Wilbur Smith - C09 Birds Of Prey

by C09 Birds Of Prey(Lit)

  The sergeant reported to Colonel Schreuder, "I have found the surgeon's instruments." He displayed the canvas roll. "But, Mijnheer, it contains sharp knives, which could be used as weapons, and the contents of the pitch pots could be used against my men."

  Schreuder looked down at Sir Francis where he squatted, haggard and dishevelled, beside the tree-trunk. "Do I have your word as a gentleman not to use these medical supplies to harm my men?"

  "You have my solemn word," Sir Francis agreed. Schreuder nodded at the sergeant. "Give all of it into Sir Francis's charge," he ordered, and the sergeant handed over the small chest of medical supplies, the tar pot and a bolt of clean cloth that could be used as bandages.

  "Now, Captain," Schreuder picked up the conversation where he had left off, "we have retrieved the plundered spice and timber, but more than half the coin and all of the gold bullion that was in the hold of the Standvastigheid is still missing."

  "The spoils were distributed to my crew." Sir Francis smiled humourlessly. "I do not know what they have done with their share, and most are too dead to be able to enlighten us."

  "We have recovered what I calculate must be the greater part of your crew's share." Schreuder gestured at the barrel containing the valuables collected in such macabre fashion from the battlefield casualties. It was being carried by a party of seamen down -to a waiting pinnace and guarded by Dutch officers with drawn swords. "My officers have searched the huts of your men in the stockade, but there is still no sign of the other half."

  "Much as I would like to be of service to you, I am unable to account to you for the missing portion," Sir Francis told him quietly. At this denial, Hal looked up from ministering to the wounded men, but his father never glanced in his direction.

  "Lord Cumbrae believes that you have cached the missing treasure," Schreuder remarked. "And I agree with him."

  "Lord Cumbrae is a famous liar and cheat," Sir Francis said. "And you, sir, are mistaken in your belief."

  "Lord Cumbrae is of the opinion that were he given the opportunity to question you in person he would be able to extract from you the whereabouts of the missing treasure. He is anxious to try to persuade you to reveal what you know. It is only with the greatest difficulty that I have been able to prevent him doing so."

  Sir Francis shrugged. "You must do as you feel fit, Colonel, but unless I am a poor judge, the torture of captives is not something that a soldier like you would condone. I am grateful for the compassion that you have shown my wounded."

  Schreuder's reply was interrupted by an agonized scream from Ned Tyler as Aboli poured a ladleful of steaming tar into the sword gash in his thigh. As the scream subsided into sobbing, Schreuder went on smoothly. "The tribunal that tries you for piracy at the fort at Good Hope will be headed by our new governor. I have serious doubts that Governor Petrus Jacobus van de Velde will feel himself so constrained to mercy as I am." Schreuder paused and then went on, "By the way, Sir Francis, I am reliably informed that the executioner employed by the Company at Good Hope prides himself on his skills."

  "I will have to give the Governor and his executioner the same answer I gave you, Colonel."

  Schreuder squatted on his heels and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial, almost friendly, tone. "Sir Francis, in our short acquaintance I have formed a high regard for you as a warrior, a sailor and a gentleman. If I were to give evidence before the tribunal that your Letter of Marque existed, and that you were a legitimate privateer, the outcome of your trial might go differently."

  "You must have faith in Governor van de Velde that I lack," Sir Francis replied. "I wish I could further your career for you by producing the missing bullion, but I cannot help you, sir. I know nothing of its whereabouts."

  Schreuder's face stiffened as he stood up. "I have tried to help you. I regret that you reject my offer. However, you are correct, sir. I do not have the stomach to have you put to the question under torture. What is more, I will prevent Lord Cumbrae from taking that task upon himself. I will simply do my duty and deliver you to the mercy of the tribunal at Good Hope. I beg you, siR, will you not reconsider?"

  Sir Francis shook his head. "I regret I cannot help you, sir.

  Schreuder sighed. "Very well. You and your men will be taken aboard the Gull of Moray as soon as she is ready to sail tomorrow morning. The frigate Sonnevogel has other duties in the Indies and she will sail at the same time to go her separate way. The Standvastigheid will remain here under her true commander, Captain Limberger, to take on her cargo of spice and timber before she resumes her interrupted voyage to Amsterdam."

  He turned on his heel and disappeared back into the shadows, in the direction of the spice go down

  When they were aroused by their captors the following morning, four of the wounded, including Daniel and Ned Tyler, were unable to walk and their comrades were forced to carry them. The slave chains allowed little freedom of movement, and it was a clumsy line of men that shambled down to the beach. Each step was hampered by the clanking shackles, so that they could not lift their feet high enough to step over the gunwale of the pinnace, and had to be shoved in by their guards.

  When the pinnace tied onto the foot of the rope ladder down the side of the Gull, the climb that faced the chained men to the deck was daunting and dangerous. Sam Bowles stood at the entry port above them. One of the guards in the pinnace shouted up to him, "Can we loose the prisoners" chains, Boatswain?"

  "Why do you want to do that?" Sam called down.

  "The wounded can't help themselves. The others will not be able to hoist them. They'll not be able to make it up the ladder otherwise." "if they don't make it they're the ones that will be the poorer for it," Sam answered. "His lordship's orders. The manacles must stay on."

  Sir Francis led the climb, his every movement hampered by the string of men linked behind him. The four wounded men, moaning in their delirium, were dead weights that had to be dragged up by force. Big Daniel, in particular, tested all their strength. If they had allowed him to slip from their grasp, he would have plummeted into the pinnace and pulled the whole string of twenty-six men with him, almost certainly capsizing the small boat. Once in the lagoon, the weight of their heavy iron chains would have plucked them all to the bottom, four fathoms down.

  If it had not been for the bull strength of Aboli, they would never have reached the deck of the Gull. Yet even he was completely played out when, at last, he heaved Daniel's inert form over the gunwale and collapsed beside him on the scrubbed white deck. They all lay there gasping and panting, to be roused at last by a tingling peal of laughter.

  With an effort Hal raised his head. On the Gull's quarterdeck, under a canvas awning, a breakfast table was laid. The glass was crystal and the silverware sparkled in the early sunlight. He smelt the heady aroma of bacon, fresh eggs and hot biscuit rising from the silver chafing dish.

  At the head of the table sat the Buzzard. He raised his glass towards that sprawling heap of human bodies in the waist of his ship.

  "Welcome aboard, gentlemen, and your astounding good health!" He drank the toast in whisky, then wiped his ginger whiskers with a damask napkin. "The finest quarters on board have been prepared for you. I wish you a pleasant voyage."

  Katinka van de Velde laughed again, a musical sound. She sat at the Buzzard's left hand. Her head was bare, her golden curls piled high, her violet eyes wide and innocent in the flawless oval of her powdered face, and a beauty spot drawn carefully at the corner of her pretty, painted mouth.

  The Governor sat opposite his wife. He stopped in the act of lifting a silver fork loaded with crisped bacon and cheese to his mouth, but continued to chew. A yellow drop of egg yolk escaped from between his pendulous lips and ran down his chin as he guffawed. "Do not despair, Sir Francis. Remember your family motto. I am sure you will endure." He stuffed the forkful into his mouth, and spoke through it. "This is really excellent fare, fresh from Good Hope. What a pity you cannot join us."

  "How thoughtful of your lordship t
o provide us with entertainment.

  Will these troubadours sing for us, or will they amuse us with more acrobatics?" Katinka asked in Dutch, then made a pretty little moue and tapped Cumbrae's arm with her painted Chinese fan.

  At that moment Big Daniel rolled his head from side to side, thumping it on the planks, and cried out in delirium. The Buzzard howled with laughter. "As you see, they try their best, madam, but their repertoire does not suit every taste." He nodded at Sam Bowles. "Pray show them to their quarters, Master Samuel, and make sure they are well cared for."

  With a knotted rope end, Sam Bowles whipped the prisoners to their feet. They lifted their wounded and shambled down the companion ladder. In the depths of the hull, below the main hold, stretched the low slave deck. When Sam Bowles lifted the hatch that opened into it, the stench that rose to greet them made even him recoil. It was the essence of the suffering of hundreds of doomed souls who had languished here.

  The head space in this deck was no higher than a man's waist so they were forced to crawl down it and drag the wounded men with them. Iron rings were set into the bulkhead, bolted into the heavy oak beam that ran the length of the hold. Sam and his four mates crawled down after them and shackled their chains into the ring bolts When they had finished, the captives were laid out like herrings in a barrel, side by side, secured at wrist and ankle, only just able to sit up, but unable to turn over or to move their limbs more than the few inches that their chains allowed.

  Hal lay with his father on one side and the inert hulk of Big Daniel on the other. Aboli was on the far side of Daniel and Ned Tyler beyond him.

  When the last man had been secured, Sam crawled back to the hatch and smirked down at them. "Ten days to Good Hope with this wind. One pint of water a day for each man, and three ounces of biscuit, when I remember to bring it to you. You're free to shit and piss where you lie. See you at Good Hope, my lovelies."

  He slammed the hatch closed, and they heard him on the far side hammering the locking pins into their seats. When the mallet blows ceased, the sudden quiet was frightening. At first the darkness was complete, but then as their eyes adjusted they could just make out the dark forms of their mates packed around them.

  Hal looked for the source of light and found a small iron grating set into the deck directly above his head. Even without the bars, it would not have been large enough to admit the head of a grown man, and he discounted it immediately as a possible escape route. At least it provided a whiff of fresh air.

  The stench was hard to bear and they all gasped in the suffocating atmosphere. It smelt like a bear-pit. Big Daniel moaned, and the sound loosened their tongues. They started to talk all at once.

  "Love of God, it smells like a shit-house in apricot season down here."

  "Do you think there's a chance of escaping from here, Captain?" , "Of course there is, my bully," one of the men answered for Sir Francis. "When we reach Good Hope."

  "I would give half my share of the richest prize that ever sailed the seven seas for five minutes alone with Sam Bowles."

  "All my share for another five with that bloody Cumbrae."

  "Or that cheese-headed bastard, Schreuder."

  Suddenly Daniel gabbled, "Oh, Mother, I see your lovely face. Come, kiss your little Danny." The plaintive cry disheartened them, and the silence of despair fell over the dark, noisome slave deck. Gradually they sank into a torpor of despondency, broken occasionally by the groans of delirium and the clank of the links as they tried to find a more comfortable position.

  Slowly, the passage of time lost all significance, and none were sure whether it was night or day when the sound of the anchor capstan from the upper deck reverberated through the hull and they heard the faint shouts of the petty-officers relaying the orders to get the Gull under way.

  Hal tried to judge the ship's course and direction by the momentum and heel of the hull, but soon lost track. It was only when the Gull plunged suddenly and began to work with a light, frolicsome motion to the scend of the open sea that he knew they had left the lagoon and passed out through the heads.

  For hour after hour the Gull battled with the sou'-easter to make good her offing. The motion threw them back and forth on the bare planks, sliding on their backs the few inches that their chains allowed before coming up hard on their manacles, and then sliding back the other way. It was a great relief when, at last, she settled into an easier reach.

  "There now. That's a sight better." Sir Francis spoke for them all. "The Buzzard has made his offing. He has come about and we are running free with the sou'-easter abaft our beam, heading west for the Cape."

  As time passed, Hal made some estimate of the passage of the days by the intensity of light from the grating above his head. During the long nights there was a crushing blackness in the slave deck, like that at the bottom of a coal shaft. Then the softest light filtered down on him as the dawn broke, which grew in strength until he could make out the shape of Aboli's dark round head beyond the lighter face of Big Daniel.

  However, even at noon the further reaches of the slave deck were hidden in darkness, from which the sighs and moans, and the occasional whispers of the other men echoed eerily between the oaken bulkheads. Then again the light faded away into that utter darkness to mark the passing of another day.

  On the third morning a whispered message was passed from man to man. "Timothy O'Reilly is dead." He was one of the wounded. he had taken a sword thrust in his chest from one of the green-jackets.

  "He was a good man." Sir Francis voiced his epitaph. "May God rest his soul. I would that we were able to afford him a Christian burial." By the fifth morning, Timothy's corpse added to the miasma of decay and rot that permeated the slave deck and filled their lungs with each breath.

  Often, as Hal lay in a stupor of despair, the scampering grey rats, big as rabbits, clambered over his body. Their sharp claws raised painful scratches across his bare skin. In the end he gave up the hopeless task of trying to drive them away by kicking and hitting out at them, and set himself to endure the discomfort. It was only when one sank its sharp, curved teeth into the back of his hand that he shouted and managed to seize it, squeaking shrilly, by the throat and throttle it with his bare hands.

  When Daniel cried out in pain beside him, he realized then that the rats had found him also, and that he was unable to defend himself from their attacks. After that he and Aboli took turns at sitting up and trying to keep the voracious rodents away from the unconscious man.

  Their fetters prevented them from squatting over the narrow gutter that ran along the foot of the bulkhead, designed to carry away their sewage. Every once in a while Hal heard the spluttering release as one of the men voided where he lay, and immediately afterwards came the fetid stench of fresh faeces in the confined and already musty spaces.

  When Daniel emptied his bladder, the warm liquid spread to flood the planks under Hal and soaked into his shirt and breeches. There was nothing he could do to avoid it, except lift his head from the deck.

  Most days, around what Hal judged to be noon, the locking pins on the hatch were suddenly driven out with thunderous mallet blows. When it was lifted the feeble light that flooded the hold almost blinded them, and they lifted their hands, heavy with chains, to shield their eyes.

  "I have a special posset for you merry gentlemen today," Sam Bowles's voice sang out. "A mug of water from out oldest barrels, with a few little beasties swimming in it and just a drop of my spittle to give it flavour." They heard him spit heartily, and then bray with laughter before he handed down the first pewter mug. Each mugful had to be passed along the deck, from hand to clumsy manacled hand, and when one was spilled there was none to replace it.

  "One for each of our gentlemen. That's twenty-six mugs, and no more," Sam Bowles told them cheerily.

  Big Daniel was now too far gone to drink unaided, and Aboli had to lift his head while Hal dribbled water between his lips. The other sick men had to be treated in the same way. Much. of the water was l
ost when it ran out of their slack mouths, and it was a long-drawn-out business. Sam Bowles lost patience before they were half through. "None of you want any more? Well, I'll be off, then." And he slammed the hatch closed and drove home the pins, leaving most of the captives pleading vainly, through parched throats and flaking lips for their share. But he was unrelenting, and they were forced to wait another day for their next ration.

  After that Aboli filled his own mouth with water from the mug, placed his lips over Daniel's and forced it into the unconscious man's mouth. They did the same for the other wounded. This method was quick enough to satisfy even Sam Bowles, and less of the precious fluid was lost.

  Sam Bowles chuckled when one of the men shouted up at him, "For God's sweet sake, Boatswain, there's a dead man down here. Timothy O'Reilly is stinking to the high heavens. Can you not smell him?"

  He answered, "I'm glad you told me. That means he will not be using his water ration. It will be only twenty-five mugs I'll be serving from tomorrow."

  Daniel was dying. He no longer groaned or thrashed about in delirium. He lay like a corpse. Even his bladder had dried up and no longer emptied itself spontaneously on the reeking planks on which they lay. Hal held his head and whispered to him, trying to cajole him into staying alive. "You can't give up now. Hold on just a while longer and we will be at the Cape before you know it. All the sweet fresh water you can drink, pretty slave girls to nurse you. just think on that, Danny."