Текст книги "Birds of Prey"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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"If we could open her up."

"If Big Daniel catches you at it, you're in bad trouble." "What's he going to do? Draw and quarter us? He aims to do that already."

Sam worked in the darkness for a while and then growled, "If I had something to prise this planking open." "I'm sitting on some loose timber."

"Let's have a piece of it here."

They were all working together now, and at last they forced the end of a sturdy wooden strut through the gap in the bulkhead. Using it as a lever they threw their weight on it together. The wood tore with a crack and Sam thrust his arm into the opening. "There's open space beyond. Could be a way out."

They all pushed forward for a chance to tear at the edges of the opening, ripping out their fingernails and driving splinters into the palms of their hands in their haste.

"Back! Get back!" Sam told them, and wriggled headfirst into the opening. As soon as they heard him crawling away on the far side they scrambled through after him.

Groping his way forward Sam choked as the fiery reek of pepper burned his throat. They were in the hold that contained the spice casks. There was a little more light in here: it came in through the gaps where the hatch coaming had not been secured.

They could hardly make out the huge casks, each taller than a man, stacked in ranks, and there was no room to crawl over the top, for the deck was too low. However, they could just squeeze between them, but it was a hazardous passage.

The heavy– casks shifted slightly with the action of the ship. They scraped and thumped on the timbers of the deck and fretted against the ropes that restrained them. A man would be crushed like a cockroach if he were caught between them.

Sam Bowles was the smallest. He crawled ahead and the others followed. Suddenly a piercing scream rang through the hold and froze them all.

"Quiet, you stupid bastard!" Sam turned back in fury. "You'll have "em down on us."

"My arm!" screamed Peter Law. "Get it off me."

One of the huge casks had lifted with the roll of the hull and then come down again, its full weight trapping the man's arm against the deck. It was still sliding and pounding down on his limb, and they could hear the bones in his forearm and elbow crushing like dry wheat between millstones. He was screeching in hysteria and there was no quieting him. pain had driven him beyond all reasoning.

Sam crawled back and reached his side. "Shut your mouth!" He grabbed Peter's shoulder and heaved, trying to drag him clear. But the arm was jammed, and Peter screamed all the louder.

"Ain't nothing for it," Sam growled, and from around his waist he pulled the length of rope that served him as a belt. He dropped a loop over the other man's head and drew the noose tight round his throat. He leaned back on it, anchoring both feet between his victim's shoulder blades, and pulled with all his strength. Abruptly Peter's wild screams were cut off. Sam kept the noose tight for some time after the struggles had ceased, then freed it and retied it about his waist. "I had to do it," he muttered to the others. "Better one man dead than all of us."

No one spoke, but they followed Sam as he crawled forward, leaving the strangled corpse to be crushed to mincemeat by the shifting casks.

"Give me a hand here," Sam said and the others boosted him up onto one of the casks below the hatch.

"There's naught but a piece of canvas "tween us and the deck now," he whispered triumphantly, and reached up to touch the tightly stretched cover.

"Come on, let's get out of here," Ed Broom whispered. "Still broad day out there." Sam held him as he tried to loosen the ropes that held the canvas cover in place. "Wait for dark. Won't be long now."

Gradually the light filtering down through the chinks around the canvas cover dulled and faded. They could hear the ship's bell tolling the watches.

"End of the last dog watch," said Ed. "Let's go now."

"Give it a while more," Sam urged. After another hour, he nodded.

"Loose those sheets."

"What we going to do out there?" Now that it was time to move they were fearful. "You'll not be thinking of trying to take the ship?"

"Nay, you donkey. I've had enough of your bloody Captain Franky. Find anything that floats and then it's over the side for me. The land's not far off."

"What of the sharks?"

"Captain Franky bites worse than any sodding shark you'll meet out there."

No one argued with that.

They freed a corner of the canvas, and Sam lifted the flap and peered out. "All clear. There's some of the empty water casks at the foot of the foremast. They'll do us just Jack-a-dandy."

He wriggled out from under the canvas and darted across the deck. The others followed, one at a time, and helped him tear at the lashing that held the empty casks in place. Within seconds they had two clear.

"Together now, lads," Sam whispered, and they trundled the first across the deck. They heaved up the cask between them and flung it over the rail, ran back and grabbed a second.

"Hey! You men! What are you doing?" The challenge from close at hand shocked them all and they turned pale faces to look back. They all recognized Hal.

"It's Franky's whelp!" one cried, and they dropped the cask and scampered for the ship's side. Ed Broom was first over. He dived headlong, with Peter Miller and John Tate close behind him.

Hal took a moment to realize what they were up to, and then bounded forward to intercept Sam Bowles. He was the ringleader, the most guilty of the gang, and Hal tackled him as he reached the ship's rail.

"Father!" he shouted, loud enough for his voice to carry to every quarter of the deck. "Father, help me!"

Locked chest to chest they struggled. Hal fastened a head-lock on him, but Sam threw back his head then butted forward in the hope of breaking Hal's nose. But Big Daniel had taught Hal his wrestling, and he had been ready. he dropped his chin on his chest so that his skull clashed with Sam's. Both men were half stunned by the impact, and broke from each other's grip.

Instantly Sam lurched for the rail but, on his knees, Hal grabbed at his legs. "Father!" he screamed again. Sam tried to kick him off but Hal held on grimly. Then Sam looked up and saw Sir Francis Courtney charging down from the quarterdeck. His sword was out and the blade flashed in the starlight.

"Hold hard, Hal! I'm coming!"

There was no time for Sam to free the rope belt from around his middle, and drop the loop over Hal's head. Instead he reached down and locked both hands around his throat. He was a small man, but his fingers were work-toughened, hard as iron marlin spikes He found Hal's windpipe and blocked it off ruthlessly.

The pain choked Hal, and his grip loosened on Sam's legs. He seized the man's wrists, trying to break his stranglehold, but Sam placed one foot on his chest, kicked him over backwards, then darted to the side of the ship. Sir Francis aimed a sword cut at him as he ran up, but Sam ducked under it and dived over the rail.

"The treacherous vermin will get clear away!" Sir Francis howled.

"Boatswain, call all hands to tack ship. We will go back to pick them up."

Sam Bowles was driven deep by the force with which he hit the water, and the shock of the cold drove the wind from his lungs. He felt himself drowning, but fought and clawed his way up. At last his head broke the surface, he sucked in a lungful of air and felt the dizziness, and the weakness in his limbs, pass.

He looked up at the hull of the ship, trundling majestically past him, and then he was left in her wake, which glistened slick and oily in the starlight. That was the highway that would guide him back to the cask. He must follow it before the swells wiped it away and left him with no signpost in the darkness. His feet were bare and he wore only a ragged cotton shirt and his canvas petticoats, which would not encumber his movements. He struck out overarm for, unlike most of his fellows, he was a strong swimmer.

Within a dozen strokes he heard a voice in the darkness nearby. "Help me, Sam Bowles!" He recognized Ed Broom's wild cries. "Give me a hand, shipmate, or I'm done for."

Sam stopped to tread water and, in the starlight, saw the splashes of Ed's struggles. Beyond him he saw something else lift on the crest of a dark swell, something black and round.

The cask!

But Ed was between him and this promise of survival. Sam started swimming again, but he sheered away from Ed Broom. It was dangerous to come too close to a drowning man, for he would always seize you and hang on with a death grip, until he had taken you down with him.

"Please, Sam! Don't leave me." Ed's voice was growing fainter.

Sam reached the floating cask and got a handhold on the protruding spigot. He rested a while then roused himself as another head bobbed up beside him. "Who's that?" he gasped.

"It's me, John Tate," the swimmer blurted out, coughing up sea water as he tried to find a hold on the barrel.

Sam reached down and loosened the rope belt from around his waist.

He used it to take a turn around the spigot and thrust his arm through the loop. John Tate grabbed at the loop too.

Sam tried to push him away. "Leave it! It's mine." But John's grip was desperate with panic and after a minute Sam let him be. He could not afford to squander his own strength in wrestling with a bigger man.

They hung together on the rope in a hostile truce. "What happened to Peter Miller? "John Tate demanded, "Bugger Peter Miller!" snarled Sam.

The water was cold and dark, and both men imagined what might be lurking beneath their feet. A pack of the monstrous tiger sharks always followed the ship in these latitudes, to pick up the offal and contents of the latrine buckets as they were emptied overboard. Sam had seen one of these fearsome creatures as long as the Lady Edwina's pinnace and he thought about it now. He felt his lower body cringe and tremble with cold and the dread of those serried ranks of fangs closing over it to shear him in two, as he might bite into a ripe apple.

"Look!" John Tate choked as a wave hit him in the face and flooded his open mouth. Sam raised his head and saw a dark, mountainous shape loom out of the night close by.

"Bloody Franky come back to find us," he growled, through chattering teeth. They watched in horror as the galleon bore down on them, growing larger with each second until she seemed to blot out all the stars and they could hear the voices of the men on her deck.

"Do you see anything there, Master Daniel?" That was Sir Francis's hail.

"Nothing, Captain," Big Daniel's voice boomed from the bows. Looking down onto the black, turbulent water it would be nigh on impossible to make out the dark wood of the cask or the two heads bobbing beside it.

They were hit by the bow wave the galleon threw up as she passed and were left twisting and bobbing in her wake as her stern lantern receded into the darkness.

Twice more during the night they saw its glimmer, but each time the ship passed further from them. Many hours later, as the dawn light strengthened, they looked with trepidation for Resolution, but she was nowhere in sight. She must have given them up for drowned and headed off on her original course. Stupefied with cold and fatigue, they hung on to their precarious handhold.

"There's the land," Sam whispered, as a swell lifted them high, and they could make out the dark shoreline of Africa. "It's so close you could swim to it easy."

John Tate made no reply but stared at him sullenly through eyes scalded red and swollen.

"It's your best chance. Strong young fellow like you. Don't worry about me." Sam's voice was rough with salt. "You'll not get rid of me that easy, Sam Bowles," John grated, and Sam fell silent again, husbanding his strength, for the cold had sapped him almost to his limit. The sun rose higher and they felt it on their heads, first as a gentle warmth that gave them new strength and then like the flames of an open furnace that seared their skin and dazzled and blinded them with its reflection off the sea around them.

The sun climbed higher, but the land came no closer. the current bore them inexorably parallel to the rocky headlands and white beaches. Idly Sam noticed a patch of cloud shadow that passed close by them, moving darkly across the surface of the water. Then the shadow turned and came back, moving against the wind, and Sam stirred and lifted his head. There was no cloud in the aching blue vault of the sky to cast such a shadow. Sam looked down again and concentrated his full attention on that dark presence on the sea. A swell lifted the cask so high that he could look down upon it.

"Sweet Jesus!" he croaked, through cracked salt-seared lips. The water was as clear as a glass of gin, and he had seen a great dappled shape move beneath, the dark zebra stripes upon its back. He screamed.

John Tate lifted his head. "What is it? The sun's got you, Sam Bowles." He stared into Sam's wild eyes, then turned his head slowly to follow their gaze. Both men saw the massive forked tail swing ponderously from side to side, driving the long body forward. It was coming up towards the surface and the tip of the tall dorsal fin broke through, only to the length of a man's finger, the rest still hidden deep beneath.

Shark! "John Tate hissed. "Tiger!" He kicked frantically, trying to turn the cask to interpose Sam between himself and the creature.

"Stay still," Sam snarled. "He's like a cat. If you move he'll come for you."

They could see its eye, small for such girth and length of body. It stared at them implacably as it began the next circle. Round it went, and round again, each circle narrower, with the cask at its centre.

"Bastard's hunting us like a stoat after a partridge."

"Shut your mouth. Don't move," Sam moaned, but he could no longer control his terror. His sphincter loosened, and he felt the fetid warm rush under his petticoats as involuntarily his bowels emptied. Immediately the creature's movements became more excited and its tail beat to a faster rhythm as it tasted his excrement. The dorsal fin rose to its full height above the surface, as long and curved as the blade of a harvester's scythe.

The shark's tail beat the surface white and foamy as it drove forward until its snout crashed into the side of the cask. Sam watched in terror as a miraculous transformation came over the sleek head. The upper lip bulged outwards as the wide jaws gaped. The ranks of fangs were thrust forward, fanning open, and clashed against the side of the wooden cask.

Both men panicked and scrabbled at their damaged raft, trying to lift their lower bodies clear of the water. They were screaming incoherently, clawing wildly at the barrel staves and at each other.

The shark backed off and started another of those terrible circles. Beneath the staring eye the mouth was a grinning crescent. Now the thrashing legs of the struggling men gave it a new focus, and it surged in again, its broad back thrusting aside the waters.

John Tate's shriek was cut off abruptly, but his mouth was still wide open, so that Sam looked down his pink gulping throat. No sound came from it but a soft hiss of expelled breath. Then he was jerked beneath the surface. His left wrist was still twisted into the loop of line and, as he was pulled under, the cask bobbed and ducked like a cork.

"Leave go! Sam howled as he was thrown around, the rope biting deep into his own wrist. Suddenly the cask flew to the surface, John Tate's wrist still twisted into the hight of line. A dark roseate cloud spread to disco lour the surface around them.

Then John's head broke out. He made a harsh, cawing sound, and his bloodstained spittle sprayed into Sam's eyes. His face was icy white as his life's blood drained from him. The shark came surging back and, beneath the surface, latched onto John's lower body, worrying and shaking him so that the damaged cask was again pulled under. As it shot once more to the surface, Sam sucked in a breath, and tugged at John's wrist. "Get away!" he screamed at both man and shark. "Get away from me." With the strength of a madman, he pulled the loop free and he kicked at the other man's chest, pushing him clear, screaming all the while" "Get away!"

John Tate did not resist. His eyes were still wide open but although his lips writhed, no sound came from them. "Below the surface his body had been bitten away below the waist, and his blood turned the waters dark red. The shark seized him once again, then swam off, gulping down lumps of John Tate's flesh.

The damaged cask had taken in water and now floated low, but this gave it a stability it had lacked when it rode high and lightly. At the third attempt Sam dragged himself up onto it. He draped both arms and legs over it, straddling it. The cask's balance was precarious and he dared not lift even his head for fear of upsetting it and being rolled back into the sea. After a while he saw the great dorsal fin pass before his eyes as the creature came back once more to the cask. He dared not lift his head to follow the narrowing circles, so he closed his eyes and tried to shut his mind to the beast's presence.

Suddenly the cask lurched under him and his resolve was forgotten.

His eyes flew wide and he shrieked. But after having bitten into the wood the shark was backing away. Twice more it returned, each time nudging the cask with its grotesque snout. However, each attempt was less determined, perhaps because it had assuaged its appetite on John Tate's carcass and was now discouraged by the taste and smell of the splinters of wood. Eventually Sam saw it turn and move away, its tall fin wagging from side to side as it swam up-current.

He lay unmoving, draped over the cask, riding the salty belly of the ocean, rising and falling to her thrusts like an exhausted lover. The night fell over him, and now he could not have moved even if he had wished to. He fell into delirium and bouts of oblivion.

He dreamed that it was morning again, that he had survived the night. He dreamed that he heard human voices near at hand. He dreamed that when he opened his eyes he saw a tall ship, hove to close alongside. He knew it was fantasy for, in a twelve-month span, fewer than two dozen ships rounded this remote cape at the end of the world. Yet, as he watched, a boat was lowered from the ship's side and rowed towards him. Only when he felt rough hands seize his legs did he realize dully that this was no dream.

The Resolution edged in towards the land with only a feather of canvas set and the crew standing ready for the order to whip it off and furl it on her masts.

Sir Francis's eyes darted from the sails to the land close ahead. He listened intently to the chant of the leadsman as he swung the line and let the weight drop ahead of their bows. As the ship passed over it, and the line came straight up and down, he read the sounding. "By the deep twenty!" "Top of the tide in an hour." Hal looked up from the slate. "And full moon in three days. She'll be making springs."

"Thank you, pilot," Sir Francis said, with a touch of sarcasm. Hal was only performing his duty, but the lad was not the only one aboard who had pored for hours over the almanac and the tables. Then Sir Francis relented. "Get up to the masthead, lad. Keep your eyes wide open."

He watched Hal race up the shrouds, then glanced at the helm and said quietly, "Larboard a point, Master Ned." "A point to larboard it is, Captain." With his teeth Ned moved the stern of his empty clay pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other. He, too, had seen the white surge of reef at the entrance to the channel.

The land was so close now that they could make out the individual branches of the trees that grew tall on the rocky heads that guarded the entrance. "Steady as she goes," Sir Francis said, as the Resolution crept forward between these towering cliffs of rock. He had never seen this entrance marked on any chart that he had either captured or purchased. This coast was depicted always as forbidding and dangerous, with few safe anchorages for a thousand miles north from Table Bay at Good Hope. Yet as the Resolution thrust deeper into the green water channel, a lovely broad lagoon opened ahead of her, surrounded on all sides by high hills, densely forested.

"Elephant Lagoon!" Hal exulted at the masthead. It was over two months since last they had sailed from this secret sally port As if to justify the name that Sir Francis had given this harbour, there came a clarion blast from the beach below the forest.

Hal laughed with pleasure as he picked out on the beach four huge grey shapes. They stood shoulder to shoulder in a solid rank, facing the ship, their ears spread wide. Their trunks were raised straight and high, the nostrils at the tips questing the air for the scent of this strange apparition they saw coming towards them. The bull elephant lifted his long yellow tusks and shook his head until his ears clapped like the tattered grey canvas of an unfurling main sail. He trumpeted again.

In the ship's bows, Aboli returned the greeting, raising his hand above his head in salute and calling out in the Lnguage that only Hal could understand, "I see you, wise old man. Go in peace, for I am of your totem and I mean you no harm."

At the sound of his voice the elephants backed away from the water's edge, then turned as one and headed back into the forest at a shambling run. Hal laughed again, at Aboli's words and to watch the great beasts go, trampling and shaking the forest with their might.

Then he concentrated once more on picking out the sandbanks and shoals, and in calling down directions to his father on the quarterdeck. The Resolution followed the meandering channel down the length of the lagoon until she came out into a wide green pool. The last scrap of her canvas was stripped and furled on her yards, and her anchor splashed into its depths. She swung round gently and snubbed at her anchor chain.

She lay only fifty yards off the beach, hidden behind a small island in the lagoon, so that she was concealed from the casual scrutiny of a passing ship looking in through the entrance between the heads. The way was scarcely off her before Sir Francis was shouting his orders. "Carpenter! Get the pinnaces assembled and launched."

Before noon the first was lowered from the deck to the water, and ten men went down into her with their ditty bags. Big Daniel took charge of the oarsmen, who rowed them down the lagoon and put them ashore at the foot of the rocky heads. Through his telescope Sir Francis watched them climb the steep elephant path to the summit. From there they would keep a lookout and warn him of the approach of any strange sail.

"On the morrow we will move the culver ins to the entrance and set them up in stone emplacements to cover the channel," he told Hal. "Now, we will celebrate our arrival with fresh fish for our dinner. Get out the hooks and lines. Take Aboli and four men with you in the other pinnace. Dig some crabs from the beach and bring me back a load of fish for the ship's mess."

Standing in the bows as the pinnace was rowed out into the channel, Hal peered down into the water. It was so clear that he could see the sandy bottom. The lagoon teemed with fish and shoal after shoal sped away before the boat. Many were as long as his arm, some as long as the spread of both arms.

When they anchored in the deepest part of the channel, Hal dropped a hand line over the side, the hooks baited with crabs they had taken from their holes on the sandy beach. Before it touched the bottom, the bait was seized with such rude power that before he could check it the line scorched his fingers. Leaning back against the line he brought it in hand over hand, and swung a flapping, glistening body of purest silver over the gunwale.

While it still thumped upon the deck and Hal struggled to twist the barbed hook from its rubbery lip, Aboli shouted with excitement and heaved back on his own line. Before he could swing his fish over the side, all the other sailors were laughing and straining to pull heavy darting fish aboard.

Within the hour the deck was knee-deep in dead fish and they were all smeared to the eyebrows with slime and scales. Even the hard, rope-calloused hands of the seamen were bleeding from line burn and the prick of sharp fins. It was no longer sport but hard work to keep the inverted waterfall of living silver streaming over the side.

Just before sunset Hal called a halt, and they rowed back towards the anchored galleon. They were still a hundred yards from her when, on an impulse, Hal stood up in the stern and stripped off his stinking slime-coated clothes. Stark mother naked he balanced on the thwart, and called to Aboli, "Take her alongside and unload the catch. I will swim from here." He had not bathed in over two months, since last they had anchored in the lagoon, and he longed for the feel of cool clear water on his skin. He gathered himself and dived overboard. The men at the galleon's rail shouted ribald encouragement and even Sir Francis paused and watched him indulgently.

"Let him be, Captain. He's still a carefree boy," said Ned Tyler.

"It's just that he's so big and tall that we sometimes forget that." Ned had been with Sir Francis for so many years that he could be forgiven such familiarity.

"There's no place for a thoughtless boy in the guerre de course. This is man's work and it needs a hard head on even the most youthful shoulders or there'll be a Dutch noose for that thoughtless head." But he made no effort to reprimand Hal as he watched his naked white body slide through the water, supple and agile as a dolphin.

Katinka heard the commotion on the deck above, and raised her eyes from the book she was reading. It was a copy of Francois Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel which had been printed privately in Paris with beautifully detailed erotic illustrations, hand-coloured and lifelike. A young man she had known in Amsterdam before her hasty marriage had sent it to her. From close and intimate experience, he knew her tastes well. She glanced idly through the window and her interest quickened. She dropped the book and stood up for a better view.

MevroU, your husband, "Zelda warned her.

"The devil with my husband," said Katinka, as she stepped out onto the stern gallery and shaded her eyes against the slanting rays of the setting sun, The young Englishman who had captured her stood in the stern of a small boat, not far across the quiet lagoon waters. As she watched he stripped off his soiled and tattered clothing, until he stood naked and unashamed, balancing with easy grace on the gunwale.

As a young girl she had accompanied her father to Italy.

There she had bribed Zelda to take her to see the collection of sculptures by Michelangelo, while her father was meeting with his Italian trading partners. She had spent almost an hour of that sultry afternoon standing before the statue of David. Its beauty had aroused in her a turmoil of emotion. It was the first depiction of masculine nudity she had ever looked upon, and it had changed her life.

Now she was looking at another David sculpture, but this one was not of cold marble. Of course, since their first encounter in her cabin she had seen the boy often. He dogged her footsteps like an over-affectionate puppy. Whenever she left her cabin he appeared miraculously, to moon at her from afar. His transparent adoration afforded her only the mildest amusement, for she was accustomed to no less from every man between the ages of fourteen and eighty. He had barely warranted more than a glance, this pretty boy, in baggy, filthy rags. After their first violent meeting, the stink of him had lingered in her cabin, so pungent that she had ordered Zelda to sprinkle perfume to dispel it. But, then, she knew from bitter experience that all sailors stank for there was no water on the ship other than for drinking, and little enough of that.

Now that the lad had shed his noisome clothing, he had become a thing of striking beauty. Though his arms and face were bronzed by the sun, his torso and legs were carved in pure unsullied white. The low sun gilded the curves and angles of his body and his dark hair tumbled down his back. His teeth were very white in the tanned face, and his laughter so musical and filled with such zest that it brought a smile to her own lips.

Then she looked down his body and her mouth opened. The violet eyes narrowed and became calculating. The sweet lines of his face were deceiving. He was a lad no longer. His belly was flat, ridged with fine young muscle like the sands of a wind-sculpted dune. At its base flared a dark bush of crisp curls, and his rosy genitals hung full and weighty, with an authority that those of Michelangelo's David had lacked.

When he dived into the lagoon, she could follow his every movement beneath the clear water. He came to the surface and, laughing, flung the sodden hair from his face with a toss of his head. The flying droplets sparkled like the sacred nimbus of light around the head of an angel.

He struck out towards where she stood, high in the stern, gliding through the water with a peculiar grace that she had not noticed he possessed when clothed in his canvas tatters. He passed almost directly under where she was but did not look up at her, unaware of her scrutiny. She could make out the knuckles of his spine flanked by ridges of hard muscle that ran down to merge with the deep crease between his lean, round buttocks, which tightened erotically with every kick of his legs, as though he were making love to the water as he passed through it.

She leaned out to follow him with her eyes, but he swam out of her view around the stern. Katinka pouted with frustration and went to retrieve her book. But the illustrations in it had lost their appeal, paling against the contrast of real flesh and glossy young skin.

She sat with it open on her lap and imagined that hard young body all white and glistening above her and those tight young buttocks bunching and changing shape as she dug her sharp fingernails into them.