it over his master’s shoulders, Sir Francis finished issuing his orders. Then he turned and
strode to the entryport where the longboat lay alongside and Hal was waiting, where his father could not ignore him, fretting that he might not be ordered to join him.

‘Very well, then,’ Sir Francis snapped. ‘Come with me. I might have need of those eyes of yours.’ And Hal slid down the mooring line ahead, and cast off the moment his
father stepped into the boat.

‘Pull till you burst your guts!’ Sir Francis told the men at the oars and the boat skittered across the lagoon. Sir Francis sprang over the side and waded ashore below the cliff with
the water slopping over the tops of his high boots. Hal had to run to catch up with him on the elephant path.

They came out on the top, three hundred feet above the lagoon, looking out over the ocean. Although the wind that buffeted them on the heights had kicked the sea into a welter of breaking waves,
Hal’s sharp eyes picked out the brighter flecks that persisted among the ephemeral whitecaps even before the lookout could point them out to him.

Sir Francis stared through his telescope. ‘What do you make of her?’ he demanded of Hal.

‘There are two ships,’ Hal told him.

‘I see but one – no, wait! You are right. There is another, a little further to the east. Is she a frigate, do you think?’

‘Three masts,’ Hal shaded his eyes, ‘and full rigged. Yes, I’d say she’s a frigate. The other vessel is too far off. I cannot tell her type.’ It pained Hal to
admit it, and he strained his eyes for some other detail. ‘Both ships are standing in directly towards us.’

‘If they are intending to head for Good Hope, then they must go about very soon,’ Sir Francis murmured, never lowering the telescope. They watched anxiously.

‘They could be a pair of Dutch East Indiamen still making their westings,’ Hal hazarded hopefully.

‘Then why are they pushing so close into a lee shore?’ Sir Francis asked. ‘No, it looks very much as though they are headed straight for the entrance.’ He snapped the
telescope closed. ‘Come along!’ At a trot he led the way back down the path to where the longboat waited on the beach. ‘Master Daniel, row across to the batteries on the far side.
Take command there. Do not open fire until I do.’

They watched the longboat move swiftly over the lagoon and Daniel’s men drag it into a narrow cove where it was concealed from view. Then Sir Francis strode along the gun emplacements in
the cliff and gave a curt set of orders to the men who crouched over the culverins with the burning slow-match.

‘At my command, fire on the leading ship. One salvo of round shot,’ he told them. ‘Aim at the waterline. Then load with chain shot and bring down their rigging. They’ll
not want to try manoeuvring in these confined channels with half their sails shot away.’ He jumped up onto the parapet of the emplacement and stared out at the sea through the narrow
entrance, but the approaching vessels were still hidden from view by the rocky cliffs.

Suddenly, from around the western point of the heads, a ship with all sail set drew into view. She was less than two miles offshore, and even as they watched in consternation she altered course,
and trimmed her yards around, heading directly for the entrance.

‘Their guns are run out, so it’s a fight they’re looking for,’ said Sir Francis grimly, as he sprang down from the wall. ‘And we shall give it to them,
lads.’

‘No, Father,’ Hal cried. ‘I know that ship.’

‘Who—’ Before Sir Francis could ask the question, he was given the answer. From the vessel’s maintop a long swallow-tailed banner unfurled. Scarlet and snowy white, it
whipped and snapped on the wind.

‘The
croix pattée
!’ Hal called. ‘It’s the
Gull of Moray
. It’s Lord Cumbrae, Father!’

‘By God, so it is. How did that red-bearded butcher know we were here?’

Astern of the
Gull of Moray
the strange ship hove into view. It also trained its yards around, and in succession altered its heading, following the Buzzard as he stood in towards the
entrance.

‘I know that ship also,’ Hal shouted, on the wind. ‘There, now! I can even recognize her figurehead. She’s the
Goddess
. I know of no other ship on this ocean with
a naked Venus at her bowsprit.’

‘Captain Richard Lister, it is,’ Sir Francis agreed. ‘I feel easier for having him here. He’s good man – though, God knows, I trust neither of them all the
way.’

As the Buzzard came sailing in down the channel past the gun emplacements, he must have picked out the bright spot of Sir Francis’s cloak against the lichen-covered rocks, for he dipped
his standard in salute.

Sir Francis lifted his hat in acknowledgement, but grated between his teeth, ‘I’d rather salute you with a bouquet of grape, you Scottish bastard. You’ve smelt the spoils, have
you? You’re come to beg or steal, is that it? But how did you know?’

‘Father!’ Hal shouted again. ‘Look there, in the futtock-shrouds! I’d know that grinning rogue anywhere. That’s how they knew. He led them here.’

Sir Francis swivelled his glass. ‘Sam Bowles. It seems that even the sharks could not stomach that piece of carrion. I should have let his shipmates deal with him while we had the
chance.’

The
Gull
moved slowly past them, reducing sail progressively, as she threaded her way deeper into the lagoon. The
Goddess
followed her, at a cautious distance. She also flew the
croix pattée
at her masthead, along with the cross of St George and the Union flag. Richard Lister was also a Knight of the Order. They picked out his diminutive figure on his
quarterdeck as he came to the rail and shouted something across the water that was jumbled by the wind.

‘You are keeping strange company, Richard.’ Even though the Welshman could not hear him, Sir Francis waved his hat in reply. Lister had been with him when they captured the
Heerlycke Nacht
, they had shared the spoils amicably, and he counted him a friend. Lister should have been with them, Sir Francis and the Buzzard while they spent those dreary months on
blockade off Cape Agulhas. However, he had missed the rendezvous in Port Louis on the island of Mauritius. After waiting a month for him to appear, Sir Francis had been obliged to accede to the
Buzzard’s demands, and they had sailed without him.

‘Well, we’d best put on a brave face, and go to greet our uninvited guests,’ Sir Francis told Hal, and went down to the beach as Daniel brought the longboat across the channel
between the heads.

As they rowed back up the lagoon the two newly arrived vessels lay at anchor in the main channel. The
Gull of Moray
was only half a cable’s length astern of the
Resolution
.
Sir Francis ordered Daniel to steer directly to the
Goddess
. Richard Lister was at the entryport to greet him as he and Hal came aboard.

‘Flames of hell, Franky. I heard the word that you had taken a great prize from the Dutch. Now I see her lying there at anchor.’ Richard seized his hand. He did not quite stand as
tall as Sir Francis’s shoulder but his grip was powerful. He sniffed the air with the great florid bell of his nose, and went on, in his singing Celtic lilt, ‘And is that not spice I
smell on the air? I curse meself for not having found you at Port Louis.’

‘Where were you, Richard? I waited thirty-two days for you to arrive.’

‘It grieves me to have to admit it but I ran full tilt into a hurricane just south of Mauritius. Dismasted me and blew me clear across to the coast of St Lawrence Island.’

‘That would be the same storm that dismasted the Dutchman.’ Sir Francis pointed across the channel at the galleon. ‘She was under jury-rig when we captured her. But how did you
fall in with the Buzzard?’

‘I thought that as soon as the
Goddess
was fit for sea again I would look for you off Cape Agulhas, on the off-chance that you were still on station there. That’s when I came
across him. He led me here.’

‘Well, it’s good to see you, my old friend. But, tell me, do you have any news from home?’ Sir Francis leaned forward eagerly. This was always one of the foremost questions men
asked each other when they met out here beyond the Line. They might voyage to the furthest ends of the uncharted seas, but always their hearts yearned for home. Almost a year had passed since Sir
Francis had received news from England.

At the question, Richard Lister’s expression turned sombre. ‘Five days after I sailed from Port Louis I fell in with
Windsong
, one of His Majesty’s frigates. She was
fifty-six days out from Plymouth, bound for the Coromandel coast.’

‘So what news did she have?’ Sir Francis interrupted impatiently.

‘None good, as the Lord is my witness. They say that all of England was struck by the plague, and that men, women and children died in their thousands and tens of thousands, so they could
not bury them fast enough and the bodies lay rotting and stinking in the streets.’

‘The plague!’ Sir Francis crossed himself in horror. ‘The wrath of God.’

‘Then while the plague still raged through every town and village, London was destroyed by a mighty fire. They say that the flames left hardly a house standing.’

Sir Francis stared at him in dismay. ‘London burned? It cannot be! The King – is he safe? Was it the Dutch that put the torch to London? Tell me more, man, tell me more.’

‘Yes, the Black Boy is safe. But no, this time it was not the Dutch to blame. The fire was started by a baker’s oven in Pudding Lane and it burned for three days without check. St
Paul’s Cathedral is burned to the ground and the Guildhall, the Royal Exchange, one hundred parish churches and God alone knows what else besides. They say that the damage will exceed ten
million pounds.’

‘Ten millions!’ Sir Francis stared at him aghast. ‘Not even the richest monarch in the world could rise to such an amount. Why, Richard, the total Crown revenues for a year are
less than one million! It must beggar the King and the nation.’

Richard Lister shook his head with gloomy relish. ‘There’s more bad news besides. The Dutch have given us a mighty pounding. That devil, de Ruyter, sailed right into the Medway and
the Thames. We lost sixteen ships of the line to him, and he captured the
Royal Charles
at her moorings in Greenwich docks and towed her away to Amsterdam.’

‘The flagship, the flower and pride of our fleet. Can England survive such a defeat, coming as it does so close upon the heels of the plague and the fire?’

Lister shook his head again. ‘They say the King is suing for peace with the Dutch. The war might be over at this very moment. It may have ended months ago, for all we know.’

‘Let us pray most fervently that is not so.’ Sir Francis looked across at the
Resolution
. ‘I took that prize barely three weeks past. If the war was over then, my
commission from the Crown would have expired. My capture might be construed as an act of piracy.’

‘The fortunes of war, Franky. You had no knowledge of the peace. There is none but the Dutch will blame you for that.’ Richard Lister pointed with his inflamed trumpet of a nose
across the channel at the
Gull of Moray
. ‘It seems that my lord Cumbrae feels slighted at being excluded from this reunion. See, he comes to join us.’

The Buzzard had just launched a boat. It was being rowed down the channel now towards them, Cumbrae himself standing in the stern. The boat bumped against the
Goddess’s
side and the
Buzzard came scrambling up the rope ladder onto her deck.

‘Franky!’ he greeted Sir Francis. ‘Since we parted, I have not let a single day go past without a prayer for you.’ He came striding across the deck, his plaid swinging.
‘And my prayers were heard. That’s a bonny wee galleon we have there, and filled to the gunwales with spice and silver, so I hear.’

‘You should have waited a day or two longer, before you deserted your station. You might have had a share of her.’

The Buzzard spread his hands in amazement. ‘But, my dear Franky, what’s this you’re telling me? I never left my station. I took a short swing into the east, to make certain the
Dutchies weren’t trying to give us the slip by standing further out to sea. I hurried back to you just as soon as I could. By then you were gone.’