Текст книги "Cry Wolf"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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well sign-posted, and I have two native guides-" The Count ignored him

and watched while the maps were spread on the glistening bonnet of the

Rolls.

"Ah!" He studied the maps learnedly, then looked up at his two

captains. "One of you on each side of me," he instructed. "Major Vita

you here! A stern expression, if you please, and do not look at the

camera." He pointed with a lordly gesture at Johannesburg four

thousand miles to the south and held the pose long enough for Gino to

record it. Next, he climbed into the rear seat of the Rolls and,

standing, he pointed imperatively ahead along the road to the Danakil

desert.

Mistakenly, Luigi Castelani took this as a command to advance. He let

out a series of bull-like bellows and the battalion was galvanized into

frantic action. Like one man, they scrambled into the covered lorries

and took their seats on the long benches, each in full matching order

with a hundred rounds of ammunition in his bandolier and a rifle

between his knees.

However, by the time 690 men were embarked, the Colonel had once more

descended from the Rolls. It was an unfortunate chance that dictated

that the Rolls should be parked directly in front of the casino.

The casino was a government-licensed institution under whose auspices

young ladies were brought out from Italy on six-month contracts to

cater to the carnal needs of tens of thousands of lusty young men in a

woman less environment.

Very few of these ladies had the stamina to sign a renewal of the

contract and none of them found it necessary.

Possessed of a substantial dowry, they returned home to find a

husband.

The casino had a silver roof of galvanized corrugated iron Hill and its

eaves and balconies were decorated with intricate cast-iron work. The

windows of the girls" rooms opened on to the street.

The young hostesses, who usually rose in the mid afternoon, had been

prematurely awakened by the bellowing of orders and the clash of

weapons. They had traipsed out on to the long second-floor veranda,

clad in brightly coloured but flimsy nightwear, and now entered into

the spirit of the occasion, giggling and blowing kisses to the

officers. One of them had a bottle of iced Lacrima Cristi, which she

knew from experience was the Colonel's favourite beverage, and she

beckoned with the cold de wed bottle.

The Colonel realized suddenly that the singing and excitement had made

him thirsty and peckish.

"A cup for the stirrup, as the English say," he suggested jocularly,

and slapped one of the captains on the shoulder.

Most of his staff followed him with alacrity into the casino.

A little after five o'clock, one of the junior subalterns emerged,

slightly inebriated, from the casino with a message from the Colonel to

the Major.

"At dawn tomorrow, we advance without fail." The battalion rumbled out

of Asmara the following morning at ten o'clock. The Colonel was

feeling liverish and disgruntled. The previous night's excitement had

got out of hand, he had sung until his throat was hoarse and had drunk

great quantities of Lacrima Cristi, before going upstairs with two of

the young hostesses.

Gino knelt on the seat of the Rolls beside him, holding an umbrella

over his head, and the driver tried to avoid potholes and

irregularities in the road. But the Count was pale and his brow

sparkled with the sweat of nausea.

Sergeant Gino wished to cheer him. He hated to see his

Count in misery and so he attempted to rekindle the warlike spirit of

yesterday.

"Think on it, my Count. We of the entire army of Italy will be the

very first to confront the enemy. The first to meet the blood-thirsty

barbarian with his cruel heart and red hands." The Count thought on it

as he was bidden. He thought on it with great concentration and

increasing nausea.

Suddenly he became aware that of all the 360,000 men that comprised the

expeditionary forces of Italy, he, Aldo Belli, was the very first, the

veritable point of the spear aimed at Ethiopia. He remembered suddenly

the horror stories he had heard from the disaster of Adowa. One of the

atrocity stories outweighed all others the

Ethiopians castrated their prisoners. He felt the contents of that

noble sac between his thighs retracting forcibly and a fresh sweat

broke out upon his brow.

Stop!" he shrieked at the driver. "Stop, this instant."

A bare two miles from the centre of the town, the column was plunged

into confusion by the abrupt halt of the lead vehicle, and,

answering the loud and urgent shouts of the commanding officer, the

Major hurried forward to learn that the order of march had been

altered. The command car would take up station in the exact centre of

the column with six motorcycle outriders brought back to ride as flank

guards.

It was another hour before the new arrangement could be put into effect

and once more the column headed south and west into the great empty

land with its distant smoky horizons and its vast vaulted blue dome of

the burning heavens.

Count Aldo Belli rode easier on the luxurious leather of the

Rolls, cheered by the knowledge that preceding him were three hundred

and forty-five fine rubbery sets of peasant testicles upon which the

barbarian could blunt his blade.

The column went into bivouac that evening fifty-three kilometres from

Asmara. Not even the Count could pretend that this was a forced march

for motorized infantry but the advantage was that a pair of

motorcyclists could send back with a despatch for General De Bono

reassuring him of the patriotism, the loyalty and the fighting ardour

of the Third Battalion and, of course, on their return the cyclists

could carry blocks of ice from the casino packed in salt and straw and

stowed in the sidecars.

The following morning, the Count had recovered much of his good cheer.

He rose early at nine " O clock and took a hearty alfresco breakfast

with his officers under the shade of a spread tarpaulin and then, from

the rear seat of the Rolls, he gave a clenched fist cavalry order to

advance.

Still in the centre of the column, pennants fluttering and battle

standard glittering, the Rolls glided forward and it looked, even to

the disillusioned Major, as if they might make good going of the day's

march.

The undulating grassland fell away almost imperceptibly beneath the

speeding wheels, and the blue loom of the mountains on their right hand

merged gradually with the lighter fiercer blue of the sky. The

transition to desert country was so gradual as to lull the unobservant

traveller.

The intervals between the flat-topped acacia trees became greater and

the trees themselves were more stunted, more twisted and spiky, as they

progressed, until at last they ceased and the bushes of spino

Cristi replaced them grey and low and viciously thor ned The earth was

parched and crumbled, dotted with clumps of camel grass and the horizon

was unbroken, enclosing them entirely. The land itself was so flat and

featureless that it gave the illusion of being saucer-shaped, as though

the rim of the land rose slightly to meet the sky.

Through this wilderness, the road was slashed like the claw mark of a

predator into the fleshy red soil. The tracks were so deeply rutted

that the middle hump constantly brushed the chassis of the

Rolls, and a mist of fine red dust stood in the heated air long after

the column had passed.

The Colonel was bored and uncomfortable. It was becoming increasingly

clear, even to the Count, that the wilderness harboured no hostile

horde, and his courage and impatience returned.

"Drive to the head of the column," he instructed Giuseppe, and the

Rolls pulled out and sped past the leading trucks, the Count bestowing

a cheery salute on Castelani as he left him glowering and muttering

behind him.

When Castelani caught up with him again, two hours later, the

Count was standing on the burnished bonnet of the Rolls staring through

his binoculars at the horizon and doing an excited little dance while

he urged Gino to make haste in unpacking the special Mantilicher 9.3

men sporting rifle from its leather case. The weapon was of seasoned

walnut, butt and stock, and the blued steel was inlaid with

twenty-four-carat gold hunting scenes of the chase boar and stag,

huntsmen on horseback and hounds in full cry. It was a masterpiece of

the gunsmith's art.

Without lowering the binoculars, he gave orders to Castelani to erect

the radio aerial and send a message of good cheer and enthusiasm to

General De Bono, to report the magnificent progress made by the

battalion to date and assure him that they would soon command all the

approaches to the Sardi Gorge. The Major should also put the column

into laager and set up the ice machine while the Colonel undertook a

reconnaissance patrol in the direction in which he was now staring so

intently.

The group of big dun-coloured animals he was watching were a mile off

and moving steadily away into the mirage-fevered distance, but their

gracefully straight horns showed dark and lo the against the distant

sky.

Gino had the loaded Mannlicher in the rear seat and the Count jumped

down into the passenger seat beside the driver. Standing holding the

windshield with one hand, he gave his officers the Fascist salute, and

the Rolls roared forward, left the road and careered away,

weaving amongst the thorn scrub and bounding over the rough ground in

pursuit of the distant herd.

The beisa oryx is a large and beautiful desert antelope.

There were eight of them in the herd and with their sharp eyesight they

were in flight before the Rolls had approached within three-quarters of

a mile.

They ran lightly over the rough ground, their pale beige hides blending

cunningly with the soft colours of the desert, but the long wicked

black horns rode proudly as any battle standard.

The Rolls gained steadily on the running herd, with the Count

hysterically urging his driver to greater speed, ignoring the thorn

branches that scored the flawless sides of the big blue machine as it

passed. Hunting was one of the Count's many pleasures. Boar and stag

were specially bred on his estates, but this was the first large game

he had encountered since his arrival in Africa. The herd was strung

out, two old bulls leading, plunging ahead with a light rocking-horse

gait, while the cows and two younger males trailed them.

The bouncing, roaring machine drew level with the last animal and ran

alongside at a range of twenty yards. The galloping oryx did not turn

its head but ran on doggedly after its stronger companions.

"Halt," shrieked the Count, and the driver stood on his brakes,

the car broadsiding to rest in a billowing cloud of dust. The Count

tumbled out of the open door and threw up the Mannlicher. The barrel

kicked up and the shots crashed out. The first was a touch high and it

threw a puff of dust off the earth far beyond the running animal the

second slapped into the pale fur in front of the shoulder and the young

oryx somersaulted over its broken neck and went down in a clumsy tangle

of limbs.

"Onwards!" shouted the Count, leaping aboard the Rolls as it roared

away once again. The herd was already far ahead but inexorably the

Rolls closed the gap and at last drew level. Again the ringing crack

of rifle-fire and the sliding, tumbling fall of a heavy pale body.

Like a paper chase, they left the wasteland littered with the pale

bodies until only one old bull ran on alone. And he was cunning,

swinging away westward into the broken ground for which he clearly

headed at the outset of the chase.

It was hours and many miles later when the Count lost all patience. On

the lip of another wadi he stopped the Rolls and ordered Gino,

protesting volubly, to stand at attention and offer his shoulder as a

dead-rest for the Marmlicher.

The beisa had slowed now to an exhausted trot, but the range was six

hundred yards as the Count sighted across the intervening scrub and

through heat-dancing air that swirled like gelatinous liquid.

The rifle-fire cracked the desert silences and the antelope kept

trotting steadily away, while the Count shrieked abuse at it and

crammed a fresh load of brass cartridges into the magazine.

The animal was almost beyond effective range now, but the next bullet

fired with the rear sight at maximum elevation fell in a long arcing

trajectory and they heard the thump of the strike, long after the beisa

had collapsed abruptly and disappeared below the line of grey scrub.

When they had found another crossing and forced the

, Rolls through the deep ravine, scraping the rear fender and denting

one of the big silver wheel-hubs, they came up to the spot where the

antelope lay on its side. Leaving the rifle on the back seat in his

eagerness, the Count leapt out before the Rolls had stopped completely.

–Get one of me completing the coup de grace," he shouted at Gino,

as he unholstered the ivory-handled Beretta and ran to the downed

animal.

The soft bullet had shattered the spinal column a few inches forward of

the pelvis, paralysing the hindquarters, and the blood pumped gently

from the wound in a bright rivulet down the pale beige flank.

The Count posed dramatically, pointing the pistol at the magnificently

horned head with its elaborate face-mask of dark chocolate stripes.

Near by, Gino knelt in the soft earth focusing the camera.

At the critical moment, the antelope heaved itself up into a sitting

position and stared with swimming agonized eyes into the

Count's face. The beisa is one of the most aggressive antelopes in

Africa, capable of killing even a fully grown lion with its long rapier

horns. This old bull weighed 450 lb. and stood four feet high at the

shoulder while the horns rose another three feet above that.

The beisa snorted, and the Count forgot all about the levelled pistol

in his hand in his sudden desperate desire to reach the safety of the

Rolls.

Leading the beisa by six inches, he vaulted lightly into the back seat

and crouched on the floorboards, covering his head with both arms while

the beisa battered the sides of the Rolls, driving in one door and

ripping the paintwork with the deadly horns.

Gino was trying to disappear into the earth by sheer pressure, and he

was making a pitiful wailing sound. The driver had stalled the engine,

and he sat frozen in his seat and every time the beisa crashed into the

Rolls, he was thrown so violently forward that his forehead struck the

windshield, and he pleaded, "Shoot it, my Count. Please, my

Count, shoot the monster." The Count's posterior was pointed to the

sky. It was the only part of his anatomy that was visible above the

rear seat of the Rolls and he was shrieking for somebody to hand him

the rifle, but not raising his head to search for it.

The bullet that had severed the beisa's spine had angled forward and

pierced the lung as well. The violent exertions of the stricken animal

tore open a large artery and, with a pitiful bellow and a sudden double

spurt of blood through the nostrils, it collapsed.

In the long silence that followed, the Count's pale face rose slowly

above the level of the back door and he stared fearfully at the

carcass. Its stillness reassured him. Cautiously, he groped for the

Marinlicher, lifted it slowly and poured a stream of bullets into the

inert beisa. His hands were shaking so violently that some of the

shots missed the body and came perilously close to where Gino still

lay, producing a fresh outburst of wails and more mole-like efforts to

become subterranean.

Satisfied that the beisa was at last dead, the Count descended and

walked slowly towards a nearby clump of thorn scrub, but his gait was

bow-legged and stiff, for he had lightly soiled his magnificently

monogrammed silk underwear.

In the cool of the evening, the slightly crumpled Rolls returned to the

battalion bivouac. Draped over the bonnet and across the wide

mudguards lay the bleeding carcasses of the antelopes. The Count stood

to acknowledge the cheers of his troops, a veritable triumphant

Nimrod.

A radio message from General De Bono awaited him. It was not a

reprimand, the General would not go that far, but it pointed out that

although the General was grateful for the Count's efforts up to the

present time, and for his fine sentiments and loyal messages,

nevertheless the General would be very grateful if the Count could find

some way in which to speed up his advance.

The Count sent him a five-hundred-word reply ending, "Ours is the

Victory," and then went to feast on barbecued antelope livers and iced

chianti with his officers.

Leaving the sailing and handling of the HirondeUe to his

Mohammedan mate and his raggedy crew, Captain Papadopoulos had spent

the preceding five days sitting at the table in his low-roofed poop

cabin playing two-handed gin rummy with Major Gareth Swales. Gareth

had suggested the diversion and it had occurred to the Captain by this

time that there was something unnatural in the consistent run of

winning cards which had distinguished Gareth's play.

The agreed fare for transporting the cars and the four passengers had

totalled two hundred and fifty of sterling.

The Captain's losses had just exceeded that figure, and Gareth smiled

winningly at Papadopoulos and smoothed the golden moustaches.

"What do you say we give it a break now, Papa old sport, go up on deck

and stretch the legs, what?" Having recovered the passage money,

Gareth had accomplished the task he had set himself, and he was now

anxious to return to the open deck where Vicky Camberwell and Jake were

becoming much too friendly for his peace of mind.

Every time Gareth had been forced by nature to make a brief journey to

the poop rail, he had seen the two of them together and they seemed to

be laughing a great deal, which was always a bad sign. Vicky was in

the forefront of any action,

passing tools to Jake and offering general encouragement, as he worked

at fine-tuning the cars and making last minute preparations for the

desert crossing or the two of them sat with Gregorius while amidst

great hilarity he gave them basic lessons in the Amharic language. He

wondered distractedly what else they were up to.

However, Gareth was a man sure of his priorities and his first concern

was to recover his money from Papadopoulos.

Having done so, he could now return to sheep-dogging Vicky

Camberwell.

"It's been a lot of fun, Papa." He half rose from the table,

folding the grimy wad of banknotes into his back pocket and gathering

the pile of coins with his free hand.

Captain Papadopoulos reached into the depths of the Arabic gown he wore

and produced a knife with an ornately carved handle and a viciously

curved blade. He balanced it lightly in the palm of his hand and his

single eye glittered coldly at Gareth.

"Deal!" he said, and Gareth smiled blandly and sank back into his

seat. He picked up the cards and cut them with a ripping sound and the

knife disappeared into Papadopoulos's gown once more as he watched the

shuffle intently.

"Actually, I do feel like a few more hands," Gareth murmured.

"Just getting warmed up, hey?" The slaver altered course as she

cleared the tip of the great horn of Africa and rounded Cape Guardafui.

Before her lay the long gut of the Gulf of Aden and a run of five

hundred miles westwards to French Somaliland.

The Hindu mate came down and whispered fearfully to his Captain.

"What troubles the fellow?" Gareth asked.

"He worries about the English blockade."

"A "So do I" Gareth answered. "Shouldn't we go up on deck? Deal,"said

Papadopoulos.

Below them they heard the steady thumping beat of the big diesel engine

begin, and the vibration of the propeller shaft spinning in its bed.

The mate had her under sail and power now, and the motion of the ship

changed immediately, the thrust of the propeller combining with the

push of the full spread of her canvas, and she flew towards the vivid

purple and pink flush of sky and piled cumulus cloud behind which the

sun was beginning to set.

The mate had set a course which would take him swiftly down the middle

of the Gulf, out of sight of Africa on his port side and Arabia on the

starboard. The HirondeUe was making twenty-five knots, for the sea

breeze was on her best point of sailing and a day and two nights would

see them in and out again. He sent one of his best men -to the

masthead with a telescope and he wondered which the English viewed more

sternly young black girls in chains or Vickers machine guns in wooden

cases. Mournfully he concluded that either of them would be lethal and

he shrilled at his masthead to keep a strict watch.

The sun was sinking with agonizing slowness, almost dead ahead and the

wind rose steadily, driving the Hirondelle on deeper into the gut.

Jake Barton wriggled out of the engine hatch of Miss Wobbly and grinned

at Vicky Camberwell who sat on the sponson above him swinging her long

legs idly, with the wind in her hair and the tan she had picked up in

the last few days gilding her arms and flushing at her cheeks. She had

lost the dark rings of worry and the paleness of fatigue, and looked

now like a schoolgirl, young and carefree and gay.

"That's the best I can do," said Jake, beginning to scour the black

grease from his arms with Scrubbs Ammonia.

"She's running so sweetly, I could take her out at Le Mans." Her knees

were at the level of Jake's eyes and her skirts had tucked up high. He

felt his heart stop as he glanced down the smooth length of her thigh.

Her skin had a lustre and sheen, as though made of some precious and

rare substance.

Vicky saw the direction of his gaze and brought her knees together

sharply, although a smile touched her lips. She jumped down lightly on

to the deck, steadying herself against the Hirondelle's rolling action

with a touch on the muscled hardness of his arm. Vicky thoroughly

enjoyed the admiration of an attractive male and Gareth had been

closeted in the Captain's cabin these last five days. She smiled up

at

Jake. He was tall but the bush of dark hair that curled around his

ears gave him the look of a small boy which was again quickly dispelled

by the strong jaw line and the fine networks of creases that radiated

from the outer corners of his eyes.

She realized suddenly that he was on the point of stooping to kiss her,

and she felt a delicious indecision the slightest encouragement would

set Jake on a violent collision course with Gareth and might seriously

endanger the whole expedition and the story she wanted so badly. At

that moment she noticed, as if for the first time, that

Jake's mouth was wide and rutI and his lips were delicately shaped for

the bigness and hairiness of him. His chin and cheeks were blued with

a day's growth of beard and she knew it would feel rough and electric

against her own peach-smooth cheeks. Suddenly she wanted to feel that,

and she lifted her chin slightly and knew that he would read that want

in the sparkle of her eyes.

The masthead shrieked like a startled gull and instantly the

Hirondelle was plunged into frantic activity. The Mohammedan mate

echoed his shrieks, but at a higher volume, and his grubby robes

flapped around him in the wind. His eyes rolled in his dark brown

skull and his toothless moutth opened so wide that Jake could see the

little pink glottis dangling in the back of his throat.

"What is it? "Vicky demanded, her hand still on Jake's arm.

"Trouble," he answered grimly, and they turned as the door of the poop

cabin flew open and Papadopoulos rushed out with his queue twitching

like the tail of a lioness and his single eye blinking rapidly. He

still clutched a fan of cards in his right hand.

"One more card and I make gin!" he howled bitterly, and threw the

cards into the wind and grabbed the mate by the front of his gown,

shouting into his open but now silent mouth.

The mate pointed aloft and Papadopoulos dropped him and hailed the

masthead in Arabic, and Jake listened to the swift exchange.

"A British destroyer sounds like "Dauntless"," he muttered.

"You speak Arabic?" Vicky asked, and Jake stilled the question

irritably and listened again.

"The destroyer has seen us. She's altering course to intercept."

Jake looked quickly at the smouldering globe of the sun, the crinkles

around his eyes puckering up thoughtfully as he listened to the heated

argument in Arabic taking place on the poop deck.

"Are you two having fun?" Gareth Swales asked, smiling but with a

glitter in his eyes as he glanced significantly at Vicky's hand still

on Jake's arm. He had come out of the cabin as silently as a

panther.

Vicky dropped her hand guiltily and immediately wished she had not. She

owed Gareth Swales no debts and she answered his stare defiantly,

before turning back to Jake and finding him gone.

"What is it, Papa?" Gareth called up at the poop-deck, and the

Captain snarled, "Your Royal mucking Navy that's what it is." And he

shook his fist at the northern horizon. "The Dauntless she based at

Aden, blockade for slavers."

"Where is she?" Gareth's expression changed swiftly and he strode to

the rail.

"She's coming fast masthead watching her. She'll be over the horizon

pretty damn quick." Papadopoulos turned from Gareth and roared a

series of orders at his crew.

Immediately they swarmed down on to the main deck and gathered about

the first car it was Priscilla the Pig swaying gently on her suspension

as the schooner plunged ahead.

"I say," Gareth exclaimed. "What are you up to?"

"They catch me with arms aboard, big trouble," Papadopoulos explained.

"No arms, no trouble," and he watched his men fall on the lines that

secured the big white-painted vehicle. "We do same trick with slaves,

they go down pretty damn fast with the chains."

"Now, just hold on a shake. I paid you a fortune to transport this

cargo."

"Where that fortune now,

Major?" Papadopoulos shouted down at him derisively. "I got nothing

in my pants how about you?" and the Captain turned away to urge his

men on.

The turret of Priscilla the Pig opened suddenly and from it emerged the

head and shoulders of Jake Barton with his hair blowing in the wind and

a Vickers machine gun in his arms. He braced himself in the turret

with the thick water jacketed barrel of the Vickers across the crook of

his left arm, and the pistol grip firmly enclosed in his other hand.

Across his shoulder was draped a heavy necklace of belted ammunition.

He fired a roaring clattering burst, the tracer streaking in fiery

white balls of flame a mere twelve inches over the Captain's head.

The

Greek threw himself flat on his deck, howling with terror, and his crew

scattered like a flock of startled hens, while Jake looked down on them

benignly from his post in the turret.

"I think we should understand each other, Captain.

Nobody is going to touch these machines. The only way you are going to

save your ship is by out sailing the Englishman, Jake called mildly.

"She can make thirty knots," protested the Captain, still face down on

the deck.

"The longer you talk the less time you have," Jake told him.

"It'll be dark in twenty minutes. Turn away, and make a stern chase of

it until it is dark Papadopoulos rose uncertainly to his feet, and

stood blinking his one eye rapidly and miserably wringing his hands.

"Kindly move your arse," said Jake affably, and fired another burst of

machine-gun bullets over his head.

The Captain dropped once again to the deck, howling the orders to bring

the HirondelLe around on a course directly away from the closing

British warship.

As the schooner came around on to her new course, Jake called

Gareth across to him, and handed him the machine gun. "I want this

bunch of bastards covered while I work with the Greek. You, Vicky

and

Greg can batten down the hatches on the cars in the meantime."

"Where did you get that gun?" Gareth asked. "I thought they were all

cased."

"I like to keep a little insurance at all times, "Jake grinned, and

Gareth selected two cheroots from his case, lit them both, and passed

one up to Jake.

"Compliments of the management" he said. "I'm beginning to know why I

picked you as a partner." Jake stuck the cheroot in the side of his

mouth, exhaled a long blue feather of smoke and grinned jauntily.

"If you've got any pull with your Royal Navy, lad, then get ready to

use it." Jake stood in the deep canvas crows-nest at the cross trees

of the main mast, and swayed with a gut-swooping rhythm through the arc

of the swinging mast as he tried to keep the grey silhouette that

closed them rapidly in the field of the telescope.

Although the warship was only ten miles off, already her shape was

fading into the deepening dusk, for the sea breeze had chopped the

surface to a wave-flecked immensity and the sun behind Jake was

touching the watery horizon and throwing the east into mysterious blue

shade.

Suddenly a bright prick of light began winking rapidly from the hazy

shape of the warship , and Jake read the urgent p query.

"What ship?" and Jake grinned and tried to judge how conspicuous the

schooner, with her mass of canvas, was to the destroyer, and to decide

the moment when he would trade speed for invisibility.

The destroyer was signalling again.

"Heave to or I will fire upon you."

"Bloody pirates," Jake growled indignantly, and cupped his hand to

bellow down at the bridge.

"Get the canvas off her." On the deck far below, he saw the

Greek's face, pale in the dusk looking up at him, then heard his orders

repeated and watched the motley crew climb swiftly aloft.

Jake glanced back towards the tiny dark shape of the destroyer on the

limitless dark sea and saw the angry red flash of her forward gun bloom

in the dark. He remembered that flash so well and his skin crawled

with the insects of fear as he waited out the long seconds while the

shell climbed high into the sombre sky and then fell towards the

schooner.

He heard it come, passing overhead in a rising shriek, before it

pitched into the sea half a mile ahead of Hirondelle.

A swift, blooming pillar of spray gleamed in the last rays of the sun

like pink Carrara marble and then was blown swiftly away on the wind.

The crewmen froze in the rigging, petrified by the howling passage of

the shot, and then suddenly they were galvanized into frantic babbling