The Monsoon (34 page)

Suddenly All Wilson whistled softly, and his dark, handsome features lit with a devilish pleasure.

“That big one in the bows, with the beard.” He pointed to one of the survivors.

“I know him. By God, it will be a pleasure to greet him again. He was the leader of the gang of cutthroats who boarded the Minotaur under exactly the same ruse as this “Stand back, please, Mr. Wilson,” Hal warned him softly, “lest he recognize you also. Let us get him on board before he sees you.”

The longboat hooked on to the Seraph’s chains, and the first of the rescued men came up the ladder and fell upon his hands and knees.

He pressed his forehead to the deck, and the seawater streamed from his long sodden robe to form a puddle around him.

“The blessings of Allah and all his saints be upon this ship.

Your kindness and mercy shall be written in the golden book-” “Enough of that, my lad.” Big Daniel lifted him to his feet with a kindly hand, and his men hustled the startled Arab to the far rail and surrounded him closely. The next man up the ladder and over the rail was the tall bearded one. He spread his arms, and his long wet robes clung to his lanky frame.

“This is a most auspicious day. My children and my grandchildren-2 he began, in sonorous tones.

“Salaam aliekum, Rachid,”All Wilson greeted him.

“My eyes have hungered many long days for the sight of your beauteous countenance.”

Rachid stared at him in alarm. Then All stepped closer and smiled at him. The Arab recognized him and looked about with wild dismay, seeking an avenue of escape, then leaped for the ship’s side. All Wilson seized him while he was in the air and bore him to the deck. He placed his knee in the small of his back and the point of his dirk against the soft skin under his ear.

“I beg of you, Beloved of the Prophet, give me reason to slit your throat.” He pricked the man so that he squealed and writhed on the deck. All ran his free hand over Rachid’s body, then groped under his wet robe and brought out a murderously curved dagger. He tested the edge against Rachid’s ear and shaved away the lobe cleanly. A trickle of blood ran down into the man’s beard.

“Ah! Sharp enough,” All said happily.

“This must be the same blade with which you cut the nose off my old shipmate Ben Brown, and murdered Johnnie Waite.” Rachid sobbed, howled and pleaded for mercy.

“God is my witness, I am innocent. You have mistaken me for another.

I am a poor honest fisherman.” The others were hustled onto the deck to stand in a bewildered group, surrounded by a ring of drawn cutlasses.

All jerked the whining, cringing Rachid to his feet and shoved him across the deck to join his men.

“If any one of you attempts to escape, or to draw one of the weapons you have concealed under your robes, my men have orders to lop off his head,” Hal warned them. Then he turned toNed Tyler.

“Please get the ship under way again.” When the Seraph was on the wind and sailing down channel once more, Hal snapped at the prisoners, “Disrobe, all of you! Down to your unwashed skins.” There were cries of protest.

“Effendi, it is not fitting.

Our own nudity must shame us in the sight of God.” Hal pulled one of the pistols from his belt and drew back the hammers. He placed the muzzle against Rachid’s head.

“All your clothes! Amaze us with the girth and length of your circumcised pricks, as you will delight the hour is in the gardens of Paradise when I send you to them.”

Reluctantly Rachid stripped off his wet robe, and stood in his loincloth.

“All of id” Hal insisted, and one after the other the Arabs shed their clothing. They laid it down with exaggerated care so that whatever was hidden in the folds did not clink or bump weightily against the deck timbers. At last they stood in a miserable huddle trying to cover their private parts with cupped hands, wailing and protesting their innocence. Their discarded clothing lay in a heap on the deck.

“Search these!” Hal ordered, and Aboli and Big Daniel ran each item through their hands, pulling out the selection of daggers concealed in the wet folds. By the time they had finished there was a heap of weapons on the deck.

“Rachid!” Hal singled out the leader, who fell on his knees with tears streaming down to mingle with the blood from his injured ear.

“What is the plan of al-Auf? What signal were you to make to show him that you had seized control of my ship?”

“I do not understand you, effendi. I know of no man named al-Auf. Have mercy on a poor fisherman! Without me to providing for them my children will starve.”

“Allah, the All Merciful, will provide for your wretched orphans,” Hal assured him, and ran his eye over the terrified prisoners.

“That one!”

He selected a villainous looking rogue, with a scarred face and one empty eye.

socket. Aboli dragged him out of the huddle. He wound a short length of heavy chain around his neck and secured it with a shackle.

“I will ask you once more.” Hal grinned at Rachid.

“What is the signal?”

“In God’s name, effendi, I do not know this person, alAuf. I know of no signal.” Hal jerked his head at Aboli, who picked up the chained Arab as if he were a child and carried him to the rail. He lifted him high over his head and threw him over the side. The man hit the water and disappeared instantly, snatched beneath the surface by the weight of the chain.

A horrified silence fell over every man on deck, even the English sailors. They had never guessed that their captain could be so ruthless. Then the group of naked prisoners let out a soft wail and, as one man, dropped to their knees, hands clasped before their eyes as they pleaded for their lives.

“The signal?” Hal asked quietly, looking straight at Rachid.

“As God is my witness, I know of no signal.”

“Take him,” Hal said to Aboli. He seized Rachid by his wounded ear and dragged him, squealing and bleeding, to the ship’s side. He threw him flat on the deck, placed one huge bare foot between his shoulder-blades to pin him down and wound another length of chain around his neck.

Then he lifted him easily over his head.

“Throw him to the sharks,” ordered Hal, “though even they will sicken on such offal.”

“I

will tell you,” Rachid howled, kicking in the air.

“Only tell this black shaitan to put me down and I will tell you:

“Hold him over the side,” Hal ordered.

Aboli changed his grip and held Rachid by the ankles far out above the Seraph’s rushing bow-wave.

“Speak,” he rumbled softly, “for my arms grow tired. They will not support your weight much longer.”

“Two lights shrieked Rachid.

“Two red lanterns at the masthead. That is the signal to al-Auf that we have taken the ship.” Aboli pulled him back on board and dropped him to grovel on the deck.

“What course did he order you to steer? Where were you to meet him?” asked Hal.

“He told me to steer south and stay close to the land, heading for Ras Ibn Khum.” Hal knew that that was a prominent headland that jutted out into the channel.

“Chain all of them and lock them in the forecastle with a guard to watch them at all times. Shoot the first one who tries to escape,” Hal ordered Aboli, in Arabic for benefit of the prisoners.

A sthe sun sank smouldering into the sea, Hal shortened sail and stood further offshore, as any Aprudent captain would with a lee shore looming so close at hand. They sailed on slowly southwards, and once or twice during the early part of the night the lookouts made out a dim lantern light on one or other of the dhows shadowing them.

On board the Minotaur, wherever she was lurking, alAuf would expect his men to seize the Seraph only after most of her crew were asleep. Therefore, Hal waited until four bells in the middle watch two o’clock in the morning before he ordered the two red signal lanterns lit and placed at bows and masthead. They glared out into the night like dragon’s eyes.

Then he ordered Aboli and twenty other chosen men to don the still-damp discarded robes of the captured Arabs. While they were winding on their head cloths Hal went down to his cabin and dressed quickly in the clothing he had worn on the night of the visit to the sauk in Zanzibar. When he came on deck again the Seraph was sailing quietly on through the dark waters. When the moon set, the dark shape of the land, with its pearly necklace of phosphorescent surf, was lost in the darkness. 1, Hal went down the deck and spoke to each group of men squatting beneath the gunwales.

“This is the dangerous time,” he told them softly.

“Be alert. They can be upon us before we see them.”

Two hours before dawn, in that darkest time of the night, Hal sent for the two boys. When they came to him, Tom was alert and snapping with excitement, but Dorian must have been curled on his pallet for he was still half asleep yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“I want both of you to go now to your battle quarters at the masthead,” he said sternly.

“If the ship becomes engaged you are to stay there, no matter what is happening on the decks below you. Do you understand me?” Yes, Father.” Tom’s face was intent in the dim light from the binnacle.” I place you in charge of your brother, Tom, Hal said, as he had so many times before.

“Dorian, you are to obey Tom, whatever he tells you to do.” Yes, Father.”

“I shall be much occupied.

I will not be able to keep an eye on You. I want to know you are both safe and high above the fighting.” He walked with them to the foremast shrouds and, under cover of the darkness, placed a hand on their shoulders and squeezed.

“God love you, lads, as I do. Don’t try to be heroes. just stay well out of harm’s way.” He watched them clamber up the shrouds then disappear into the darkness above. He went back to his place on the quarterdeck.

With the dawn it rained again, so the night was prolonged. Then, simultaneously with the sunrise, the rain clouds parted, and the day burst upon them with dramatic suddenness. During the night, with the vagaries of the current in the narrow channel, the Seraph had been carried in close to the land.

Two miles to starboard the African mainland was rimmed with white beaches, and the fangs of coral reefs snarled in the shallow green inshore lagoons. Dead ahead was the whale@ backed headland of Ras Ibn Khum, which thrust out into the channel. Hal quietly ordered a change of course to carry them clear of it.

During the night the fleet of following dhows, guided by the signal lanterns at Seraph’s masthead, had closed the gap between them.

The leading vessel, a ship of some hundred tons and packed with men, was less than a cable’s length astern of the ship. As soon as they saw the Seraph appear, with magical suddenness, out of the darkness ahead of them, they burst out cheering and fired their jezails into the air.

Clearly they believed from the signal lamps that the ship was already in al-Auf’s hands. Feathers of gunsmoke spurted into the air, while their voices and the popping of their weapons carried thinly across the dark, choppy waters as they danced and waved them.

“Greet them, lads,” Hal told his men in Arab gear.

They capered and waved back at the dhow, their robes ng ze off the land.

flaring and billowing in the morning breeze Hal made no move to slow the ship so the gap between them was not reduced.

He looked ahead, judging his safe distance off the green headland that jutted out ahead, then felt his chest tighten and his breathing come short as, not two miles ahead, another square-rigged ship with black sails came charging around the point.

At once Hal realized that she had been lying at anchor in the bay beyond, waiting in ambush while the signal fires along the coast warned her of the Seraph’s approach. Now she rushed out to meet them, with a bow-wave curling white under her forefoot. She was followed by a horde of small craft, a dozen or more small dhows.

All Wilson ran back to Hall his dark eyes dancing with excitement.

“That’s the old Minotaur,” he shouted.

“I’d know her anywhere, Captain.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wilson, I suspected as much.” Hal kept his expression neutral, then turned to glance at Ned Tyler.

“Hold her on this course.” As the two tall ships came together swiftly, Hal examined the Minotaur through his telescope. It was less than two years since she had been captured by al-Auf, but Hal saw at once that her sails and rigging had been allowed to deteriorate into a sorry state. No English captain would ever neglect his ship like that.

Added to which, she was being handled sloppily. Perhaps her captain was accustomed to the lateen rig, and lacked expertise in the complicated setting of the high tiers of square sails. Now, her topsails were luffing and her mains were not properly trimmed around so the wind was spilling, the black canvas shaking and trembling as if with palsy. Hal could tell by the leeway she was making that her bottom must be foul and thick with weeds.

A disorderly swarm of men lined her sides and crowded into the rigging, prancing and waving their weapons, wild with glee. Hal estimated that there were several hundred, and he felt a chill of apprehension as he imagined that wild horde pouring aboard the Seraph.

But he took no avoiding action that might alert the corsair.

Meanwhile, the disguised English seamen on the Seraph were going through a delirious pantomime of welcome to the corsair.

The Minotaur carried twenty-five guns a side and the weight of her broadside was almost double that of the Seraph’s. If she were deftly handled, the Seraph would be no match for her. Let us hope that her fighting skills match her sailing qualities, Hal thought, as the two ships raced together head-on, until they seemed on the point of collision. The Minotaur’s attendant dhows straggled along behind her like ducklings.

They were so close now that Hal could make out the figurehead at her bows, the homed beast of mythology, half man and half bull.

Swiftly the two ships closed until Hal could make out her name, Minotaur, even though the goldleaf lettering was chipped, faded and coated with salt crystals.

Hal lifted his telescope and swept her deck. Almost at once he picked out a tall figure in black robes who stood out from the rabble of Arab seamen. There was no doubt in his mind that this was al-Auf, the Bad One. How had the cousin of bin-Tall described him?