INTO UNCHARTED SEAS
by
E. C. Williams
Book Three of the Westerly Gales Saga
A Science Fiction Novel
Copyright 2012 by E. C. Williams
All Rights Reserved
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I'm grateful to my brother, Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Williams, U. S. Air Force (retired), for his helpful advice on aviation in the Westerly Gales universe.
I also appreciate the helpful editorial comments of Mrs. Eileen Yearwood Waite.
As always, any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the author alone.
DEDICATION: with love, to Sue, as always.
Table of Contents
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Dawn in the southern Indian Ocean. A seventy-five foot dhow, single-masted, runs before a gentle south-easterly breeze.
To the sort of observer likely to sight her in these waters, she would appear to be an innocent little Zanzibari cargo carrier, perhaps on her way home after delivering a cargo of supplies to the new Caliphate settlement on the island of Anjouan, near the ruins of the ancient town of Mutsamadu. Or so her skipper, Lieutenant David Schofield of the Republic of Kerguelen Navy, most fervently hoped, since he was overwhelmingly outgunned by any one of the big war-dhows that roamed these waters , usually in pairs, preying on Kerguelenian shipping,
His little command was actually the RKS Scorpion, captured, then renamed, refitted, and commissioned into the RKN especially for the current mission.
Like her namesake, Scorpion was certainly small, and if her disguise was penetrated, she could inflict a deadly sting, in the form of two 25 mm guns, a squad of seaman-gunners armed with repeating rifles, and the balance of her crew with shotguns and pistols.
But in a battle with a big two-masted pirate dhow, or more probably two of them, armed with long bronze three-inchers, she might inflict a lot of pain but would inevitably be squashed like a bug.
And once the pirates became aware of the recent utter destruction of their settlement on Anjouan by two Kerguelenian naval vessels – at the time, the only two warships of the tiny Kerg navy – their vessels would be on full alert for any strange sail on the horizon.
But there was no way of knowing whether the Caliphate had yet learned of this defeat. Although the pirates had acquired the use of radio communications, probably with captured sets and the aid of Kerguelenian renegades, the Kerg squadron's radio operators had detected no enemy transmissions during the engagement.
Schofield had taken part in that horribly bloody battle – the “Battle at Anchor” the hands called it, since it had taken place with both sides moored, the two Kerg vessels having bottled up four dhows in the harbor. He had been Executive Officer and then acting CO of the RKS Joan of Arc after her Captain, Commander Bill Ennis, had been wounded early in the battle. The brutal fight had taken place at point-blank range, and the Kerguelenian vessels, the other being the squadron flag, Albatros,, had suffered more than fifty percent casualties. But the Caliphate ships had been utterly destroyed: sunk or driven aground and burned, with only a handful of survivors who swam ashore to hide in the bush. There, Dave hoped, they would either starve or suffer the vengeance of the natives, whom they had horribly abused during their short occupation of the island.
Although it had long become clear that the undeclared guerre de course carried on by the Caliphate against Kerguelenian shipping and settlements was in fact a war between two states, the Kergs had early fallen into the habit of referring to the raiders as “pirates”. The fact that the few Caliphate prisoners they had managed to take and interrogate strongly disliked that term, insisting that they were instead “warriors of Allah”, only reinforced the practice.
Dave was getting used to his command – and it took some getting used to, being a very different kind of vessel from the schooners he had served on since he had first gone to sea as a cadet in the merchant marine. The dhow's quadrilateral lateen sail, with its very long yard, was tricky to handle in tacking, and it couldn't be reefed. Instead she carried four different sails for different tacks and wind conditions. There were two full-sized sails for daytime and fair-weather sailing, and two smaller ones for night or foul weather. Of each pair, one was cut flat, for going to windward, and one full-bellied, for reaching and running. Apparently, before her capture, the dhow had routinely reduced sail for the night regardless of the weather. This made sense, given the small crew with which she had been manned when taken – only nine men, master included. But Dave had three times as many hands, and could call out the watch below to change sails quickly if the wind got up or a squall threatened, so he routinely carried the big running sail all night during the fair weather and steady breezes typical of the southern Indian Ocean.
When the sun was just clear of the horizon, the watch was called and all hands except the helmsman and the lookouts turned-to, scrubbing down the deck and every other accessible surface. The little vessel had been filthy and verminous when captured but was now pristine, the result of much work by her new crew, urged on profanely by her bosun's mates. Built entirely of Indian teak and unpainted, when scrubbed clean she was a pleasant golden-brown color.
The deck was crowded with the six-oared dory replacing the little skiff that had been the dhow's only boat when captured. The new boat sat in an improvised cradle amidships, lashed down. Since there were no davits, nor any convenient way to fit them, getting the boat over the side would be an all-hands evolution, relying mainly on muscle power. Although built on Nosy Be, it was of the pattern Kerg fishermen used for inshore work back home.
The crew was strangely dressed in loose gowns and headcloths, an approximation of pirate garb. This disguise was supposed to add to the dhow's ostensibly innocent character, but it wouldn't stand close scrutiny. It was imperative to give any war dhow encountered no reason for suspicion, no excuse to hail or come close aboard for a better look.
Dave was dressed like his crew. He had come to appreciate the coolness and comfort of the gown in the tropical heat, but had trouble keeping the headcloth tied and secure. There must be a trick to it, he thought, but so far he hadn't discovered it. And it didn't do much to keep the sun out of his eyes, making him miss the broad-brimmed straw hat that was the Kerg seaman's customary headgear in the tropics.
Warrant Gunner Landry appeared on deck and threaded his way through the line of seamen scrubbing the deck, a mug of coffee in each hand. At the foot of the ladder to the raised poop, he paused and asked formally, “Permission to come on the quarterdeck, sir?”
“Certainly, Chief. I hope that second coffee's for me.” Although newly promoted to warrant, and thus entitled to the officer's “mister”, Landry preferred to be addressed by his previous rank. He had been the very first chief petty officer in the Kerguelen Navy, and was the squadron's acknowledged expert on landing party tactics, as well as a forceful and effective leader.
“Of course, Skipper. A fresh pot – Cookie brewed it just now.”
Dave took the proffered mug and sipped the strong black brew gratefully. He had been on watch since 0400, and needed it. He, like most Kerguelenians, had never tasted coffee back home on the Rock, where it was an expensive luxury. But it was much c
heaper in the tropics, and had become a daily part of naval routine. All hands had come to look forward to it nearly as much as they did the daily liquor issue.
“Skipper, the hands are complaining that their hammocks are musty. They say that airing bedding at night, for just one watch, doesn't do the trick – that the sunlight is what freshens it. They want your permission to air bedding during the day. They promise to strike it below instantly if an enemy vessel is sighted.”
Dave had ordered bedding to be aired only after dark because he was afraid the sight of two dozen hammocks hung out on lines stretching fore and aft would give away their true nature to any pirate vessel they encountered. Caliphate seamen didn't sleep in hammocks. Judging from the Scorpion's layout when captured, they didn't even sleep below. She had one tiny cabin under the poop, apparently the master's, and a single big cargo hold that took up almost the entire length of the vessel except for small stores lockers. The hold had been nearly filled with a cargo of bagged rice when she was captured. It appeared that Caliphate mariners – or at least those manning smaller vessels – slept on deck in all weathers. During the quick refit she had undergone prior to commissioning into the RKN, an orlop deck for berthing had been added in the forward part of the hold, with a scuttle for fresh air. But the ventilation left much to be desired, and with no shower or bathing facilities for the crew, the berthing deck had an odorous atmosphere that defied any amount of scrubbing out with sea-water.
Dave considered the request. There was already one thing they had to be sure to strike below on the close approach of an enemy vessel – the generator mast. Fitted on the stern all the way aft, it might have passed for a yawl-rigged vessel's mizzen mast, except for the obvious bulge of the vertical-shaft wind turbine atop it. It was essential to keep it rigged for as much of the time as possible, in order to top up the radio's batteries, the radio being the only electrical device on the vessel. There had been no time in Hell-ville to install a motor generator set, nor was one immediately available, so wind power it had to be, as unsatisfactory as that was in the light breezes of the tropics – so unlike home waters, where the wind blew strongly and constantly.
He couldn't think of a good reason to deny the present request. The radioman and his mate could take care of the generator mast, and the entire crew would be on deck during daylight hours – as Landry had pointed out, striking bedding below would be the work of a few seconds.
“Okay, Chief. But any time we sight another vessel in these waters, it's bound to be a pirate. So all bedding has to vanish instantly. Make that clear, will you?”
“Roger that, Skipper.”
Landry, as the next senior officer after Dave, was the Scorpion's XO, and thus such housekeeping matters were part of his responsibilities.
Midshipman and Acting Lieutenant Todd Cameron, the third, and only other, officer of the dhow, came topside, also carrying a coffee mug, and approached the quarterdeck. His appearance told Dave that it was almost 0800, because Cameron was his relief. It was Dave's privilege as commanding officer to leave himself off the watch bill if he chose, but that would have meant Cameron and Landry standing watch and watch. Since it was usual in the Navy that everyone, regardless of rank or watch schedule, was required to be up and working during the day, the XO and the mid would have gotten very little sleep in that event. The hands also stood watch and watch, but during night watches in this steady fair weather only the lookouts and helmsmen, duties that rotated every thirty minutes, had to be awake and alert. Everyone else was free to find a soft plank and take a nap. Except, of course, for the officer of the watch, who had to remain alert for the entire four hours.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Morning, Gadget. Sleep well?”
“Like a rock, sir, thanks.”
Dave turned over the watch to Cameron: “On a starboard tack and a broad reach, course varying between north-west and north-north west, no traffic, Condition Bravo set.”
The helm, masthead lookout, and stern lookout reported being relieved.
“Now let's grab a sun-line before I go down to breakfast, Gadget. Fetch our sextants.” Cameron darted below to the master's cabin, which doubled as the chart room on the miniscule Scorpion, returning with both instruments. They took out their watches – mariner's pocket timepieces, with a button to stop the hands at the moment of the sight – and each brought the sun down to the horizon through the dark sun shade on their sextant scopes, and clicked the stop button on their watches at the moment the sun's lower limb was precisely resting on the horizon. They both then went below to compare their watches to the chronometer, work out their sights, and plot them. This resulted in two parallel lines of position, very close together – a good result, and not surprising to Dave since Cameron had a chief mate's ticket and the time to sit for the master's exam when next he found himself on Kerguelen. A captain's license was the minimum professional qualification to be a lieutenant in the Navy, so once he had his master's ticket he was eligible for the lieutenant's board, necessary to make his acting appointment permanent.
Around the middle of his watch, Cameron would take another sun line. At local apparent noon, Dave would join him again in determining latitude by the sun, and they would advance the sun lines using their estimated course and speed to create a running fix: the noon position. Normally, taking the noon sight was a ritual in which every officer participated, but Landry, although a seasoned mariner, had advanced in rank “through the hawsepipe” – that is, from humble beginnings as an apprentice seaman – and had never learned celestial navigation.
As Dave went down to write up the log, and then have his breakfast, Midshipman Cameron, with the assistance of the lee helmsman, was estimating the dhow's speed through the water by means of a chip log. The Scorpion lacked that modern convenience, the mechanical taffrail log.
In his cramped sleeping cabin, Dave finished tidying away the charts that covered his little table just as the seaman who doubled as his steward brought down his breakfast. It consisted of salt fish, rice, and a small banana, very dark-skinned and very soft.
“Cookie sez that's the last banana, and the last of the fresh fruit,” said the seaman, an AB named Best. “He just opened a barrel of pickled Kerg cabbage, he sez, if you'd druther.”
Dave picked up the banana by the stem end between thumb and forefinger. The skin cracked, and dark yellow goo dripped out.
“I'll have the cabbage. And just toss this over the side for me, will you, Best?”
The Scorpion was just four days out of Hell-ville. She should have ample fresh stores left. But the little dhow had no purser, and “nobody's job gets done by nobody”, as his old grand-dad used to say. Clearly, Landry, as XO, should have paid more attention, but it was hard to blame him. Ordering stores had never formed any part of his duties before, and he, like Dave and Cameron, had been frantically busy trying to meet the Commodore's impossible deadline for getting her underway on her mission. The dhow's cook hadn't even been appointed until after she sailed. He was an AB, the only man who spoke up when Landry asked the crew if anyone knew how to make coffee. (Coffee was one of the two items, the other being rum, with which Dave could be certain they were amply supplied – the entire crew would have reminded the XO to order plenty of both.)
Dave made a mental note to have Landry inventory the dry stores and fresh water, to make sure the dhow had at least minimal food and drink for the accomplishment of her mission – which, if all went well, should take not much longer than a month. If they were short ... he'd just deal with that if and when he had to. One thing was certain: the mission couldn't be aborted merely because of a shortage of food due to his failure to plan ahead, or the Commodore would have Schofield hanged, drawn, and quartered.
Well, busted down to ordinary seaman, anyway.
Best came back with a heaping plate of Kerguelen cabbage, hot in both senses of the word: steaming and spicy with onions and peppers. Dave ate the entire serving with relish. Kerg settlers around the Southern Oc
ean and in the southern IO had lost their taste for the pungent leafy vegetable, native to the Rock, but Dave had grown up on it, eating it fresh ashore and pickled at sea. Long before the Troubles, during the first age of sail, it had been the Southern Ocean mariner's specific against the potentially-deadly vitamin deficiency sailors called “scurvy”. Mechanical refrigeration had done away with its importance for a couple of centuries, but now it had resumed its former critical role in a seaman's diet.
After breakfast he went on deck, where he found the crew at various tasks. Much of it was busy-work, the Scorpion being considerably over-crewed for her size. A couple of seamen handy with their knives were carving elaborate name-boards for display when in port, and from the looks of things, the Scorpion would return to Nosy Be with every vertical stanchion on the quarterdeck decorated with turk's heads, and every horizontal railing flaunting McNamara's lace.
Dave met Chief Landry as the latter was coming out of the hold by way of the forward hatch, and started to task him with inventorying the dhow's stores. Landry interrupted him with “Just finished that, Skipper. It worried me that we're out of fresh fruit and vegetables already. But we've got plenty of fresh water and salt fish, adequate rum and coffee, and enough rice to carry us round the world – most of the cargo she carried when she was captured was simply left in the hold. We'll have to ration the pickled cabbage to make it last, but, no longer than the mission should take, there's no danger of scurvy even if we run out.”
“That's good news. I was a bit worried, but it sounds like we'll be OK.”
“I apologize for not thinking of this back in Nosy Be, Skipper. I should have been on top of the stores issue.”
“No worries, Chief. We don't have a purser, and I should have assigned someone...”
“No, sir,” replied Landry firmly. “It's the XO's job to take care of things like this. I let you down, Captain, but I promise it won't happen again.”
Into Uncharted Seas (Westerly Gales) Page 1
