Birds of Prey

Wilbur Smith - C09 Birds Of Prey

Author's Note

Although this story is set in the mid-seventeenth century, the galleons and caravels in which my characters find themselves are more usually associated with the sixteenth century. Seventeenth-century ships often bore a strong resemblance to those of the sixteenth century, but as their names may be unfamiliar to the general reader, I have used the better-known, if anachronistic, terms to convey an accessible impression of their appearance. Also, for the sake of clarity, I have simplified terminology in respect of firearms and, as it exists as such in common idiom, I have occasionally used the word "cannon" as a generic.

The boy clutched at the rim of the canvas bucket in which he crouched sixty feet AT above the deck as the ship went about. The mast canted over sharply as she thrust her head through the wind. The ship was a caravel named the Lady Edwina, after the mother whom the boy could barely remember.

Far below in the pre-dawn darkness he heard the great bronze culver ins slat against their blocks and come up with a thump against their straining tackle. The hull throbbed and resonated to a different impulse as she swung round and went plunging away back into the west. With the south-east wind now astern she was transformed, lighter and more limber, even with sails reefed and with three feet of water in her bilges.

It was all so familiar to Hal Courtney. He had greeted the last five and sixty dawns from the masthead in this manner. His young eyes, the keenest in the ship, had been posted there to catch the first gleam of distant sail in the rose of the new day.

Even the cold was familiar. He pulled the thick woollen Monmouth cap down over his ears. The wind sliced through his leather jerkin but he was inured to such mild discomfort. He gave it no heed and strained his eyes out into the darkness. "Today the Dutchmen will come," he said aloud, and felt the excitement and dread throb beneath his ribs.

High above him the splendour of the stars began to pale and fade, and the firmament was filled with the pearly promise of new day. Now, far below him, he could make out the figures on the deck. He could recognize Ned Tyler, the helmsman, bowed over the whipstall, holding the ship true; and his own father stooping over the binnacle to read the new course, the lantern lighting his lean dark features and his long locks tangling and whipping in the wind.

With a start of guilt Hal looked out into the darkness; he should not be mooning down at the deck in these vital minutes when, at any moment, the enemy might loom close at hand out of the night.

By now it was light enough to make out the surface of the sea rushing by the hull. It had the hard iridescent shine of new-cut coal.

By now he knew this southern sea so well; this broad highway of the ocean that flowed eternally down the eastern coast of Africa, blue and warm and swarming with life. Under his father's tutelage he had studied it so that he knew the colour, the taste and run of it, each eddy and surge.

One day he also would glory in the title of Nautonnier Knight of the Temple of the Order of St. George and the Holy Grail. He would be, as his father was, a Navigator of the Order. His father was as determined as Hal himself to bring that about, and, at seventeen years of age, his goal was no longer merely a dream.

This current was the highway upon which the Dutchmen must sail to make their we stings and their landfall on the mysterious coast that still lay veiled out there in the night. This was the gateway through which all must pass who sought to round that wild cape that divided the Ocean of the Indies from the Southern Atlantic.

This was why Sir Francis Courtney, Hal's father, the Navigator, had chosen this position, at 34 degrees 25 minutes south latitude, in which to wait for them. Already they had waited sixty-five tedious days, beating monotonously back and forth, but today the Dutchmen might come, and Hal stared out into the gathering day with parted lips and straining green eyes.

A cable's length off the starboard bow he saw the flash of wings high enough in the sky to catch the first rays of the sun, a long flight of gannets coming out from the land, snowy chests and heads of black and yellow. He watched the leading bird dip and turn, breaking the pattern, and twist its head to peer down into the dark waters. He saw the disturbance below it, the shimmer of scales and the seething of the surface as a shoal came up to the light. He watched the bird fold its wings and plunge downwards, and each bird that followed began its dive at the same point in the air, to strike the dark water in a burst of lacy foam.

Soon the surface was thrashed white by the diving birds and the struggling silver anchovies on which they gorged. Hal turned away his gaze and swept the opening horizon.

His heart tripped as he caught the gleam of a sail, a tall ship square-rigged, only a league to the eastward. He had filled his lungs and opened his mouth to hail the quarterdeck before he recognized her. It was the Gull of Moray, a frigate, not a Dutch East Indiaman. She was far out of position, which had tricked Hal.

The Gull of Moray was the other principal vessel in the blockading squadron. The Buzzard, her captain, should be lying out of sight below the eastern horizon. Hal leaned out over the edge of the canvas crow's nest and looked down at the deck. His father, fists on his hips, was staring up at him.

Hal called down the sighting to the quarterdeck, "The Gull hull up to windward!" and his father swung away to gaze out to the east. Sir Francis picked out the shape of the Buzzard's ship, black against the darkling sky, and raised the slender brass tube of the telescope to his eye. Hal could sense anger in the set of his shoulders and the way in which he slammed the instrument shut and tossed his mane of black hair.

Before this day was out words would be exchanged between the two commanders. Hal grinned to himself With his iron will and spiked tongue, his fists and blade, Sir Francis struck terror into those upon whom he turned them even his brother Knights of the Order held him in awe. Hal was thankful that this day his father's temper would be directed elsewhere than at him.

He looked beyond the Gull of Moray, sweeping the horizon as it extended swiftly with the coming of day. Hal needed no telescope to aid his bright young eyes besides, only one of these costly instruments was aboard. He made out the others" sails then exactly where they should be, tiny pale flecks against the dark sea. The two pinnaces maintaining their formation, beads in the necklace, were spread out fifteen leagues on each side of the Lady Edwina, part of the net his father had cast wide to ensnare the Dutchmen.

The pinnaces were open vessels, with a dozen heavily armed men crowded into each. When not needed they could be broken down and stowed in the Lady Edwina's hold. Sir Francis changed their crews regularly, for neither the tough West Country men nor the Welsh nor the even hardier ex-slaves that made up most of his crew could endure the conditions aboard those little ships for long and still be fit for a fight at the end of it.

At last the full steely light of day struck as the sun rose from the eastern ocean. Hal gazed down the fiery path it threw across the waters. He felt his spirits slide as he found the ocean empty of a strange sail. just as on the sixty-five preceding dawns, there was no Dutchman in sight.

Then he looked northwards to the land mass that crouched like a great rock sphim, dark and inscrutable, upon the horizon. This was the Agulhas Cape, the southernmost tip of the African continent.

"Africa!" The sound of that mysterious name on his own lips raised goose pimples along his arms and made the thick dark hair prickle on the back of his neck.

"Africa!" The uncharted land of dragons and other dreadful creatures, who ate the flesh of men, and of darkskinned savages who also ate men's flesh and wore their bones as decoration.

"Africa!" The land of gold and ivory and slaves and other treasures, all waiting for a man bold enough to seek them out, and, perhaps, to perish in the endeavour. Hal felt daunted yet fascinated by the sound and promise of that name, its menace and challenge.

Long hours he had pored over the charts in his father's cabin when he should have been learning by rote the tables of celestial passages, or declining his Latin verbs. He had studied the great interior spaces, filled with drawings of elephants and lions and monsters, traced the outlines of the Mountains of the Moon, and of lakes and mighty rivers confidently emblazoned with names such as "Khoikhoi', and "Camdeboo', "Sofala" and "the Kingdom of Prester John'. But Hal knew from his father that no civilized man had ever travelled into that awesome interior and wondered, as he had so many times before, what it would be like to be the first to venture there. Prester John particularly intrigued him. This legendary ruler of a vast and powerful Christian empire in the depths of the African continent had existed in the European mythology for hundreds of years. Was he one man, or a line of emperors? Hal wondered.

Hal's reverie was interrupted by shouted orders from the quarterdeck, faint on the wind, and the feel of the ship as she changed course. Looking down, he saw that his father intended to intercept the Gull of Moray. Under top sails only, and with all else reefed, the two ships were now converging, both running westward towards the Cape of Good Hope and the Atlantic. They moved sluggishly they had been too long in these warm southern waters, and their timbers were infested with the Toredo worm. No vessel could survive long out here. The dreaded shipworrns grew as thick as a man's finger and as long as his arm, and they bored so close to each other through the planks as to honeycomb them. Even from his seat at the masthead Hal could hear the pumps labouring in both vessels to lower the bilges. The sound never ceased: it was like the beating of a heart that kept the ship afloat. It was yet another reason why they must seek out the Dutchmen: they needed to change ships. The Lady Edwina was being eaten away beneath their feet.

As the two ships came within hailing distance the crews swarmed into the rigging and lined the bulwarks to shout ribald banter across the water.

The numbers of men packed into each vessel never failed to amaze Hal when he saw them in a mass like this. The Lady Edwina was a ship of 170 tons burden, with an overall length of little more than 70 feet, but she carried a crew of a hundred and thirty men if you included those now manning the two pinnaces. The Gull was not much larger, but with half as many men again aboard.

Every one of those fighting men would be needed if they were to overwhelm one of the huge Dutch East India galleons. Sir Francis had gathered intelligence from all the corners of the southern ocean from other Knights of the Order, and knew that at least five of these great ships were still at sea. So far this season twenty-one of the Company's galleons had made the passage and had called at the tiny victualling station below the towering Tafelberg, as the Dutch called it, or Table Mountain at the foot of the southern continent before turning northwards and voyaging up the Atlantic towards Amsterdam.

Those five tardy ships, still straggling across the Ocean of the Indies, must round the Cape before the southeasterly trades fell away and the wind turned foul into the north-west. That would be soon.

When the Gull of Moray was not cruising in the guerre de course, which was a euphemism for privateering, Angus Cochran, Earl of Cumbrae, rounded out his purse by trading for slaves in the markets of Zanzibar.

Once they had been shackled to the ring bolts in the deck of the long narrow slave hold, they could not be released until the ship docked at the end of her voyage in the ports of the Orient. This meant that even those poor creatures who succumbed during the dreadful tropical passage of the Ocean of the Indies must lie rotting with the living in the confined spaces of the "tween decks. The effluvium of decaying corpses, mingled with the waste odour of the living, gave the slave ships a distinctive stench that identified them for many leagues down wind. No amount of scouring with even the strongest lyes could ever rid a slaver of her characteristic smell.

As the Gull crossed upwind, there were howls of exaggerated disgust from the crew of the Lady Edwina. "By God, she stinks like a dung-heap."

"Did you not wipe your backsides, you poxy vermin? We can smell you from here!" one yelled across at the pretty little frigate. The language bawled back from the Gull made Hal grin. Of course, the human bowels held no mysteries for him, but he did not understand much of the rest of it, for he had never seen those parts of a woman to which the seamen in both ships referred in such graphic detail, nor knew of the uses to which they could be put, but it excited his imagination to hear them so described. His amusement was enhanced when he imagined his father's fury at hearing it.

Sir Francis was a devout man who believed that the fortunes of war could be influenced by the god-fearing behaviour of every man aboard.

He forbade gambling, blasphemy and the drinking of strong spirits.

He led prayers twice a day and exhorted his seamen to gentle and dignified behaviour when they put into port although Hal knew that this advice was seldom followed. Now Sir Francis frowned darkly as he listened to his men exchange insults with those of the Buzzard but, as he could not-have half the ship's company flogged to signal his disapproval, he held his tongue until he was in easy hail of the frigate.

In the meantime he sent his servant to his cabin to fetch his cloak. What he had to say to the Buzzard was official and he should be in regalia. When the man returned, Sir Francis slipped the magnificent velvet cloak over his shoulders before he lifted his speaking trumpet to his lips. "Good morrow, my lord!"

The Buzzard came to his rail and lifted one hand in salute. Above his plaid he wore half-armour, which gleamed in the fresh morning light, but his head was bare, his red hair and beard bushed together like a haystack, the curls dancing on the wind as though his head was on fire. "Jesus love you, Franky!" he bellowed back, his great voice easily transcending the wind.

"Your station is on the eastern flank! "The wind and his anger made Sir Francis short. "Why have you deserted it?" The Buzzard spread his hands in an expressive gesture of apology. "I have little water and am completely out of patience. Sixty-five days are enough for me and my brave fellows. There are slaves and gold for the taking along the Sofala coast." His accent was like a Scottish gale.

"Your commission does not allow you to attack Portuguese shipping."

"Dutch, Portuguese or Spanish," Cumbrae shouted back. "Their gold shines as prettily. You know well that there is no peace beyond the Line. " "You are well named the Buzzard," Sir Francis roared in frustration, "for you have the same appetite as that carrion bird!" Yet what Cumbrae had said was true. There was no peace beyond the Line.

A century and a half ago, by Papal Bull Inter Caetero of 25 September 1493, the Line had been drawn down the mid-Atlantic, north to south, by Pope Alexander VI to divide the world between Portugal and Spain. What hope was there that the excluded Christian nations, in their envy and resentment, would honour this declaration? Spontaneously, another doctrine, was born: "No peace beyond the Line!" It became the watchword of the privateer and the corsair. And its meaning extended in their minds to encompass all the unexplored regions of the oceans.

Within the waters of the northern continent, acts of piracy, rapine and murder whose perpetrator previously would have been hunted down by the combined navies of Christian Europe and hanged from his own yard-arm were condoned and even applauded when committed beyond the Line. Every embattled monarch signed Letters of Marque that, at a stroke, converted his merchantmen into privateers, ships of war, and sent them out marauding on the newly discovered oceans of the expanding globe.

Sir Francis Courtney's own letter had been signed by Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, the Lord Chancellor of England, in the name of His Majesty King Charles II. It sanctioned him to hunt down the ships of the Dutch Republic, with which England was at war.

"Once you desert your station, you forfeit your rights to claim a share of any prize!" Sir Francis called across the narrow strip of water between the ships, but the Buzzard turned away to issue orders to his helmsman.

He shouted to his piper, who stood at the ready, "Give Sir Francis a tune to remember us by!" The stirring strains of "Farewell to the Isles" carried across the water to the Lady Edwina, as the Buzzard's topmast men clambered like monkeys high into the rigging, and loosed the reefs. The Gull's top-hamper billowed out. The main sail filled with a boom like the discharge of cannon, she heeled eagerly to the south-easter and pressed her shoulder into the next blue swell, bursting it asunder.

As the Buzzard pulled away rapidly he came back to the stern rail, and his voice lifted above the skirling of the pipes and the whimper of the wind. "May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ shield you, my revered brother Knight." But on the Buzzard's lips it sounded like blasphemy.

With his cloak, which was quartered by the crimson croix pat tie of the Order, billowing and flapping from his wide shoulders, Sir Francis watched him go.

Slowly the ironic cheering and heavy banter of the men died away. A sombre new mood began to infect the ship as the company realized that their forces, puny before, had been more than halved in a single stroke. They had been left alone to meet the Dutchmen in whatever force they might appear. The seamen that crowded the Lady Edwina's deck and rigging were silent now, unable to meet each other's eyes.

Then Sir Francis threw back his head and laughed. "All the more for us to share!" he cried, and they laughed with him and cheered as he made his way to his cabin below the poop deck.

For another hour Hal stayed at the masthead. He wondered how long the men's buoyant mood could last, for they were down to a mug of water twice a day. Although the land and its sweet rivers lay less than half a day's sailing away, Sir Francis had not dared detach even one of the pinnaces to fill the casks. The Dutchmen might come at any hour, and when they did he would need every man.

At last a man came aloft to relieve Hal at the lookout. "what is there to see, lad?" he asked, as he slipped into the canvas crow's nest beside Hal.

"Precious little," Hal admitted, and pointed out the tiny sails of the two pirmaces on the distant horizon. "Neither carries any signals," Hal told him. "Watch for the red flag it'll mean they have the chase in sight."

The sailor grunted. "You'll be teaching me to fart next." But he smiled at Hal in avuncular fashion the boy was the ship's favourite.

Hal grinned back at him. "God's truth, but you need no teaching, Master Simon. I've heard you at the bucket in the heads. I'd rather face a Dutch broadside. You nigh crack every timber in the hull."

Simon let out an explosive guffaw, and punched Hal's shoulder. "Down with you, lad, before I teach you to fly like an albatross."

Hal began to scramble down the shrouds. At first he moved stiffly, his muscles cramped and chilled after the long vigil, but he soon warmed up and swung down lithely.

Some of the men on the deck paused at their labours on the pumps, or with palm and needle as they repaired win dripped canvas, and watched him. He was as robust and broad-shouldered as a lad three years older, and long in limb he already stood as tall as his father. Yet he still retained the fresh smooth skin, the unlined face and sunny expression of boyhood. His hair, tied with a thong behind his head, spilled from under his cap and glistened blueblack in the early sunlight. At this age his beauty was still almost feminine, and after more than four months at sea since they had laid eyes on a woman some, whose fancy lay in that direction, watched him lasciviously.

Hal reached the main yard and left the security of the mast. He ran out along it, balancing with the ease of an acrobat forty feet above the curling rush of the bow wave and the planks of the main deck.

Now every eye was on him-. it was a feat that few aboard would care to emulate.

"For that you have to be young and stupid," Ned Tyler growled, but shook his head fondly as he leaned against the whipstall and stared up.

"Best the little fool does not let his father catch him playing that trick."

Hal reached the end of the yard and without pause swung out onto the brace and slid down it until he was ten feet above the deck. From there he dropped to land lightly on his hard bare feet, flexing his knees to absorb the impact on the scrubbed white planks.

He bounced up, turned towards the stern and froze at the sound of an inhuman cry. It was a primordial bellow, the menacing challenge of some great predatory animal.

Hal remained pinned to the spot for only an instant then instinctively spun away as a tall figure charged down upon him. He heard the fluting sound in the air before he saw the blade and ducked under it. The silver steel flashed over his head and his attacker roared again, a screech of fury.

Hal had a glimpse of his adversary's face, black and glistening, a cave of a mouth lined with huge square white teeth, the tongue as pink and curled as a leopard's as he screamed.

Hal danced and swayed as the silver blade came arcing back. He felt a tug at the sleeve of his jerkin as the sword point split the leather, and fell back.

"Ned, a blade!" he yelled wildly at the helmsman behind him, never taking his eyes off those of his assailant. The pupils were black and bright as obsidian, the iris opaque with fury, the whites engorged with blood.

Hal leaped aside at the next wild charge, and felt on his cheek the draught of the blow. Behind him he heard the scrape of a cutlass drawn from the boatswain's scabbard, and the weapon slide across the deck towards him. He stooped smoothly and gathered it up, the hilt coming naturally to his hand, as he went into the guard stance and aimed the point at the eyes of his attacker.

In the face of Hal's menacing blade, the tall man checked his next rush and when, with his left hand, Hal drew from his belt his ten-inch dirk and offered that point also, the mad light in his eyes turned cold and appraising. They circled each other on the open deck below the mainmast, their blades weaving, touching and tapping lightly, as each sought an opening.

The seamen on the deck left their tasks even those on the handles of the pumps and came running to form a ring around the swordsmen as though they watched a cockfight, their faces alight with the prospect of seeing blood spurt. They growled and hooted at each thrust and parry, and urged on their favourites.

"Hack out his big black balls, young Hal!" "Pluck the cockerel's saucy tail feathers for him." Aboli stood five inches taller than Hal, and there was no fat on his lean, supple frame. He was from the eastern coast of Africa, of a warrior tribe highly prized by the slavers. Every hair had been carefully plucked from his pate, which gleamed like polished black marble, and his cheeks were adorned with ritual tattoos, whorls of raised cicatrices that gave him a terrifying appearance. He moved with a peculiar grace, on those long muscular legs, swaying from the waist like some huge black cobra. He wore only a petticoat of tattered canvas, and his chest was bare. Each muscle in his torso and upper arms seemed to have a life of its own, serpents slithering and coiling beneath the oiled skin.

He lunged suddenly, and with a desperate effort Hal turned the blade, but. almost in the same instant Aboli reversed the blow, aiming once more at his head. There was such power in his stroke that Hal knew he could not block it with cutlass alone. He threw up both blades, crossing them, and trapped the Negro's high above his head. Steel rang and thrilled on steel, and the crowd howled at the skill and grace of the parry.

But at the fury of the attack Hal gave a pace, and another then another as Aboli pressed him again and again, giving him no respite, using his greater height and superior strength to counter the boy's natural ability.

Hal's face mirrored his desperation. He gave more readily now and his movements were uncoordinated: he was tired and fear dulled his responses. The cruel watchers turned against him, yelling for blood, urging on his implacable opponent.

"Mark his pretty face, Aboli!" "Give us a look at his guts!"

Sweat greased Hal's cheeks and his expression crumpled as Aboli drove him back against the mast. He seemed much younger suddenly, and on the point of tears, his lips quivering with terror and exhaustion. He was no longer counter-attacking. Now it was all defence. He was fighting for his life.

Relentlessly Aboli launched a fresh attack, swinging at Hal's body, then changing the angle to cut at his legs. Hal was near the limit of his strength, only just managing to fend off each blow.

Then Aboli changed his attack once more: he forced Hal to overreach by feinting low to the left hip, then shifted his weight and lunged with a long right arm. The shining blade flew straight through Hal's guard and the watchers roared as at last they had the blood they craved.

Hal reeled sideways off the mast and stood panting in the sunlight, blinded by his own sweat. Blood dripped slowly onto his jerkin but from a nick only, made with a surgeon's skill.

"Another scar for you each time you fight like a woman!" Aboli scolded him.

With an expression of exhausted disbelief, Hal raised his left hand, which still held the dirk, and with the back of his fist wiped the blood from his chin. The tip of his earlobe was neatly split and the quantity of blood exaggerated the severity of the wound.

The spectators bellowed with derision and mirth.

"By Satan's teeth!" one of the coxswains laughed. "The pretty boy has more blood than he has guts!"

At the gibe, a swift transformation came over Hal. He lowered his dirk and extended the point in the guard position, ignoring the blood that still dripped from his chin. His face was blank, like that of a statue, and his lips set and blanched frosty white. From his throat issued a low growl, and he launched himself at the Negro.

He exploded across the deck with such speed that Aboli was taken by surprise and driven back. When they locked blades he felt the new power in the boy's arm, and his eyes narrowed. Then Hal was upon him like a wounded wildcat bursting from a trap.

Pain and rage put wings on his feet. His eyes were pitiless and his clenched jaws tightened the muscles of his face into a mask that retained no trace of boyishness. Yet his fury had not robbed him of reason and cunning. All the skill that the lad had accumulated, over hundreds of hours and days upon the practice deck, suddenly coalesced.

The watchers bayed as this miracle took place before their eyes. It seemed that, in that instant, the boy had become a man, had grown in stature so that he stood chin to chin and eye to eye with his dark adversary.

It cannot last, Aboli told himself, as he met the attack. His strength cannot hold out. But this was a new man he confronted, and he had not yet recognized him.

Suddenly he found himself giving ground he will tire soon but the twin blades that danced before his eyes seemed dazzling and ethereal, like the dread spirits of the dark forests that had once been his home.

He looked into the pale face and burning eyes and did not know them. He felt a superstitious awe assail him, which slowed his right arm. This was a demon, with a demon's unnatural strength. He knew that he was in danger of his life.

The next coup sped at his chest, glancing through his guard like a sunbeam. He twisted aside his upper body, but the thrust raked under his raised left arm. He felt no pain but heard the rasp of the razor edge against his ribs, and the warm flood of blood down his flank. And he had ignored the weapon in Hal's left fist and the boy used either hand with equal ease.

At the edge of his vision he saw the shorter, stiffer blade speed towards his heart and threw himself back to avoid it. His heel caught in the tail of the yard brace, coiled on the deck, and he went sprawling. The elbow of his sword arm slammed into the gunwale, numbing it to the fingertips, and the cutlass flew from his fingers.

On his back, Aboli looked up helplessly and saw death above him in those terrifying green eyes. This was not the face of the child who had been his ward and special charge for the last decade, the boy he had cherished and trained and loved over ten long years. This was a man who would kill him. The bright point of the cutlass started down, aimed at his throat, with the full weight of the lithe young body behind it.

"Henry!" A stern, authoritative voice rang across the deck, cutting through the hubbub of the blood-crazed spectators.

Hal started, and stood still with the point against Aboli's throat. A bemused expression spread across his face, like that of an awakening dreamer, and he looked up at his father on the break of the poop.

"Avast that tomfoolery. Get you down to my cabin at once.

Hal glanced around the deck, at the flushed, excited faces surrounding him. He shook his head in puzzlement, and looked down at the cutlass in his hand. He opened his fingers and let it drop to the planks. His legs turned to water under him and he sank down on top of Aboli and hugged him as a child hugs his father.

"Aboli!" he whispered, in the language of the forests that the black man had taught him and which was a secret no other white man on the ship shared with them. "I have hurt you sorely. The blood! By my life, I could have killed you Aboli chuckled softly and answered in the same language, "It was past time. At last you have tapped the well of warrior blood. I thought you would never find it. I had to drive you hard to it."

He sat up and pushed Hal away, but there was a new light in his eyes as he looked at the boy, who was a boy no longer. "Go now and do your father's bidding!"

Hal stood up shakily and looked again round the circle of faces, seeing an expression in them that he did not recognize: it was respect mingled with more than a little fear.

"What are you gawking at?" bellowed Ned Tyler. "The play is over. Do you have no work to do? Man those pumps. Those topgallants are luffing. I can find mastheads for all idle hands." There was the thump of bare feet across the deck as the crew rushed guiltily to their duties.

Hal stooped, picked up the cutlass, and handed it back to the boatswain, hilt first.

"Thank you, Ned. I had need of it."

"And you put it to good use. I have never seen that heathen bested, except by your father before you."

Hal tore a handful of rag from the tattered hem of his canvas pantaloons, held it to his ear to staunch the bleeding, and went down to the stern cabin.

Sir Francis looked up from his log-book, his goose quill poised over the page. "Do not look so smug, puppy," he grunted at Hal. "Aboli toyed with you, as he always does. He could have spitted you a dozen times before you turned it with that lucky coup at the end."

When Sir Francis stood up there was hardly room for them both in the tiny cabin. The bulkheads were lined from deck to deck with books, more were stacked about their feet and leather-bound volumes were crammed into the cubby-hole that served his father as a bunk. Hal wondered where he found place to sleep.

His father addressed him in Latin. When they were alone he insisted on speaking the language of the educated and cultivated man. "You will die before you ever make a swordsman, unless you find steel in your heart as well as in your hand. Some hulking Dutchman will cleave you to the teeth at your first encounter." Sir Francis scowled at his son, "Recite the law of the sword."

"An eye for his eyes," Hal mumbled in Latin.

"Speak up, boy!" Sir Francis's hearing had been dulled by the blast of culver ins over the years a thousand broadsides had burst around his head. At the end of an engagement, blood would be seen dripping from the ears of the seamen beside the guns and for days after even the officers on the poop heard heavenly bells ring in their heads.

"An eye for his eyes," Hal repeated roundly, and his father nodded.

"His eyes are the window to his mind. Learn to read in them his intentions before the act. See there the stroke before it is delivered. What else?"

"The other eye for his feet," Hal recited.

"Good." Sir Francis nodded. "His feet will move before his hand.

What else?"

"Keep the point high."

"The cardinal rule. Never lower the point. Keep it aimed at his eyes."

Sir Francis led Hal through the catechism, as he had countless times before. At the end, he said, "Here is one more rule for you. Fight from the first stroke, not just when you are hurt or angry, or you might not survive that first wound."

He glanced up at the hourglass hanging from the deck above his head. "There is yet time for your reading before ship's prayers." He spoke in Latin still. "Take up your Livy and translate from the top of page twenty-six."

For an hour Hal read aloud the history of Rome in the original, translating each verse into English as he went. Then, at last, Sir Francis closed his Livy with a snap. "There is improvement. Now, decline the verb dur are

That his father should choose this one was a mark of his approval.

Hal recited it in a breathless rush, slowing when he came to the future indicative. Vurabo. I shall endure."

That word formed the motto of the Courtney coat-of arms and Sir Francis smiled frostily as Hal voiced it.

"May the Lord grant you that grace." He stood up. "You may go now but do not be late for prayers."

Rejoicing to be free, Hal fled from the cabin and went bounding up the companionway.

Aboli was squatting in the lee of one of the hulking bronze culver ins near the bows. Hal knelt beside him. "I wounded you."

Aboli made an eloquent dismissive gesture. "A chicken scratching in the dust wounds the earth more gravely."

Hal pulled the tarpaulin cloak off Aboli's shoulders, seized the elbow and lifted the thickly muscled arm high to peer at the deep slash across the ribs. "None the less, this little chicken gave you a good pecking," he observed drily, and grinned as Aboli opened his hand and showed him the needle already threaded with sail maker yarn. He reached for it, but Aboli checked him.

"Wash the cut, as I taught you."

"With that long black python of yours you could reach it yourself," Hal suggested, and Aboli emitted his long, rolling laugh, soft and low as distant thunder.

"We will have to make do with a small white worm."

Hal stood and loosed the cord that held up his pantaloons. He let them drop to his knees, and with his right hand drew back his foreskin.

"I christen you Aboli, lord of the chickens!" He imitated his own father's preaching tone faithfully, and directed a stream of yellow urine into the open wound.

Although Hal knew how it stung, for Aboli had done the same many times for him, the black features remained impassive. Hal irrigated the wound with the very last drop and then hoisted his breeches. He knew how efficacious this tribal remedy of Aboli's was. The first time it had been used on him he had been repelled by it, but in all the years since then he had never seen a wound so treated mortify.

He took up the needle and twine, and while Aboli held the lips of the wound together with his left hand, Hal laid neat sail maker stitches across it, digging the needle point through the elastic skin and pulling his knots up tight. When he was done, he reached for the pot of hot tar that Aboli had ready. He smeared the sewn wound thickly and nodded with satisfaction at his handiwork.

Aboli stood up and lifted his canvas petticoats. "Now we will see to your ear," he told Hal, as his own fat penis overflowed his fist by half its length.

Hal recoiled swiftly. "It is but a little scratch, he protested, but Aboli seized his pigtail remorselessly and twisted his face upwards.

At the stroke of the bell the company crowded into the waist of the ship, and stood silent And bare-headed in the sunlight even the black tribesmen, who did not worship exclusively the crucified Lord but other gods also whose abode was the deep dark forests of their homes.

When Sir Francis, great leather-bound Bible in hand, intoned sonorously, "We pray you, Almighty God, deliver the enemy of Christ into our hands that he shall not triumph..." his eyes were the only ones still cast heavenward. Every other eye in the company turned towards the east from where that enemy would come, laden with silver and spices.

Half-way through the long service a line squall came boring up out of the east, wind driving the clouds in a tumbling dark mass over their heads and deluging the decks with silver sheets of rain. But the elements could not conspire to keep Sir Francis from his discourse with the Almighty, so while the crew huddled in their tar-daubed canvas jackets, with hats of the same material tied beneath their chins, and the water streamed off them as off the hides of a pack of beached walrus, Sir Francis missed not a beat of his sermon. "Lord of the storm and the wind," he prayed, "succour us. Lord of the battle4 me be our shield and buckler..."

The squall passed over them swiftly and the sun burst forth again, sparkling on the blue swells and steaming on the decks.

Sir Francis clapped his wide-brimmed cavalier hat back on his head, and the sodden white feathers that surmounted it nodded in approval. "Master Ned, run out the guns."

It was the proper course to take, Hal realized. The rain squall would have soaked the priming and wet the loaded powder. Rather than the lengthy business of drawing the shot and reloading, his father would give the crews some practice.

"Beat to quarters, if you please."

The drum-roll echoed through the hull, and the crew ran grinning and joking to their stations. Hal plunged the tip of a slow-match into the charcoal brazier at the foot of the mast. When it was smouldering evenly, he leapt into the shrouds and, carrying the burning match in his teeth, clambered up to his battle station at the masthead.

On the deck he saw four men sway an empty water cask up from the hold and stagger with it to the ship's side. At the order from the poop, they tossed it over and left it bobbing in the ship's wake. Meanwhile the gun crews knocked out the wedges and, heaving at the tackles, ran out the culver ins On either side of the lower deck there were eight, each loaded with a bucketful of powder and a ball. On the upper deck were ranged ten demi-culver ins five on each side, their long barrels crammed with grape.

The Lady Edwina was low on iron shot after her two year-long cruise, and some of the guns were loaded with water-rounded flint marbles hand-picked from the banks of the river mouths where the watering parties had gone ashore. Ponderously she came about, and settled on the new tack, beating back into the wind. The floating cask was still two cables" length ahead but the range narrowed slowly. The gunners strode from cannon to cannon, pushing in the elevation wedges and ordering the training tackles adjusted. This was a specialized task: only five men aboard had the skill to load and lay a gun.

In the crow's nest, Hal swung the long-barrelled falconer on its swivel and aimed down at a length of floating kelp that drifted past on the current. Then with the point of his dirk he scraped the damp, caked powder out of the pan of the weapon, and carefully repacked it with fresh powder from his flask. After ten years of instruction by his father, he was as skilled as Ned Tyler, the ship's master gunner, in the esoteric art. His rightful battle station should have been on the gundeck, and he had pleaded with his father to place him there but had been answered only with the stern retort, "You will go where I send you." Now he must sit up here, out of the hurly-burly, while his fierce young heart ached to be a part of it.

Suddenly he was startled by the crash of gunfire from the deck below, A long dense plume of smoke billowed out and the ship heeled slightly at the discharge. A moment later a tall fountain of foam rose dramatically from the surface of the sea fifty yards to the right and twenty beyond the floating cask. At that range it was not bad shooting, but the deck erupted in a chorus of jeers and whistles.

Ned Tyler hurried to the second culverin, and swiftly checked its lay. He gestured for the men on the tackle to train it a point left then stepped forward and held the burning match to the touch hole. A fizzling puff of smoke blew back and then, from the gaping muzzle, came a shower of sparks, half-burned powder and clods of damp, caked muck. The ball rolled down the bronze barrel and fell into the sea less than half-way to the target cask. The crew howled with derision.

The next two weapons misfired. Cursing furiously, Ned ordered the crews to draw the charges with the long iron corkscrews as he hurried on down the line.

"Great expense of powder and bullet!" Hal recited to himself the words of the great Sir Francis Drake for whom his own father had been christened spoken after the first day of the epic battle against the Armada of Philip 11, King of Spain, led by the Duke of Medina Sidonia. All that long day, under the dun fog of gunsmoke, the two great fleets had loosed their mighty broadsides at each other, but the barrage had sent not a single ship of either fleet to the bottom.

"Fright them with cannon," Hal's father had instructed him, "but sweep their decks with the cutlass," and he voiced his scorn for the rowdy but ineffectual art of naval gunnery. It was impossible to aim a ball from the plunging deck of one ship to a precise point on the hull of another- accuracy was in the hands of the Almighty rather than those of the master gunner.

As if to illustrate the point, after Ned had fired every one of the heavy guns on board six had misfired and the nearest he had come to striking the floating cask was twenty yards. Hal shook his head sadly, reflecting that each of those shots had been carefully laid and aimed. In the heat of a battle, with the range obscured by billowing smoke, the powder and shot stuffed in haste into the muzzles, the barrels heating unevenly and the match applied to pan by excited and terrified gunners, the results could not be even that satisfactory.

At last his father looked up at Hal. "Masthead!" he roared.

Hal had feared himself forgotten. Now, with a thrill of relief, he blew on the tip of the smouldering slow-match in his hand. It glowed bright and fierce.

From the deck Sir Francis watched him, his expression stern and forbidding. He must never let show the love he bore the boy. He must be hard and critical at all times, driving him on. For the boy's own sake nay, for his very life he must force him to learn, to strive, to endure, to run every step of the course ahead of him with all his strength and all his heart. Yet, without making it apparent, he must also help, encourage and assist him. He must shepherd him wisely, cunningly towards his destiny. He had delayed calling upon Hal until this moment, when the cask floated close alongside.

If the boy could shatter it with the small weapon where Ned had failed with the great cannon, then his reputation with the crew would be enhanced. The men were mostly boisterous ruffians, simple illiterates, but one day Hal would be called upon to lead them, or others like them. He had made a giant stride today by be sting Aboli before them all. Here was a chance to consolidate that gain. "Guide his hand, and the flight of the shot, oh God of the battle-line!" Sir Francis prayed silently, and the ship's company craned their necks to watch the lad high above them.

Hal hummed softly to himself as he concentrated on the task, conscious of the eyes upon him. Yet he did not sense the importance of this discharge and was oblivious of his father's prayers. It was a game to him, just another chance to excel. Hal liked to win, and each time he did so he liked it better. The young eagle was beginning to rejoice in the power of his wings.

Gripping the end of the long brass monkey tail, he swivelled the falconer downwards, peering over the yard long barrel, lining up the notch above the pan with the pip on the muzzle end.

He had learned that it was futile to aim directly at the target. There would be a delay of seconds from when he applied the slow-match, to the crash of the shot, and in the meantime ship and cask would be moving in opposite directions. There was also the moment when the discharged balls were in flight before they struck. He must gauge where the cask would be when the shot reached it and not aim for the spot where it had been when he pressed the match to the pan.

He swung the pip of the foresight smoothly over the target, and touched the glowing end of the match to the pan. He forced himself not to flinch away from the flare of burning powder nor to recoil in anticipation of the explosion but to keep the barrels swinging gently in the line he had chosen.

With a roar that stung his eardrums the falconer bucked heavily against its swivel, and everything disappeared in a cloud of grey smoke. Desperately he craned his head left and right, trying to see around the smoke, but it was the cheers from the decks below that made his heart leap, reaching him even through his singing ears. When the wind whisked away the smoke, he could see the ribs of the shattered cask swirling and tumbling astern in the ship's wake. He hooted with glee, and waved his cap at the faces on the deck far below. Aboli was at his place in the bows, coxswain and gun captain of the first watch. He returned Hal's beatific grin and beat his chest with one fist, while with the other he brandished the cutlass over his bald head.

The drum rolled to end the drill and stand down the crew from their battle stations. Before he dropped down the shrouds Hal reloaded the falconet carefully and bound a strip of tar-soaked canvas around the pan to protect it from dew, rain and spray.

As his feet hit the deck he looked to the poop, trying to catch his father's eye and glean his approbation. But Sir Francis was deep in conversation with one of his petty officers. A moment passed before he glanced coldly over his shoulder at Hal. "What are you gawking at, boy? There are guns to be reloaded."

As he turned away Hal felt the bite of disappointment, but the rowdy congratulations of the crew, the rough slaps across his back and shoulders as he passed down the gundeck, restored his smile.

When Ned Tyler saw him coming he stepped back from the breech of the culverin he was loading and handed the ramrod to Hal. "Any oaf can shoot it, but it takes a good man to load it," he grunted, and stood back critically to watch Hal measure a charge from the leather powder bucket. "What weight of powder?" he asked, and Hal gave the same reply he had a hundred times before.

"The same weight as that of the round shot."

The black powder comprised coarse granules. There had been a time when, shaken and agitated by the ship's way or some other repetitive movement, the three essential elements, sulphur, charcoal and saltpetre, might separate out and render it useless. Since then the process of "coming" had evolved, whereby the fine raw powder was treated with urine or alcohol to set it into a cake, which was then crushed in a ball mill to the required size of granules. Yet the process was not perfect and a gunner must always have an eye for the condition of his powder. Damp or age could degrade it. Hal tested the grains between his fingers and tasted a dab. Ned Tyler had taught him to differentiate between good and degenerate powder in this way. Then he poured the contents of the bucket into the muzzle, and followed it with the oakum wadding.

Then he tamped it down with the long wooden-handled ramrod. This was another crucial part of the process: tamped too firmly, the flame could not pass through the charge and a misfire was inevitable, but not tamped firmly enough, and the black powder would burn without the power to hurl the heavy projectile clear of the barrel. Correct tamping was an art that could only be learned from prolonged practice, but Ned nodded as he watched Hal at work.

It was much later when Hal scrambled up again into the sunlight. All the culver ins were loaded and secured behind their ports and Hal's bare upper body was glistening with sweat from the heat of the cramped gundeck and his labours with the ramrod. As he paused to wipe his streaming face, draw a breath and stretch his back, after crouching so long under the cramped head space of the lower deck, his father called to him with heavy irony, "Is the ship's position of no interest to you, Master Henry?"

With a start Hal glanced up at the sun. It was high in the heavens above them: the morning had sped away. He raced to the companionway, dropped down the ladder, burst into his father's cabin, and snatched the heavy backstaff from its case on the bulkhead. Then he turned and ran back to the poop deck.

"Pray God, I'm not too late," he whispered to himself, and glanced up at the position of the sun. It was over the starboard yard-arm. He positioned himself with his back to it and in such a way that the shadow cast by the main sail would not screen him, yet so that he had a clear view of the horizon to the south.

Now he concentrated all his attention on the quadrant of the backstaff. He had to keep the heavy instrument steady against the ship's motion. Then he must read the angle that the sun's rays over his shoulder subtended onto the quadrant, which gave him the sun's inclination to the horizon. It was a juggling act that required strength and dexterity.

At last he could observe noon passage, and read the sun's angle with the horizon at the precise moment it reached its zenith. He lowered the backstaff with aching arms and shoulders, and hastily scribbled the reading on the traverse slate.

Then he ran down the ladder to the stern cabin, but the table of celestial angles was not on its shelf. In distress he turned to see that his father had followed him down and was watching him intently. No word was exchanged, but Hal knew that he was being challenged to provide the value from memory. Hal sat at his father's sea-chest, which served as a desk, and closed his eyes as he reviewed the tables in his mind's eye. He must remember yesterday's figures and extrapolate from them. He massaged his swollen ear-lobe, and his lips moved soundlessly.

Suddenly his face lightened, he opened his eyes and scribbled another number on the slate. He worked for a nimite longer, translating the angle of the noon sun into degrees of latitude. Then he looked up triumphantly. "Thirty-four degrees forty-two minutes south latitude."

His father took the slate from his hand, checked his figures, then handed it back to him. He inclined his head slightly in agreement. "Close enough, if your sun sight was true. Now what of your longitude?"

The determination of exact longitude was a puzzle that no man had ever solved. There was no timepiece, hourglass or clock that could be carried aboard a ship and still be sufficiently accurate to keep track of the earth's majestic revolutions. Only the traverse board, which hung beside the compass binnacle, could guide Hal's calculation. Now he studied the pegs that the helmsman had placed in the holes about the rose of the compass each time he had altered his heading during the previous watch. Hal added and averaged these values, then plotted them on the chart in his father's cabin. It was only a crude approximation of longitude and, predictably, his father demurred. "I would have given it a touch more of east, for with the weed on her bottom and the water in her bilges she pays off heavily to leeward but mark her so in the log."

Hal looked up in astonishment. This was a momentous day indeed. No other hand but his father's had ever written in the leather-bound log that sat beside the Bible on the lid of the sea-chest.

While his father watched, he opened the log and, for a minute, stared at the pages filled with his father's elegant, flowing script, and the beautiful drawings of men, ships and landfalls that adorned the margins. His father was a gifted artist. With trepidation Hal dipped the quill in the gold inkwell that had once belonged to the captain of the Heerlycke Nacht, one of the Dutch East India Company's galleons that his father had seized. He wiped the superfluous drops from the nib, test they splatter the sacred page. Then he trapped the tip of his tongue between his teeth and wrote with infinite care: "One bell in the afternoon watch, this 3rd day of September in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ 1667. Position 34 degrees 42 minutes South, 20 degrees 5 minutes East. African mainland in sight from the masthead bearing due North. "Not daring to add more, and relieved that he had not marred the page with scratchings; or splutterings, he set aside the quill and sanded his well formed letters with pride. He knew his hand was fair though perhaps not as fair as his father's, he conceded as he compared them.

Sir Francis took up the pen he had laid aside and leaning over his shoulder wrote: "This forenoon Ensign Henry Courtney severely wounded in an unseemly brawl." Then, beside the entry he swiftly sketched a telling caricature of Hal with his swollen ear sticking out lopsidedly and the knot of the stitch like a bow in a maiden's hair.

Hal gagged on his own suppressed laughter, but when he looked up he saw the twinkle in his father's green eyes. Sir Francis laid one hand on the boy's shoulder, which was as close as he would ever come to an embrace, and squeezed it as he said, "Ned Tyler will be waiting to instruct you in the lore of rigging and sail trimming. Do not keep him waiting." it was late when Hal made his way forward along the upper deck, it was still light enough for him to pick his way with ease over the sleeping bodies of the off-duty watch. The night sky was filled with stars, such an array as must dazzle the eyes of any northerner. This night Hal had no eyes for them. He was exhausted to the point where he reeled on his feet.

Aboli had kept a place for him in the bows, under the lee of the forward cannon where they were out of the wind. He had spread a straw-filled pallet on the deck and Hal tumbled gratefully onto it. There were no quarters set aside for the crew, and the men slept wherever they could find a space on the open deck. In these warm southern nights they all preferred the topsides to the stuffy lower deck. They lay in rows, shoulder to shoulder, but the proximity of so much stinking humanity was natural to Hal, and even their snoring and mutterings could not keep him long from sleep. He moved a little closer to Aboli. This was how he had slept each night for the last ten years and there was comfort in the huge figure beside him.

"Your father is a great chief among lesser chieftains, Aboli murmured. "He is a warrior and he knows the secrets of the sea and the heavens. The stars are his children."

"I know all this is true," Hal answered, in the same language.

"It was he who bade me take the sword to you this day," Aboli confessed.

Hal raised himself on one elbow, and stared at the dark figure beside him. "My father wanted you to cut me?" he asked incredulously.

"You are not as other lads. If your life is hard now, it will be harder still. You are chosen. One day you must take from his shoulders the great cloak of the red cross. You must be worthy of it."

Hal sank back on his pallet, and stared up at the stars. "What if I do not want this thing?" he asked.

"It is yours. You do not have a choice. The one Nautonnier Knight chooses the Knight to follow him. It has been so for almost four hundred years. Your only escape from it is death."

Hal was silent for so long that Aboli thought sleep had overcome him, but then he whispered, "How do you know these things?"

"From your father."

"Are you also a Knight of our Order?"

Aboli laughed softly. "My skin is too dark and my gods are alien.

I could never be chosen."

"Aboli, I am afraid."

"All men are afraid. It is for those of us of the warrior blood to subdue fear."

"You will never leave me, will you, Aboli?"

"I will stay at your side as long as you need me." "Then I am not so afraid."

Hours later Aboli woke him with a hand on his shoulder from a deep and dreamless sleep. "Eight bells in the middle watch, Gundwane." He used Hal's nickname: in his own language it meant "Bush Rat'. It was not meant pejoratively, but was the affectionate name he had bestowed on the four-year-old who had been placed in his care over a decade before.

Four o'clock in the morning. It would be light in an hour. Hal scrambled up and, rubbing his eyes, staggered to the stinking bucket in the heads and eased himself. Then, fully awake, he hurried down the heaving deck, avoiding the sleeping figures that cluttered it.

The cook had his fire going in the brick-lined galley and passed Hal a pewter mug of soup and a hard biscuit. Hal was ravenous and gulped the liquid, though it scalded his tongue. When he crunched the biscuit he felt the weevils in it pop between his teeth.

As he hurried to the foot of the mainmast he saw the glow of his father's pipe in the shadows of the poop and smelled a whiff of his tobacco, rank on the sweet night air. Hal did not pause but went up the shrouds noting the change of tack and the new setting of the sails that had taken place while he slept.

When he reached the masthead and had relieved the lookout there, he settled into his nest and looked about him. There was no moon and, but for the stars, all was dark. He knew every named star, from the mighty Sirius to tiny Mintaka in Orion's glittering belt, They were the ciphers of the navigator, the signposts of the sky, and he had learned their names with his alphabet. His eye went, unbidden, to pick out Regulus in the sign of the Lion. It was not the brightest star in the zodiac, but it was his own particular star and he felt a quiet pleasure at the thought that it sparkled for him alone. This was the happiest hour of his long day, the only time he could ever be alone in the crowded vessel, the only time he could let his mind dance among the stars and his imagination have full rein.

His every sense seemed heightened. Even above the whimper of the wind and the creak of the rigging he could hear his father's voice and recognize its tone if not the words, as he spoke quietly to the helmsman on the deck far below. He could see his father's beaked nose and the set of his brow in the ruddy glow from the pipe bowl as he drew in the tobacco smoke. It seemed to him that his father never slept.

He could smell the iodine of the sea, the fresh odour of kelp and salt. His nose was so keen, purged by months of sweet sea air, that he could even whiff the faint odour of the land, the warm, baked smell of Africa like biscuit hot from the oven.

Then there was another scent, so faint he thought his nostrils had played a trick on him. A minute later he caught it again, just a trace, honey-sweet on the wind. He did not recognize it and turned his head back and forth, questing for the next faint perfume, sniffing eagerly.

Suddenly it came again, so fragrant and heady that he reeled like a drunkard smelling the brandy pot, and had to stop himself crying aloud in his excitement. With an effort he kept his mouth closed and, with the aroma filling his head, tumbled from the crow's nest, and fled down the shrouds to the deck below. He ran on bare feet so silently that his father started when Hal touched his arm.

"Why have you left your post?"

"I could not hail you from the masthead they are too close. They might have heard me also."

"What are you babbling about, boy?" His father came angrily to his feet. "Speak plainly."

"Father, do you not smell it?" He shook his father's arm urgently.

"What is it?" His father took the pipe stern from his mouth. "What is it that you smell?"

"Spice!" said Hal. "The air is full of the perfume of spice."

They moved swiftly down the deck, Ned Tyler, Aboli and Hal, shaking the off-duty watch awake, cautioning each man to silence as they shoved him towards his battle stations. There was no drum to beat to quarters. Their excitement was infectious. The waiting was over. The Dutchman was out there somewhere close, to windward in the darkness. They could all smell his fabulous cargo now.

Sir Francis extinguished the candle in the binnacle so that the ship showed no lights, then passed the keys of the arms chests to his boatswains. They were kept locked until the chase was in sight for the dread of mutiny was always in the back of every captain's mind. At other times only the petty officers carried cutlasses.

In haste the chests were opened and the weapons passed from hand to hand. The cutlasses were of good Sheffield steel, with plain wooden hilts and basket guards. The pikes had six-foot shafts of English oak and heavy hexagonal iron heads. Those of the crew who lacked skill with the sword chose either these robust spears or the boarding axes that could lop a man's head from his shoulders at a stroke.

The muskets were racked in the black powder magazine. They were brought up, and Hal helped the gunners load them with a handful of lead pellets on top of a handful of powder. They were clumsy, inaccurate weapons, with an effective range of only twenty or thirty yards. After the lock was triggered, and the burning match mechanically applied, the weapon fired in a cloud of smoke, but then had to be reloaded. This operation took two or three vital minutes, during which the musketeer was at the mercy of his foes.

Hal preferred the bow; the famous English longbow that had decimated the French knights at Agincourt. He could loose a dozen shafts in the time it took to reload a musket. The longbow carried fifty paces with the accuracy to strike a foe in the centre of the chest and with the power to spit him to the backbone, even though he wore a breastplate. He already had two bundles of arrows lashed to the sides of the crow's nest, ready to hand.

Sir Francis and some of his petty officers strapped on their half armour, light cavalry cuitasses and steel pot helmets. Sea salt had rusted them and they were dented and battered from other actions.

In short order the ship was readied for battle, and the crew armed and armoured. However, the gun ports were closed and the demi-culver ins were not run out. Most of the men were hustled below by Ned and the other boatswains, while the rest were ordered to lie flat on the deck concealed below the bulwarks. No slow-match was lit the glow and smoke might alert the chase to her danger. However, charcoal braziers smouldered at the foot of each mast, and the wedges were knocked out of the gun ports with muffled wooden mallets so that the sound of the blows would not carry.

Aboli pushed his way through the scurrying figures to where Hal stood at the foot of the mast. Around his bald head he wore a scarlet cloth whose tail hung down his back, and thrust into his sash was a cutlass. Under one arm he carried a rolled bundle of coloured silk. "From your father." He thrust the bundle into Hal's arms. "You know what to do with them!" He gave Hal's pigtail a tug. "Your father says that you are to remain at the masthead no matter which way the fight goes. Do you hear now?"

He turned and hurried back towards the bows. Hal grimaced rebelliously at his broad back, but climbed dutifully into the shrouds. When he reached the masthead he scanned the darkness swiftly, but as yet there was nothing to see. Even the aroma of spice had evaporated. He felt a stab of concern that he might only have imagined it, "It is only that the chase has come out of our wind," he reassured himself. "She is probably abeam of us by now."

He attached the banner Aboli had given him to the signal halyard, ready to fly it at his father's order. Then he removed the cover from the pan of the falconer. He checked the tension of the string before setting his longbow into the rack beside the bundles of yard-long arrows. Now there was nothing to do but wait. Below him the ship was unnaturally quiet, not even a bell to mark the passage of the hours, only the soft song of the sails and the muted accompaniment of the rigging.

The day came upon them with the suddenness that in these African seas he had come to know so well. Out of the dying night rose a tall bright tower, shining and translucent as an ice-covered alp. a great ship under a mass of gleaming canvas, her masts so tall they seemed to rake the last pale stars from the sky.

"Sail ho!" he pitched his voice so that it would carry to the deck below but not to the strange ship that lay, a full league away, across the dark waters. "Fine on the larboard beam!"

His father's voice floated back to him. "Masthead! Break out the colours!" Hal heaved on the signal halyard, and the silken bundle soared to the masthead. There it burst open and the tricolour of the Dutch Republic streamed out on the southeaster, orange and snowy white and blue, Within moments the other banners and long pennants burst out from the head of the mizzen and the foremast, one emblazoned with the cipher of the VOC, die Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the United East India Company. The regalia was authentic, captured only four months previously from the Heerlycke Nacht. Even the standard of the Council of Seventeen was genuine. There would scarce have been time for the captain of the galleon to have learned of the capture of his sister ship and so to question the credentials of this strange caravel.

The two ships were on converging courses even in darkness Sir Francis had judged well his interception. There was no call for him to alter course and alarm the Dutch captain. But within minutes it was clear that the Lady Edwina, despite her worm-riddled hull, was faster through the water than the galleon. She must soon begin to overtake the other ship, which he must avoid at all costs.

Sir Francis watched her through the lens of his telescope, and at once he saw why the galleon was so slow and ungainly: her mainmast was jury-rigged, and there was much other evidence of damage to her other masts and rigging. He realized that she must have been caught in some terrible storm in the eastern oceans which would also account for her belated arrival off her landfall on the Agulhas Cape. He knew that he could not alter sail without alarming the Dutch captain, but he had to pass across her stern. He had prepared for this. he signed to the carpenter, at the rail, who with his mate lifted a huge canvas drogue and dropped it over the stern. Like the curb on a head, strong stallion it bit deep in the water and pulled up the Lady Edwina sharply. Again Sir Francis judged the disparate speeds of the two vessels, and nodded with satisfaction.

Then he looked down his own deck. The majority of the men were concealed below decks or lying under the bulwarks where they were invisible even to the lookouts at the galleon's masthead. There was no weapon in sight, all the guns hidden behind their ports. When Sir Francis had captured this caravel she had been a Dutch trader, operating off the west African coast. In converting her to a privateer, he had been at pains to preserve her innocent air and prosaic lines. Only a dozen or so men were visible on the decks and in the rigging, which would be normal for a sluggish merchantman.

As he looked up again the banners of the Republic and the Company broke out at the Dutchman's mastheads. Only a trifle tardily she was acknowledging his salute.

"She accepts us," Ned grunted, as he held the Lady Edwina stolidly on course. "She likes our sheep's clothing." "Perhaps!" Sir Francis replied. "And yet she cracks on more sail." As they watched, the galleon's royals and topgallants bloomed against the morning sky.

"There!" he exclaimed a moment later. "She is altering course, sheering away from us. The Dutchman is a cautious fellow."

"Satan's teeth! just sniff herV Ned whispered, almost to himself, as a trace of spices scented the air. "Sweet as a virgin, and twice as beautiful."

"It's the richest smell you'll ever have in your nostrils." Sir Francis spoke loudly enough for the men on the deck below to hear him. "There lies fifty pounds a head in prize money if you have the notion to fight for it." Fifty pounds was ten years of an English workman's wages, and the men stiffed and growled like hunting hounds on the leash.

Sir Francis went forward to the poop rail and lifted his chin to call softly up to the men in the rigging, "Make believe that those cheese-heads over there are your brothers. Give them a cheer and a brave welcome."

The men aloft howled with glee, and waved their bonnets at the tall ship as the Lady Edwina edged in under her stern. atinka van de Velde sat up and frowned at Zelda, her old nurse. "Why have you woken me so early?" she demanded petulantly, and tossed the tumble of golden curls back from her face. Even so freshly aroused from sleep, it was rosy and angelic. Her eyes were of a startling violet colour, like the lustrous wings of a tropical butterfly.

"There is another ship near us. Another Company ship. The first we have seen in all these terrible stormy weeks. I had begun to think there was not another Christian soul left in all the world," Zelda whined. "You are always complaining of boredom. It might divert you for a while."

Zelda was pale and wan. Her cheeks, once fat, smooth and greased with good living, were sunken. Her great belly was gone, and hung in folds of loose skin almost to her knees. Katinka could see it through the thin stuff of her nightgown.

She has puked away all her fat and half her flesh, Katinka thought, with a twinge of disgust. Zelda had been prostrated by the cyclones that had assailed the Standvastigheid and battered her mercilessly ever since they had left the Trincomalee coast.

Katinka threw back the satin bedclothes and swung her long legs over the edge of the gilded bunk. This cabin had been especially furnished and redecorated to accommodate her, a daughter of one of the omnipotent Zeventien, the seventeen directors of the Company. The decor was all gilt and velvet, silken cushions and silver vessels. A portrait of Katinka by the fashionable Amsterdam artist Pieter de Hoogh hung on the bulkhead opposite her bed, a wedding present from her doting father. The artist had captured her lascivious turn of head. He must have scoured his paint pots to reproduce so faithfully the wondrous colour of her eyes and their expression, which was at once both innocent and corrupt.

"Do not wake my husband," she cautioned the old woman as she flung a gold-brocade wrap over her shoulders and tied the jewelled belt around her hourglass waist. Zelda's eyelid drooped in conspiratorial agreement. At Katinka's insistence the Governor slept in the smaller, less grand cabin beyond the door that was locked from her side. Her excuse was that he snored abominably, and that she was indisposed by the mal-de-mer. In truth, caged in her quarters all these weeks, she was restless and bored, bursting with youthful energy and aflame with desires that the fat old man could never extinguish.

She took Zelda's hand and stepped out onto the narrow stern gallery. This was a private balcony, ornately carved with cherubs and angels, looking out over the ship's wake and hidden from the vulgar eyes of the crew.

It was a morning dazzling with sunlit magic, and as she filled her lungs with the salt tang of the sea she felt every nerve and muscle of her body quiver with the impetus of life. The wind kicked creamy feathers from the tops of the long blue swells, and played with her golden curls. It ruffled the silk over her breasts and belly with the caress of a lover's fingers. She stretched and arched her back sensuously like a sleek, golden cat.

Then she saw the other ship. It was much smaller than the galleon but with pleasing lines. The pretty flags and pennants that streamed from her masts contrasted with the pile of her white sails. She was close enough for Katinka to make out the figures of the few men that manned her rigging. They were waving a greeting, and she could see that some were young and clad only in short petticoats.

She leaned over the rail and stared across. Her husband had commanded that the crew of the galleon observe a strict dress code while she was aboard, so the figures on this strange ship fascinated her. She folded her arms over her bosom and squeezed her breasts together, feeling her nipples harden and engorge. She wanted a man. She burned for a man, any man, just as long as he was young and hard and raging for her. A man like those she had known in Amsterdam before her father had discovered her taste for strong game and sent her out to the Indies, to a safe old husband who had a high position in the Company and even higher prospects. His choice had been Petrus Jacobus van de Velde who, now that he was married to Katinka, was assured of the next vacancy on the Company's board, where he would join the pantheon of the Zeventien.

"Come inside, Lieveling." Zelda tugged at her sleeve. "Those ruffians over there are staring at you."

Katinka. shrugged off Zelda's hand, but it was true. They had recognized her as a female. Even at this distance their excitement was almost palpable. Their antics had become frenzied and one strapping figure in the bows took a double handful of his own crotch and thrust his hips towards her in a rhythmic and obscene gesture.

"Revolting! Come insideV Zelda insisted. "The Governor will be furious if he sees what that animal is doing."

"He should be furious that he cannot perform as nimbly," Katinka replied angelically. She pressed her thighs tightly together the better to savour the sudden moist warmth at their juncture. The caravel was much closer now, and she could see that what the seaman was offering her was bulky enough to overflow his cupped hands. The tip of her pink tongue dabbed at her pouting lips.

"Please, mistress."

"In a while," Katinka demurred. "You were right, Zelda.

This does amuse me. "She raised one white hand and waved back at the other ship. Instantly the men redoubled their efforts to hold her attention.

"This is so undignified," Zelda moaned.

"But it's fun. We'll never see those creatures again, and being always dignified is so dull." She leaned further out over the rail and let the front of her gown bulge open.

At that moment there was a heavy pounding on the door to her husband's cabin. Without further urging Katinka fled from the gallery, rushed to her bunk and threw herself upon it. She pulled the satin bedclothes up to her chin, before she nodded at Zelda, who lifted the cross bar and dropped into an ungainly curtsy as the Governor burst in.

He ignored her and, belting his robe around his protruding belly, waddled to the bunk where Katinka. lay. Without his wig his head was covered by sparse silver bristles.

"My dear, are you well enough to rise? The captain has sent a message. He wishes us to dress and stand to. There is a strange vessel in the offing, and it is behaving suspiciously."

Katinka stifled a smile as she thought of the suspicious behaviour of the strange seamen. Instead she made a brave but pitiful face. "My head is bursting, and my stomach, -" "My poor darling." Petrus van de Velde, Governor-elect of the Cape of Good Hope, bent over her. Even on this cool morning his jowls were basted with sweat, and he reeked of last evening's dinner, Javanese curried fish, garlic and sour rum.

This time her stomach truly churned, but Katinka. offered her cheek dutifully. "I may have the strength to rise," she whispered, "if the captain orders it."

Zelda rushed to the bedside and helped her sit up, and then lifted her to her feet, and with an arm around her waist, led her to the small Chinese screen in the corner of the cabin. Seated on the bench opposite, her husband was afforded only vague glimpses of shining white skin from behind the painted silk panels, even though he craned his head to see more.

"How much longer must this terrible journey last?" Katinka complained.

"The captain assures me that, with this wind holding fair, we should drop anchor in Table Bay within ten days."

"The Lord give me strength to survive that long."

"He has invited us to dine today with him and his officers," replied the Governor. "It is a pity, but I will send a message that you are indisposed."

Katinka's head and shoulders popped up over the screen. "You will do no such thing!" she snapped. Her breasts, round and white and smooth, quivered with agitation.

One of the officers interested her more than a little. He was Colonel Cornelius Schreuder, who, like her own husband, was en route to take up an appointment at the Cape of Good Hope. He had been appointed military commander of the settlement of which Pettus van de Velde would be Governor. He wore pointed moustaches and a fashionable van Dyck beard, and bowed to her most graciously each time she went on deck. His legs were well turned, and his dark eyes were eagle bright and gave her goose pimples when he looked at her. She read in them more than just respect for her position, and he had responded most gratifyingly to the sly appraisal she had given him from under her long eyelashes.

When they reached the Cape, he would be her husband's subordinate.

Hers also to command and she was sure that he could relieve the monotony of exile in the forsaken settlement at the end of the world that was to be her home for the next three years.

"I mean," she changed her tone swiftly, "it would be churlish of us to decline the captain's hospitality, would it not?"

"But your health is more important," he protested.

"I will find the strength." Zelda slipped petticoats over her head, one after another, five in all, each fluttering with ribbons.

Katinka came from behind the screen and raised her arms. Zelda lowered the blue silk dress over them and drew it down over the petticoats. Then she knelt and carefully tucked up the skirts on one side to reveal the petticoats beneath, and the slim ankles clad in white silk stockings. It was the very latest fashion. The Governor watched her, entranced. If only the other parts of your body were as big and busy as your eyeballs, Katinka thought derisively, as she turned to the long mirror and pirouetted before it.

Then she screamed wildly and clutched her bosom as, from the deck directly above them, there came the sudden deafening roar of gunfire. The Governor screamed as shrilly and flung himself from the bench onto the Oriental carpets that covered the deck.

"Through the lens of the telescope Sir Courtney read the name off her gilded transom. "The Standvastigheid. the Resolution." He lowered the glass and grunted, "A name which we will soon put to the test!"

As he spoke a long bright plume of smoke spurted from the ship's upper deck, and a few seconds later the boom of the cannon carried across the wind. Half a cable's length ahead of their bows, the heavy ball plunged into the sea, making a tall white fountain. They could hear drums beating urgently in the other ship, and the gun ports in her lower decks swung open. Long barrels prodded out.

"I marvel that he waited so long to give us a warning shot," Sir Francis drawled. He closed the telescope, and looked up at the sails. "Put up your helm, Master Ned, and lay us under his stern." The display of false colours had won them enough time to duck in under the menace of the galleon's crushing broadside.

Sir Francis turned to the carpenter, who stood ready at the stern rail with a boarding axe in his hands. "Cut her loose!" he ordered.

The man raised the axe above his head and swung it down. With a crunch the blade sliced into the timber of the stern rail, the drogue line parted with a whiplash crack and, free of her restraint, the Lady Edwina bounded forward, then heeled as Ned put up the helm.

Sir Francis's manservant, Oliver, came running with the red-quartered cloak and plumed cavalier hat. Sir Francis donned them swiftly and bellowed at the masthead, "Down with the colours of the Republic and let's see those of England!" The crew cheered wildly as the Union flag streamed out on the wind.

They came boiling up from below decks, like ants from a broken nest, and lined the bulwarks, roaring defiance at the huge vessel that towered over them. The Dutchman's decks and rigging swarmed with frantic activity.

The cannon in the galleon's ports were training around, but few could cover the caravel as she came flying down on the wind, screened by the Dutchman's own high counter.

A ragged broadside thundered out across the narrowing gap but most of the shot fell wide by hundreds of yards or howled harmlessly overhead. Hal ducked as the blast of a passing shot lifted the cap from his head and sent it sailing away on the wind. A neat round hole had appeared miraculously in the sail six feet above him. He flicked his long hair out of his face, and peered down at the galleon.

The small company of Dutch officers on the quarterdeck were in disarray. Some were in shirtsleeves, and one was stuffing his night-shirt into his breeches as he came up the companion-ladder.

One officer caught his eye in the throng: a tall man in a steel helmet with a van Dyck beard was rallying a company of musketeers on the foredeck. He wore the gold-embroidered sash of a colonel over his shoulder, and from the way he gave his orders and the alacrity with which his men responded seemed a man to watch, one who might prove a dangerous foe.

Now at his bidding the men ran aft, each carrying a murderer, one of the small guns especially used for repelling boarders. There were slots in the galleon's stern rail into which the iron pin of the murderer would fit, allowing the deadly little weapon to be traversed and aimed at the decks of an enemy ship as it came alongside. When they had boarded the Heerlycke Nacht Hal had seen the execution the murderer could wreak at close range. It was more of a threat than the rest of the galleon's battery.

He swivelled the falconet, and blew on the slow-match in his hand.

To reach the stern the file of Dutch musketeers must climb the ladder from the quarterdeck to the poop. He aimed at the head of the ladder as the gap between the two ships closed swiftly; The Dutch colonel was first up the ladder, sword in hand, his gilded helmet sparkling bravely in the sunlight. Hal let him cross the deck at a run, and waited for his men to follow him up.

The first musketeer tripped at the head of the ladder and sprawled on the deck, dropping his murderer as he fell. Those following were bunched up behind him, unable to pass for the moment that it took him to recover and regain his feet. Hal peered over the crude sights of the falconet at the little knot of men. He pressed the burning tip of the match to the pan, and held his aim deliberately as the powder flared. The falconet jumped and bellowed and, as the smoke cleared he saw that five of the musketeers were down, three torn to shreds by the blast, the others screaming and splashing their blood on the white deck.

Hal felt breathless with shock as he looked down at the carnage. He had never before killed a man, and his stomach heaved with sudden nausea. This was not the same as shattering a water cask. For a moment he thought he might vomit.

The Dutch colonel at the stern rail looked up at him. He lifted his sword and pointed it at Hal's face. He shouted something up at Hal, but the wind and the continuous roll of gunfire obliterated his words. But Hal knew that he had made a mortal enemy.

This knowledge steadied him. There was no time to reload the falconer, it had done its work. He knew that that single shot had saved the lives of many of his own men. He had caught the Dutch musketeers before they could set up their murderers to scythe down the boarders. He knew he should be proud, but he was not. He was afraid of the Dutch colonel.

Hal reached for the longbow. He had to stand tall to draw it. He aimed his first arrow down at the colonel. He drew to full reach, but the Dutchman was no longer looking at him: he was commanding the survivors of his company to their positions at the galleon's stern rail.

His back was turned to Hal.

Hal held off a fraction, allowing for the wind and the ship's movement. He loosed the arrow and watched it flash away, curling as the wind caught it. For a moment he thought it would find its mark in the colonel's broad back, but the wind thwarted it. It missed by a hand's breadth and thudded into the deck timbers where it stood quivering. The Dutchman glanced up at him, scorn curling his spiked moustaches. He made no attempt to seek cover, but turned back to his men.

Hal reached frantically for another arrow, but at that instant the two ships came together, and he was almost catapulted over the rim of the crow's nest.

There was a grinding, crackling uproar, timbers burst, and the windows in the galleon's stern galleries shattered at the collision. Hal looked down and saw Aboli in the bows, a black colossus as he swung a boarding grapnel around his head in long swooping revolutions then hurled it upwards, the line snaking out behind.

The iron hook skidded across the poop deck, but when Aboli jerked it back it lodged firmly in the galleon's stern rail. One of the Dutch crew ran across and lifted an axe to cut it free. Hal drew the fl etchings of another arrow to his lips and loosed. This time his judgement of the windage was perfect and the arrowhead buried itself in the man's throat. He dropped the axe and clutched at the shaft as he staggered backwards and collapsed.

Aboli had seized another grapnel and sent that up onto the galleon's stern. It was followed by a score of others, from the other boatswains. In moments the two vessels were bound to each other by a spider's web of manila lines, too numerous for the galleon's defenders to sever though they scampered along the gunwale with hatchets and cutlasses.

The Lady Edwina had not fired her culver ins Sir Francis had held his broadside for the time when it would be most needed. The shot could do little damage to the galleon's massive planking, and it was far from his plans to mortally injure the prize. But now, with the two ships locked together, the moment had come.

"Gunners!" Sir Francis brandished his sword over his head to attract their attention. They stood over their pieces, smoking slow-match in hand, watching him. "Now!" he roared, and slashed his blade downwards.

The line of culver ins thundered in a single hellish chorus. Their muzzles were pressed hard against the galleon's stern, and the carved, gilded woodwork disintegrated in a cloud of smoke, flying white splinters and shards of stained glass from the windows.

It was the signal. No command could be heard in the uproar, no gesture seen in the dense fog that billowed over the locked vessels, but a wild chorus of warlike yells rose from the smoke and the Lady Edwina's crew poured up into the galleon.

They boarded in a pack through the stern gallery, like ferrets into a rabbit warren, climbing with the nimbleness of apes and swarming over the gunwale, screened from the Dutch gunners by the rolling cloud of smoke. Others ran out along the Lady Edwina's yards and dropped onto the galleon's decks. " Franky and St. George!" Their war-cries came up to Hal at the masthead. He saw only three or four shot down by the murderers at the stern before the Dutch musketeers themselves were hacked down and overwhelmed. The men who followed climbed unopposed to the galleon's poop. He saw his father go across, moving with the speed and agility of a much younger man.

Aboli stooped to boost him over the galleon's rail and the two fell in side by side, the tall Negro with the scarlet turban and the cavalier in his plumed Hat, cloak swirling around the battered steel of his cuirass.

"Franky and St. George!" the men howled, as they saw their captain in the thick of the fight, and followed him, sweeping the poop deck with ringing, slashing steel.

The Dutch colonel tried to rally his few remaining men, but they were beaten back remorselessly and sent tumbling down the ladders to the quarterdeck. Aboli and Sir Francis went down after them, their men clamouring behind them like a pack of hounds with the scent of fox in their nostrils.

Here they were faced with sterner opposition. The galleon's captain had formed up his men on the deck below the mainmast, and now their musketeers fired a close-range volley and charged the Lady Edwina's men with bared steel. The galleon's decks were smothered with a struggling mass of fighting men.

Although Hal had reloaded the falconer, there was no target for him. Friend and foe were so intermingled that he could only watch helplessly as the fight surged back and forth across the open deck below him.

Within minutes it was apparent that the crew of the Lady Edwina were heavily outnumbered. There were no reserves Sir Francis had left no one but Hal aboard the caravel. He had committed every last man, gambling all on surprise and this first wild charge. Twenty-four of his men were leagues away across the water, manning the two pinnaces, and could take no part. They were sorely needed now, but when Hal looked for the tiny-scout vessels he saw that they were still miles out. Both had their gaff main sails set, but were making only snail's progress against the southeaster and the big curling swells. The fight would be decided before they could reach the two embattled ships and intervene.

He looked back at the deck of the galleon and to his consternation, realized that the fight had swung against them. His father and Aboli were being driven back towards the stern. The Dutch colonel was at the head of the counter-attack, roaring like a wounded bull and inspiring his men by his example.

From the back ranks of the boarding-party broke a small group of the Lady Edwina's men, who had been hanging back from the fight. They were led by a weasel of a man, Sam Bowles, a forecastle lawyer, whose greatest talent lay in his ready tongue, his skill at arguing the division of spoils and in brewing dissension and discontent among his fellows.

Sam Bowles darted up into the galleon's stern and dropped over the rail to the Lady Edwina's deck, followed by four others.

The interlocked ships had swung round ponderously before the wind, so that now the Lady Edwina was straining at the grappling lines that held them together. In panic and terror, the five deserters fell with axe and cutlass upon the lines. Each parted with a snap that carried clearly to Hal at the masthead.

"Avast that! "he screamed down, but not one man raised his head from his treacherous work.

"Father!" Hal shrieked towards the deck of the other ship. "You'll be stranded! Come back! Come back!"

His voice could not carry against the wind or the noise of battle.

His father was fighting three Dutch seamen, all his attention locked onto them. Hal saw him take a cut on his blade, and then riposte with a gleam of steel. One of his opponents staggered back, clutching at his arm, his sleeve suddenly sodden red.

At that moment the last grappling line parted with a crack, and the Lady Eduna was free. Her bows swung clear swiftly, her sails filled and she bore away, leaving the galleon wallowing, her flapping sails taken all aback, making ungainly sternway.

Hal launched himself down the shrouds, his palms scalded by the speed of the rope hissing through them. He hit the deck so hard that his teeth cracked together in his jaws and he rolled across the planks.

In an instant he was on his feet, and looking desperately around him. The galleon was already a cable's length away across the blue swell, the sounds of the fighting growing faint on the wind. Then he looked to his own stern and saw Sam Bowles scurrying to take the helm.

A fallen seaman was lying in the scupper, shot down by a Dutch murderer. His musket lay beside him, still unfired, the match spluttering and smoking in the lock. Hal snatched it up and raced back along the deck to head off Sam Bowles.

He reached the whipstall a dozen paces before the other man and rounded on him, thrusting the gun's gaping muzzle into his belly. "Back, you craven swine! Or I'll blow your traitor's guts over the deck."

Sam recoiled, and the other four seamen backed up behind him, staring at Hal with faces still pale and terrified from their flight.

"You can't leave your shipmates. We're going back!" Hal screamed, his eyes blazing green with wild rage and fear for his father and Aboli. He waved the musket at them, the smoke from the match swirling around his head. His forefinger was hooked around the trigger. Looking into those eyes, the deserters could not doubt his resolve and retreated down the deck.

Hal seized the whipstall and held it over. The ship trembled under his feet as she came under his command. He looked back at the galleon, and his spirits quailed. He knew that he could never drive the Lady Edwina back against the wind with this set of sail: they were flying away from where his father and Aboli were fighting for their lives. At the same moment Bowles and his gang realized his predicament. "Nobody ain't going back, and there's naught you can do about it, young Henry." Sam cackled triumphantly. "You'll have to get her on the other tack, to beat back to your daddy, and there's none of us will handle the sheets for you. Is there, lads? We have you strapped!"

Hal looked about him hopelessly. Then, suddenly, his jaw clenched with resolution. Sam saw the change in him and turned to follow his gaze. His own expression collapsed in consternation as he saw the pinnace only half a league ahead, crowded with armed sailors.

"Have at him, lads!" he exhorted his companions. "He has but one shot in the musket, and then he's ours!"

"One shot and my sword! " Hal roared, and tapped the hilt of the cutlass on his hip. "God's teeth, but I'll take half of you with me and glory in it."

"All together!" Sam squealed. "He'll never get the blade out of its sheath."

"Yes! Yes!" Hal shouted. "Come! Please, I beg you for the chance to have a look at your cowardly entrails."

They had all watched this young wildcat at practice, had seen him fight Aboli, and none wanted to be at the front of the charge. They growled and shuffled, fingered their cutlasses and looked away.

"Come on, Sam Bowles!" Hal challenged. "You were quick enough from the Dutchman's deck. Let's see how quick you are to come at me now."

Sam steeled himself and then, grimly and purposefully, started forward, but when Hal poked the muzzle of the musket an inch forward, aiming at his belly, he pulled back hurriedly and tried to push one of his gang forward.

"Have at him, lad!" Sam croaked. Hal changed his aim to the second man's face, but he broke out of Sam's grip and ducked behind his neighbour.

The pinnace was close ahead now they could hear the eager shouts of the seamen in her. Sam's expression was desperate. Suddenly he fled. Like a scared rabbit he shot down the ladder to the lower deck, and in an instant the others followed him in a panic-stricken mob.

Hal dropped the musket to the deck, and used both hands on the whipstall. He gazed forward over the plunging bows, judging his moment carefully, then threw his weight against the lever and spun the ship's head up into the wind.

She lay there hove to. The pinnace was nearby and Hal could see Big Daniel Fisher in the bows, one of the Lady Edwina's best boatswains. Big Daniel seized his opportunity, and shot the small boat alongside. His sailors latched onto the trailing grappling lines that Sam and his gang had cut, and came swarming up onto the caravel's deck.

"Daniel!" Hal shouted at him. "I'm going to wear the ship around. Get ready to train her yards! We're going back into the fight!"

Big Daniel flashed him a grin, his teeth jagged and broken as a shark's, and led his men to the yard braces. Twelve men, fresh and eager, Hal exulted, as he prepared for the dangerous manoeuvre of bringing the wind across the ship's stern rather than over her bows. If he misjudged it, he would dismast her, but if he succeeded in bringing her round, stern first to the wind, he would save several crucial minutes in getting back to the embattled galleon.

Hal put the whipstall hard alee, but as she struggled wildly to feel the wind come across her stern, and threatened to gybe with all standing, Daniel paid off the yard braces to take the strain. The sails filled like thunder, and suddenly she was on the other tack, clawing up into the wind, tearing back to join the fight.

Daniel hooted and lifted his cap, and they all cheered him, for it had been courageously and skilfully done. Hal hardly glanced at the others, but concentrated on holding the Lady Edwina close hauled, heading back for the drifting Dutchman. The fight must still be raging aboard her, for he could hear the faint shouts and the occasional pop of a musket. Then there was a flash of white off to leeward, and he saw the gaff sail of the second pinnace ahead the crew waving wildly to gain his attention. Another dozen fighting men to join the muster, he thought. Was it worth the time to pick them up? Another twelve sharp cutlasses? He let the Lady Edwina drop off a point, to head straight for the tiny vessel.

Daniel had a line ready to heave across and, within seconds, the second pinnace had disgorged her men and was on tow behind the Lady Edwina.

"Daniel!" Hal called him. "Keep those men quiet! No sense in warning the cheese-heads we're coming."

"Right, Master Hal. We'll give "em a little surprise." "Batten down the hatches on the lower decks! We have a cargo of cowards and traitors hiding in our holds. Keep "em. locked down there until Sir Francis can deal with them."

Silently the Lady Edwina steered in under the galleon's tumble home Perhaps the Dutchmen were too busy to see her coming in under shortened sail for not a single head peered down from the rail above as the two hulls came together with a jarring grinding impact. Daniel and his crew -hurled grappling irons over the galleon's rail, and immediately stormed up them, hand over hand.

Hal took only a moment to lash the whipstall hard over, then raced across the deck and seized one of the straining lines. Close on Big Daniel's heels, he climbed swiftly and paused as he reached the galleon's rail. With one hand on the line and both feet planted firmly on the galleon's timbers, he drew his cutlass and clamped the blade between his teeth. Then he swung himself up and, only a second behind Daniel, dropped over the rail.

He found himself in the front rank of the fresh boarding party. With Daniel beside him, and the sword in his right fist he took a moment to glance around the deck. The fight was almost over. They had arrived with only seconds to spare for his father's men were scattered in tiny clusters across the deck, surrounded by its crew and fighting for their lives. Half their number were down, a few obviously dead. A head, hacked from its torso, leered up at Hal from the scupper where it rolled back and forth in a puddle of its own blood. With a shudder of horror, Hal recognized the Lady Edwina's cook.

Others were wounded, and writhed, rolled and groaned on the deck. The planks were slick and slippery with their blood. Still others sat exhausted, disarmed and dispirited, their weapons thrown aside, their hands clasped over their heads, yielding to the enemy.

A few were still fighting. Sir Francis and Aboli stood at bay below the mainmast, surrounded by howling Dutchmen, hacking and stabbing. Apart from a gash on his left arm, his father seemed unhurt perhaps the steel cuirass had saved him from serious injury and he fought with all his usual fire. Beside him, Aboli was huge and indestructible, roaring a war-cry in his own tongue when he saw Hal's head pop over the rail.

Without a thought but to go to their aid, Hal started forward. "For Franky and St. George!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, and Big Daniel took up the cry, running at his left hand. The men from the pinnaces were after them, shrieking like a horde of raving madmen straight out of Bedlam.

The Dutch crew were themselves almost spent, a score were down, and of those still fighting many were wounded. They looked over their shoulders at this latest phalanx of bloodthirsty Englishmen rushing upon them. The surprise was complete. Shock and dismay was on every tired and sweat-lathered face. Most flung down their weapons and, like any defeated crew, rushed to hide below decks.

A few of the stouter souls swung about to face the charge, those around the mast led by the Dutch colonel. But the yells of Hal's boarding-party had rallied their exhausted and bleeding shipmates, who sprang forward with renewed resolve to join the" attack. The Dutchmen were surrounded.

Even in the confusion and turmoil Colonel Schreuder recognized Hal, and whirled to confront him, aiming a cut, backhanded, at his head. His moustaches bristled like a lion's whiskers, and the blade hummed in his hand. He was miraculously unhurt and seemed as strong and fresh as any of the men that Hal led against him. Hal turned the blow with a twist of his wrist and went for the counter-stroke.

In order to meet Hal's charge the colonel had turned his back on Aboli, a foolhardy move. As he trapped Hal's thrust and shifted his feet to lunge, Aboli rushed at him from behind. For a moment Hal thought he would run him through the spine, but he should have guessed better. Aboli knew the value of ransom as well as any man aboard: a dead enemy officer was merely so much rotting meat to throw overboard to the sharks that followed in their wake but a captive was worth good gold guilders.

Aboli reversed his grip, and brought the steel basket of the cutlass hilt cracking into the back of the colonel's skull. The Dutchman's eyes flew wide open with shock, then his legs buckled under him and he toppled face down on the deck.

As the colonel went down, the last resistance of the galleon's crew collapsed with him. They threw down their weapons, and those of the Lady Edwina's crew who had surrendered leapt to their feet, wounds and exhaustion forgotten. They snatched up the discarded weapons and turned them on the beaten Dutchmen, herding them forward, forcing them to squat in ranks with their hands clasped behind their heads, dishevelled and forlorn.

Aboli seized Hal in a bear-hug. "When you and Sam Bowles set sail, I thought it was the last we would see of you," he panted.

Sir Francis came striding towards his son, thrusting his way through the milling, cheering pack of his seamen. "You deserted your post at the masthead!" He scowled at Hal as he bound a strip of cloth around the nick in his upper arm and knotted it with his teeth.

"Father," Hal stammered, "I thought, -" "And for once you thought wisely!" Sir Francis's dark expression cracked and his green eyes sparkled. "We'll make a warrior of you yet, if you remember to keep your point up on the riposte. This great cheese-head," he prodded the fallen colonel with his toe, "was about to skewer you, until Aboli tapped his noggin." Sir Francis slipped his sword back into its scabbard. "The ship is not yet secure. The lower decks and holds are crawling with them. We'll have to drive them out. Stay close to Aboli and me!" "Father, you're hurt, "Hal protested.

"And perhaps I would have been more sorely wounded had you come back to us even a minute later than you did."

"Let me see to your wound."

"I know the tricks Aboli has taught you would you piss on your own father?" He laughed, and clapped Hal on the shoulder. "Perhaps I'll give you that pleasure a little later." He turned and bellowed across the deck, "Big Daniel, take your men below and winkle out those cheese-heads who are hiding there. Master John, put a guard on the cargo hatches. See to it there is no looting. Fair shares for all! Master Ned, take the helm and get this ship on the wind before she flogs her canvas to rags."

Then he roared at the others, "I'm proud of you, you rascals! A good day's work. You'll each go home with fifty gold guineas in your pocket. But the Plymouth lassies will never love you as well I do!"

They cheered him, hysterical with the release from desperate action and the fear of defeat and death.

"Come on!" Sir Francis nodded to Aboli and started for the ladder that led down into the officers" and passengers" quarters in the stern.

Hal followed at a run as they crossed the deck, and Aboli grunted over his shoulder, "Be on your mettle. There are those below who would be happy to stick a dirk between your ribs."

Hal knew where his father was going, and what would be his first concern. He wanted the Dutch captain's charts, log and sailing directions. They were more valuable to him than all the fragrant spices and precious metals and bright jewels the galleon might be carrying. With those in his hands he would have the key to every Dutch harbour and fort in the Indies. He would read the sailing orders of the spice convoys and the manifest of their cargoes. To him they were worth ten thousand pounds in gold.

Sir Francis stormed down the ladder and tried the first door at the bottom. It was locked from within. He stepped back and charged. At his flying kick, the door flew open and crashed back on its hinges.

The galleon's captain was crouched over his desk, his cropped pate wig less and his clothing sweat-soaked. He looked up in dismay, blood dripping from a cut on his cheek onto his silken shirt, its wide fashionable sleeves slashed with green.

At the sight of Sir Francis, he froze in the act of stuffing the ship's books into a weighted canvas bag, then snatched it up and rushed to the stern windows. The casements and glass had been shot away by the Lady Edwina's culver ins and they gaped open, the sea breaking and swirling under her counter. The Dutch captain lifted the bag to hurl it through the opening but Sir Francis seized his raised arm and flung him backwards onto his bunk. Aboli grabbed the bag, and Sir Francis made a courteous little bow. "You speak English?"he demanded.

"No English," the captain snarled back, and Sir Francis changed smoothly into Dutch. As a Nautonnier Knight of the Order he spoke most of the languages of the great seafaring nations, French, Spanish andpo-rtuguese, as well as Dutch. "You are my prisoner, Mijnheer. What is your name?"

Timberger, captain of the first class, in the service of the VOC. And you, Mijnheer, are a corsair," the captain retorted.

"You are mistaken, sir! I sail under Letters of Marque from His Majesty King Charles the second. Your ship is now a prize of war."

"You flew false colours," the Dutchman accused.

Sir Francis smiled bleakly. "A legitimate ruse of war." He made a dismissive gesture and went on, "You are a brave man, Mijnheer, but the fight is over now. As soon as you give me your word, you will be treated as my honoured guest. The day your ransom is paid, you will go free."

The captain wiped the blood and sweat from his face with his silken sleeve, and an expression of resignation dulled his features. He stood and handed his sword hilt first to Sir Francis.

"You have my word. I will not attempt to escape."

"Nor encourage your men to resistance?" Sir Francis prompted him.

The captain nodded glumly. "I agree."

"I will need your cabin, Mijnheer, but I will find you comfortable quarters elsewhere." Sir Francis turned his attention eagerly to the canvas bag and dumped its contents on the desk.

Hal knew that, from now on, his father would be absorbed in his reading, and he glanced at Aboli on guard in the doorway. The Negro nodded permission at him, and Hal slipped out of the cabin. His father did not see him go.

Cutlass in hand, he moved cautiously down the narrow corridor. He could hear the shouts and clatter from the other decks as the crew of the Lady Edwina cleared out the defeated Dutch seamen and herded them up onto the open deck. Down here it was quiet and deserted. The first door he tried was locked. He hesitated then followed his father's earlier example. The door resisted his first onslaught, but he backed off and charged again. This time it burst open and he went flying through into the cabin beyond, off balance and skidding on the magnificent Oriental rugs that covered the deck. He sprawled on the huge bed that seemed to fill half the cabin.

As he sat up and gazed at the splendour that surrounded him, he was aware of an aroma more heady than any spice he had ever smelt. The boudoir odour of a pampered woman, not merely the precious oils of flowers, procured by the perfumer's art, but blended with these the more subtle scents of skin and hair and a healthy young female body. It was so exquisite, so moving that when he stood his legs felt strangely weak under him, and he snuffed it up rapturously. It was the most delicious smell that had ever set his nostrils a-quiver.

Sword in hand he gazed around the cabin, only vaguely aware of the rich tapestries and silver vessels filled with sweetmeats, dried fruits and potpourri. The dressing table against the port bulkhead was covered with an array of cut glass cosmetic and perfume bottles with stoppers of chased silver. He moved across to it. Laid out beside the bottles was a set of silver-backed brushes and a tortoiseshell comb. Trapped between the teeth of the comb was a single strand of hair, long as his arm, fine as a silk thread.

Hal lifted the comb to his face as though it were a holy relic. There was that entrancing odour again, that giddy woman's smell. He wound the hair about his finger and freed it from the teeth of the comb, then reverently tucked it into the pocket of his stained and sweat-stinking shirt.

At that moment there came a soft but heartbreaking sob from behind the gaudy Chinese screen across one end of the cabin.

"Who's there?" Hal challenged, cutlass poised. "Come out or I'll thrust home."

There was another sob, more poignant than the last. "By all the saints, I mean it!" Hal stalked towards the screen.

He slashed at the screen, slicing through one of the painted panels. At the force of the blow it toppled and crashed to the deck. There was a terrified shriek, and Hal stood gaping at the wondrous creature who knelt, cowering, in the corner of the cabin.

Her face was buried in her hands, but the mass of shining hair that tumbled to the deck glowed like freshly minted gold escudos, and the skirts spread around were the blue of a swallow's wings.

"Please, madam!" Hal whispered. "I mean you no ill. Please do not cry." His words had no effect. Clearly they were not understood and, inspired by the moment, Hal switched into Latin. "You need not fear- You are safe. I will not harm you.

The shining head lifted. She had understood. He looked into her face, and it was as though he had received a charge of grape shot in the centre of his chest. The pain was so intense that he gasped aloud.

He had never dreamed that such beauty could exist.

"Mercy!" she whispered pitifully in Latin. "Please do not harm me." Her eyes were liquid and brimming, but her tears served only to enhance their magnitude and intensify their iridescent violet. Her cheeks were blanched to the translucent lustre of alabaster, and the tears upon them gleamed like tiny seed pearls.

"You are beautiful," Hal said, still in Latin. His voice sounded like that of a victim on the rack, breathless and agonized. He was tortured by emotions that he had never dreamed existed. He wanted to protect and cherish this woman, to keep her for ever for himself, to love and worship her. All the words of chivalry, which, until he looked upon her, he had read and mouthed but never truly understood, rushed to his tongue demanding utterance, but he could only stand and stare.

Then he was distracted by another soft sound from behind him. He spun round, cutlass at the ready. From under the satin sheets that trailed over the edge of the huge bed crawled a porcine figure. The back and belly were so well larded as to wobble with every movement the man made. Rolls of fat swaddled the back of his neck and hung down his pendulous jowls. "Yield yourself!" Hal bellowed, and prodded him with the point of the blade. The Governor screamed shrilly and collapsed on the deck. He wriggled like a puppy.

"Please do not kill me. I am a rich man," he sobbed, also in Latin. "I will pay any ransom."

"Get up!" Hal prodded him again, but Petrus van de Velde had only enough strength and courage to reach his knees. He knelt there, blubbering.

"Who are you?"

"I am the Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, and this lady is my wife."

These were the most terrible words Hal had ever heard spoken. He stared at the man aghast. The wondrous lady he already loved with his very life was married and to this grotesque burlesque of a man who knelt before him.

"My father-in-law is a director of the Company, one of the richest and most powerful merchants in Amsterdam. He will pay he will pay anything. Please do not kill us."

The words made little sense to Hal. His heart was breaking. Within moments he had gone from wild elation to the depths of the human spirit, from soaring love to plunging despair.

But the Governor's words meant more to Sir Francis Courtney, who stood now in the entrance to the cabin with Aboli at his back.

"Please calm yourself, Governor. You and your wife are in safe hands. I will make the arrangements for your ransom with all despatch." He swept off his plumed cavalier Hat, and bent his knee towards Katinka. Even he was not entirely proof against her beauty. "May I introduce myself, madam? Captain Francis Courtney, at your command. Please take a while to compose yourself. At four bells that is in an hour's time I would be obliged if you would join me on the quarterdeck. I intend to hold a muster of the ship's company." the ships were under sail, the little caravel under studding-sails and top sails only, the great galleon with her mainsail set. They sailed in close company on a north-easterly heading, away from the Cape and on a closing course with the eastern reaches of the African mainland. Sir Francis looked down paternally upon his crew in the galleon's waist.

"I promised you fifty guineas the man as your prize," he said, and they cheered him wildly. Some were stiff and crippled with their wounds. Five were laid on pallets against the rail, too weak from loss of blood to stand but determined not to miss a word of this ceremony. The dead were already stitched in their canvas shrouds, each with a Dutch cannonball at his feet, and laid out in the bows. Sixteen Englishmen and forty-two Dutch, comrades in the truce of death. None of the living now gave them a thought.

Sir Francis held up one hand. They fell silent and crowded forward so as not to miss his next words.

"I lied to you," he told them. There was a moment of stunned disbelief and then they groaned and muttered darkly. "There is not a man among you..." he paused for effect "... but is the richer by two hundred pounds for this day's work!"

The silence persisted as they stared incredulously at him, and then they went mad with joy. They capered and howled, and whirled each other around in a delirious jig. Even the wounded sat up and crowed.

Sir Francis smiled down on them benignly for a while as he let them give vent to their joy. Then he waved a sheaf of manuscript pages over his head and they fell silent again. "This is the extract I have made of the ship's manifest!" "Read it!" they pleaded.

The recital went on for almost half an hour, for they cheered each item of the bill of lading that he translated from the Dutch as he read aloud. Cochineal and pepper, vanilla and saffron, cloves and cardamom with a total weight of forty-two tons. The crew knew that, weight for weight and pound for pound, those spices were as precious as bars of silver. They were hoarse with shouting, and Sir Francis held up his hand again. "Do I weary you with this endless list? Have you had enough?"

"No!" they roared. "Read on!"

"Well, then, there are a few sticks of timber in her holds.

Balu and teak and other strange wood that has never been seen north of the equator. Over three hundred tons." They feasted on his words with shining eyes. "There is still more, but I see that I weary you. You want no more?"

"Read it to us!" they pleaded.

"Finest Chinese blue and white ceramic ware, and silk in bolts. That will please the ladies!" They bellowed like a herd of bull elephants in musth at the mention of women. When they reached the next port, with two hundred pounds in each purse, they could have as many women, of whatever quality and comeliness their fancies ordered.

"There is also gold and silver, but that is boarded over in sealed steel chests in the bottom of the main hold, with three hundred tons of timber on top of it. We will not get our hands on it until we reach port and unload the main cargo."

"How much gold?" they pleaded. "Tell us how much silver."

"Silver in coin to the value of fifty thousand guilders. That's over ten thousand good English pounds. Three hundred ingots of gold from the mines of Kollur on the Krishna river in Kandy, and the Good Lord alone knows what those will bring in when we sell them in London."

Hal hung in the mainmast shrouds, a vantage point from which he could look down on his father on the quarterdeck. Hardly a word of what he was saying made sense to Hal, but he realized dimly that this must be one of the greatest prizes ever taken by English sailors during the course of this war with the Dutch. He felt dazed and lightheaded, unable to concentrate on anything but the greater treasure he had captured with his own sword, and which now sat demurely behind his father, attended by her maid. Chivalrously Sir Francis had placed one of the carved, cushioned chairs from the captain's cabin on the quarterdeck for the Dutch governor's wife. Now Petrus van de Velde stood behind her, splendidly dressed, wearing high rhine graves of soft Spanish leather that reached to his thighs, bewigged and beribboned, his corpulence covered with the medallions and silken sashes of his office.

To his surprise Hal found that he hated the man bitterly, and lamented that he had not skewered him as he crawled from under the bed, and so made the angel who was his wife into a tragic widow.

He imagined devoting his life to playing Lancelot to her Guinevere. He saw himself humble and submissive to her every whim but inspired to deeds of outstanding valour by his pure love for her. At her behest, he might even undertake a knightly errand to search for the Holy Grail and place the sacred relic in her beautiful white hands. He shuddered with pleasure at the thought, and stared down longingly at her.

While Hal daydreamed in the rigging, the ceremony on the deck below him drew to its conclusion. Behind the Governor were ranked the Dutch captain and the other captured officers. Colonel Cornelius Schreuder was the only one without a Hat, for a bandage swathed his head. Despite the blow Aboli, had dealt him his eye was still keen and unclouded and his expression fierce as he listened to Sir Francis list the spoils.

"But that is not all, lads!" Sir Francis assured his crew. "We are fortunate enough to have aboard, as our honoured guest, the new Governor of the Dutch settlement of the Cape of Good Hope." With an ironic flourish he bowed to van de Velde, who glowered at him: now that his captors had realized his value and position, he felt more secure.

The Englishmen cheered, but their eyes were on Katinka, and Sir Francis obliged them by introducing her. "We are also fortunate to have with us the Governor's lovely wife-" He broke off as the crew sounded their appreciation of her beauty.

"Coarse peasant cattle," van de Velde growled and laid his hand protectively upon Katinka's shoulder. She gazed upon the men with wide violet eyes, and her beauty and innocence shamed them into an embarrassed silence.

"Mevrouw van de Velde is the only daughter of Burgher Hendrik Coetzee, the stadhouder of the City of Amsterdam, and the Chairman of the governing board of the Dutch East India Company."

The crew stared at her in awe. Few understood the importance of such an exalted personage, but the manner in which Sir Francis had recited these titles had impressed them.

"The Governor and his wife will be held on board this ship until their ransom is paid. One of the captured Dutch officers will be despatched to the Cape of Good Hope with the ransom demand to be transmitted by the next Company ship to the Council in Amsterdam."

The crew goggled at the couple as they considered this, then Big Daniel asked, "How much, Sir Francis? What is the amount of the ransom you have set?"

"I have set the Governor's ransom at two hundred thousand guilders in gold coin."

The ship's company was stunned, for such a sum surpassed their understanding.

Then Daniel bellowed again, "Let's have a cheer for the captain, lads!" And they yelled until their voices cracked.

Sir Francis walked slowly down the ranks of captured Dutch seamen. There were forty-seven, eighteen of them wounded. He examined the face of each man as he passed: they were rough stock, coarse-featured and unintelligent of expression. It was obvious that none had any ransom value. They were, rather, a liability, for they had to be fed and guarded, and there was always the danger that they might recover their courage and attempt an insurrection.

"The sooner we are rid of them the better," he murmured to himself, then addressed them aloud in their own language. "You have done your duty well. You will be set free and sent back to the fort at the Cape. You may take your ditty bags with you, and I will see to it that you are paid the wages owing you before you go." Their faces brightened. They had not expected that. That should keep them quiet and docile, he thought, as he turned away to the ladder down to his newly acquired cabin, where his more illustrious prisoners were waiting for him.

"Gentlemen!" he greeted them, as he entered and took his seat behind the mahogany desk. "Would you care for a glass of Canary wine?"

Governor van de Velde nodded greedily. His throat was dry and although he had eaten only half an hour previously his stomach growled like a hungry dog. Oliver, Sir Francis's servant, poured the yellow wine into the long-stemmed glasses and served the sugared fruits he had found in the Dutch captain's larder. The captain made a sour face as he recognized his own fare, but took a large gulp of the Canary.

Sir Francis consulted the pile of manuscript on which he had made his notes, then glanced at one of the letters he had found in the captain's desk. It was from an eminent firm of bankers in Holland. He looked up at the captain and addressed him sternly. "I wonder that an officer of your service and seniority with the VOC should indulge in trade for his own account. We both know it is strictly forbidden by the Seventeen."

The captain looked as though he might protest, but when Sir Francis tapped the letter he subsided and glanced guiltily at the Governor, who sat beside him.

"It seems that you are a rich man, Mijnheer. You will hardly miss a ransom of two hundred thousand guilders." The captain muttered and scowled darkly, but Sir Francis went on smoothly, "If you will pen a letter to your bankers, the matter can be settled as between gentlemen, just as soon as I receive that amount in gold." The captain inclined his head in acquiescence.

"Now, as to the ship's officers," Sir Francis went on, "I have examined your enlistment register." He drew the book towards him and opened it, "It seems that they are all men without high connections or financial substance." He looked up at the captain. "Is that the case?"

"That is true, Mijnheer."

"I will send them to the Cape with the common seamen. Now it remains to decide to whom we shall entrust the ransom demand to the Council of the Company for Governor van de Velde and his good lady and, of course, your letter to your bankers."

Sir Francis looked up at the Governor. Van de Velde stuffed another candied fruit into his mouth and replied around it, "Send Schreuder."

"Schreuder?" Sir Francis riffled through the papers until he found the colonel's commission. "Colonel Cornelius Schreuder, the newly appointed military commander of the fort at Good Hope?" ja, that one." Van de Velde reached for another sweetmeat. "His rank will give him more standing when he presents your demand for my ransom to my father-in-law," he pointed out.

Sir Francis studied the man's face as he chewed. He wondered why the Governor wanted to be rid of the colonel. He seemed a good man and resourceful; it would make more sense to keep him at hand. However, what van de Velde said of his status was true. And Sir Francis sensed that Colonel Schreuder might play the devil if he were kept captive aboard the galleon for any length of time. Much more trouble than he's worth, he thought, and said aloud, "Very well, I will send him."

The Governor's sugar-coated lips pouted with satisfaction. He was fully aware of his wife's interest in the dashing colonel. He had been married to her for only a few years, and yet he knew for a certainty that she had taken at least eighteen lovers in that time, some for only an hour or an evening.

Her maid, Zelda, was in the pay of van de Velde and reported to him each of her mistress's adventures, taking a deep vicarious pleasure in relating every salacious detail.

When van de Velde had first become aware of Katinka's carnal appetite, he had been outraged. However, his initial furious remonstrations had had no effect upon her and he learned swiftly that over her he had no control. He could neither protest too much nor send her away for on the one hand he was besotted by her, and on the other her father was too rich and powerful. The advancement of his own fortune and status depended almost entirely upon her. In the end his only course of action had been, as far as possible, to keep temptation and opportunity from her. During this voyage he had succeeded in keeping her a virtual prisoner in her quarters, and he was sure that, had he not done so, his wife would have already sampled the colonel's wares, which were ostentatiously on display. With him sent off the ship. her choice of diversion would be severely curtailed and, after a prolonged fast, she might even become amenable to his own sweaty advances.

"Very well," Sir Francis agreed, "I will send Colonel Schreuder as your emissary." He turned the page of the almanac on the desk in front of him. "With fair winds, and by the grace of Almighty God, the round trip from the Cape to Holland and back here to the rendezvous should not occupy more than eight months. We can hope that you might be free to take up your duties at the Cape by Christmas."

"Where will you keep us-until the ransom is received? My wife is a lady of quality and delicate disposition."

"In a safe place, and in comfort. That I assure you, sir." "Where will you meet the ship returning with our ransom monies? "At thirty-three degrees south latitude and four degrees thirty minutes east."

"Where, pray, might that be?"

"Why, Governor van de Velde, at the very spot upon the ocean where we are at this moment." Sir Francis would not be tricked so readily into revealing the whereabouts of his base.

In a misty dawn the galleon dropped anchor in the gentler waters behind a rocky headland of the African coast. The wind had dropped and begun to veer. The end of the summer season was at hand; they were fast approaching the autumnal equinox. The Lady Edwina, her pumps pounding ceaselessly, came alongside and, with fenders of matted oakum between the hulls, she made fast to the larger vessel.

At once the work of clearing her out began. Blocks and tackle had already been rigged from the galleon's yards. They took out the guns first. The great bronze barrels on their trains were swayed aloft. Thirty seamen walked away with the tackle and then lowered each culverin to the galleon's deck. Once these guns were sited, the galleon would have the firepower of a ship of the line and would be able to attack any Company galleon on better than equal terms.

Watching the cannon come on board, Sir Francis realized that he now had the force to launch a raid on any of the Dutch trading harbours in the Indies. This capture of the Standvastigheid was only a beginning. From here he planned to become the terror of the Dutch in the Ocean of the Indies, just as Sir Francis Drake had scourged the Spanish on their own main in the previous century.

Now the powder kegs were lifted out of the caravel's magazine. Few remained filled after such a long cruise and the heavy actions she had fought. However, the galleon still carried almost two tons of excellent quality gunpowder, sufficient to fight a dozen battles, or to capture a rich Dutch entrept on the Trincomalee or Javanese coast.

When the furniture and stores had been brought across, water casks and weapons chests, brine barrels of pickled meats, bread bags and barrels of flour, the pirmaces were also hoisted aboard and broken down by the carpenters. They were stowed away in the galleon's main cargo hold on top of the stacks of rare oriental timbers. So bulky were they and so heavily laden with her own cargo was the galleon that to accommodate their bulk the hatch coamings had to be left off the main holds until the prize was taken into Sir Francis's secret base.

Stripped to her planks, the Lady Edwina rode high in the water when Colonel Schreuder and the released Dutch crew were ready to board her. Sir Francis summoned the colonel to the quarterdeck and handed him back his sword and the letter addressed to the Council of the Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam. It was stitched in a canvas cover, the seams sealed with red wax, and tied with ribbon. It made an impressive -bundle, which Colonel Schreuder placed firmly under his arm.

"I hope we meet again, Mijnheer," Schreuder said ominously to Sir Francis.

"In eight months from now I will be at the rendezvous," Sir Francis assured. "Then I shall be delighted to see you again, as long as you have the two hundred thousand gold guilders for me."

"You miss my meaning, "said Cornelius Schreuder grimly. "I assure you I do not," responded Sir Francis quietly. Then the colonel looked to the break in the poop where Katinka van de Velde stood at her husband's side. The deep bow that he made towards them and the look of longing in his eyes were not for the Governor alone. "I shall return with all haste to end your suffering," he told them.

"God be with you," said the Governor. "Our fate is in your hands."

"You will be assured of my deepest gratitude on your return, my dear Colonel," Katinka whispered, in a breathless little girl's voice, and the colonel shivered as though a bucket of icy water had been poured down his back. He drew himself to his full height, saluted her, then turned and strode to the galleon's rail.

Hal was waiting at the port with Aboli and Big Daniel. The colonel's eyes narrowed and he stopped in front of Hal and twirled his moustache. The ribbons on his coat fluttered in the breeze, and the sash of his rank shimmered as he touched the sword at his side.

"We were interrupted, boy," he said softly, in good unaccented English. "However, there will be a time and a place for me to finish the lesson."

"Let us hope so, sir." Hal was brave with Aboli at his side. "I am always grateful for instruction."

For a moment they held each other's eyes, and then Schreuder dropped over the galleon's side to the deck of the caravel. Immediately the lines were cast off and the Dutch crew set the sails. The Lady Edwina threw up her stern like a skittish colt and heeled to the press of her canvas. Lightly she turned away from the land to make her offing.

"We also will get under way, if you please, Master Ned!" Sir Francis said. "Up with her anchor."

The galleon bore away from the African coast, heading into the south. From the masthead where Hal crouched the Lady Edwina was still in plain view. The smaller vessel was standing out to clear the treacherous shoals of the Agulhas Cape, before coming around to run before the wind down to the Dutch fort below the great table-topped mountain that guarded the south-western extremity of the African continent.

As Hal watched, the silhouette of the caravel's sails altered drastically. He leaned out and shouted down, "The Lady Edwina is altering course."

"Where away?" his father yelled back.

"She's running free," Hal told him. "Her new course looks to be due west."

She was doing precisely what they expected of her. With the south-easter well abaft her beam, she was now heading directly for Good Hope.

"Keep her under your eye."

As Hal watched her, the caravel dwindled in size until her white sails merged with the tossing manes of the wind driven white horses on the horizon.

"She's gone!" he shouted at the quarterdeck. "Out of sight from here!" Sir Francis had waited for this moment before he brought the galleon around onto her true heading. Now he gave the orders to the helm that brought her around towards the east, and she went back on a broad reach parallel with the African coast. "This seems to be her best point of sailing," he said to Hal, as his son came down to the deck after being relieved at the masthead. "Even with her jury-rigging, she's showing a good turn of speed. We must get to know the whims and caprice of our new mistress. Make a cast of the log, please."

With the glass in hand, Hal timed the wooden log on its reel, dropped from the bows on its journey back along the hull until it reached the stern. He made a quick calculation on the slate, and then looked up at his father. "Six knots through the water."

"With a new mainmast she will be good for ten. Ned Tyler has found a spar of good Norwegian pine stowed away in her hold. We will step it as soon as we get into port." Sir Francis looked delighted: God was smiling upon them. "Assemble the ship's company. We will ask God's blessing on her and rename her."

They stood bare-headed in the wind, clutching their caps to their breasts, their expressions as pious as they could muster, anxious not to attract the disfavour of Sir Francis.

"We thank you, Almighty God, for the victory you have granted us over the heretic and the apostate, the benighted followers of the son of Satan, Martin Luther."

"Amen!" they cried loudly. They were all good Anglicans, apart from the black tribesmen among them, but these Negroes cried, "Amen!" with the rest. They had learned that word their first day aboard Sir Francis's ship.

"We thank you also for your timely and merciful intervention in the midst of the battle and your deliverance of us from certain defeat. -" Hal shuffled in disagreement, but without looking up. Some of the credit for the timely intervention was his, and his father had not acknowledged this as openly.

"We thank you and praise your name for placing in our hands this fine ship. We give you our solemn oath that we will use her to bring humiliation and punishment upon your enemies. We ask your blessing upon her. We beg you to look kindly upon her, and to sanction the new name which we now give her. From henceforth she will become the Resolution."

His father had simply translated the galleon's Dutch name, and Hal was saddened that this ship would not bear his mother's name. He wondered if his father's memory of his mother was at last fading, or if he had some other reason for no longer perpetuating her memory. He knew, though, that he would never have the courage to ask, and he must simply accept this decision.

"We ask your continued help and intervention in our endless battle against the godless. We thank you humbly for the rewards you have so bountifully heaped upon us. And we trust that if we prove worthy you will reward our worship and sacrifice with further proof of the love you bear us."

This was a perfectly reasonable sentiment, one with which every man on board, true Christian or pagan, could be in full accord. Every man devoted to God's work on earth was entitled to his rewards, and not only in the life to come. The treasures that fitted the Resolution's holds were proof and tangible evidence of his approval and consideration towards them.

"Now let's have a cheer for Resolution and all who sail in her." and Sir Francis They cheered until they were boars silenced them at last. He replaced his broad-brimmed Hat and gestured for them to cover their heads. His expression became stern and forbidding. "There is one more task we have to perform now," he told them, and looked at Big Daniel. "Bring the prisoners on deck, Master Daniel."

Sam Bowles was at the head of the forlorn file that came up from the hold, blinking in the sunlight. They were led facing the ship's company. aft and forced to kneel, Sir Francis read their names from the sheet of parchment he held up. "Samuel Bowles. Edward Broom. Peter Law. Peter Miller. John Tate. You kneel before your shipmates accused of cowardice and desertion in the face of the enemy, and dereliction of your duty."

The other men growled and glared at them.

"How say You to these charges? Are you the cowards and traitors we accuse you of being?" "Mercy, your grace!" Truly we repent. Forgive us, we beg you for the sakes of our wives and the sweet babes we left at home," Sam Bowles pleaded as their spokesman.

"The only wives you ever had were the trulls in the bawdy houses of Dock Street," Big Daniel mocked him, and the crew roared. Let's watch them "String them up at the yard-arm! dance a little jig to the devil."

"Shame on you!" Sir Francis stopped them. What kind of English justice is this? Every man, no matter how base, is entitled to a fair trial." They sobered and he went on. "We will deal with this matter in proper order. Who brings these charges against them?"

"We do!" roared the crew in unison. "Who are your witnesses?" "We are!" they replied, with a single voice.

"Did you witness any act of treachery or cowardice? Did you see these foul creatures flee from the fight and leave their shipmates to their fate?"

"We did."

"You have heard the testimony against you. Do you have aught to say in- your defence?"

"Mercy!"whined Sam Bowles. The others were dumb.

Sir Francis turned back to the crew. "And so what is your verdict?"

"Guilty!" "Guilty as hell!" added Big Daniel, lest there be any lingering doubts.

"And your Sentence?" Sir Francis asked, and immediately an uproar broke out.

"Hang them!" "Hanging's too good for the swine. Keel haul "em."

"No! No! Draw and quarter "em. Make them eat their own balls."

"Let's fry some pork! Burn the bastards at the stake."

Sir Francis silenced them again. "I see we have some differences of opinion." He gestured to Big Daniel. "Take them down below and lock them up. Let them stew in their own stinking juices for a day or two. We will deal with them when we get into port. Until then there are more important matters to attend to."

For the first time in his life aboard ship, Hal had a cabin of his own. He need no longer share every sleeping and waking moment of his life crammed in enforced intimacy with a horde of other humanity.

The galleon was spacious by comparison with the little caravel, and his father had found a place for him alongside his own magnificent quarters. It had been the cupboard of the Dutch captain's servant, and was a mere cubby-ole. "You need a lighted place to continue your studies," Sir Francis had justified this indulgence. "You waste many hours each night sleeping when you could be working." He ordered the ship's carpenter to knock together a bunk and a shelf on which Hal could lay out his books and papers.

An oil lamp swung above his head, blackening the deck overhead with its soot, but giving Hal just enough light to make out his lines and allow him to write the lessons his father set him. His eyes burned with fatigue and he had to stifle his yawns as he dipped his quill and peered at the sheet of parchment onto which he was copying the extract from the Dutch captain's directions that his father had captured. Every navigator had his own personal manual of sailing directions, a priceless journal in which he kept details of oceans and seas, currents and coasts, landfalls and harbours; tables of the compass's changeable and mysterious deviations as a ship voyaged in foreign waters, and charts of the night sky, which altered with the latitudes. This was knowledge that each navigator painstakingly accumulated over his lifetime, from his own observations or gleaned from the experience and anecdotes of others. His father would expect him to complete this work before his watch at the masthead, which began at four in the morning.

A faint noise from behind the bulkhead distracted him, and he looked up with the quill still in his hand. It was a footfall so soft as to be almost inaudible and came from the luxurious quarters of the Governor's wife. He listened with every fibre of his being, trying to interpret each sound that reached him. His heart told him that it was the lovely Katinka, but he could not be certain of that. It might be her ugly old maid, or even the grotesque husband. He felt deprived and cheated at the thought.

However, he convinced himself that it was Katinka and her nearness thrilled him, even though the planking of the bulkhead separated them. He yearned so desperately for her that he could not concentrate on his task or even remain seated.

He stood, forced to stoop by the low deck above his head, and moved silently to the bulkhead. He leaned against it and listened. He heard a light scraping, the sound of a something being dragged across the deck, the rustle of cloth, some further sounds that he could not place, and then the purling sound of liquid flowing into a basin or bowl. With his ear against the panel, he visualized every movement beyond. He heard her dip water with her cupped hands and dash it into her face, heard her small gasps as the cold struck her cheeks, and then the drops splash back into the basin.

He looked down and saw that a faint ray of candlelight was shining through a crack in the panelling, a narrow sliver of yellow light that wavered in rhythm to the ship's motion. Without regard to the consequence of what he was doing, he sank to his knees and placed his eye to the crack. He could see little, for it was narrow, and the soft light of the candle was directly in his eye.

Then something passed between him and the candle, a swirl of silks and lace. He stared then gasped as he caught the pearly gleam of flawless white skin. It was merely a flash, so swift that he barely had time to make out the line of a naked back, luminous as mother-of-pearl in the yellow light.

He pressed his face closer to the panel, desperate for another glimpse of such beauty. He fancied that over the normal sound of the ship's timbers working in the seaway he could hear soft breathing, light as the whisper of a tropic zephyr. He held his own breath to listen until his lungs burned, and he felt light-headed with awe.

At that moment the candle in the other cabin was whisked away, the ray of light through the crack sped across his straining eye and was gone. He heard soft footfalls move away, and darkness and silence fell beyond the panelling.

He stayed kneeling for a long while, like a worshipper at a shrine, and then rose slowly and seated himself once more at his work shelf. He tried to force his tired brain to attend to the task his father had set him, but it kept breaking away like an unruly colt from the trainer's noose. The letters on the page before him dissolved in images of alabaster skin and golden hair. In his nostrils was a memory of that tantalizing odour he had smelt when first he burst into her cabin. He covered his eyes with one hand in an attempt to prevent the visions invading his aching brain.

It was to no avail: his mind was beyond his control. He reached for his Bible, which lay beside his journal, and opened the leather cover. Between the pages was a fine gold filigree, that single strand of hair that he had stolen from her comb.

He touched it to his lips, then gave a low moan: he fancied he could still detect a trace of her perfume on it, and he closed his eyes tightly.

It was some time before he became aware of the actions of his treacherous right hand. Like a thief it had crept under the skirts of the loose canvas petticoat that was his only garment in the hot, stuffy little cubby-hole. By the time he realized what he was doing it was too late to stop himself. He surrendered helplessly to the pumping and tugging of his own fingers. The sweat ran from his every pore and slicked down his hard young muscles. The rod he held between his fingers was hard as bone and endowed with a throbbing life of its own.

The scent of her filled his head. His hand beat fast but not as fast as his heart. He knew this was sin and folly. His father had warned him, but he could not stop. He writhed on his stool. He felt the ocean of his love for her pressing against the dyke of his restraint, like a high and irresistible tide. He gave a small cry and the tide burst from him. He felt the warm flood of it spray down his rigid straining thighs, heard it splatter the deck, and then its musky odour drove the sacred perfume of her hair from his nostrils.

He sat, sweating and panting softly, and let the waves of guilt and self-disgust overwhelm him. He had betrayed his father's trust, the promise he had made him, and with his profane lust, he had besmirched the pure and lovely image of a saint.

He could not remain in his cabin a moment longer. He flung on his canvas sea-jacket and fled up the ladder to the deck. He stood for a while at the rail breathing deeply. The raw salt air cleansed his guilt and self-disgust. He felt steadier, and looked about him to take stock of his surroundings.

The ship was still on the larboard tack, with the wind abeam. Her masts swung back and forth across the brilliant canopy of stars. He could just make out the lowering mass of the land down to leeward. The Great Bear stood a finger's breadth above the dark silhouette of the land. It was a nostalgic reminder of the land of his birth, and the childhood he had left behind.

To the south the sky was dazzling with the constellation of Centaurus standing above his right shoulder, and the mighty Southern Cross, burning in its heart. This was the symbol of this new world beyond the Line.

He looked to the helm and saw his father's pipe glow in a sheltered corner of the quarterdeck. He did not want to face him now, for he was certain that his guilt and depravity would still be so engraved on his features that his father would recognize it even in the gloom. Yet he knew that his father had seen him, and would count it as odd if he did not pay him respect. He went to him quickly. "Your indulgence, please, Father. I came up for a breath of air to clear my head," he mumbled, not able to meet Sir Francis's eyes.

"Don't idle up here too long," his father cautioned him. "I will want to see your task completed before you take your watch at the masthead."

Hal hurried forward. This expansive deck was still unfamiliar. Much of the cargo and goods from the caravel could not fit into the galleon's already crammed holds and was lashed down on the deck. He picked his way among the casks and chests, and bronze culver ins

Hal was still so deep in remorse and guilt that he was aware of little around him, until he heard a soft, conspiratorial whispering near at hand. His wits returned to him with a rush, and he looked towards the bows.

A small group of figures was hiding in the shadows cast by the cargo stacked under the rise of the forecastle. Their furtive movements alerted him to something out of the ordinary.

After their trial by their peers, Sam Bowles and his men had been frog marched down into the galleon's lower decks. and thrown into a small compartment, which must have been the carpenter's store. There was no light and little air. The reek of pepper and bilges was stifling, and the space so confined that all five could not stretch out at the same time on the deck. They settled themselves as best they could into this hellhole, and lapsed into a forlorn, despairing silence.

"Whereabouts are we? Below the waterline, do you think?" Ed Broom asked miserably.

"None of us knows his way about this Dutch hulk," Sam Bowles muttered.

"Do you reckon they're going to murder us?" Peter Law asked.

"You can be sure they ain't about to give us a hug and a kiss," Sam grunted.

"Keel-hauling," Ed whispered. "I seen it done once. When they'd dragged the poor bastard under the ship and got him out tother side he was drowned dead as a rat in a beer barrel. There weren't much meat on his carcass it were all scraped off by the barnacles under the hull. You could see his bones sticking out all white, like."

They thought about that for a while. Then Peter Law said, "I saw them hang and draw the regicides at Tyburn back in "fifty-nine. They murdered King Charlie, the Black Boy's father. They opened their bellies like fish, then they stuck in an iron hook and twisted it until they had caught up all they guts, and they pulled their intestines out of them like ropes. After that they hacked off their cocks and their balls.-" "Shut your mouth!" Sam snarled, and they lapsed into abject silence in the darkness.

An hour later Ed Broom murmured, "There's air coming in here some place. I can feel it on my neck."

After a moment Peter Law said, "He's right, you know. I can feel it too."

"What's behind this bulkhead?"

"Ain't nobody knows. Maybe the main cargo hold." There was a scrabbling sound, and Sam demanded, "What you doing?"

"There's a gap in the planking here. That's where the air's coming in."

"Let me see." Sam crawled across and, after a few moments, agreed. "You're right. I can get my fingers through the hole."

"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.

She knew instinctively that he was a virgin she could almost smell the honey sweet odour of chastity upon him and felt herself drawn to it, like a wasp to an overripe fruit. It would be her first time with a sexual innocent. The thought of it added spice to his natural beauty.

Her erotic daydreams were aggravated by the long period of her enforced abstinence and she lay back and pressed her thighs tightly together, beginning to rock gently back and forth in her chair, smiling secretly to herself.

Hal spent the next three nights camped on the beach below the heads. His father had Hplaced him in charge of ferrying the cannon ashore and building the stone emplacements to house them, overlooking the narrow entrance to the lagoon.

Naturally Sir Francis had rowed across to approve the sites his son had chosen, but even he could find no fault with Hal's eye for a field of fire that would rake an enemy ship seeking to pass through the heads.

On the fourth day, when the work was done and Hal was rowed back down the lagoon, he saw from afar that the work of repairing the galleon was well in hand. The carpenter and his mates had built scaffolds over her stern, from which platform they were fitting new timbers to replace those damaged by gunfire, to the great discomfort of the guests aboard. The ungainly jury mast raised by the Dutch captain to replace his gale-shattered main, had been taken down and the galleon's lines were awkward and unharmonious with one mast missing.

However, when Hal climbed up to the deck through the entry port he saw that Ned Tyler and his work gang were swaying up the massive baulks of exotic timber that made up the heaviest part of the ship's cargo and lowering them into the lagoon to float across to the beach.

The spare mast was stowed at the bottom of the hold, where the sealed compartment contained the coin and ingots. The cargo had to be removed to reach them.

"Your father has sent for you," Aboli greeted Hal, and Hal hurried aft.

"You have missed three days of your studies while you were ashore," Sir Francis told him, without preamble.

"Yes, Father." Hal knew that it was vain to point out that he had not deliberately evaded them. But, at least, I will not apologize for it, he determined silently, and met his father's gaze unflinchingly.

"After your supper this evening, I will rehearse you in the catechism of the Order. Come to my cabin at eight bells in the second dog watch."

The catechism of initiation to the Order of St. George and the Holy Grail had never been written down and for nearly four centuries the two hundred esoteric questions and answers had been passed on by word of mouth, master instructing novice in the Strict Observance.

Sitting beside Aboli on the foredeck, Hal wolfed hot biscuit, fried in dripping, and baked fresh fish. Now with an unlimited supply of firewood and fresh food on hand, the ship's meals were substantial, but Hal was silent as he ate. In his mind he went over his catechism, for his father would be strict in his judgement. Too soon the ship's bell struck and, as the last note faded, Hal tapped on the door to his father's cabin.

While his father sat at his desk Hal knelt on the bare planks of the deck. Sir Francis wore the cloak of his office over his shoulders, and on his breast sparkled the magnificent seal fashioned of gold, the insignia of a Nautonnier Knight who had passed through all the degrees of the Order. It depicted the lion rampant of England holding aloft the croix paWe and, above it, the stars and crescent moon of the mother goddess. The lion's eyes were rubies and the stars were diamonds. On the second finger of his right hand he wore a narrow gold ring, engraved with a compass and a backstaff, the tools of the navigator, and above these a crowned lion. The ring was small and discreet, not as ostentatious as the seal.

His father conducted the catechism in Latin. The use of this language ensured that only literate, educated men could ever become members of the Order.

"Who are you?" Sir Francis asked the first question. "Henry Courtney, son of Francis and Edwina." "What is your business here?"

"I come to present myself as an acolyte of the Order of St. George and the Holy Grail."

"Whence, come you?"

"From the ocean sea, for that is my beginning and at my ending will be my shroud." With this response Hal acknowledged the maritime roots of the Order. The next fifty questions examined the novice's understanding of the history of the Order.

"Who went before you?"

"The Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon." The Knights of the Temple of the Order of St. George and the Holy Grail were the successors to the extinct Order of the Knights Templar.

After that Sir Francis made Hal outline the history of the Order, how in the year 1312 the Knights Templar had been attacked and destroyed by the King of France, Philippe Le Bel, in connivance with his puppet Pope Clement V of Bordeaux. Their vast fortune in bullion and land was confiscated by the Crown, and most of them were tortured and burned at the stake. However, warned by their allies, the Templar mariners slipped their moorings in the French channel harbours and stood out to sea. They steered for England, and sought the protection of King Edward II. Since then, they had opened their lodges in Scotland and England under new names, but with the basic tenets of the Order intact.

Next Sir Francis made his son repeat the arcane words of recognition, and the grip of hands that identified the Knights to each other.

"In Arcadia habito. I dwell in Arcadia," Sir Francis intoned, as he stooped over Hal to take his right hand in the double grip.

"Flumen sac rum bene cognosco! I know well the sacred river!" Hal replied reverently, interlocking his forefinger with his father's in the response.

"Explain the meaning of these words, "his father insisted. "It is our covenant with God and each other. The Temple is Arcadia, and we are the river."

The ship's bell twice sounded the passage of the hours before the two hundred questions were asked and answered, and Hal was allowed to rise stiffly from his knees.

When he reached his tiny cabin he was too weary even to light the oil lamp and dropped to his bunk fully clothed to lie there in a stupor of mental exhaustion. The questions and responses of the catechism echoed, an endless refrain, through his tired brain, until meaning and reality seemed to recede.

Then he heard faint sounds of movement from beyond the bulkhead and, miraculously, his fatigue cleared. He sat up, his senses tuned to the other cabin. He would not light the lamp for the sound of steel striking flint would carry through the panel. He rolled off his bunk and, in the darkness, moved on silent bare feet to the bulkhead.

He knelt and ran his fingers lightly along the joint in the woodwork until he found the plug he had left there. Quietly he removed it and placed his eye to the spy hole

Each day his father allowed Katinka van de Velde and her maid, with Aboli to guard them, to go ashore and walk on the beach for an hour. That afternoon while the women had been away from the ship, Hal had found a moment to steal down to his cabin. He had used the point of his dirk to enlarge the crack in the bulkhead. Then he had whittled a plug of matching wood to close and conceal the opening.

Now he was filled with guilt, but he could not restrain himself. He placed his eye to the enlarged aperture. His view into the small cabin beyond was unimpeded. A tall Venetian mirror was fixed to the bulkhead opposite him and, in its reflection, he could see clearly even those areas of the cabin that otherwise would have been hidden from him. It was apparent that this smaller cabin was an annexe to the larger and more splendid main cabin. It seemed to serve as a dressing and retiring place where the Governor's wife could take her bath and attend to her private and intimate toilet. The bath was set up in the centre of the deck, a heavy ceramic hip bath in the Oriental style, the sides decorated with scenes of mountain landscapes and bamboo forests.

Katinka sat on a low stool across the cabin and her maid was tending her hair with one of the silver-backed brushes. It flowed down to her waist, and each stroke made it shimmer in the lamp-light. She wore a gown of brocade, stiff with gold embroidery, but Hal marvelled that her hair was more brilliant than the precious metal thread.

He gazed at her, entranced, trying to memorize each gesture of her white hands, and each delicate movement of her lovely head. The sound of her voice and her soft laughter were balm to his exhausted mind and body. The maid finished her task, and moved away. Katinka stood up from her stool and Hal's spirits plunged, for he expected her to take up the lamp and leave the cabin. But instead she came towards him. Though she passed out of his direct line of sight he could still see her reflection in the mirror. There was only the thickness of the panel between them now, and Hal was afraid she might become aware of his hoarse breathing.

He gazed at her reflection as she stooped and lifted the lid of the night cabinet that was affixed to the opposite side of the bulkhead against which Hal pressed. Suddenly, before he realized what she intended, she swept the skirts of her gown above her waist and, in the same movement, perched like a bird on the seat of the cabinet. _She continued to laugh and chat to her maid as her water putted into the chamber-pot beneath her. When she rose again Hal was given one more glimpse of her long pale legs before the skirts dropped over them and she swept gracefully from the cabin.