Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  At last Winterton waved away any further chaff and congratulation. He stood up, leaned over the table towards Schreuder, and said seriously, ‘I salute you, sir. You are a gentleman of iron nerve, and a sportsman of the first water. I offer you the hand of friendship.’ He stretched out his right hand with the palm open. Schreuder looked at it disdainfully, still not moving, and the smiles faded away. Another charged silence fell over the little cabin.

  Schreuder spoke out clearly: ‘I should have examined thosediceof yours more closely while I had the chance.’ He placed a heavy emphasis on the possessive pronoun. ‘I hope you will forgive me, sir, butImakeitarule neverto shake hands with cheats.’ Vincent recoiled sharply and stared at Schreuder in disbelief, while the others gasped and gaped.

  It took Vincent a long moment to recover from the shock of the unexpected insult, and his handsome young face had paled under his sea-and salt-tanned skin as he replied, ‘I would be deeply obliged if you could see fit to accord me satisfaction for that remark, Colonel Schreuder.’

  ‘With the greatest of pleasure.’ Schreuder rose to his feet, smiling with triumph. He had been challenged so the choice of weapons was his. There would be no aping about with pistols. It would be the steel and this English puppy would have the pleasure of a yard of the Neptune sword in his belly. Schreuder turned to Llewellyn. ‘Would you do me the honour of acting as my second in this matter?’ he asked.

  ‘Not I!’ Llewellyn shook his head firmly. ‘I will not allow duelling on board any ship of mine. You will have to find yourself another person to act for you, and you will have to check your temper until we reach port. Then you can go ashore to settle this matter.’

  Schreuder looked back at Vincent. ‘I will inform you of the name of my second at the first opportunity,’ he said. ‘I promise you satisfaction as soon as we reach port.’ He stood up and marched out of the cabin. He could hear their voices behind him, raised in comment and conjecture, but the brandy fumes rose to mingle with his rage until he feared the veins beating in his temples might burst with the strength of it.

  The following day Schreuder kept to his own kennel of a cabin where a servant brought him his meals as he lay on his bunk like a battle casualty, nursing the terrible wounds to his pride and the unbearable pain caused by the loss of his entire worldly wealth. On the second day he came on deck while the Golden Bough was on a larboard tack and making good her course of west-north-west along the bulging coastline of southern Africa.

  As soon as his head appeared above the coaming of the companionway, the officer of the watch turned away and busied himself with the pegs on the traverse board, while Captain Llewellyn raised his telescope and studied the blue mountains that loomed on the horizon to the north. Schreuder paced along the lee rail of the ship while the officers studiously ignored his presence. The servant who had waited at the Captain’s dinner party had spread the news of the impending duel through all the ship, and the crew eyed him curiously and kept well out of his path.

  After half an hour Schreuder stopped abruptly in front of the officer of the watch and, without preamble, asked, ‘Mr Fowler, will you act as my second?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Colonel, Mr Winterton is a friend of mine. Will you excuse me, please?’

  During the days that followed Schreuder approached every officer aboard to act for him, but in each case he was received with frigid refusals. Ostracized and humiliated, he prowled the open deck like a night-stalking leopard. His thoughts swung like a pendulum between remorse and agony over Katinka’s death, and resentment of the treatment meted out to him by the captain and officers of the ship. His rage swelled until he could barely support it.

  On the morning of the fifth day, as he paced the lee rail, a hail from the masthead aroused him from this black mist of suffering. When Captain Llewellyn strode to the windward rail and stared into the south-west, Schreuder followed him across the deck and stood at his shoulder.

  For some moments he doubted his own eyesight as he stared at the mountainous range of menacing dark cloud that stretched from the horizon to the heavens and which bore down upon them with such speed that it made him think again of the avalanche sweeping down the dark gorge.

  ‘You had best go below, Colonel,’ Llewellyn warned him. ‘We’re in for a bit of a blow.’

  Schreuder ignored the warning and stood by the rail, filled with awe as he watched the clouds roll down upon them. All around him the ship was in turmoil as the crew rushed to get the sails furled and to bring the bows around, so that the Golden Bough faced into the racing storm. The wind came on so swiftly that it caught her with her royals and jib still set and sheeted home.

  The storm hurled itself upon the Golden Bough, howling with fury, and laid her over so that the lee rail went under and green water piled aboard to sweep the deck waist deep. Schreuder was borne away on this flood and might have been washed overboard had he not grabbed hold of the main shrouds.

  The Golden Bough’s jib and royals burst as though they were wet parchment and for a long minute she wallowed half under as the gale pinned her down. The sea poured into her open hatches, and from below there was the crash and thunder as some of her bulkheads burst and her cargo shifted. Men screamed as they were crushed by a culverin that had broken its breeching tackle and was running amok on the gundeck. Other sailors cried like lost souls falling into the pit as they were carried over the side by the racing green waters. The air turned white with spray so that Schreuder felt himself drowning, even though his face was clear of the water, and the white fog blinded him.

  Slowly the Golden Bough righted herself as her leadweighted keel levered her upright, but her spars and rigging were in tatters, snapping and lashing in the gale. Some of her yards were broken away and they clattered, banged and battered the standing masts. Listing heavily with the seawater she had taken in the Golden Bough was driven out of control before the wind.

  Gasping and choking, half-drowned and doused to the skin, Schreuder dragged himself across the deck to the shelter of the companionway. From there he watched in dread and fascination as the world around him dissolved in silver spray and maddened green waves streaked with long pathways of foam.

  For two days the wind never ceased its assault upon them, and the seas grew taller and wilder with every hour until they seemed to tower higher than the mainmast as they rushed down upon them. Half-swamped, the Golden Bough was slow to lift to meet them, and as they struck her they burst into foam and tumbled green across her decks. Two helmsmen, lashed to the whipstaff, battled to keep her pointing with the gale, but each wave that came aboard burst over their heads. By the second day all aboard were exhausted and nearing the limits of their endurance. There was no chance of sleep and only hard biscuit to eat.

  Llewellyn had lashed himself to the mainmast and from there he directed the efforts of his officers and men to keep the ship alive. No man could stand unsupported upon the open deck, so Llewellyn could not order them to man the main pumps, but on the gundeck teams of seamen worked in a frenzy at the auxiliary pumps to try to clear the six feet of water in her bilges. As fast as they pumped it out the sea poured back through the shattered gunports and the cracked hatch covers.

  Always the land loomed closer in their lee as the storm drove them onwards under bare masts, and though the helmsmen strained muscle and heart to hold her off, the Golden Bough edged in towards the land. That night they heard the surf break and boom like a barrage of cannon out there in the darkness, growing every hour more tumultuous as they were driven towards the rocks.

  When dawn broke on the third day they could see, through the fog and spume, the dark, threatening shape of the land, the cliffs and jagged headlands only a league away across the marching mountains of grey and furious waters.

  Schreuder dragged himself across the deck, clinging to mast and shroud and backstay as each wave came aboard. Seawater streamed from his hair down his face, filling his mouth and nostrils, as he gasped at Llewellyn, ‘I know this coast. I recognize th
at headland coming up ahead of us.’

  ‘We’ll need God’s blessing to weather it on this course,’ Llewellyn shouted. ‘The wind has us in its teeth.’

  ‘Then pray to the Almighty with all your heart, Captain, for our salvation lies not five leagues beyond,’ Schreuder bellowed, blinking the salt water from his eyes.

  ‘How can you be certain of that?’

  ‘I have been ashore here and marched through the country. I know every wrinkle of the land. There is a bay beyond that cape, which we named Buffalo Bay. Once she is into it, the ship should be sheltered from the full force of the wind, and on the far side there stand a pair of rocky heads that guard the entrance to a wide and calm lagoon. In there we would be safe from even such a storm as this.’

  ‘There is no lagoon marked on my charts.’ Llewellyn’s expression was riven with hope and doubt.

  ‘Sweet Jesus, Captain, you must believe me!’ Schreuder shouted. On the sea he was out of his natural element and foronceevenhewas afraid.

  ‘First we must weather those rocks, and after that we can prove the quality of your memory.’

  Schreuder was silenced and clung desperately to the mast beside Llewellyn. He stared ahead in horror as he watched the sea open her snarling lips of white foam and bare fangs of black rock. The Golden Bough drove on helplessly into her jaws.

  One of the helmsmen screamed, ‘Oh, holy Mother of God, save our mortal souls! We’re going to strike!’

  ‘Hold your helm hard over!’ Llewellyn roared at him. Close alongside, the sea opened viciously and the reef burst out like a blowing whale. Claws of stone seemed to reach out towards the frail planks of the little ship, and they were so near that Schreuder could see the masses of shellfish and weed that cloaked the rocks. Another wave, larger than the rest, lifted and flung them at the reef, but the rocks disappeared below the boiling surface and the Golden Bough rose up like a hunter at a fence and shot high over it.

  Her keel touched the rock and she checked with such force that Schreuder’s grip on the mast was broken and he was hurled to the deck, but the ship shook herself free, surged onwards, carried on the crest of that mighty wave, and slid off the reef into the deeper water beyond. She charged forward, the point of the headland dropping away behind her and the bay opening ahead. Schreuder dragged himself upright and felt at once that the dreadful might of the gale had been broken by the sprit of land. Though the ship still hurtled on wildly, she was coming back under control and Schreuder could feel her respond to the urging of her rudder.

  ‘There!’ he screamed in Llewellyn’s ear. ‘There! Dead ahead!’

  ‘Sweet heaven! You were right.’ Through the spume and seafret Llewellyn picked out the shape of the twin heads over the ship’s bows. He rounded on his helmsmen. ‘Let her fall off a point!’ Though their terrified expressions showed how they hated to obey, they let her come down across the wind and point towards the next pier of black rock and surf.

  ‘Hold her at that!’ Llewellyn checked them, and the Golden Bough tore headlong across the bay.

  ‘Mr Winterton!’ he roared at Vincent, who crouched below the hatch-coaming close at hand with a half-dozen sailors sheltering on the companion behind him. ‘We must shake out a reef on the main topgallant sail to give her steerage. Can you do it?’

  He made the order a request, for it was the next thing to murder to send a man to the top of the mainmast in this gale. An officer must lead the way, and Vincent was the strongest and boldest among them.

  ‘Come on, lads!’ Vincent shouted at his men without hesitation. ‘There’s a golden guinea for any man who can beat me to the main topgallant yard.’ He leapt to his feet and darted across the deck to the mainmast shrouds and went flying up them hand over hand with his men in pursuit.

  The Golden Bough tore across Buffalo Bay like a runaway horse. Suddenly Schreuder shouted again, ‘Look there!’ and pointed to where the entrance to the lagoon began to open to their view between the heads that towered on either hand.

  Llewellyn threw back his head and gazed up the mainmast at the tiny figures that spread out along the high yard and wrestled with the reefed canvas. He recognized Vincent easily by his lean athletic form and his dark hair whipping in the wind.

  ‘Bravely done thus far,’ Llewellyn whispered, ‘but hurry, lad. Give me a scrap of canvas to steer her by.’

  As he said it the studding-sail flew out and filled with a crack like a musket shot. For a dreadful moment Llewellyn thought the canvas might be shredded in the gale, but it filled and held and immediately he felt the ship’s motion change.

  ‘Sweet Mother Mary! We might make it yet!’ he croaked, through a throat scoured and rough with salt. ‘Hard over!’ he called to the helm, and the Golden Bough answered willingly and put her bows across the wind.

  Like an arrow from a longbow, she drove straight at the western headland as though to hurl herself ashore, but her hull slid away through the water and the angle of her bows altered. The passage opened full before her, and as she passed into the lee of the land she steadied, darted between the heads, caught the tide, which was at full flow, and sped upon it through the channel into the quiet lagoon where she was protected from the full force of the storm.

  Llewellyn gazed at the green forested shores in wonder and relief. Then he started and pointed ahead. ‘There’s another ship at anchor here already!’

  Beside him Schreuder shaded his eyes from the slashing gusts of wind that eddied around the cliffs.

  ‘I know that vessel!’ he cried. ‘I know her well. ’Tis Lord Cumbrae’s ship. ’Tis the Gull of Moray!’

  ‘Eland!’ whispered Althuda softly, and Hal recognized the Dutch name for elk, but these creatures were unlike any of the great red deer of the north that he had ever seen. They were enormous, larger even than the cattle that his uncle Thomas had raised on the High Weald estate.

  The three of them, Hal, Althuda and Aboli, lay belly down in a small hollow filled with rank grass. The herd was strung out among the open grove of sweet-thorn trees ahead. Hal counted fifty-two bulls, cows and calves together. The bulls were ponderous and fat so that, as they walked, their dewlaps swung from side to side and the flesh on their bellies and quarters quivered like that of a jellyfish. At each pace there came a strange clicking sound like breaking twigs.

  ‘It is their knees that make that noise,’ Aboli explained in Hal’s ear. ‘The Nkulu Kulu, the great god of all things, punished them when they boasted of being the greatest of all the antelope. He gave them this affliction so that the hunter would always hear them from afar.’

  Hal smiled at the quaint belief, but then Aboli told him something else that turned off that smile. ‘I know these creatures, they were highly prized by the hunters of my tribe, for a bull such as that one at the front of the herd carries a mass of white fat around his heart that two men cannot carry.’ For months now none of them had tasted fat, for all the game they had managed to kill was devoid of it. They all craved it, and Sukeena had warned Hal that for lack of it they must soon sicken and fall prey to disease.

  Hal studied the herd bull as he browsed on one of the sweet-thorn trees, hooking down the higher branches with his massive spiralling horns. Unlike his cows, who were a soft and velvet brown, striped with white across their shoulders, the bull had turned grey-blue with age and there was a tuft of darker hair on his forehead between the bases of his great horns.

  ‘Leave the bull,’ Aboli told Hal. ‘His flesh will be coarse and tough. See that cow behind him? She will be sweet and tender as a virgin, and her fat will turn to honey in your mouth.’ Against Aboli’s advice, which Hal knew was always the best available, he felt the urge of the hunter attract him to the great bull.

  ‘If we are to cross the river safely, then we need as much meat as we can carry. Each of us will fire at his own animal,’ he decided. ‘I will take the bull, you and Althuda pick younger animals.’ He began to snake forward on his belly, and the other two followed him.

  In these last d
ays since they had descended the escarpment they had found that the game upon these plains had little fear of man. It seemed that the dreaded upright bipod silhouette he presented had no especial terrors for them, and they allowed the hunters to approach within certain musket shot before moving away.

  Thus it must have been in Eden before the Fall, Hal thought, as he closed with the herd bull. The soft breeze favoured him, and the tendrils of blue smoke from their slow-match drifted away from the herd.

  He was so close now that he could make out the individual eyelashes that framed the huge liquid dark eyes of the bull, and the red and gold legs of the ticks that clung in bunches to the soft skin between his forelegs. The bull fed, delicately wiping the young green leaves from the twigs between the thorns with its blue tongue.

  On each side of him two of his young cows fed from the same thorn tree. One had a calf at heel while the other was full-bellied and gravid. Hal turned his head slowly and looked at the men who lay beside him. He indicated the cows to them with a slow movement of his eyes, and Aboli nodded and raised his musket.

  Once more Hal concentrated all his attention on the great bull, and traced the line of the scapula beneath the skin that covered the shoulder, fixing a spot in all that broad expanse of smooth blue-grey hide at which to aim. He raised the musket and held the butt into the notch of his shoulder, sensing the men on either side of him do the same.

  As the bull took another pace forward he held his fire. It stopped again and raised its head, on the thick dewlapped neck, to full stretch, laying the massive twisted horns across its back, reaching up over two fathoms high to the topmost sprigs of the thorn tree where the sweetest bunches of lacy green leaves grew.

  Hal fired, and heard the detonation of the other muskets on either side of him blend with the concussion of his own weapon. A swirling screen of white gunsmoke blotted out his forward view. He let the musket drop, sprang to his feet and raced out to his side to get a clear view around the smoke bank. He saw that one of the cows was down, kicking and struggling as her lifeblood spurted from the wound in her throat, while the other was staggering away, her near front leg swinging loosely from the broken bone. Already Aboli was running after her, his drawn cutlass in his right hand.