The Monsoon (45 page)

Hal could almost smell the nervous tension in the crew of the pinnace. For all fighting seamen there was a peculiar allure in the cutting out of an enemy ship from a protected anchorage. This bearding of the lion was an English speciality, an innovation of men like Drake, Frobisher and Hawkins.

Hal had enough men to take out only two of the ships he had seen in the bay. He and Aboli had studied them all carefully from the beach, and though it had been dark, the moon had given him light enough to make his selection.

First, of course, had been the Minotaur. Though she had been badly neglected in the hands of the corsairs, and severely damaged in her short encounter with the Seraph, she was still a well-found vessel of great value. Hal estimated she would be worth ten thousand pounds when he tied her up in London. He had no way of knowing how much of her cargo remained on board, but it might be considerable.

The other ship he had selected was a Dutchman that, clearly, had been pirated from the
VOC
. She was a big bottomed vessel built in the Rotterdam style that would fetch as much as the Minotaur. If he could bring both ships out, it would mean twenty thousand pounds for the night’s work.

He leaned forward in his seat at the tiller and whispered to the men nearest him, “There’s twenty pounds a Man lying there in the bay for the picking. Pass that along.” They chuckled fiercely, and turned on the thwarts to send the message down the length of the pinnace.

There’s nothing like the smell of gold to raise a bloodthirst in an English seamen, Hal thought, and smiled to himself in the dark. It was a great shame that he could not bring out the other craft. Two more tall ships and a dozen dhows of varying shapes and sizes would add nicely to the bag, but he would have to settle for the smell of the smoke of their funeral pyres.

As they approached the pass through the reef the other boats moved into a single column behind him to follow him through. This was where the entire expedition could end before it had begun in bloody disaster.

He had only his father’s chart and his own instinctive seamanship to carry them through.

He stood as high as he could on the thwart and stared ahead. He was watching the snore of the surf curling white on the murderously jagged spikes of the reef, picking out the dark spot towards the north end where the deeper water remained unbroken.

“Start the lead,” he whispered, and heard the plop as it was thrown out ahead of the bows.

Seconds later came the soft call of the leadsman.

“No bottom with this line.” They were still beyond the drop-off. Suddenly there was a startled cry from the bows and Hal looked ahead.

He saw a large dhow coming down the channel directly towards them, her triangular sail catching the moonlight, and her wake leaving a long glossy slick through the passage. She was on a collision course with the pinnace.

Hal had a moment’s temptation. She was a large vessel, and she was almost certainly stuffed with treasure she had traded from al-Auf.

She was unsuspecting and vulnerable. It would take only minutes to board her and Subdue her crew. Five of his men could sail her out to [where the Seraph waited.

Hal hesitated. If they could take her cleanly it would be gold in the purse of every man-jack on the Seraph, but if they ran into resistance, and there was a fight on her deck, the sounds of the struggle would carry to the corsairs on the beach.

“Take her or let her go!” Hal had only seconds in which to decide.

He glanced beyond the oncoming dhow, into the heart of the bay, and saw the bare masts of the Minotaur stand tall and proud against the stars. Then he looked back at the oncoming dhow. Let her go. He made the fateful decision, and aloud he whispered to his crew, “Vast heaving.” The rowers held their beat and the tips of the long oars dragged over the surface, taking the way off her, until she lay quiet and low in the dark waters. Behind her the other boats conformed to her example.

The big dhow made the final turn out through the passage.

Unchecked and unmolested, she swept past where the pinnace lay. A lookout on her deck spotted them and hailed them in Arabic.

“What boat are you?”

“Fishing boats with the night’s catch.” Hal pitched his voice so that it would not carry to the shore. What boat are you?”

“The ship of the Prince Abd Muhammad alMalik.”

“Go with Allah!” Hal called after her as she bore away into the west and disappeared on the dark plains of the ocean.

“Haul away!” he ordered, and watched the long oars sweep forward and dip, swing and rise in unison, dripping liquid fire from their tips. He aimed the bows for the exact spot where the big dhow had come through.

“By the mark ten.” The lead had found bottom. Sir Francis’s chart was proved accurate once again, confirmed for Hal by the passage of the dhow. They rowed on into the gap. Suddenly water was breaking on either side of them.

3@ “By the mark five. “They were entering the throat.

“Drop the number-one buoy!” Hal ordered. The leads, man in the bows let it go over the side, and the line attached to the small white-painted keg peeled out. Hal looked round and saw the keg bobbing in their wake. It would give him his marks when he brought out the captured Minotaur. He turned back and squinted at the walls of the fort, which showed pale in the moonlight, lining them up with the tip of the reef.

“Now!” he muttered, and made the first turn of the dog-leg. The other boats followed him round.

“By the mark four, and a half four.”

“Too close to the outer reef.” Hal altered course slightly to keep down the centre of the channel.

Suddenly there was suppressed urgency in the voice of the man on the lead.

“By the mark two!” With that warning Hal picked up the shape of the coral, dark and menacing as some monster, dead ahead. He put the tiller hard over, bringing her round only just in time for they had almost overrun the channel.

“By the mark seven!” There was relief in the leadsman’s tone.

They had passed through the coral jaws and were into the open harbour where the unsuspecting enemy ships lay.

“Drop the number-two buoy!” Hal whispered, and they left it standing in the middle of the pass to mark their way out. He glanced back over his shoulder. The other boats were fanning out.

He had given each of them their targets. Hal would take the Minotaur. In the second pinnace Big Daniel would take the Dutchman, and the longboats would attack and burn all the other craft in the anchorage. Hal steered for the big East Indiaman, where she lay in the deepest water directly opposite the fort. Let us find out how bright-eyed is her anchor watch, he thought, as he waited for the first alarm to be given. But the Minotaur stood tall, dark and silent as they came up under her quarter and hooked on to her chains.

Aboli went first, swinging up over the side. With the double-headed axe in one hand he landed on the deck, his bare feet making almost no sound, and ran forward lightly while a rush of men followed him up from the pinnace.

Halfway down the deck a watchman struggled to his feet from where he had been lying asleep under the gunwale.

He was unsteady on his feet and obviously only half awake.

“Who are you?” His voice was sharp with alarm.

“I know you notV He grabbed for the musket that leaned against the gunwale beside him.

“Go with God.” said Aboli, and swung the axe in a wide, flashing arc. It took the man full in the side of his neck, severing it cleanly. His head toppled forward and rolled down his chest, while his trunk stood erect before it slumped to the deck. The air escaped from his lungs in a whistling blast of frothy blood from the open windpipe.

Aboli jumped over the corpse and, with a dozen long strides, reached the anchor cable stretched tautly through its hawsehole. He looked back over his shoulder and saw that Hal was already at the helm.

The rest of the Minotaur’s skeleton crew had been subdued without any outcry, and their robed bodies were scattered along the open deck.

Looking upwards he saw that most of the Seraph’s seamen were swarming up the rigging and swinging out along the yards. The Minotaur had been built in the same yard as the Seraph, and the rigging of her masts was almost identical.

There was no hesitation in the way the topmast men did their work.

As the main course spread, like the wings of a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis sheath, Aboli swung the axe high above his head and, with both hands, brought the blade flashing down again. The axe buried itself with a thump in the deck timber and the anchor cable parted with a twang.

The Minotaur paid away before the night breeze, until the rudder and push of the spreading sails checked her. Hal spun the wheel full to starboard and, lightly as a lover, the Minotaur came on the wind.

Only then could Hal spare a glance for the other boats of the flotilla. There was fighting on the deck of the Dutchman, and he heard the tinny clank of cutlass blade on scimitar, then the faint death-cry of a man hit through the heart. The sails spread on the yards and the big ship turned for the bay entrance.

At that moment there was a flicker of light, which grew swiftly in strength until it lit the deck of the Minotaur.

Hal could make out Aboli’s features clearly as he strode down the deck towards him. He swung round and saw that the square-rigged ship closest to him was on fire. The men from the longboat commanded by All Wilson had climbed aboard her, killed her crew and tossed tar-soaked torches into her holds and rigging.

The flames caught in her hull and jumped up into the rigging. The fire raced up as though it were gun match, tracing fiery strings against the dark sky. It reached the furled canvas on her yards, and exploded in a tall writhing tower of light higher than the palm trees on the beach.

All’s men tumbled back into the longboat and rowed lustily across to the next ship in the anchorage, whose crew saw them coming and did not linger to greet them.

They fired a few wild shots at them, then threw aside their weapons and jumped over the ship’s side, hitting the water in a series of white splashes and swimming frantically for the beach.

One after the other the anchored ships burst into flame, and lit the anchorage as though it were noon. The shadows and light played vividly over the walls of the fort, ” and the first cannon shot banged out from the battlements.

Hal did not see where the ball struck for he was bringing the Minotaur around and lining her up for the entrance.

The keg they had left floating to mark the passage stood out clearly in the firelight, and the flames were so bright that he could even make out the loom of the reef beneath the surface.

“Ready aboud” Hal bellowed, and began the delicate manoeuvre of tacking ship with so few men in the confines of the bay. There was no latitude for error here.

One false turn would put them up on the beach, or send the Minotaur crunching into the coral. He was towing the pinnace behind the ship and its weight and drag affected the Minotaur’s handling. He would have to allow for this when he made his turn.

The Minotaur was heading directly towards the fort, and in the dancing light of the flames Hal could see the gunners scurrying to their weapons. Before he had reached the keg that marked the entrance a cannon fired, then another. He saw a clean round hole appear miraculously in the mainsail as a ball flew through it, and realized that the gunners had made no effort to depress their aim: all their shots were flying high. He glanced back over the stern and saw that Big Daniel, in the Dutchman, was following only a cable’s length behind. He was towing his pinnace too: they would leave no consolation prize for the enemy.

Deeper in the bay the longboats had completed their work of destruction and every enemy ship was on fire. The anchor cable of one of the big square-rigged vessels burned through and she began to drift towards the beach, a moving bonfire. Suddenly the fire reached her powder magazine and she blew up with a thunderous roar. Her main mast as hurled aloft like a javelin, and as it fell back it 4″ skewered one of the small dhows, smashing clean through her decks so that the bottom was torn out of her and she sank stern first. The shock-wave of the explosion capsized two of the dhows nearest her, and raised a tidal wave that swept through the anchorage.

Hal searched for sight of the longboats, worried that they had been overwhelmed by the force of the explosion, but then he saw them, bobbing and rolling in the disturbed waters, but making good speed to catch up with the Minotaur as their crews heaved frantically on the oars. Hal turned all his attention to taking the ship out through the channel.

He passed the marker keg by an oar’s length on the port side, and they entered the mouth of the pass at speed, passing close under the guns on the battlements of the fort.

Hal had a few seconds before the next turn came upon them, and he looked up at the batteries above.

Some of the gunners seemed to have realized their error and were training their pieces down. Hal saw the angle of the protruding barrels depressing as they strained at the training tackles.

“Stand by the main course,” Hal told his tiny crew.

Each man was forced to do the work of three, but when he put up the helm, and shouted, “Lee hoV they jumped to it with a shout and a will, the Minotaur came round handily and glided down the passage between the menacing arms of coral, disaster lurking close on either hand. Hal looked back and saw Big Daniel make the same turn in the slick path of the Minotaur’s wake.

“Stout fellow!” Hal applauded him, under his breath.

The battery on the walls behind him was firing furiously: the gunsmoke was a thick rolling bank through which the flashes of the bombardment cut long bright shafts. The gunners had managed to lower their barrage now, and a ball raised a gleaming fountain of spray close under the Minotaur’s counter.

Hal smiled wolfishly. The turn was taking the ship almost directly away from the fort and now the cannon shots were flying too low. It would take the gunners some time to realize this, and by then Hal hoped to be clear of the pass and bearing out into the open sea.