Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  All of Hal’s party were blown by the hard run across the mud-flats and the plunge through the channel. ‘No time to rest.’ Hal’s breath whistled in his throat. The devil ships were covered with mounds of cut branches and they dragged them clear. Then they formed a ring round the first of these vessels, and each took a handhold.

  ‘Together now!’ Hal exhorted them, and between them they just lifted the keels of the double-hulled vessel clear of the sand. It was heavy with its cargo, faggots of dried wood drenched with pitch to make it more flammable.

  They staggered down the beach with it, and dropped it into the shallows, where it wallowed and rolled in the wavelets, the square of dirty canvas on the stubby mast stirring idly in the light puffs of wind coming down from the heads. Hal took a turn of the painter around his wrist to prevent it drifting away.

  ‘Not enough wind!’ Big Daniel lamented, looking to the sky. ‘For the sweet love of God, send us a breeze.’

  ‘Keep your prayers for later.’ Hal secured the vessel, and led them back at a run into the trees. They carried, shoved and dragged two more of the boats down to the water’s edge.

  ‘Still not enough wind.’ Daniel looked across at the Gull. In the short time it had taken them to launch, the morning light had strengthened, and now, as they paused for a moment to regain their breath, they saw the Buzzard’s men leave their guns, and, cheering wildly, brandishing cutlass and pike, swarm down into the boats.

  ‘Will you look at those swine! They reckon the fight’s over,’ grunted Ned Tyler. ‘They’re going in for the looting.’

  Hal hesitated. Two more devil ships still lay at the edge of the forest, but to launch them would take too long. ‘Then we must give them aught to change their opinion,’ he said grimly, and gripped the burning match between his teeth. He waded out as deep as his armpits to where the first devil ship bobbed, just off the beach, and lobbed the slow-match onto the high pile of cordwood. It spluttered and flared, blue smoke poured from it and drifted away on the sluggish breeze as the pitch-soaked logs caught fire.

  Hal grabbed the painter attached to the bows, and dragged her out into the channel. Within a dozen yards he was into deeper water and had lost the bottom. He swam round to the stern, and found a purchase on it, kicked out strongly with both legs and the boat moved away.

  Aboli saw what he was doing and plunged headlong into the lagoon. With a few powerful strokes he reached Hal’s side. With both of them swimming it out, the boat moved faster.

  With one hand on the stern Hal lifted his head clear of the water to orientate himself and saw the flotilla of small boats from the Gull heading in towards the beach. They were crowded with wildly yelling seamen, their weapons glinting in the morning light. So certain was the Buzzard of his victory that he could have left only a few men aboard to guard the ship.

  Hal glanced over his shoulder and saw that both Ned and Daniel had followed his example. They had led the rest of the gang into the water and were clinging to the sterns of two more craft, kicking the water to a white froth behind them as they pushed out into the channel. From all three boats rose tendrils of smoke as the flames took hold in the loads of pitch-soaked firewood.

  Hal dropped back beside Aboli and set himself to work doggedly with both legs, pushing the boat ahead of him, down the channel to where the Gull lay at anchor. Then the incoming tide caught them firmly in its flood and, like a trio of crippled ducks, bore them along more swiftly.

  As Hal’s boat swung its bows around he had a better view of the beach. He recognized the flaming red head and beard of the Buzzard in the leading longboat heading into the attack on the encampment, and fancied that, even in the uproar, he heard peals of his laughter carrying over the water.

  Then he had something else to think about for the fire in the cargo above him gained a firm hold and roared into boisterous life. The flames crackled and leapt high in columns of dense black smoke. They danced and swayed as their heat created its own draught, and the single sail filled with more determination.

  ‘Keep her moving!’ Hal panted to Aboli beside him. ‘Steer her two points more to larboard.’

  A gust of heat swept over him so fiercely that it seemed to suck the air from his lungs. He ducked his head beneath the surface and came up snorting, water cascading down his face from his sodden hair, but still kicking with all his strength. The Gull lay less than a cable’s length dead ahead. Daniel and Ned followed close behind him, both their vessels wreathed in tarry black smoke and dark orange flame. The air over them quivered and throbbed with the heat like a desert mirage.

  ‘Keep her going,’ Hal blurted. His legs were beginning to ache unbearably, and he spoke more to himself than to Aboli. The painter tied to the bows of the devil ship trailed back, threatening to wrap around his legs, but he kicked it away – there was no time to loosen it.

  He saw the first of the Gull’s longboats reach the beach and Cumbrae leap ashore, swinging his claymore in flashing circles around his head. As he landed on the sand he threw back his head, uttered a blood-curdling Gaelic war-cry, then went bounding up the steep beach. As he reached the trees he looked back to make certain his men were following him. There he paused with his sword held high, and stared back across the channel at the tiny squadron of devil ships, blooming with smoke and flame and bearing down steadily upon his anchored Gull.

  ‘Nearly there!’ Hal gasped, and the waves of heat that broke over his head seemed to fry his eyeballs in their sockets. He plunged his head underwater again to cool it, and this time when he came up he saw that the Gull lay only fifty yards ahead.

  Even above the crackling roar of the flames he heard the Buzzard’s roar: ‘Back! Back to the Gull. The bastards are sending fireships at her.’ The frigate was stuffed with the booty of a long, hard privateering cruise, and her crew sent up a wild chorus of outrage as they saw the fruits of three years so endangered. They raced back to their boats even faster than they had charged up the beach.

  The Buzzard stood in the bows of his, prancing and gesticulating so that he threatened to upset her balance. ‘Let me get my hands on the pox-ridden swine. I’ll rip out their windpipes, I’ll split their stinking—’ At that moment he recognized Hal’s head at the stern of the leading fireship, lit by the full glare of the swirling flames, and his voice rose a full octave. ‘It’s Franky’s brat, by God! I’ll have him! I’ll roast his liver in his own fire!’ he shrieked, then lapsed into crimson-faced, inarticulate rage and hacked at the air with his claymore to spur his crew to greater speed.

  Hal was only a dozen yards now from the Gull’s tall side, and found fresh strength in his exhausted legs. Tirelessly Aboli swam on, using a powerful frog-kick that pushed back the water in a swirling wake behind him.

  With the Buzzard’s longboat bearing down swiftly upon them, they covered the last few yards and Hal felt the fireship’s bows thump heavily into the Gull’s stern timbers. The push of the tide pinned her there, swinging her broadside so that the flames were fanned by the rising morning breeze to lick up along the Gull’s side, scorching and blackening the timbers.

  ‘Latch onto her!’ bellowed the Buzzard. ‘Get a line on her and tow her off!’ His oarsmen shot straight in towards the fireship but, as they felt the full heat blooming out to meet them, they quailed. In the bows the Buzzard threw up his hands to cover his face, and his red beard crisped and singed. ‘Back off!’ he roared. ‘Or we’ll fry.’ He looked at his coxswain. ‘Give me the anchor! I’ll grapple her, and we’ll tow her off.’

  Hal was on the point of diving and swimming under water out of the circle of heat but he heard Cumbrae’s order. The painter still trailed around his legs, and he groped beneath the surface for the end, clenching it between his feet. Then he sank below the water and swam under the fireship’s hull, coming up in the narrow gap between it and the Gull.

  The Gull’s rudder stock broke the surface and, spitting lagoon water from his mouth, Hal threw a loop of the painter around the pintle. His face felt as though
it were blistering as the heat beat down upon his head with hammer strokes, but he hitched the flaming craft securely to the Gull’s stern.

  Then he dived again and came up next to Aboli. ‘To the beach!’ he gasped. ‘Before the fire reaches the Gull’s powder store.’

  Both struck out overarm, and Hal saw the longboat, close by, almost close enough to touch, but the Buzzard had lost all interest in them. He was whirling the small anchor around his head, and as Hal watched he hurled it out over the burning vessel, hooking onto her.

  ‘Lie back on your oars!’ he shouted at his crew. ‘Tow her off.’ The boatmen went to it with all their strength, but immediately the fireship came up short on the mooring line Hal had tied, and their blades beat the water vainly. She would not tow, and now the planking of the Gull’s side was smouldering ominously.

  Fire was the terror of all seamen. The ship was built of combustibles and stuffed with explosives, wood and pitch, canvas and hemp, tallow, spice barrels and gunpowder. The faces of the longboat’s crew were contorted with terror. Even the Buzzard was wild-eyed in the firelight as he looked up and saw the other two fireships drifting remorselessly upon him. ‘Stop those others!’ he pointed with his claymore. ‘Turn them away!’ Then he turned his attention back to the burning vessel moored to the Gull.

  By now Hal and Aboli were fifty yards away, swimming for the beach, but Hal rolled onto his back to watch and trod water. He saw at once that the Buzzard’s efforts to tow away the fireship had failed.

  Now he rowed around to the Gull’s bows and scrambled up onto her deck. As his crew followed him he roared, ‘Buckets! Get a bucket chain going. Pumps! Ten men on the pumps. Spray the flames!’ They scurried to obey, but the fire was spreading swiftly, eating into the stern and dancing along the gunwale, reaching up hungrily towards the furled sails on their outstretched yards.

  One of the Gull’s longboats had grappled Ned’s fireship and, with frantically beating oars, was dragging it clear. Another was trying to get a line on Big Daniel’s fireship, but the flames forced them to keep their distance. Each time they succeeded in hooking on, Daniel swam round and cut the rope with a stroke of his knife. The men in the longboat who carried muskets and pistols were firing wildly at his bobbing head, but though the balls kicked up spray all around him, he seemed invulnerable.

  Aboli had swum on ahead, and now Hal rolled onto his belly and followed him back to the beach. Together they raced up the white sand, and into the shot-shattered forest. Sir Francis was still in the gunpit where they had left him, but he had gathered around him a scratch crew of the Resolution’s survivors. They were reloading the big gun as Hal ran up to him and shouted, ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Take Aboli with you to find some more of the men. Load another culverin. Bring the Gull under fire.’ Sir Francis did not look up from the gun, and Hal ran back among the trees. He found half a dozen men, and he and Aboli kicked and dragged them out of the holes and bushes where they were cowering, and led them back to the silenced battery.

  In the few short minutes it had taken him to gather the guncrew, the scene out on the lagoon had changed completely. Daniel had guided his fireship up to the Gull’s side and had secured her there. Her flames were adding to the confusion and panic on board the frigate. Now he was swimming back to the beach. He had seized two of his men, who could not swim, and was dragging them through the water.

  The Gull’s crew had snared Ned’s fireship – they had lines on it and were dragging it clear. Ned and his three fellows had abandoned it, and were also floundering back towards the shore. But, even as Hal watched, one gave up and slipped below the surface.

  The sight of the drowning spurred Hal’s anger: he poured a handful of powder into the culverin’s touch hole as Aboli used an iron marlinspike to train the barrel around. It bellowed deafeningly, and Hal’s men shouted with delight as the full charge of grape smashed into the longboat towing Ned’s abandoned craft. It disintegrated at the blast, and the men packed into her were hurled into the lagoon. They splashed about, screaming for aid and trying to clamber into another longboat nearby, but it was already overcrowded and the men in her tried to beat off the frantic seamen with their oars. Some, though, managed to get a hold on the gunwale, and yelling and fighting among themselves, they caused the longboat to list heavily, until suddenly she capsized. The water around the burning hulks was filled with wreckage and the heads of struggling swimmers.

  Hal was concentrating on reloading, and when he looked up again, he saw that some of the men in the water had reached the Gull and were climbing the rope ladders to the deck.

  The Buzzard had at last got his pumps working. Twenty men were bobbing up and down like monks at prayer as they threw their weight on the handles, and white jets of water were spurting from the nozzles of the canvas hoses, aimed at the base of the flames, which were now spreading over the Gull’s stern.

  Hal’s next shot shattered the wooden rail on the Gull’s larboard side, and went on to sweep through the gang serving the bow pump. Four were snatched away, as though by an invisible set of claws, their blood splattering the others beside them on the handles. The jet of water from the hose shrivelled away.

  ‘More men here!’ Cumbrae’s voice resounded across the lagoon, as he sent others to take the places of the dead. At once the jet of water was revived, but it made little impression on the leaping flames that now engulfed the Gull’s stern.

  Big Daniel reached the shore, and dropped the two men he had rescued on the sand. He ran up into the trees, and Hal shouted, ‘Take command of one of the guns. Load with grape and aim at her decks. Keep them from fighting the fire.’

  Big Daniel grinned at Hal with black teeth and knuckled his forehead. ‘We’ll play his lordship a pretty tune to dance to,’ he promised.

  The crew of the Resolution, who had been demoralized by the Gull’s sneak attack, now began to take heart again at the swing in fortunes. One or two more emerged from where they had been skulking in the forest. Then, as the fire started to crash from the beach batteries and thump into the Gull’s hull, the others grew bold and rushed back to serve the guns.

  Soon a sheet of flame and smoke was tearing from out of the trees across the water. Flames had reached the Gull’s mizzen-yards and were taking hold in the furled sails.

  Hal saw the Buzzard striding through the smoke, lit by the flames of his burning ship, an axe in his hand. He stood over the anchor rope where it was drawn tightly through its fair lead and, with one gigantic swing he cut it free. Immediately the ship began to drift across the wind. He raised his head and bellowed an order to his seamen, who were clambering up the shrouds.

  They shook out the main sail and the ship responded quickly. As she caught the rising breeze, the flames poured outwards, and the fire-fighters were able to run forward and direct the water from the hoses onto the base of the fire.

  She towed the two fireships for a short distance, but when the lines that secured them burned through, the Gull left them as she headed slowly down the channel.

  Along the beach the culverins continued to pour salvo after salvo into her but, as she drew out of range, the battery fell silent. Still streaming smoke and orange flame behind her, the Gull headed for the open sea. Then, as she entered the channel between the heads and looked to have sailed clear away, the batteries hidden in the cliffs opened up on her. Gunsmoke billowed out from among the grey rocks and cannonballs kicked up spouts of foam along the Gull’s waterline or punched holes in her sails.

  Painfully she ran this gauntlet, and at last left the smoking batteries out of range.

  ‘Mr Courtney!’ Sir Francis shouted at Hal – even in the heat of the battle he had used the formal address. ‘Take a boat and cross to the heads. Keep the Gull under observation.’

  Hal and Aboli reached the far side of the bay, and climbed up to the high ground on top of the heads. The Gull was already a mile offshore, reaching across the wind with sail set on her two forward masts. Wisps of dark grey
smoke trailed from her stern, and Hal could see that her mizzen sails and her spanker were blackened and still smouldering. Her decks seethed with the tiny figures of her crew as they snuffed out the last of the fire and laboured to get the ship under full control and sailing handily again.

  ‘We have given his lordship a lesson he’ll long remember,’ Hal exulted. ‘I doubt we’ll be having any more trouble from him for a while.’

  ‘The wounded lion is the most dangerous,’ Aboli grunted. ‘We have blunted his teeth, but he still has his claws.’

  When Hal stepped out of the boat onto the beach below the encampment he found that his father already had a gang of men at work, repairing the damage to the battery of culverins along the shore. They were building up the parapets and levelling the two guns that had been shot off their mountings by the Gull’s broadsides.

  Where she lay careened on the beach, the Resolution had been hit by shot. The Gull’s fire had knocked great raw wounds in the timbers. Grape shot had peppered her sides but had not penetrated her stout planks. The carpenter and his mates were already at work cutting out the damaged sections and checking the frames beneath them, preparatory to replacing them with new oak planking from the ship’s stores. The pitch cauldrons were bubbling and smoking over the coals, and the rasping of saws and soughing of planes resounded through the camp.

  Hal found his father further back among the trees, where the wounded had been laid out under a makeshift canvas shelter. He counted seventeen and, at a glance, could tell that at least three were unlikely to see tomorrow’s dawn. Already the aura of death hung over them.

  Ned Tyler doubled as the ship’s surgeon – he had been trained for the role in the rough empirical school of the gundeck, and he wielded his instruments with the same rude abandon as the carpenters working on the Resolution’s punctured hull.

  Hal saw that he was performing an amputation. One of the topmast-men had taken a blast of grape in his leg just below the knee and the limb hung by a tatter of flesh and exposed stringy white sinew from which protruded sharp white splinters of the shin bone. Two of Ned’s mates were trying to hold down the patient on a sheet of blood-soaked canvas, as he bucked and writhed. They had thrust a doubled layer of leather belt between his teeth. The sailor bit down so hard upon it that the sinews in his neck stood out like hempen ropes. His eyes started out of his straining crimson face and his lips were drawn back in a terrifying rictus. Hal saw one of his rotten black teeth explode under the pressure of his bite.