Call of the Raven

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘In the name of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, I am taking possession of this ship!’ he announced.

  No one heard him. The deck was empty. More of his men swarmed over the side, weapons ready.

  ‘Search her!’ Fairchild snapped the order.

  His confidence had begun to waver. Perhaps she was a simple merchantman that had put in for water. Perhaps the ship had been abandoned. But her rigging was in good order, and though she had suffered damage recently it had been repaired.

  Then all his doubts were laid to rest. The coxswain emerged from below decks shepherding four dishevelled men who stank of rum. They must have been rousted from their hammocks. They looked around in shock, rubbing their bleary eyes in disbelief at the crew of Royal Navy men aboard their ship.

  ‘Which of you is in command?’ Fairchild asked.

  After a pause, one shuffled forward. He did not look like an officer. He had a prominent forehead, sharp sideburns and a terrible sunburn. He looked around like a cornered animal, fixing his eyes anywhere but on Fairchild.

  ‘Are you the captain?’ Fairchild asked.

  ‘Only a passenger.’

  ‘And what is your purpose here?’

  The man looked at the masthead, as if for inspiration from above.

  ‘Fishing,’ he tried.

  ‘Where is the captain? Where are the rest of the crew?’

  ‘Gone hunting.’

  ‘Hunting for what?’

  He did not answer, though it made no difference. The coxswain had finished his search and emerged from below carrying a set of iron shackles. He threw them down on the deck.

  ‘There’s hundreds of those. They’ve even built the slave decks.’

  ‘Then this ship is forfeit,’ said Fairchild.

  Whoever the captain might be, he was clearly an amateur. Most slavers took great care not to carry any of the tools of their evil trade until the slaves were ready to come aboard. Chains, shackles, copper kettles – even timbers and nails for building extra decks: possession of any of these things meant the Royal Navy could seize the ship. The Raven proclaimed her guilt on every count.

  The only protection she had was the American flag fluttering defiantly at her masthead. It should have given her immunity from being searched by a British officer; Fairchild had overstepped his authority. But there were ways around that.

  He crossed to the mast and severed the halyard with his sabre. The flag fluttered to the deck. Fairchild threw it over the side and watched it disappear in the muddy river current.

  ‘You will record the ship was not flying any colours when we boarded her,’ he told his men.

  They nodded happily. They all stood to gain a share of the money if the Raven was sold by a prize court.

  But where were the rest of the crew?

  Fairchild surveyed the shoreline.

  ‘There are no barracoons here. They must have gone inland to capture the slaves themselves.’

  He had never heard of such a thing – usually, white captains and crews touched African soil as little as possible – but it was the only explanation. The captain was not just a novice; he must have been desperate. Fairchild thanked the Lord again for the opportunity he had been given.

  ‘Secure the ship,’ he told his men. He pointed to the embankment beyond the mud flats that lined the river. The trees grew thickly around its edges; the only path led up an earthen gully towards the higher ground. That would be the way the slaves would come. ‘When this ship’s captain returns, we will give him a warm welcome he does not expect.’

  A thought struck him. He turned back to his prisoner.

  ‘What is the name of the man who commands this unholy vessel?’

  De Villiers considered not answering, but it would make no difference. They would surely find the name written in the logbook.

  ‘Thomas Sinclair.’

  Fairchild had heard the name before, though for a moment he could not think where. It was not a man he had captured before. Someone he had read about?

  Then – with a rush of surprise so hard he almost had to sit down – it came to him. A warm night in Madeira, the Mariners’ Ball and the last man he had expected to see.

  I would be grateful if you could forget the name Mungo St John. Here, I am Thomas Sinclair.

  He gripped the rigging, staring out at the mudflats and the land beyond. As the shock receded, he saw this for what it truly was. The Lord had answered his prayers. He had given Fairchild the opportunity to atone for what had happened aboard the Blackhawk.

  When Mungo returned, Fairchild would be ready for him.

  Mungo crested the brow of the hill and looked down into the river delta. There was the Raven riding safely at anchor. His spirits rose to see his ship again, and the promise of the open sea. The journey back had been long and difficult. The slave coffle – almost three hundred and fifty people – moved agonisingly slowly. Back at Wisi’s village, the Punu had yoked the captives together with forked branches tied fast around their throats. Even if one escaped, a six-foot branch hanging off his neck meant he could not run far. It was a wise precaution, but it did not help their speed – and Mungo could not drive them too hard, for he needed them in good enough condition to survive the passage to Cuba. Normally, they would have had weeks or months being fattened up in the barracoons, but Mungo did not have that luxury.

  He was desperate to get aboard – to be free of Africa, the flies and the heat. Yet now he hesitated. Looking down on the Raven, he felt a prickle on the back of his neck that something was wrong.

  There was no one on deck. That angered him, though it didn’t surprise him. De Villiers and the others were probably below decks, out of the sun, sleeping off their hangovers.

  Then he saw it. The masthead was bare; there was no flag flying.

  Mungo pulled out his spyglass and studied the scene more carefully. The edge of the riverbank had been churned to mud, as if a great herd of animals had come down to drink. But what animal would choose to drink so close to the ship? Beyond, he saw tracks in the soft earth. From a distance they could have been animal tracks, but magnified by the glass they looked decidedly more human. He followed them with his telescope, across the mud flats and up an embankment until . . .

  There.

  It was well camouflaged, but Mungo already had an idea what he was looking for. In a grove of trees, almost hidden by thorn bushes and long grass, he saw the black muzzle of a gun pointing out.

  He ran back to the main column and gestured them to halt. The slaves collapsed to the ground, groaning. The branches tied around their necks had made sores that were beginning to suppurate in the heat. Flies clustered on the wounds, and with their hands bound the captives could do nothing to stop them.

  All because of Mungo. He was the reason they had been torn from their homes, watched their families slaughtered. Sometimes when he looked at them, he felt a pang of something almost like sympathy. He knew – too well – what it was like to lose everything. Was it right to visit the same misery on them in pursuit of his revenge?

  You are starting to sound like Fairchild, he scolded himself. God could judge him. Chester had given him no choice.

  There is only one law, Mungo reminded himself. The power of the strong and wealthy over the weak and poor.

  He could not let himself be weaker or poorer than Chester. He had to rescue Camilla.

  And now he had more urgent things to worry about than the pangs of conscience. He summoned Tippoo, Pendleton and Wisi and explained what he had seen.

  ‘How many men?’ Tippoo asked.

  ‘I did not see any. But the ships of the Preventative Squadron are mostly corvettes and sloops. There could be upwards of a hundred men.’

  Mungo tried to imagine what the British officers – they must surely be British – might have planned. Clearly they were expecting him to bring his slave coffle down the track and across the mudflats to the ship. They had prepared their ambush on the embankment so that when he came out on the mudflat
s, he would be directly under their fire.

  But if he were the British officer in command, he would not have stopped there. The Royal Navy had obviously been aboard the Raven to strike her colours. Presumably they had captured her skeleton crew as well. Why leave the ship abandoned? Why not hide a detachment of men below decks, ready to burst out on Mungo’s men when they arrived? Out on the flats, Mungo would be caught between the sailors on the embankment and the sailors on his ship. He would be utterly at their mercy.

  ‘What do we do?’ said Tippoo.

  They could not retrace their steps to Wisi’s village. It would take the best part of a week overland; slaves would start to die. Even if they reached it, what then? The Nganga had no more men to spare. And while they were gone, the British captain might get bored of waiting. If he sailed the Raven away, Mungo would be marooned.

  But to march out onto the mudflats would be as good as surrendering. Even with Wisi’s men and the Raven’s crew combined, he barely had forty men. They would be outnumbered more than two to one.

  Tippoo, Wisi and the rest of the men were looking at him, waiting for a decision.

  ‘The only advantage we have is that the British do not know that we have seen them,’ Mungo mused.

  ‘So?’ said Tippoo.

  ‘So we will give them what they expect.’

  Mungo explained his plan. It took some time to translate it for Wisi, and even longer to persuade him to accept it.

  But there was no other choice.

  Fairchild crouched at the top of the embankment and peered out through the brush that disguised their position. A fly crawled over his face, but he did not swat it away. He had waited three days in this infernal heat, being eaten alive by insects and scratched by the thorn bushes that surrounded them. Some of his men had started to mutter that they should give up. They had more than enough evidence to seize the ship. They could take her to the Mixed Commission Court and claim their prize money, and leave her crew to rot on the coast.

  Fairchild had silenced all such talk. He would wait here until Judgement Day, if necessary, for Mungo St John. The man was the Devil incarnate. Fairchild had to stop him. And yet, even now, he thought of the look in Mungo’s yellow eyes in that moment he had pointed the gun at his head aboard the Blackhawk. He was convinced he had seen a spark of goodness there, a moral qualm buried deep that had made him spare Fairchild’s life. If Fairchild could capture Mungo – confront him – he could surely redeem him.

  There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents, than ninety-nine just men, he told himself.

  That was why he had endured three days in this horrible place, deaf to the pleas of his men, and of reason, rather than simply sail away with his prize. He would save Mungo St John, and when they returned to England, Mungo would be able to testify with the full power of the convert about the abhorrent practices still rife on the coast of Africa. His testimony might even force the American government to withdraw the immunity their ships enjoyed, and allow the British squadron to intercept them. That would be a hammer blow against the slave trade.

  On the hill away upriver, where the Nyanga disappeared around a bend, a movement caught his eye. Keeping his telescope carefully shaded, lest any flash of the glass betray him, Fairchild examined the ridge. A man had appeared. He paused, scanning the river basin ahead. Fairchild held his breath, but evidently the man saw nothing to alarm him. He lifted his arm in greeting to the Raven, lying at anchor, and began descending the hill. More men followed, armed with rifles. Fairchild counted a dozen of them, escorting a column of about twenty Africans who were bound together at the neck by forked sticks. It had not been a productive raid. Twenty slaves, even prime healthy young men such as these, would not even cover the cost of the voyage.

  They would never see the inside of the ship’s hold, Fairchild promised himself. He wriggled back and found his second in command.

  ‘Ready the men,’ he ordered.

  Of the Maeander’s total complement of one hundred and eighteen men, he had brought one hundred ashore.

  ‘If the Raven escapes, that does not leave enough men to work the ship to pursue her,’ his lieutenant had warned, but Fairchild dismissed that risk. Mungo would not get aboard the Raven – and if he did, he would find forty of the Maeander’s toughest men waiting for him. Sixty more were with Fairchild at the top of the embankment.

  Everything was ready. Fairchild loosened his sword in his scabbard, checked the priming on his pistols, and prepared to give the command to attack.

  Mungo led his men across the mudflats, forcing himself not to look at the guns hidden in the thicket to his right. He felt almost naked, walking into a trap he knew was waiting for him. What if he had misjudged? He doubted the British would open fire at that range for fear of hitting the slave coffle, but there was always the possibility that they had a marksman with a rifle trained on his head.

  He held himself upright and showed no fear. He had made his choice, making the best of the hand he had been dealt. Now all that remained was to see how the cards fell.

  The boom of a gun sounded from the embankment, echoing across the flats. Smoke puffed from the thicket, and a flock of red-breasted birds flew into the air. Mungo turned, as if he was surprised, to see a group of check-shirted British sailors charging out of the trees, armed with pikes and boarding axes. An officer led them, sword raised, blue coat unbuttoned and flapping around him. A mop of sandy hair blew back from his weathered face.

  He halted his men about fifty yards from the slaving party.

  ‘You are surrounded and your ship is taken!’ he shouted, his booming quarterdeck voice carrying easily over the flat ground. ‘Surrender yourselves to Her Majesty’s justice!’

  Mungo stared. This time, his surprise was entirely unfeigned. Now that they had stopped, he could see the officer clearly.

  ‘Fairchild?’

  ‘Mungo St John!’ There was no surprise in Fairchild’s voice; he had anticipated this moment. They stared at each other across a hundred and fifty feet of mud. ‘In the name of all that is honourable and good, I implore you to surrender!’

  Mungo had no time to wonder what trick of fate had brought his old adversary here. The die was cast.

  ‘We surrender!’

  He threw down his rifle. The other men did likewise. The Africans in the coffle looked around as if they could not believe what was happening, while Fairchild advanced with his men. Mungo met his gaze head on, no sign of defeat in his yellow eyes.

  ‘You did the right thing,’ said Fairchild.

  ‘You did not give me much choice.’

  Mungo nodded to the men surrounding him, then back to the Raven. Dozens more sailors had appeared on her deck, muskets at the ready.

  ‘But you have a choice now.’ Fairchild’s men spread out, making a ring around the slave party. ‘God has given you one last chance. Give up this life you have made for yourself.’

  He thought he saw a shadow of regret cross Mungo’s face.

  ‘I did not choose this life,’ Mungo said softly.

  ‘But you may choose to change it.’

  ‘No.’

  Fairchild thought he had misheard. Before he could think, a cry from beside him drew his attention away.

  ‘The ship!’

  His lieutenant was staring beyond the captives, across the flats to the river where the Raven was moored. Or rather, Fairchild saw, where she should have been moored. Instead of lying fast at anchor, she had somehow slipped her cable and was drifting downriver towards the sea.

  It took her prize crew completely by surprise. They dropped their weapons and scrambled for her rigging, trying to find the sheets and halyards on the unfamiliar ship so they could regain control. The mainsail dropped, but that only made the situation worse. The wind was coming from off the land, so that as it caught the sail it only added to the ship’s momentum downstream. Away from Fairchild.

  Fairchild turned to Mungo in horror. ‘What—?’

  In the few s
econds he had been distracted, everything had changed. The slaves were no longer bound in a coffle. They had pulled off the sticks that yoked them together – which were not sticks at all, Fairchild realised, but rifles with bark tied to them. They brandished the guns at their erstwhile rescuers.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ Fairchild shouted. ‘We are here to rescue you!’

  Of course they could not comprehend him. In a split second, something he had said to Mungo that night at the Cambridge Union flashed back in his memory. Arguing with you is like arguing with the Devil himself. White is black, and black is white. And how else could you explain the terrible sight he saw now? Blacks, armed with modern rifles, turning them on the white men who had come to save them.

  The Africans fired. The Maeander’s men were taken completely off guard. Eight or nine of them went down, clutching wounds, or killed outright. Before the others could respond, Mungo’s crew grabbed the weapons they had thrown down and added a second volley.

  Fairchild’s numerical advantage had evaporated. Instead of a dozen men, he was now facing three times that number, all armed. The reinforcements on the Raven were drifting helplessly downriver. And the sudden onslaught from the Africans had levelled the field still further.

  One man was responsible for this. One man alone who could make Africans turn against their saviours, who could ruin Fairchild’s triumph yet again. With his sword in one hand and pistol in the other, Fairchild sought him out through the smoke and dust that swirled on the battlefield.

  The guns had fallen silent. There was no time to reload, even with the rapid Hall rifles. Some of the Punu used the stocks of their guns as clubs, while others pulled out the knives they had hidden under their loincloths, or revealed spears hidden as coffle sticks. Wisi picked up a boarding axe dropped by one of the dead sailors and whirled it over his head, driving back any man who came near.

  But British reinforcements were arriving. The men Fairchild had left on the embankment ran down to help their comrades. That gave the Royal Navy men a numerical advantage once more. Mungo and his fighters had to give ground, retreating towards the river. Soon they would be trapped against its banks.