Wilbur Smith - C09 Birds Of Prey
Author's Note
Although this story is set in the mid-seventeenth century, the galleons and caravels in which my characters find themselves are more usually associated with the sixteenth century. Seventeenth-century ships often bore a strong resemblance to those of the sixteenth century, but as their names may be unfamiliar to the general reader, I have used the better-known, if anachronistic, terms to convey an accessible impression of their appearance. Also, for the sake of clarity, I have simplified terminology in respect of firearms and, as it exists as such in common idiom, I have occasionally used the word "cannon" as a generic.
The boy clutched at the rim of the canvas bucket in which he crouched sixty feet AT above the deck as the ship went about. The mast canted over sharply as she thrust her head through the wind. The ship was a caravel named the Lady Edwina, after the mother whom the boy could barely remember.
Far below in the pre-dawn darkness he heard the great bronze culver ins slat against their blocks and come up with a thump against their straining tackle. The hull throbbed and resonated to a different impulse as she swung round and went plunging away back into the west. With the south-east wind now astern she was transformed, lighter and more limber, even with sails reefed and with three feet of water in her bilges.
It was all so familiar to Hal Courtney. He had greeted the last five and sixty dawns from the masthead in this manner. His young eyes, the keenest in the ship, had been posted there to catch the first gleam of distant sail in the rose of the new day.
Even the cold was familiar. He pulled the thick woollen Monmouth cap down over his ears. The wind sliced through his leather jerkin but he was inured to such mild discomfort. He gave it no heed and strained his eyes out into the darkness. "Today the Dutchmen will come," he said aloud, and felt the excitement and dread throb beneath his ribs.
High above him the splendour of the stars began to pale and fade, and the firmament was filled with the pearly promise of new day. Now, far below him, he could make out the figures on the deck. He could recognize Ned Tyler, the helmsman, bowed over the whipstall, holding the ship true; and his own father stooping over the binnacle to read the new course, the lantern lighting his lean dark features and his long locks tangling and whipping in the wind.
With a start of guilt Hal looked out into the darkness; he should not be mooning down at the deck in these vital minutes when, at any moment, the enemy might loom close at hand out of the night.
By now it was light enough to make out the surface of the sea rushing by the hull. It had the hard iridescent shine of new-cut coal.
By now he knew this southern sea so well; this broad highway of the ocean that flowed eternally down the eastern coast of Africa, blue and warm and swarming with life. Under his father's tutelage he had studied it so that he knew the colour, the taste and run of it, each eddy and surge.
One day he also would glory in the title of Nautonnier Knight of the Temple of the Order of St. George and the Holy Grail. He would be, as his father was, a Navigator of the Order. His father was as determined as Hal himself to bring that about, and, at seventeen years of age, his goal was no longer merely a dream.
This current was the highway upon which the Dutchmen must sail to make their we stings and their landfall on the mysterious coast that still lay veiled out there in the night. This was the gateway through which all must pass who sought to round that wild cape that divided the Ocean of the Indies from the Southern Atlantic.
This was why Sir Francis Courtney, Hal's father, the Navigator, had chosen this position, at 34 degrees 25 minutes south latitude, in which to wait for them. Already they had waited sixty-five tedious days, beating monotonously back and forth, but today the Dutchmen might come, and Hal stared out into the gathering day with parted lips and straining green eyes.
A cable's length off the starboard bow he saw the flash of wings high enough in the sky to catch the first rays of the sun, a long flight of gannets coming out from the land, snowy chests and heads of black and yellow. He watched the leading bird dip and turn, breaking the pattern, and twist its head to peer down into the dark waters. He saw the disturbance below it, the shimmer of scales and the seething of the surface as a shoal came up to the light. He watched the bird fold its wings and plunge downwards, and each bird that followed began its dive at the same point in the air, to strike the dark water in a burst of lacy foam.
Soon the surface was thrashed white by the diving birds and the struggling silver anchovies on which they gorged. Hal turned away his gaze and swept the opening horizon.
His heart tripped as he caught the gleam of a sail, a tall ship square-rigged, only a league to the eastward. He had filled his lungs and opened his mouth to hail the quarterdeck before he recognized her. It was the Gull of Moray, a frigate, not a Dutch East Indiaman. She was far out of position, which had tricked Hal.
The Gull of Moray was the other principal vessel in the blockading squadron. The Buzzard, her captain, should be lying out of sight below the eastern horizon. Hal leaned out over the edge of the canvas crow's nest and looked down at the deck. His father, fists on his hips, was staring up at him.
Hal called down the sighting to the quarterdeck, "The Gull hull up to windward!" and his father swung away to gaze out to the east. Sir Francis picked out the shape of the Buzzard's ship, black against the darkling sky, and raised the slender brass tube of the telescope to his eye. Hal could sense anger in the set of his shoulders and the way in which he slammed the instrument shut and tossed his mane of black hair.
Before this day was out words would be exchanged between the two commanders. Hal grinned to himself With his iron will and spiked tongue, his fists and blade, Sir Francis struck terror into those upon whom he turned them even his brother Knights of the Order held him in awe. Hal was thankful that this day his father's temper would be directed elsewhere than at him.
He looked beyond the Gull of Moray, sweeping the horizon as it extended swiftly with the coming of day. Hal needed no telescope to aid his bright young eyes besides, only one of these costly instruments was aboard. He made out the others" sails then exactly where they should be, tiny pale flecks against the dark sea. The two pinnaces maintaining their formation, beads in the necklace, were spread out fifteen leagues on each side of the Lady Edwina, part of the net his father had cast wide to ensnare the Dutchmen.
The pinnaces were open vessels, with a dozen heavily armed men crowded into each. When not needed they could be broken down and stowed in the Lady Edwina's hold. Sir Francis changed their crews regularly, for neither the tough West Country men nor the Welsh nor the even hardier ex-slaves that made up most of his crew could endure the conditions aboard those little ships for long and still be fit for a fight at the end of it.
At last the full steely light of day struck as the sun rose from the eastern ocean. Hal gazed down the fiery path it threw across the waters. He felt his spirits slide as he found the ocean empty of a strange sail. just as on the sixty-five preceding dawns, there was no Dutchman in sight.
Then he looked northwards to the land mass that crouched like a great rock sphim, dark and inscrutable, upon the horizon. This was the Agulhas Cape, the southernmost tip of the African continent.