"The Gull has gone," he said aloud. Once again, the Buzzard had eluded him. There will be another time, he consoled himself. Firmly he put the distracting thought from his mind, and turned his full attention back to the battle that was opening like some hellish pageant before him.
The moment that first broadside tore into the quarry, Aboli did not have to wait for an order. The deck was lit by the flare of many bright flames as the Amadoda lit their fire-arrows. On each cane shaft, tied behind the iron arrowhead, was a tuft of unravelled hemp rope that had been soaked in pitch, which spluttered and then burned fiercely when touched with the slow-match, The archers loosed their arrows, which sailed up in a high, flaming parabola and dropped down to peg into the timbers of an anchored vessel. As the screams of terror and agony rose from the shot-shattered hull, the Golden Bough glided on deeper into the mass of shipping.
"Two vessels a point on either side of your bows," Hal told the helmsman. "Steer between them."
As they passed them close on either hand, the ship heeled first to one side and then to the other as her broadsides thundered out in quick succession, and a rain of rite-arrows fell from the sky upon the stricken vessels.
Behind them the first dhow was ablaze, and her flames lit the bay, brilliantly illuminating the quarry to the Golden Bough's gunners as she ran on amongst them.
"El Tazar!" As Hal heard the terrified Arab voices screaming his name from ship to ship, he smiled grimly and watched their panic-stricken efforts to cut their anchor cables and escape his terrible approach. Now five dhows were burning, and drifted out of control into the crowded anchorage.
Some enemy vessels were firing wildly, blazing away without making any attempt to lay their aim on the frigate. Stray cannonballs, aimed too high, howled overhead, while others, aimed too low, skipped across the surface of the water and crashed into the friendly ships anchored alongside them.
The flames jumped from ship to ship and the whole sweep of the bay was bright as day. Once again Hal looked for the Gull's tall masts. If she were here, by this time the Buzzard would have set sails and his silhouette would be unmistakable. But he was nowhere in sight, and Hal turned back angrily to the task of wreaking as much destruction as he could upon the fleet of Islam.
Behind them one of the blazing hulls must have been loaded with several hundred tons of black powder for El Grang's artillery. It went up in a vast tower of black smoke, shot through with flaring red flames as though the devil had flung open the doors of hell. The rolling column of smoke went on mounting into the night sky until its top was no longer visible and seemed to have reached into the heavens. The blast swept through the fleet striking down those vessels closest to it and shattering their timbers or rolling them over on their backs.
The wind from the explosion roared over the frigate and, for a moment, her sails were taken aback and she began to lose steerage way. Then the offshore night breeze took over and filled them once more. She bore onwards, deeper into the bay and into the heart of the enemy fleet.
Hal nodded with grim satisfaction each time one of the Golden Bough's salvoes crashed out. They were one sudden shock of thunder and a single flare of red flame as every gun fired at the same instant. Even Aboli's Arnadoda launched their flights of arrows in a single flaming cloud. In contrast, there was never such a wild discordant banging of uncontrolled shot as stuttered from the enemy ships.
El Grang's shore batteries began to open up as their sleep-groggy gunners stumbled to their colossal siege guns. Each discharge was like a separate clap of thunder, belittling even the roar of the frigate's massed volleys. Hal smiled each time one of their mighty muzzle flashes tore out from the rock-walled redoubts across the bay. The shore gunners could not possibly pick out the black sails of the Golden Bough in the confusion and smoke. They fired into their own fleet and Hal saw at least one enemy ship smashed to planks by a single ball from the shore.
"Stand by to go about!" Hal gave the order in one of the fleeting moments of quiet. The shore was coming up fast, and they would soon be landlocked in the depths of the bay. The topmast men handled the sails with perfect timing, and the bows swung through a wide. arc then steadied as they pointed back towards the open sea.
Hal walked forward in the brilliant light of the burning ships and raised his voice so that the men could hear him. "I doubt not that El Grang will long remember this night." They cheered him even as they heaved on the gun tackles and nocked their arrows. "The Bough and Sir Hal!"
Then a single voice sang out, "El Tazar!" and they all took up the cry so heartily that El Grang and the Prince must have heard them as they stood before the silken tent on the knoll above the bay and looked down upon their shattered fleet.
"El Tazar! El Tazar!"
Hal nodded at the helm. "Take us out, please, Mister Tyler." As they wove their way through the burning hulks and floating wreckage, and drew slowly out towards the entrance a single shot fired from one of the drifting dhows smashed in through the gunwale, and tore across the open deck. Miraculously it passed between one of the gun crews and a group of the half-naked archers without touching them. But Stan Sparrow was standing at the far rail, commanding a gun battery, and the hot iron ball took off both his legs neatly, just above the knees.
Instinctively Hal started forward to succour him, but then he checked himself. As captain, the dead and wounded were not his concern, but he felt the agony of loss. Stan Sparrow had been with him from the beginning. He was a good man and a shipmate.
When they carried Stan away, they passed close by where Hal stood.
He saw that Stan's face was ivory pale, and that he was drained of blood. He was sinking fast but he saw Hal and, with a great effort, lifted his hand to touch his forehead. "They was good times, Captain," he said, and his hand dropped.