Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  He turned his eyes away and began his report to Sir Francis. ‘The Gull was heading west the last I saw of her. The Buzzard seems to have the fire in hand, although she is still making a cloud of smoke—’

  He was interrupted by screams as Ned laid aside his knife and took up the saw to trim off the shattered bone. Then, abruptly, the man lapsed into silence and slumped back in the grip of the men who held him. Ned stepped back and shook his head. ‘Poor bastard’s taken shore leave. Bring one of the others.’ He wiped the sweat and smoke from his face with a blood-caked hand and left a red smear down his cheek.

  Although Hal’s stomach heaved, he kept his voice level as he went on with his report. ‘Cumbrae was cracking on all the sail the Gull would carry.’ He was determined not to show weakness in front of his men and his father, but his voice trailed off as near at hand Ned started to pluck a massive wood splinter from another seaman’s back. Hal could not drag away his eyes.

  Ned’s two brawny assistants straddled the patient’s body and held him down, while he got a grip on the protruding end of the splinter with a pair of blacksmith’s tongs. He placed one foot on the man’s back to give himself purchase and leaned back with all his weight. The raw splinter was as thick as his thumb, barbed like an arrowhead and relinquished its grip in the living flesh only with the greatest reluctance. The man’s screams rang through the forest.

  At that moment Governor van de Velde came waddling towards them through the trees. His wife was on his arm, weeping pitifully and barely able to support her own weight. Zelda followed her closely, attempting to thrust a green bottle of smelling-salts under her mistress’s nose.

  ‘Captain Courtney!’ van de Velde said. ‘I must protest in the strongest possible terms. You have placed us in the most dire danger. A ball passed through the roof of my abode. I might have been killed.’ He mopped at his streaming jowls with his neckcloth.

  At that moment the wretch who had been receiving Ned’s ministrations let out a piercing shriek as one of the assistants poured hot pitch to staunch the bleeding into the deep wound in his back.

  ‘You must keep these oafs of yours quiet.’ Van de Velde waved disparagingly towards the severely wounded seaman. ‘Their barnyard bleatings are frightening and offending my wife.’

  With a last groan the patient sagged back limply into silence, killed by Ned’s kindness. Sir Francis’s expression was grim as he lifted his hat to Katinka. ‘Mevrouw, you cannot doubt our consideration for your sensibilities. It seems that the rude fellow prefers to die rather than offend you further.’ His expression was hard and unkind as he went on, ‘Instead of caterwauling and indulging in the vapours, perhaps you might like to assist Master Ned with his work of tending the wounded?’

  Van de Velde drew himself to his full height at the suggestion and glared at him. ‘Mijnheer, you insult my wife. How dare you suggest that she might act as a servant to these coarse peasants?’

  ‘I apologize to your lady, but I suggest that if she is to serve no other purpose here other than beautifying the landscape you take her back to her hut and keep her there. There will almost certainly be further unpleasant sights and sounds to test her forbearance.’ Sir Francis nodded at Hal to follow him, and turned his back on the Governor. Side by side, he and his son strode towards the beach, past where the sailmakers were stitching the dead into their canvas shrouds and a gang was already digging their graves. In such heat they must be buried the same day. Hal counted the canvas-covered bundles.

  ‘Only twelve are ours,’ his father told him. ‘The other seven are from the Gull, washed up on the beach. We have taken eight prisoners too. I’m going to deal with them now.’

  The captives were under guard on the beach, sitting in a line with their hands clasped behind their heads. As they came up to them Sir Francis said, loudly enough for all to hear, ‘Mr Courtney, have your men set eight nooses from that tree.’ He pointed to the outspreading branches of a huge wild fig. ‘We will hang some new fruit from them.’ He gave a chuckle so macabre that Hal was startled.

  The eight sent up a wail of protest. ‘Don’t hang us, sir. It were his lordship’s orders. We only did as we was bade.’

  Sir Francis ignored them. ‘Get those ropes hung up, Mr Courtney.’

  For a moment longer Hal hesitated. He was appalled at the prospect of having to carry out such a cold-blooded execution, but then he saw his father’s expression and hurried to obey.

  In short order ropes were thrown over the stout branches and the nooses were knotted at the hanging ends. A team of the Resolution’s sailors stood ready to heave their victims aloft.

  One at a time the eight prisoners from the Gull were dragged to a rope’s end, their hands bound behind their backs, their heads thrust through the waiting nooses. At his father’s orders Hal went down the line and adjusted the knots under each victim’s ears. Then he turned back to face his father, pale-faced and sick to the stomach. He touched his forehead. ‘Ready to proceed with the execution, sir.’

  Sir Francis’s face was turned away from the condemned men and he spoke softly from the corner of his mouth. ‘Plead for their lives.’

  ‘Sir?’ Hal looked bewildered.

  ‘Damn you.’ Sir Francis’s voice cracked. ‘Beg me to spare them.’

  ‘Beg your pardon, sir, but will you not spare these men?’ Hal said loudly.

  ‘The blackguards deserve nothing but the rope’s end,’ Sir Francis snarled. ‘I want to see them dance a jig to the devil.’

  ‘They were only carrying out the orders of their captain.’ Hal warmed to the role of advocate. ‘Will you not give them a chance?’

  The noosed heads of the eight men swung back and forth as they followed the argument. Their expressions were abject, but their eyes held a faint glimmer of hope.

  Sir Francis fingered his chin. ‘I don’t know.’ His face was still ferocious. ‘What would we do with them? Turn them loose into the wilderness to serve as fodder for wild beasts and cannibals? It would be more merciful to string them up.’

  ‘You could swear them in as crew to replace the men we have lost,’ Hal pleaded.

  Sir Francis looked still more dubious. ‘They would not take an oath of allegiance, would they?’ He glared at the condemned men who, had not the nooses restrained them, might have fallen to their knees.

  ‘We will serve you truly, sir. The young gentleman is right. You’ll not find better men nor more loyal than us.’

  ‘Bring my Bible from my hut,’ Sir Francis growled, and the eight seamen took their oath of service with the nooses round their necks.

  Big Daniel freed them and led them away, and Sir Francis watched them go with satisfaction. ‘Eight prime specimens to replace some of our losses,’ he murmured. ‘We’ll need every hand we can find if we are to have the Resolution ready for sea before the end of this month.’ He glanced across the lagoon at the entrance between the headlands. ‘Only the good Lord knows who our next visitors might be if we linger here.’

  He turned back to Hal. ‘That leaves only the drunken sots who lapped up the Buzzard’s rum. Do you fancy another flogging, Hal?’

  ‘Is this the time to render half our crew useless with the cat, Father? If the Buzzard returns before we are fit for sea, then they’ll fight no better with half the meat stripped off their backs.’

  ‘So you say let them go scot free?’ Sir Francis asked coldly, his face close to Hal’s.

  ‘Why not fine them their share of the spoils from the Standvastigheid and divide it among the others who fought sober?’

  Sir Francis stared at him a moment longer, then smiled grimly. ‘The judgement of Solomon! Their purses will give them more pain than their backs, and it will add a guilder or three to our own share of the prize.’

  Angus Cochran, Earl of Cumbrae, stepped out on the saddle of the mountain pass at least a thousand feet above the beach where he had come ashore from the Gull. His boatswain and two seamen followed him. They all carried muskets and cutlasses. One of the men ba
lanced a small keg of drinking water on his shoulder, for the African sun speedily sucks the moisture from a man’s body.

  It had taken half the morning of hard hiking, following the game trails along the steep and narrow ledges, to reach this lookout point, which Cumbrae knew well. He had used it more than once before. A Hottentot they had captured on the beach had first led him to it. Now as he settled comfortably on a rock that formed a throne-like seat, the Hottentot’s white bones lay at his feet in the undergrowth. The skull gleamed like a pearl, for it had lain here three years and the ants and other insects had picked it clean. It would have been foolhardy of Cumbrae to allow the savage to carry tales of his arrival to the Dutch colony at Good Hope.

  From his stone throne Cumbrae had a breathtaking panoramic view of two oceans and of rugged mountain scenery spread out all around him. When he looked back the way he had come he could see the Gull of Moray anchored not far off a tiny rind of beach that clung precariously to the foot of the soaring rocky cliffs where the mountains fell into the sea. There were twelve distinct peaks in this maritime range, marked on the Dutch charts he had captured as the Twelve Apostles.

  He stared at the Gull through his telescope but could see little evidence of the fire damage she had suffered to her stern. He had been able to replace the mizzen yards, and furled new sails upon them. From this great height and distance she looked lovely as ever, tucked away from inquisitive eyes in the green water cove below the Apostles.

  The longboat that had brought Cumbrae through the surf was still drawn up on the beach, ready for a swift departure if he should run into trouble ashore. However, he expected none. He might encounter a few Hottentots among the bushes but they were a harmless, half-naked tribe, a pastoral people with high cheekbones and slanted Asiatic eyes, who could be scattered willy-nilly by a musket shot over their heads.

  Much more dangerous were the wild animals that abounded in this harsh, untamed land. The previous night, from the deck of the anchored Gull, they had heard terrifying, blood-chilling roars, rising and falling, then ending in a diminishing series of grunts and groans that sounded like the chorus of all the devils of hell.

  ‘Lions!’ the older hands who knew the coast had whispered to each other, and the ship’s company had listened in awed silence. In the dawn they had seen one of the terrible yellow cats, the size of a pony, with a dense dark mane of hair covering its head and reaching back behind its shoulder, sauntering along the white beach sands with a regal indolence. After that it had taken the threat of the lash to force the boat crew to row Cumbrae and his party to the shore.

  He reached into the leather pouch that hung in front of his plaid and brought out a pewter flask. He tipped its base to the sky and swallowed twice, then sighed with pleasure and screwed the stopper back into the neck. His boatswain and the two seamen watched him intently, but he grinned at them and shook his head. ‘It would do you no good. Mark my words, whisky is the devil’s own hot piss. If you have no pact with him, as I have, you should never let it past your lips.’

  He slipped the flask back into the pouch, and lifted the telescope to his eye. On his left hand rose the sphinx-shaped mountain top that the earliest mariners had named Lion’s Head, when viewing it from the sea. At his right hand stood the sheer cliff that towered up to the flat top of the mighty Table Mountain that dominated the horizon and gave its name to the bay that opened out beneath it.

  Far below where he sat, Table Bay was a lovely sweep of open water, nursing a small island in its arms. The Dutch called it Robben Island, for that was their name for the thousands of seals that infested it.

  Beyond that was the endless wind-flecked expanse of the south Atlantic. Cumbrae scrutinized it for any sign of a strange sail, but when he could pick out nothing he transferred his attention below to the Dutch settlement of Good Hope.

  There was little to make it stand out from the wild and rocky wilderness that surrounded it. The roofs of the few buildings were of thatch and blended into their surroundings. The Company gardens, which had been laid out to grow provisions for the VOC ships on their passage to the east, were the most obvious sign of man’s intrusion. The regular rectangular fields were either bright green with crops or chocolate brown with new-turned earth.

  Just above the beach was the Dutch fort. Even from this distance Cumbrae could see that it was unfinished. He had heard from other captains that since the outbreak of war with England the Dutch had tried to speed up the construction, but there were still raw gaps in the defensive outer walls, like missing teeth.

  The fort, and its half-completed state, were of interest to Cumbrae only in as much as it could afford protection to the ships that lay at anchor in the bay, under its guns. At this moment three large vessels were there, and he fastened his attention on them.

  One looked like a naval frigate. She flew the ensign of the Republic, orange, white and blue, from her masthead. Her hull was painted black, but the gunports were picked out in white. He counted sixteen on the side she presented to him. He judged that she would outgun the Gull if it ever came to a set-piece engagement with her. But that was not his intention. He wanted easier pickings, and that meant one of the other two vessels in the bay. Both were merchantmen, and both flew the Company ensign.

  ‘Which one is it to be?’ he mused, as he glassed them with the closest attention.

  One looked familiar. She rode high in the water, and he reckoned that she was probably in ballast and on the eastern leg of her voyage, heading out to the Dutch possessions to take on valuable cargo.

  ‘No, by God, I recognize the cut of her jib now,’ he exclaimed aloud. ‘She’s the Lady Edwina, Franky’s old ship. He told me he’d sent her back to the Cape with his ransom demand.’ He studied her a while longer. ‘She’s been stripped bare – even the guns are out of her.’

  Losing interest in her as a possible prize, Cumbrae turned his telescope on the second merchantman. This ship was slightly smaller than the Lady Edwina but she was heavy with her cargo, riding so low that her lower ports were almost awash. Clearly she was on her return voyage, and stuffed with the treasures of the Orient. What made her even more attractive was that she was anchored further off the beach than the other merchantman, at least two cables’ length from the walls of the fort. Even under the best conditions that would be impossibly long cannon-shot for the Dutch gunners on the shore.

  ‘A lovely sight.’ The Buzzard grinned to himself. ‘Fair makes one’s mouth water to behold her.’

  He spent another half-hour studying the bay, noting the lines of foam and spindrift that marked the flow of current along the beach and the set of the wind as it swirled down from the heights. He planned his entry into Table Bay. He knew that the Dutch had a small post on the slopes of Lion’s Head whose lookouts would warn the settlement of the approach of a strange ship with a cannon-shot.

  Even at midnight, with the present phase of the moon, they might be able to pick out the gleam of his sails while he was still well out at sea. He would have to make a wide circle, out below the horizon and then come in from the west, using the bulk of Robben Island as a stalking horse to creep in unobserved by even the sharpest lookout.

  His crew were well versed in the art of cutting out a prize from under the shore batteries. It was a special English trick, one beloved of both Hawkins and Drake. Cumbrae had polished and refined it, and considered himself the master of either of those great Elizabethan pirates. The pleasure of plucking out a prize from under the enemy’s nose rewarded him far beyond the spoils it yielded. ‘Mounting the good wife while the husband snores in the bed beside her – so much sweeter than tipping up her skirts while he’s off across the seas with no danger in it.’ He chuckled, and swept the bay with his telescope, checking that nothing had changed since his last visit, that there were no lurking dangers such as newly emplaced cannon along the shore.

  Even though the sun was past its noon and it was a long journey back to where the longboat waited on the beach, he spent a little longe
r studying the rigging of the prize through the glass. Once he had seized her, his men must be able to get her sails up speedily, and work her off the lee shore in the darkness.

  It was after midnight when the Buzzard, using as his landmark the immense bulk of Table Mountain which blotted out half the southern sky, brought the Gull into the bay from the west. He was confident that, even on a clear starry night like this with half a moon shining, he was still well out of sight of the lookout on Lion’s Head.

  The dark whale shape of Robben Island rose with startling suddenness out of the gloom ahead. He knew there was no permanent settlement on this barren piece of rock so he was able to bring the Gull close into its lee, and drop his anchor in seven fathoms of protected water.

  The longboat on deck was ready to launch. No sooner had the catted anchor splashed into the easy swells, than it was swung outboard and dropped to the surface. The Buzzard had already inspected the boarding-party. They were armed with pistol and cutlass and oak clubs, and their faces were darkened with lamp-black so that they looked like a party of wild savages with only their eyes and teeth gleaming. They were dressed in pitch-blackened sea-jackets, and two men had axes to cut the anchor cable of the prize.

  The Buzzard was the last man down the ladder into the longboat, and as soon as he was aboard they pushed off. The oars were muffled, the rowlocks padded, and the only sound was the dip of the blades, but even this was lost in the breaking of the waves and the gentle sighing of the wind.