Sam and Mooney, conferring over that morning's star sights, had just concluded that the schooner, now on a starboard tack was making measurable leeway, normal for her when sailing on a reach or beat, and that sooner or later she would have to jibe or tack and run offshore for awhile, to avoid getting too close to the land. It wouldn't do to be caught in a sudden squall with a lee shore close aboard.
The bosun's mates were just about to pipe “up spirits”, the rum already mixed with water in the tub and the XO and Boatswain standing by as usual to oversee the issuing of the liquor ration, when the lookout's cry of “Sail ho! Sail broad on the starboard beam” shocked everyone out of their usual mid-morning anticipation of the daily tot.
Sam snatched his telescope from its rack and focused in the direction indicated. After a short search, he could just make out two white triangles nicking the eastern horizon: a two-masted dhow.
He tucked his telescope under his arm, cupped his hands to his mouth, and shouted upward, “Lookout, there! Keep a sharp watch for her mate.” For the Caliphate war-dhows almost invariably cruised in pairs, and two were known to be in these waters.
“Aye aye, sir. No other sail in sight just now.”
“Battle stations, Mister Munro,” he said to the watch officer.
“Aye aye, sir.”
As prearranged, the hands went to battle stations in the prescribed manner in every respect except for the 37 mm gun. Her crew had orders not to uncover it until ordered from the quarterdeck. Small arms and the one-inchers were issued from the armory, along with canvas ammunition bandoliers for the rifles and shotguns, pre-loaded. The watch was relieved, in accordance with the WQ&S bill, by those whose battle station was on the quarterdeck.
“Navigation watch properly relieved, sir,” Mooney, who was watch officer at battle stations, said to Sam.
“Very well, Mister Mooney.”
Al Kendall came aft for their usual last face-to-face conference before action started, when by doctrine they would remain separated by the length of the schooner, communicating only through their phone talkers.
“Still no sign of a consort, Skipper?” he asked.
“No, none. Maybe they've taken to cruising alone, now that they've decided to decline engagement with warships. Two war-dhows are after all a bit of overkill when it comes to taking a lightly-armed – or completely unarmed – merchant vessel or fisherman.”
“Mebbe so, sir,” the XO replied. Sam could hear the doubt in his voice, and shared it himself to some degree. Even before there had been a Kerguelenian navy at all for the pirates to contend with, the corsairs had nearly always, to the best of Sam's knowledge, cruised in pairs, their usual tactic being to close on their prey from either side. It was generally assumed that they did this to ensure that merchantmen were captured relatively undamaged; for capture, not destruction, always seemed to be their aim. He could think of no reason why they should change their tactical doctrine now.
He took his megaphone from its hook on the after bulkhead of the wheelhouse, and shouted up to the maintop lookout: “Still no sign of another dhow?”
“None, sir.”
Tense minutes went by as the Albatros forged slowly on and the dhow grew steadily closer. Finally, Sam decided that even the doziest merchant skipper would have noted the dhow's presence by now, and begun some evasive action. The logical course of action for a merchant vessel running from a pirate in these weather conditions would be to tack, fall off to a broad reach, set square sails, and try to run away while she still had something of a lead and the weather gage. Every mariner who sailed these waters knew by now that even the slowest war-dhow had a knot or two speed advantage over the fastest Kerguelenian cargo schooner. But the only alternative to running was surrender and slavery, so Kerg merchantmen always ran, and always prepared to fight, however hopelessly, when eventually and inevitably caught,
“Mister Mooney I don't want my next orders to be carried out too smartly, if you know what I mean – more like an undermanned merchant schooner.”
“Gotcha, Commodore,” Mooney replied with a grin.
“Good. Tack and fall off to a beam reach. But at your convenience, Pilot.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Mooney then shouted for the Boatswain, and the two warrant officers conferred briefly. Then he relayed the orders Sam had given.
Mr. Terreblanche had by then passed the word to the seamen on deck, and the hands, their humor tickled at being told to ignore all their training, gave a marvelous performance. The Albatros came tentatively around to starboard and up into the wind, but the sheets not being handled smartly, she immediately fell into irons and stalled, almost dead in the water, sails slatting and banging. She fell off again – too far – for another try, and finally managed to get her bow through the wind this time. Then, with agonizing slowness, the sails were trimmed to the new angle of attack, and the square topsail rose haltingly to the foremast top. Sam thought that even the most under-manned Kerg merchant schooner could have done better than that, and worried that his crew had overdone the farce. The dhow forged on, though, apparently still satisfied of Albatros's defenseless state.
The big square, full-cut sail the hands called the “drifter” wasn't set. It was not a sail merchantmen carried, being both costly and too labor-intensive to manage in anything like a breeze.
Sam took another look through his telescope at the dhow. She had drawn perceptibly closer, but he estimated that it would be the best part of an hour before she would be within effective range.
Mr. Robert, the vessel's communications officer, appeared on deck and, on speaking with Mooney, was directed immediately to report to Sam.
“Enemy radio chatter copied, sir,” he said. “Messages exchanged between two stations, we think. I haven't decoded it yet, but I thought you should know right away.”
“Thanks, Sparks. Give it to me as soon as you've deciphered it, of course.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
This was interesting. Apparently, the dhow had reported her sighting of Albatros to another Caliphate ship or station, most likely her consort.
Sam knew he wouldn't get the deciphered message any time soon. The Kerguelenians had quickly figured out – or rather Lieutenant Dallas, their brilliant intelligence officer had – that the pirates' radio communications were en clair, in Arabic, using Morse code roughly matched to the Arabic alphabet, adding numerals for the additional letters. This was taken as a sure sign that they had acquired the use of radio from Kerg renegades, else they would almost certainly have evolved their own code for continuous-wave radio communications. Or, if like the Kerguelenians, they had never lost the use of radio, they would have had a less clumsy way to encode Arabic, inherited from their ancestors.
At any rate, “breaking” pirate radio transmissions was tedious and time-consuming. The radioman took down the message using the Latin alphabet, which resulted in an apparently-meaningless string of letter groups. Then, painstakingly, letter by letter, it was transcribed into Arabic characters using the table of equivalents built up by Dallas. Then a French-Arabic or English-Arabic dictionary was used to finally translate the message from Arabic into a language the Kergs could read. Often a message was translated into both French and English, and the versions compared to see which made the most sense. This mechanical, rote process, carried out by radiomen who could not read or write Arabic, was fraught with possibilities for error, and messages thus intercepted were often almost or wholly unintelligible.
But he had already learned a couple of important things without knowing the content of the messages. One, the dhow pursuing them was radio-equipped, and two, there was another Caliphate station within daytime radio range. Was it afloat or ashore? Unless the pirates had established a shore base of which the Kergs were not yet aware, it had to be afloat – and thus almost certainly the second dhow. Interesting. And unusual.
At any rate, they would probably be in action before he had a decode of the intercepted messages.
The dhow was
closing slowly but steadily, and had altered course to intercept the Albatros on her new heading.
Sam didn't dare wait too long to unmask his battery. Albatros's lipstick and rouge wouldn't hide her true nature at anything like a reasonable distance, and he guessed the dhow would make a run for it on her captain's first suspicion that he was the victim of a deception.
“Guns, keep checking the range,” he said to his phone talker, who repeated the command into his mike. After a pause, the phone talker repeated the range to Sam, and added, “Gunner sez we'll be within 37 mm range in a few minutes.”
“Fire when ready, Guns – frag with number two fuses, and aim at her rig.” Sam's phone talker repeated this, then after a pause said, “Gunner acknowledges, sir.”
“Very well.”
Tense minutes went by. Finally, Sam saw Du Lesseps take one last look through the range finder and give an order to the 37 mil gunners. With great speed and energy, the gunners kicked down the bamboo framework and ripped away the canvas cover, trained and loaded the gun, and fired at the pirate dhow, all in a matter of seconds. Sam had his telescope trained on the dhow and swore aloud when he saw the result of the shot: a neat round 37 mm hole in the pirate's foresail, a perfect hit but no sail-shredding explosion. The dhow, which had been beating up to intercept Albatros, immediately fell off and trimmed in to run to the eastward on a reach, her best point of sailing, on a starboard tack.
Sam swore again, and felt the urge to kick something. The phone talker said: “Gunner sez 'Sorry sir, must have been a dud fuse.'”
“Run the gun out to port and fire at will!”
At that moment the pirate dhow fired two rounds, close together. She had two guns, something they hadn't encountered before. Both rounds were wide or over – but startlingly near. And they shouldn't have been within range, not the range of the bronze muzzle-loaders they usually carried. Plus, a doubling of the firepower of a pirate dhow was worrisome, and could make all the difference in a close-range battle. Sam resolved to stay just out of her her range, and rely on his own advantages in accuracy and rate of fire.
“Radio reports transmission from enemy vessel,” Sam's phone talker said.
The dhow, now headed up to match Albatros's reach on the starboard tack, and was rapidly drawing ahead, clearly deciding to run rather than accept battle. There was a sharp crack from the 37 mm after it had been quickly run out to port; a cloud of dust and splinters from the dhow's starboard quarter showed that it had loaded a solid round from the ready box without waiting for another number two fused frag round to come up from the magazine.
Then a gunner appeared at the forward hatch, cradling a number two round in his arms, and Sam watched in horror as the young man, in his haste, tripped over the hatch coaming and dropped the round. The lad threw himself forward, trying to catch the round before it hit the deck, but he was too late: it went off with a deafening crash, showering everyone nearby with blood, bone fragments, and shrapnel. Cries of pain from all over the foredeck showed where the latter had found targets.
Amazingly, the Gunner, although wounded himself, rallied the 37 mm crew and they got off another round almost immediately, another solid shot into the dhow's hull. SBAs immediately rushed up from sick bay and helped seamen carry their wounded mates below for treatment, priority given to the bloody, mutilated form of the boy who had dropped the round, even though it was obvious that no one could have survived that.
“Gunner: don't use number two fused rounds again,” Sam barked to his phone talker. What they had feared would happen in the haste of battle had in fact occurred in spite of all their precautions. He couldn't risk another use of these rounds until they had somehow, through changes in procedures or to the round itself, made it safer to handle. This meant they had a much lower likelihood of damaging the fleeing dhow's rigging enough to catch up with her. But he meant to try.
Mr. Mooney, without waiting for orders, had immediately upon the beginning of the action ordered sheets trimmed and halyards two-blocked to maximize Albatros's speed.
“Guns, alternate solid shot at her hull and number one frag at her weather deck,” Sam said to his phone talker. The Gunner acknowledged almost immediately.
The dhow drew ahead, the Albatros firing at her continuously, until she was just out of range. Sam persisted in the chase, however, hoping for some accident to the dhow's rig or mistake by her captain that would allow him to catch her. Too, the Albatros had scored multiple hits to the dhow's hull with solid shot. Sam hoped that she was holed enough to keep the dhow's crew from patching and pumping fast enough to stay ahead of the flooding.
Long minutes passed, giving Sam time to mourn his dead and wounded, and bitterly regret that a young sailor died, and his shipmates injured, as a result of avoidable accident rather than in action against the enemy. This prompted him to ask for a preliminary casualty report from sick bay. As time and materials availability had allowed, they had gradually added sound-powered phone stations at key points throughout the schooner, so he had merely to speak to his phone talker to accomplish this.
The report came back promptly but tersely: “Doc sez one KIA, seven wounded, one critically,” the phone talker said. The terseness was forgivable. Sam could imagine how busy Marie and her staff were in sick bay. Since the vessel was still in action, and she could reasonably anticipate more casualties, she would want to stabilize the patients she had as quickly as possible.
Sam had asked for regular range reports from the Gunner, and noted that the dhow, once it had pulled out of the Albatros's range, seemed to have stopped gaining on her. This was curious. The gun-dhow, with her significant speed advantage on this point of sailing, should have been slowly but steadily drawing ahead. He studied her carefully and at length through his telescope, looking for signs of foundering or damage to her rig. She seemed no deeper in the water than normal, and he could see no evidence of damaged rigging – no Irish pennants, no shredded sails.
What he did see was constant adjustment of her sheets – not to increase her speed but to maintain it at a constant rate.
The dhow was clearly staying just out of range while being careful not to draw too far ahead.
The Albatros was being enticed to continue the chase. But to what end?
Sam's growing suspicion was confirmed with a lookout's cry: “Sail ho! Deck, there: sail broad on the starboard beam, approaching. Looks like another two-masted dhow.”
Obviously, pirate dhows were still cruising in pairs, but these two, radio-equipped, could do so without needing to stay in sight of one another. They could thus cast a wider net. The radio traffic they had intercepted was obviously dhow number one summoning her consort to her aid, in the meantime keeping Albatros in sight.
Sam weighed the odds. Two dhows, each armed with a pair of bronze three-inchers – he had to assume the second dhow's armament was similar to the first – with the weather gage, were about to engage him from either side. With their four heavy guns to his one, and their usual willingness to accept very heavy casualties, he didn't see how he could win this one. He could inflict a lot of damage on his attackers, but inevitably, barring some great stroke of luck, the Albatros would be battered into helplessness, taken or sunk. He most definitely couldn't allow her to be taken. He couldn't risk the pirates seizing examples of the Kergs' superior weaponry to copy..
No. It wouldn't do. As bitter a pill as it was to swallow, his duty now was to run away as fast as he could and hope to preserve his ship to fight another day.
“Fall off a couple of points, Mister Mooney. Set the drifter. Prepare to launch the motor sloop, rigged to tow.” Mooney looked at him in surprise, but relayed the orders.
“Double-man the sloop, and make sure her fuel tanks are topped up and there is food and water aboard. This may be a long chase.” Mooney passed those orders along, as well.
Now the Albatros, on a course that would allow her to carry the big, square, full-bellied drifter, and on a heading allowing her to motor-sail, could, jus
t possibly, outrun the dhows.
The leading, and nearest, dhow didn't seem to catch on to the Albatros's intentions right away. The motor sloop had been launched, warmed up, and was taking up the strain on the towline before the pirate vessel too fell off and shaped a course to intercept. Sam thought with pain that it must surprise the pirates to see the Albatros running away. She never had before.
There was a critical few minutes after this change of course during which the Albatros, during her closest point of approach to the lead dhow, was in range of her own gun and those of the pirate. There was a brief and furious exchange of fire. Sam noted with grim satisfaction that the good guys still had a distinct advantage in rate of fire, in spite of the pirates' apparent improvement in efficiency. And the 37 mm crew, pouring frag rounds into the dhow as fast as they could load and fire, and aiming at the one gun the pirates were able to bring into action in time, had the satisfaction of briefly silencing it until the Albatros had managed to run out of range.
Once the motor sloop had taken the strain and was pulling hard, the slight additional speed made the relative wind come forward, and Mr. Mooney had her fall off a bit more, experimenting with different courses and trims until he felt he had the optimal combination for maximum speed. He sent a midshipman aft to stand by the taffrail log, watch in hand, to call out six-minute speed estimates.
The leading dhow was now straining her rig to come up back within range of her own guns. Before she could, the Albatros, with the superior reach of her 37 mm rifle, could punish her badly. But the dhow doggedly forged on, shaking off the numerous hits she took,with solid shot and fragmentation rounds. Then the Albatros managed to increase her lead slightly, putting the pirate out of range of her 37 mm gun as well as the pirates' three-inchers.
The pirate had mounted one of her guns in the windward bow, and occasionally tried the range. Sam noted through his telescope that the pirates had now adopted the sensible addition of a transverse steel plate spanning the gun barrel forward of the breech, offering some protection for the gun crew. Perhaps they had copied the Albatros's similar arrangement. This took away some of the Albatros's advantage in being able to pick off exposed pirate gunners. The mobile mounts for the pirate three-inchers raised the barrel well clear of the bulwarks, causing the gunners to have to stand almost fully erect to serve their weapon, exposing them to the sharpshooters. Now they had some protection. Sam had an odd fleeting notion: he hoped the pirates were hazy on the properties of dissimilar metals in contact, and had mounted the steel plate in direct contact with the bronze barrel. But corrosion, however accelerated, wouldn't help the Albatros just at the moment.
Into Uncharted Seas Page 13
