Birds of Prey

Hal lay on his hard bunk in the dark, his hands clasped across his chest, and tried to sleep. But the images of her beauty tormented him.

His body burned and he rolled restlessly from side to side. "I will be strong!" he whispered aloud, and clenched his fists until the knuckles cracked. He tried to drive the vision from his mind, but it buzzed in his brain like a swarm of angry bees. Once again he heard, in his imagination, her laughter, mingle with the merry tinkle she made in her chamber-pot, and he could resist no longer. With a groan of guilt he capitulated and reached down with both hands to his swollen, throbbing loins.

Since the cargo of timber had been lifted out of the main hold, the spare mast could be raised to the deck. It was a labour that required half the ship's company. The massive spar was almost as long as the galleon and had to be carefully manoeuvred from its resting place in the bowels of the hold. It was floated across the channel and then dragged up the beach. There,in a clearing beneath the spreading forest canopy, the carpenters set it on trestles and began to trim and shape it, so that it could be stepped into the hull to replace the gale-shattered mast.

Only once the hold was emptied could Sir Francis call the entire ship's company to witness the opening of the treasure compartment that the Dutch authorities had deliberately covered with the heaviest cargo.

It was the usual practice of the VOC to secure the most valuable items in this manner. Several hundred tons of heavy timber baulks stacked over the entrance to the strong room would deter even the most determined thief from tampering with its contents.

While the crew crowded the opening of the hatch above them Sir Francis and the boatswains went down, each carrying a lighted lantern, and knelt in the bottom of the hold to examihe the seals that the Dutch Governor of Trincomalee had placed on the entrance.

"The seals are intactV Sir Francis shouted, to reassure the watchers, and they cheered raucously.

"Break the hinges!" he ordered Big Daniel, and the boatswain went to it with a will.

Wood splintered and brass screws squealed as they were ripped from their seats. The interior of the strong room was lined with sheets of copper, but Big Daniel's iron bar ripped through the metal and a hum of delight went up from the spectators as the contents of the compartment were revealed.

The coin was sewn into thick canvas bags of which there were fifteen. Daniel dragged them out and stacked them into a cargo net to be hoisted to the deck. Next, the ingots of gold bullion were raised. They were packed ten at a time into chests of raw, un planed wood on which the number and weight of the bars had been branded with a red-hot iron.

When Sir Francis climbed up out of the hold he ordered all but two of the sacks of coin, and all the chests of gold bars, to be carried down to his own cabin.

"We will divide only these two sacks of coin now," Sir Francis told them. "The rest of your share you will receive when we get home to dear old England." He stooped over the two remaining canvas sacks of coin with a dagger in his hand and he slit the stitching. The men howled like a pack of wolves as a stream of glinting silver ten-guilder coins poured onto the planking.

"No need to count it. The cheese-heads have done that job for us." Sir Francis pointed out the numbers stencilled on the sacks. "Each man will come forward as his name is called," he told them. With excited laughter and ribald repartee, the men formed lines. As each was called, he shuffled forward with his cap held out, and his share of silver guilders was doled out to him.

Hal was the only man aboard who drew no part of the booty. Although he was entitled to a midshipman's share, one two-hundredth part of the crew's portion, almost two hundred guilders, his father would take care of it for him. "No fool like a boy with silver or gold in his purse, he had explained reasonably to Hal. "One day you'll thank me for saving it for you." Then he turned with mock fury on his crew. "Just because you're rich now, doesn't mean I have no more work for you," he roared. "The rest of the heavy cargo must go ashore before we can beach and careen her and clean her foul bottom and step the new mast and put the culver ins into her. There's enough work in that to keep you busy for a month or two."

No man was ever allowed to remain idle for long in one of Sir Francis's ships. Boredom was the most dangerous enemy he would ever encounter. While one of the watches went ahead with the work of unloading, he kept the off-duty watches busy. They must never be, allowed to forget that this was a fighting ship and that they must be ready at any moment to face a desperate enemy.

With the hatches open and the huge casks of spice being lifted out, there was no space on the deck for weapons practice so Big Daniel took the off-duty men to the beach. Shoulder to shoulder, they formed ranks and worked through the manual of arms. Swinging the cutlass cut to the left, thrust and recover, cut to the right, thrust and recover until the sweat streamed from them and they gasped for breath.

"Enough of that!" Big Daniel told them at last, but they were not to be released yet.

"A bout or two of wrestling now, just to warm your blood, he shouted, and strode among them matching man against man, seizing a pair by the scruff of their necks and thrusting them at each other, as though they were fighting birds in the cockpit.

Soon the beach was covered with struggling, shouting pairs of men naked to the waist, heaving and spinning each other off their feet and rolling in the white sand.

Standing back among the first line of forest trees, Katinka and her maid watched with interest. Aboli stood a few paces behind them, leaning against the trunk of one of the giant forest yellow-woods.

Hal was matched against a seaman twenty years his elder. They were of the same height, but the other man was a stone heavier. Both struggled for a hold on each other's neck and shoulders as they danced in a circle, trying to force one another off balance or to hook a heel for a trip throw.

"Use your hip. Throw him over your hip!" Katinka whispered, as she watched Hal. She was so carried along by the spectacle that unconsciously she had clenched her fists and was beating them on her own thighs in excitement as she urged Hal on, her cheeks pinker than either the rouge pot or the heat had coloured them.

Katinka loved to watch men or animals pitted against each other. At every opportunity, her husband was made to accompany her to the bull-baiting and the cock-fights or the ratting contests with terriers.

"Whenever the red wine is poured, my lovely little darling is happy." Van de Velde was proud of her unusual penchant for blood sport. She never missed a tournament of ipie, and had even enjoyed the English sport of bare fisted fighting. However, wrestling was one of her favourite diversions, and she knew all the holds and throws.

Now she was enchanted by the lad's graceful movements and impressed by his technique. She could tell that he had been well instructed, for although his opponent was heavier Hal was quicker and stronger. He used his opponent's weight against him, and the older man had to grunt and thrash around to recover himself as Hal tipped him to the edge of his balance. At his next lunge Hal offered no resistance but gave to his opponent's rush, and went over backwards, still maintaining his grip. As he struck the ground, he broke his own fall with an arch to his back, at the same time thrusting his heels into his opponent's belly to catapult him overhead. While the older man lay stunned, Hal whipped round to straddle his back and pin him face down. He grabbed the man's pigtail and forced his face into the fine white sand, until he slapped the earth with both hands to signal his surrender.

Hal released him and sprang to his feet with the agility of a cat.

The seaman came to his knees gasping and spitting sand. Then, unexpectedly, he launched himself at Hal just as he was beginning to turn away. From the corner of his eye Hal spotted the swing of the bunched fist coming at his head and rolled away from the blow, but not quite quickly enough. It swiped across his face, bringing a flash of blood from one nostril. He seized the man's wrist as he reached the limit of his swing, twisting his arm and then lifting his wrist up between his shoulder-blades. The seaman squealed as he was forced up on his toes.

St. "Mary's milk, Master John, but you must like the taste of sand."

Hal placed one bare foot on his backside and sent him sprawling head first on to the beach once more.

"You grow too clever and cocky, Master Hal!" Big Daniel strode up to him, frowning, and his voice was gruff as he tried to hide his delight at his pupil's performance. "Next time I'll give you a harder match. And don't let the captain hear that milky blasphemy of yours or more than good clean beach sand you'll be tasting yourself."

Still laughing, delighting in Daniel's ill-concealed approbation and in the hoots of encouragement from the other wrestlers, Hal swaggered to the lagoon's edge and scooped up a double handful of water to wash the blood from his upper lip.

"Joseph and Mary, but he loves to win." Daniel grinned behind his back. "Try as he will, Captain Franky will not break that one down. The old dog has sired a puppy of his own blood."

"How old do you think he is?" Katinka asked her maid, in a reflective tone.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Zelda primly. "He's just a child."

Katinka shook her head, smiling, remembering him standing naked in the stern of the pinnace. "Ask our blackamoor watch-dog."

Obediently Zelda looked back at Aboli, and asked in English, "How old is the boy?"

"Old enough for what she wants from him," Aboli grunted in his own language, a puzzled frown on his face as he pretended not to understand. These last few days, while he guarded her, he had studied this woman with sun coloured hair. He had recognized the bright, predatory glimmer in the depths of those demure violet eyes. She watched a man the way a mongoose watches a plump chicken, and she carried her head in an affectation of innocence that was belied by the wanton swing of her hips beneath the layers of bright silks and gossamer lace. "A whore is still a whore, whatever the colour of her hair and no matter if she lives in a beehive hut or a governor's palace." The deep cadence of his voice was punctuated by the staccato clicks of his tribal speech.

Zelda turned away from him with a flounce. "Stupid animal. He understands nothing."

Hal left the water's edge and came up into the trees. He reached up to the branch on which hung his discarded shirt. His hair was still wet and his naked chest and shoulders were blotched red with the rough contact of the wrestling. A smear of blood was still streaked across his cheek.

His hand raised towards his shirt, he looked up. His eyes met Katinka's level violet regard. Until that moment he had been unaware of her presence. Instantly his arrogant swagger evaporated, and he stepped back as though she had slapped him unexpectedly. Now a dark blush spread over his face, obliterating the lighter blotches left by his opponent's blows.

Coolly Katinka looked down at his bare chest. He folded his arms across it, as if ashamed.

"You were right, Zelda," she said, with a dismissive flick of her hand. "Just a grubby child," she added in Latin, to make certain that he understood. Hal stared after her miserably as she gathered her skirts and, followed by Aboli and her maid, sailed regally down the beach to the waiting pinnace.

That night, as he lay on the lumpy straw pallet on his narrow bunk, he heard movement, soft voices and laughter from the cabin next door. He propped himself up on one elbow. Then he recalled the insult she had thrown at him so disdainfully. "I will not think of her ever again," he promised himself, as he sank back onto the pallet and placed his hands over his ears to block out the lilting cadence of her voice. In an attempt to drive her from his mind, he repeated softly, "In Arcadia habito." But it was long before weariness allowed him at last to fall into a deep black dreamless sleep. The head of the lagoon, almost two miles from where the Resolution lay at anchor, a stream of clear sweet water tumbled down through a narrow gorge to mingle with the brackish waters below. As the two longboats moved slowly against the current into the mouth of the gorge, they startled the flocks of water birds from the shallows into the air.

They rose in a cacophony of honks, quacks and cackles, twenty different varieties of ducks and geese unlike any they knew from the north. There were other species, too, with strangely shaped bills or disproportionately long legs trailing, and herons, curlews and egrets that were not quite the same as their English counterparts, bigger or brighter in plumage. The sky was darkened with their numbers, and the men rested for a minute upon their oars to gaze in astonishment at these multitudes.

"It's a land of marvels, Sir Francis murmured, staring up at this wild display. "Yet we have explored only a trivial part of it. What other wonders lie beyond this threshold, deep in the hinterland, that no man has ever laid eyes upon?"

His father's words excited Hal's imagination, and conjured up once more the images of dragons and monsters that decorated the charts he had studied.

"Heave away!" his father ordered, and they bent to the long sweeps again. The two were alone in the leading boat. Sir Francis pulled the starboard oar with a long powerful stroke that matched Hal's tirelessly. Between them stood the empty water casks, the refilling of which was the ostensible purpose of this expedition to the head of the lagoon. The real reason, however, lay on the floorboards at Sir Francis's feet. During the night Aboli and Big Daniel had carried the canvas sacks of coin and the chests of gold ingots down from the cabin and had hidden them under the tarpaulin in the bottom of the boat. In the bows they had stacked five kegs of powder and an array of weapons, captured along with the treasure from the galleon, cutlass, pistol and musket, and leather bags of lead shot.

Ned Tyler, Big Daniel and Aboli followed closely in the second boat, the three men in his crew whom Sir Francis trusted above all others. Their boat, too, was loaded with water casks.

Once they were well into the mouth of the stream, Sir Francis stopped rowing and leaned over the side to scoop a mugful of water and taste it. He nodded with satisfaction.

"Pure and sweet." He called across to Ned Tyler, "Do you begin to refill here. Hal and I will go on upstream."

As Ned steered the boat in towards the riverbank, a wild, booming bark echoed down the gorge. They all looked up. "What are those creatures? Are they men?" demanded Ned. "Some kind of strange hairy dwarfs?" There was fear and awe in his voice, as he stared up at the ranks of human-like shapes that lined the edge of the precipice high above them.

"Apes." Sir Francis called to him as he rested on his oar. "Like those of the Barbary Coast."

Aboli chuckled, then threw back his head and faithfully mimicked the challenge of the bull baboon that led the pack. Most of the younger animals leaped up and nervously skittered along the cliff at the sound.

The huge bull ape accepted the challenge. He stood on all fours at the edge of the precipice, and opened his mouth wide to display a set of terrible white fangs. Emboldened by this show, some of the younger animals returned and began to hurl small stones and debris down upon them. The men were forced to duck and dodge the missiles.

"Give them a shot to see them off," Sir Francis ordered. "It's a long one." Daniel unslung his musket and blew on the burning tip of the slow-match as he raised the butt to his shoulder. The gorge echoed to the thunderous blast, and they all burst out laughing at the antics of the baboon pack, as it panicked at the shot. The ball knocked a chip off the lip of the ledge, and the youngsters of the troop somersaulted backwards with shock. The mothers seized their offspring, slung them under their bellies and scrambled up the sheer face, and even the brave bull abandoned his dignity and joined the rush for safety. Within seconds, the cliff was deserted and the sounds of the terror-stricken retreat dwindled.

Aboli jumped over the side, waist deep into the river, and dragged the boat onto the bank while Daniel and Ned un stoppered the water casks to refill them. In the other boat Sir Francis and Hal bent to the oars and rowed on upstream. After half a mile the river narrowed sharply, and the cliffs on both sides became steeper. Sir Francis paused to get his bearings and then turned the longboat in under the cliff and moored the bows to the stump of a dead tree that sprang from a crack in the rock. Leaving Hal in the boat he jumped out onto the narrow ledge below the cliff and began to climb upwards. There was no obvious path to follow but Sir Francis moved confidently from one handhold to another. Hal watched him with pride. in his eyes, his father was an old man he must have long passed the venerable age of forty years yet he climbed with strength and agility. Suddenly, fifty feet above the river, he reached a ledge invisible from below and shuffled a few paces along it. Then he knelt to examine the narrow cleft in the cliff face, the opening was blocked with neatly packed rocks. He smiled with relief when he saw that they were exactly as he had left them many months previously. Carefully he pulled them out of the cleft and laid them aside, until the opening was wide enough for him to crawl through.

The cave beyond was in darkness but Sir Francis stood up and reached to a stone shelf above his head where he groped for the flint and steel he had left there. He lit the candle he had brought with him, and then looked around the cave.

Nothing had been touched since his last visit. Five chests stood against the back wall. That was the booty from the Heerlycke Nacht, mostly silver plate and a hundred thousand guilders in coin that had been intended for payment of the Dutch garrison in Batavia. A pile of gear was stacked beside the entrance, and Sir Francis began work on this immediately. It took him almost half an hour to rig the heavy wooden beam as a gantry from the ledge outside the cave entrance, and then to lower the tackle to the boat moored below.

"Make the first chest fast!" he called down to Hal.

Hal tied it on and his father hauled it upwards, the sheave squeaking at each heave. The chest disappeared and a few minutes later the rope end dropped back and dangled where Hal could reach it. He tied on the next chest.

It took them well over an hour to hoist all the ingots and the sacks of coin and stack them in the back of the cave. Then they started work on the powder kegs and the bundles of weapons. The last item to go up was the smallest. a box into which Sir Francis had packed a compass and backstaff, a roll of charts taken from the Standvasdgheid, flint and steel, a set of surgeon's instruments in a canvas roll, and a selection of other equipment that could make the difference between survival and a lingering death to a party stranded on this savage, unexplored coast.

"Come up, Hal," Sir Francis called down at last, and Hal went up the cliff with the speed and ease of one of the young baboons.

When Hal reached him, his father was sitting comfortably on the narrow-ledge, his legs dangling and his clay stemmed pipe and tobacco pouch in his hands.

"Give me a hand here, lad." He pointed with his empty pipe at the vertical crack in the face of the cliff. "Close that up again."

Hal spent another half-hour packing the loose rock back into the entrance, to conceal it and to discourage intruders. There was little chance of men finding the cache in this deserted gorge, but he and his father knew that the baboons would return. They were as curious and mischievous as any human.

When Hal would have started back down the cliff, Sir Francis stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "There is no hurry. The others will not have finished refilling the water casks."

They sat in silence on the ledge while Sir Francis got his long-stemmed pipe to draw sweetly. Then he asked, through a cloud of blue smoke, "What have I done here?"

"Cached our share of the treasure."

"Not only our share alone, but that of the Crown and of every man aboard, sir Francis corrected him. "But why have I done that?"

"Gold and silver is temptation even to an honest man." Hal repeated the lore his father had drummed into his head so many times before.

"Should I not trust my own crew?" Sir Francis asked.

"If you trust no man, then no man will ever disappoint you. "Hal repeated the lesson.

"Do you believe that?" Sir Francis turned to watch his face as he replied, and Hal hesitated. "Do you trust Aboli?" "Yes, I trust him," Hal admitted, reluctantly, as though it were a sin.

"Aboli is a good man, none better. But you see that I do not bring even him to this place." He paused, then asked, "Do you trust me, lad?"

"Of course."

"Why? Surely I am but a man and I have told you to trust no man?"

"Because you are my father and I love you."

Sir Francis's eyes clouded and he made as if to caress Hal's cheek. Then he sighed, dropped his hand and looked down at the river below. Hal expected his father to censure his reply, but he did not. After a while Sir Francis asked another question. "What of the other goods I have cached here? The powder and weapons and charts and the like. Why have I placed those here?"

"Against an uncertain future, Hal replied confidently he had heard the answer often enough before. "A wise fox has many exits to his earth."

Sir Francis nodded. "All of us who sail in the guerre de course are always at risk. One day, those few chests may be worth our very lives."

His father was silent again as he smoked the last few shreds of tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. Then he said softly, "If God is merciful, the time will come, perhaps not too far in the future, when this war with the Dutch will end. Then we will return here and gather up our prize and sail home to Plymouth. It has long been my dream to own the manor of Gainesbury that runs alongside High Weald-" He broke off, as if not daring to tempt fate with such imagining. "If harm should befall me, it is necessary that you should know and remember where I have stored our winnings. It will be my legacy to you."

"No harm can ever come your way!" Hal exclaimed in agitation. It was more a plea than a statement of conviction. He could not imagine an existence without this towering presence at the centre of it.

"No man is immortal," said Sir Francis softly. "We all owe God a death." This time he allowed his right hand to settle briefly on Hal's shoulder. "Come, lad. We must still fill the water casks in our own boat before dark." the longboats crept back down the edge of the darkening lagoon, Aboli had taken Sir *-AFrancis's place on the rowing thwart, and now Hal's father sat in the stern, wrapped in a dark woollen cloak against the evening chill. His expression was. remote and sombre. Facing aft as he worked one of the long oars, Hal could study him surreptitiously.

Their conversation at the mouth of the cave had left him troubled with a presentiment of ill-fortune ahead.

He guessed that since they had anchored in the lagoon his father had cast his own horoscope. He had seen the zodiacal chart covered with arcane notations lying open on his desk in his cabin. That would account for his withdrawn and introspective mood. As Aboli had said, the stars were his children and he knew their secrets.

Suddenly his father lifted his head and sniffed the cool evening air. Then his face changed as he studied the forest edge. No dark thoughts could absorb him to the point where he was unaware of his surroundings.

"Aboli, take us in to the bank, if you please."

They turned the boat towards the narrow beach, and the second followed. After they had all jumped out onto the beach and moored both boats, Sir Francis gave a quiet order. "Bring your arms. Follow me, but quietly."

He led them into the forest, pushing stealthily through the undergrowth, until he stepped out suddenly onto a well-used path. He glanced back to make certain they were following him, then hurried along.

Hal was mystified by his father's actions until he smelt a trace of woodsmoke on the air and noticed for the first time the bluish haze along the tops of the dense forest trees. This must have been what had alerted his father.

Suddenly Sir Francis stepped out into a small clearing in the forest and stopped. The four men who were already there had not noticed him. Two lay like corpses on a battlefield, one still clutching a squat brown hand-blown bottle in his inert fingers, the other drooling strings of saliva from the corner of his mouth as he snored.

The second pair were wholly absorbed by the stacks of silver guilders and the ivory dice lying between them. One scooped up the dice and rattled them at his ear before rolling them across the patch of beaten bare earth. "Mother of a pig!" he growled. "This is not my lucky day."

"You should not speak unkindly of the dam who gave birth to you," said Sir Francis softly. "But the rest of what you say is the truth. This is not your lucky day."

They looked up at their captain in horrified disbelief, but made no attempt to resist or escape as Daniel and Aboli dragged them to their feet and roped them neck to neck in the manner used by the slavers.

Sir Francis walked over to inspect the still that stood at the far end of the clearing. They had used a black iron pot to boil the fermented mash of old biscuit and peelings, and copper tubing stolen from the ship's stores for the coil. He kicked it over and the colourless spirits flared in the flames of the charcoal brazier on which the pot stood. A row of filled bottles, stoppered with wads of leaves, was laid out beneath a yellow-wood tree. He picked them up one at a time and hurled them against the tree-trunk. As they shattered the evaporating fumes were pungent enough to make his eyes water. Then he walked back to Daniel and Ned, who had kicked the drunks out of their stupor and had dragged them across the clearing to rope them to the other captives.

"We'll give them a day to sleep it off, Master Ned. Then tomorrow, at the beginning of the afternoon watch, have the ship's company assemble to witness their punishment." He glanced at Big Daniel. "I trust you can still make your cat whistle, Master Daniel."

"Please, Captain, we meant no harm. just a little fun." They tried to crawl to where he stood, but Aboli dragged them back like dogs on the leash.

"I will not grudge you your fun," said Sir Francis, "if you do not grudge me mine." he carpenter had knocked up a row of four tripods on the quarterdeck, and the drunkards and gamblers were lashed to them by wrist and ankle. Big Daniel walked down the line and ripped their shirts open from collar to waist, so that their naked backs were exposed. They hung helplessly in their bonds like trussed pigs on the back of a market cart.

"Every man aboard knows full well that I will tolerate no drunkenness and no gaming, both of which are an offence and abomination in the eyes of the Lord." Sir Francis addressed the company, assembled in solemn ranks in the ship's waist. "Every man aboard knows the penalty. Fifty licks of the cat." He watched their faces. Fifty strokes of the knotted leather thongs could cripple a man for life. A hundred strokes was a sentence of certain and horrible death. "They have earned themselves the full fifty. However, I remember that these four fools fought well on this very deck when we captured this vessel. We still have some hard fighting ahead of us, and cripples are of no use to me when the culver ins are smoking and the cutlasses are out."

He paused to watch their faces, and saw the terror of the cat in their eyes, mixed with relief that it was not them bound to the tripods. Unlike the captains of many privateers, even some Knights of the Order, Sir Francis took no pleasure in this punishment. Yet he did not flinch from necessity. He commanded a ship full of tough, unruly men, whom he had handpicked for their ferocity and who would take any show of kindness as weakness.

"I am a merciful man," he told them, and somebody in the rear ranks chuckled derisively. Sir Francis paused and, with a bleak eye, singled out the offender. When the culprit hung his head and shuffled his feet, he went on smoothly, "But these rascals would test my mercy to its limits."

He turned to Big Daniel, who stood beside the first tripod. He was stripped to the waist and his great muscles bulged in arms and shoulders. He had tied back his long greying hair with a strip Of Cloth, and from his scarred fist the lashes of the cat hung to the planks of the deck like the serpents of Medusa's head.

"Make it fifteen for each, Master Daniel," Sir Francis ordered, "but comb your cat well between the strokes." Unless Daniel's fingers separated the lashes of the cat after each stroke, the blood would matt them together and clot them "into a single heavy instrument that would cut human flesh like a sword, blade. Even fifteen with an uncombed cat would strip the meat off a man's back down to the vertebrae of his spine.

"Fifteen it is, Captain," Daniel acknowledged, and shaking out the whip to separate the knotted thongs, stepped up to his first victim. The man twisted his head to watch him over his shoulder, his expression blanched with fear.

Daniel raised his arm high and let the lash stream out over his shoulder then, with a peculiar grace for such a big man, he swung forward. The lash whistled like the wind in the leaves of a tall tree and clapped loudly on bare skin.

"One!" chanted the crew in unison, as the victim shrieked on a high note of shock and agony. The lash left a grotesque pattern over his back, each red line studded with a row of brighter crimson stars where the knots had broken the skin. It looked like the sting from the venomous tendrils of a Portuguese man-of-war.

Daniel combed out the lash, and the fingers of his left hand were smeared with bright fresh blood.

Two!" The watchers counted, and the man shrieked again and writhed in his bonds, his toes dancing a tattoo of pain on the deck timbers.

"Avast punishment!" Sir Francis called, as he heard a mild commotion at the head of the companionway leading down to the cabins in the stern. Obediently Daniel lowered the whip, and waited as Sir Francis strode to the ladder.

Governor van de Velde's plumed Hat appeared above the coaming, followed by his fat flushed face. He stood wheezing in the sunlight, mopping his jowls with a silk handkerchief, and looked about him. His face brightened with interest as he saw the men hanging on the row of tripods. Ja! Goed! I see we are not too late," he said, with satisfaction. Close behind him Katinka emerged from the hatch with a light, eager step, holding her skirts just high enough to reveal satin slippers embroidered with seed pearls.

"Good morrow, Mijnheer," Sit Francis greeted the Governor with a perfunctory bow, "there is punishment in progress. It is an unsuitable spectacle for a lady of your wife's delicate breeding to witness."

"Truly, Captain," Katinka laughed lightly as she intervened, "I am not a child. Heaven knows, there is a great paucity of diversion aboard this ship. just think, you would collect no ransom if I were to die of boredom." She tapped Sir Francis's arm with her fan, but he pulled away from this condescending touch, and spoke again to her husband.

"Mijnheer, I think you should escort your wife to her quarters."

Katinka stepped between them as though he had not spoken, and beckoned Zelda who followed her. "Place my stool there in the shade." She spread out her skirts as she settled herself on the stool and pouted prettily at Sir Francis. "I will be so quiet that you will not even know that I am here."

Sir Francis glared at the Governor, but van de Velde spread his pudgy hands in a theatrical gesture of helplessness. "You know how it is, Mijnheer, when a beautiful woman sets her heart on something." He moved up behind Katinka and placed a proud and indulgent hand on her shoulder.

"I cannot be responsible for your wife's sensibilities, if they should be offended by the spectacle," Sir Francis warned grimly, relieved at least that his men could not understand this exchange in Dutch and be aware that he had bowed to pressure from his captives.

"I think you need not trouble yourself too deeply. My wife has a strong stomach," van de Velde murmured. During their tour of duty in Kandy and Trincomalee his wife had never missed the executions that were carried out regularly on the parade ground of the fort. Depending on the nature of the offence these punishments had ranged from burning at the stake to branding, gar rotting and beheading. Even on those days when she had been suffering the break-bone pains of dengue fever and, in accordance with her doctor's orders, should have remained in bed, her carriage had always been parked in its accustomed place overlooking the scaffold.

"Then it shall be at your own responsibility, Mijnheer." Sir Francis nodded curtly, and turned back to Daniel. "Proceed with the punishment, Master Daniel," he ordered. Daniel threw back the whip, high behind his shoulder, and the coloured. tattoos that decorated his great biceps rippled with a life of their own.

"Three!" yelled the crew, as the lash sang and snapped. Katinka stiffened, and leaned forward slightly on her stool.

"Four!" She started at the crack of the cat and the high scream of pain that followed it. Slowly her face turned pale as candle tallow.

"Five!" Thin snakes of -scarlet crawled down the man's back and soaked into the waistband of his canvas petticoat. Katinka let her long golden eyelashes droop half closed to hide the gleam in her violet eyes.

"Six!" Katinka felt a tiny drop of liquid strike her, like a single spot of warm tropical rain. She tore her eyes from the wriggling, moaning body on the tripod, and looked down at her graceful hand.

A drop of blood, flung from the sodden lash, had landed on her forefinger. Like a ruby set in a precious ring it sparkled against her white skin. She cupped her other hand over it, hiding it in her lap while she glanced around at the faces that surrounded her. Every eye was fixed in total fascination upon the gruesome spectacle in front of them. No one had seen the blood splash her. No. one was watching her now.

She lifted her hand to her full soft lips as though in an involuntary gesture of dismay. The pink tip of her tongue darted out and dabbed away the droplet from her finger.

She savoured its metallic salt taste. It reminded her of a lover's sperm, and she felt the viscous wetness welling up between her legs, so that when she rubbed her thighs together they slid against each other, slippery as mating eels.

There would be a need for lodgings on shore while the Resolution was careened on the beach, her hull cleaned of weed and examined for any sign of shipworm.

Sir Francis put Hal in charge of building the compound that was to accommodate their hostages. Hal took particular care over the hut that would house the Governor's wife, making it spacious and comfortable and siting it for privacy and security from wild animals. Then he had his men build a stockade of thorn branches around the entire prison compound.

When darkness brought the first day's work to a halt, he went down to the beach of the lagoon and soaked himself in the warm, brackish waters. Then he scrubbed his body with handfuls of wet sand until his skin tingled. Yet he still felt sullied by the memory of the floggings he had been forced to watch that morning. Only when he smelt the tantalizing odour of hot biscuit floating across the water from the ship's galley did his mood change, and he thrust his legs into his breeches and ran down the beach to scramble into the pinnace as it pulled away from the shore.

While he had been ashore his father had written on the slate a series of navigational problems for him to solve. He tucked it under his arm, grabbed a pewter mug of small beer, a bowl of fish stew and, holding a hot biscuit between his teeth, darted down the ladder to his cabin, the only place on the ship where he could be alone to concentrate on his task.

Suddenly he looked up as he heard water being poured in the cabin next door. He had noticed the buckets of fresh river water standing over the charcoal fire in the galley and laughed when the cook had complained bitterly that his fire was being used to heat water to bathe in. Now Hal knew for whom those steaming pails had been prepared. Zelda's guttural tones carried to him through the panel as she harangued Oliver, his father's servant. Oliver's reply was truculent. "I don't understand a word you say, you grisly old bitch. But if you don't like it you can fill the sodding bath yerself."

Hal grinned to himself, half with amusement and half in anticipation, as he blew out his lamp and knelt to remove the wooden plug from his peephole. He saw that the cabin was filled with clouds of steam, which frosted the mirror on the far bulkhead so that his view was restricted. Zelda was shooing Oliver from the cabin as Hal adjusted his eye to the aperture.

"All right, you old trull!" Oliver baited her, as he lugged the empty buckets from the cabin. "There's nothing you've got that would keep me here a minute longer."

When Oliver was gone, Zelda went through into the main cabin and Hal heard her speaking to her mistress. A minute later she ushered Katinka through the doorway. Katinka paused beside the steaming bath and dabbled her fingers in the water. She exclaimed sharply and jerked away her hand. Zelda hurried forward, apologizing, and poured cold water from the bucket that stood beside the bath. Katinka tested the temperature again. This time she nodded with satisfaction, and went to sit on the stool. Zelda came up behind her, lifted the splendid shimmering bundle of her hair with both hands to pile it on top of her head and pinned it there, like a sheaf of ripe wheat.

Katinka leaned forward and, with her fingertips, wiped a small clear window in the clouded surface of the mirror. She examined the vignette of herself in this clear spot. She thrust out her tongue to examine it for any trace of white coating. It was pink as a rose petal. Then she opened her eyes wide and peered into their depths, touching the skin beneath them with her fingertips. "Look at these horrid wrinkles!" she lamented.

Zelda denied it vehemently. "Not a single one!"

"I never want to grow old and ugly." Katinka's expression was tragic.

"Then you had best die now!" said Zelda. "That's the only way you'll avoid it."

"What a terrible thing to say. You are so cruel to me," Katinka complained.

Hal could not understand what they said but the tone of her voice touched him to the depths of his being.

"Come now," Zelda chided her. "You know you're beautiful."

"Am I, Zelda? Do you really think so?"

"Yes. And so do you." Zelda lifted her to her feet. "But if you don't bathe now, you will stink just as beautifully."

She unfastened her mistress's gown, then moved behind her, lifted the gown from her shoulders and Katinka stood naked before the mirror. Hal's involuntary gasp was muffled by the panel and the small sounds of the ship's hull.

From that slender neck down to her tiny ankles Katinka's body formed a line of heartbreaking purity. Her buttocks swelled out into two perfectly symmetrical orbs, like a pair of the ostrich eggs Hal had seen offered for sale in the markets of Zanzibar. But there were childish, vulnerable dimples at the back of her knees.

Katinka's own image in the clouded mirror was ethereal and could not hold her attention for long. She turned away from it and stood facing him. Hal's gaze flew to her breasts. They were large for her narrow shoulders. Each would have filled his cupped hands, yet they were not perfectly round as he had expected them to be.

Hal stared at them until his eye watered and he was forced at last to blink. Then he let his gaze sink down, over the slight but enthralling bulge of her belly, and onto the misty cloud of fine curls that nestled between her thighs. The lamp-light struck them and they sparked purest gold.

She stood a long time thus, longer than he had dared hope she might, staring down into the bath while Zelda poured perfumed oil from a crystal bottle into the water, and then knelt to stir it with her hand. Katinka continued to stand, her weight on one leg so that her pelvis was tilted at an enchanting angle, and there was a small sly smile on her lips as she reached up slowly and took one of her nipples between thumb and forefinger. For a moment Hal thought she stared directly at him, and he began to pull away guiltily from his peep-hole.

Then he knew that it was an illusion for she dropped her eyes and looked down at the fat little berry that poked out rosily between her fingers.

She rolled it softly back and forth, and while Hal stared in amazement it changed colour and shape. It swelled and hardened and darkened. He had never imagined anything quite like this a little miracle that should have filled him with reverence but instead tore at his loins with the claws of lust.

Zelda looked up from the bath she was mixing and, when she saw what her mistress was doing, snapped a prim reprimand. Katinka laughed and stuck out her tongue, but dropped her hand and stepped into the bath. With a luxurious sigh she sank into the hot, perfumed water, until only the thick coil of golden hair on top of her head showed above the rim of the bath.

Zelda fussed over her, lathering soap on a flannel, wiping and washing, murmuring endearments and cackling at her mistress's replies. Suddenly she rocked back on her heels and gave another instruction, in response to which Katinka stood up and the soapy water cascaded down her body. Her back was turned to Hal, and now the rounds of her bottom glowed pinkly from the hot water. At Zelda's instructions she moved compliantly to allow the old woman to soap down each leg in turn.

At last Zelda climbed stiffly to her feet and shuffled out of the cabin. As soon as she was gone Katinka, still standing in the bath, glanced over her shoulder. Again, Hal had the guilty illusion that she was looking directly into his own staring eye. It was only for a moment, then slowly and voluptuously she bent. Her buttocks changed shape at the movement. Katinka reached behind herself with both hands.

She laid those small white hands on each of her glowing pink buttocks and drew them gently apart. This time Hal could not choke back the little abandoned cry that rose to his lips as the deep crease of her bottom opened to his feverish gaze.

Zelda bustled back into the cabin bearing an armful of towels. Katinka straightened and the enchanted crevice closed firmly, its secrets hidden once more from his eyes. She stepped from the bath and Zelda draped a towel over her shoulders that hung to her ankles. Zelda loosened the coil of her mistress's hair and brushed it out, and then braided it into a thick golden rope. She stood behind Katinka and held a gown for her to slip her arms into the sleeves, but Katinka shook her head and gave a peremptory order. Zelda protested but Katinka insisted and the maid threw the gown over the stool and left the cabin in an obvious pet.

When she was gone Katinka let the towel drop to the deck and, naked once more, crossed to the door and slid the locking bolt into place. Then she turned back and passed out of Hal's sight.

He saw a fuzzy pink blur of movement in the clouded mirror but could not be sure what she was doing until, abruptly and shockingly, her lips were an inch from the opposite side of his peep-hole and she hissed viciously at him, "You filthy little Pirate!" She spoke in Latin, and he recoiled as though she had flung a kettle of boiling water into his face.

Even in his confusion, though, the taunt had stung him to the quick, and he answered her, without thinking, "I am not a pirate. My father carries Letters of Marque."

"Don't you dare to contradict me." Confusingly she was switching between Latin, Dutch and English. But her tone was sharp and stinging as a scourge.

Again he was stung into a reply. "I did not mean to offend you."

"When my noble husband finds out that you have been spying on me, he will go to your pirate father, and they will have you flogged on the tripod like those other men this morning."

"I was not spying on you, -" "Liar!" She would not let him finish. "You dirty lying pirate." For a moment she had run out of breath and insults. "I only wanted to, -" Her fury was recharged. "I know what you wanted. You wanted to look at my katjie, -" he knew that was the Dutch word for kitten " and then you wanted to take your cock in your hand and pull it, -" "NoV Hal almost shouted. How had she known his shameful secret? He felt sick and mortified.

"Quiet! Zelda will hear you," she hissed again. "If they catch you it will be the lash."

"Please!" he whispered back. "I meant no harm. Please forgive me.

I did not mean it."

"Then show me. Prove your innocence. Show me your cock."

"I can't. "His voice quivered with shame.

"Stand up! Put it here next to the hole so I can see if you are lying."

"No. Please don't make me do that."

"Quickly or I -will scream for my husband to come." Slowly he came to his feet. The peep-hole was at almost exactly the same level as his aching crotch.

"Now, show me. Open your breeches, her voice goaded him.

Slowly, consumed by shame and embarrassment he lifted the canvas skirt, and before it was fully raised his penis jumped out like the springy branch of a sapling. He knew she must be nauseated and speechless with disgust to see such a thing. After a minute of thick, charged silence that seemed the longest in his life, he began to lower his skirt over himself.

Instantly she stopped him in a voice that seemed to him to tremble with revulsion, so that he could hardly understand her distorted English words.

"No! Do not seek to cover your shame. This thing of yours condemns you. Do you still pretend you are guiltless?" "No,"he admitted miserably.

"Then you must be punished," she told him. "I must tell your father."

"Please don't do that," he pleaded. "He would kill me with his own hands."

"Very well. I shall have to punish you myself. Bring your cock closer."

Obediently he pushed his hips forward. "Closer, so I can reach it. Closer."

He felt the tip of his distended penis touch the rough wood that surrounded the peep-hole, and then shockingly cool soft fingers closed over the tip. He tried to pull away, but her grip tightened and her voice was sharp. "Stay still!"

Katinka knelt at the bulkhead and threaded his glans through the opening, then eased it out into the lamp-light. It was so swollen that it could barely fit through the hole.

"No, do not pull away," she told him, making her voice stern and angry, as she took a firmer grip upon him. Obediently he relaxed and gave himself over to the insistent pressure of her fingers, allowing her to draw his full length through the opening.

She gazed at it, fascinated. At his age she had not expected him to be so large. The engorged head was the glossy purple of a ripe plum. She drew the loose prepuce over it, like a monk's cowl, and then pulled back the skin again as far it would go. The head seemed to swell harder as though on the point of bursting, and she felt the shaft jump in her hands.

She repeated the movement, slowly forward and then back again, and heard him groan beyond the panel. It was strange but she had almost forgotten the boy. This mannikin she held in her hands had a life and existence of its own.

"This is your punishment, you dirty, shameless boy."

She could hear his fingernails scratching at the wood, as her hand began to fly back and forth along the full length of him as though she were working the shuttle of a weaver's loom.

It happened sooner than she had expected. The hot glutinous spurting against her sensitive breasts was so powerful that it startled her, but she did not pull away.

After a time, she said, "Do not think that I have forgiven you yet for what you have done to me. Your penitence has only just begun. Do you understand?"

"Yes." His voice was ragged and hoarse.

"You must make a secret opening in this wall." She tapped the bulkhead softly with her knuckle. "Loosen this panel so that you can come through to me, and I can punish you more severely. Do you understandT "Yes, he panted.

"You must conceal the opening. No one else must know."

"It is my observation," Sir Francis told Hal, "that filth and sickness have a peculiar affinity, one for the other. I know not why this should be, but it is so."

He was responding to his son's cautious enquiry as to why it was necessary to go through the onerous and odious business of fumigating the ship. With all the cargo out of her and most of the crew billeted ashore Sir Francis was determined to try to rid the hull of vermin. It seemed that every crack in the woodwork swarmed with lice, and the holds were overrun with rats. The galley was littered with the black pellets of their droppings, and Ned Tyler had reported finding some of the stinking bloated carcasses rotting in the water casks.

Since the day of their arrival in the lagoon a shore party had been burning cordwood and leaching the ashes to obtain the lye, and Sir Francis had sent Aboli into the forest to search for those special herbs that his tribe used to keep their huts clear of the loathsome vermin. Now a party of seamen waited on the foredeck, armed with buckets of the caustic substance.

"I want every crack and joint of the hull scrubbed out, but be careful," Sir Francis warned them. "The corrosive fluid will burn the skin from your hands-" He broke off abruptly. Every head on board turned towards the distant rocky heads, and every man upon the beach paused in what he was doing and cocked his head to listen.

The flat boom of a cannon shot echoed from the cliffs at the entrance to the lagoon and reverberated across the still waters of the wide bay.

"It's the alarm signal from the lookout on the heads, Captain," shouted Ned Tyler, and pointed across the water to where a puff of white gunsmoke still hung over one of the emplacements that guarded the entrance. As they stared, a tiny black ball soared to the top of the makeshift flag-pole on the crest of the western headland then unfurled into a red swallow-tail. It was the general alarm signal, and could only mean that a strange sail was in sight.

"Beat to quarters, Master Daniel!" Sir Francis ordered crisply. "Unlock the weapons chests and arm the crew. I am going across to the entrance. Four men to row the longboat and the rest take up their battle stations ashore."

Although his face remained expressionless, inwardly he was furious that he should have allowed himself to be surprised like this, with the masts un stepped and all the cannon out of the hull. He turned to Ned Tyler. "I want the prisoners taken ashore and placed under your strictest guard, well away from the beach. If they learn that there is a strange ship off the coast, it might give them the notion to try to attract attention."

Oliver rushed up the companionway with Sir Francis's cloak over his arm. While he spread it over his master's shoulders, Sir Francis finished issuing his orders. Then he turned and strode to the entry port where the longboat lay alongside and Hal was waiting, where his father could not ignore him, fretting that he might not be ordered to join him.

"Very well, then," Sir Francis snapped. "Come with me. I might have need of those eyes of yours." And Hal slid down the mooring line ahead, and cast off the moment his father stepped into the boat.

"Pull till you burst your guts!" Sir Francis told the men at the oars and the boat skittered across the lagoon. Sir Francis sprang over the side and waded ashore below the cliff with the water slopping over the tops of his high boots. Hal had to run to catch up with him on the elephant path.

They came out on the top, three hundred feet above the lagoon, looking out over the ocean. Although the wind that buffeted them on the heights had kicked the sea into a welter of breaking waves, Hal's sharp eyes picked out the brighter flecks that persisted among the ephemeral whitecaps ever before the lookout could point them out to him.

Sir Francis stared through his telescope. "What do you make of her? "he demanded of Hal.

"There are two ships," Hal told him.

"I see but one no, wait! You are right. There is another, a little further to the east. Is she a frigate, do you think?" "Three masts," Hal shaded his eyes, "and full rigged. Yes, I'd say she's a frigate. The other vessel is too far off. I cannot tell her type." It pained Hal to admit it, and he strained his eyes for some other detail. "Both ships are standing in directly towards us."

"If they are intending to head for Good Hope, then they must go about very soon," Sir Francis murmured, never lowering the telescope. They watched anxiously.

"They could be a pair of Dutch East Indiamen still making their we stings Hal hazarded hopefully.

"Then why are they pushing so close into a lee shore?" Sir Francis asked. "No, it looks very much as though they are headed straight for the entrance." He snapped the telescope closed. "Come along!" At a trot he led the way back down the path to where the longboat waited on the beach. "Master Daniel, row across to the batteries on the far side. Take command there. Do not open fire until I do They watched the longboat move swiftly over the lagoon and Daniel's men drag it into a narrow cove where it was concealed from view. Then Sir Francis strode along the gun emplacements in the cliff and gave a curt set of orders to the men who crouched over the culver ins with the burning slow-match.

"At my command, fire on the leading ship. One salvo of round shot," he told them. "Aim at the waterline. Then load with chain shot and bring down their rigging. They'll not want to try manoeuvring in these confined channels with half their sails shot away." He jumped up onto the parapet of the emplacement and stared out at the sea through the narrow entrance, but the approaching vessels were still hidden from view by the rocky cliffs.

Suddenly, from around the western point of the heads, a ship with all sail set drew into view. She was less than two miles offshore, and even as they watched in consternation she altered course, and trimmed her yards around, heading directly for the entrance.

"Their guns are run out, so it's a fight they're looking for, said Sir Francis grimly, as he sprang down from the wall. "And we shall give it to them, lads."

"No, Father," Hal cried. "I know that ship."

"Who-" Before Sir Francis could ask the question, he was given the answer. From the vessel's maintop a long swallow-tailed banner unfurled. Scarlet and snowy white, it whipped and snapped on the wind.

"The croix paudeP Hal called. "It's the Gull of Moray. It's Lord Cumbrae, Father!"

"By God, so it is. How did that red-bearded butcher know we were here?"

Astern of the Gull of Moray the strange ship hove into view. It also trained its yards around, and in succession altered its heading, following the Buzzard as he stood in towards the entrance.

"I know that ship also," Hal shouted, on the wind. "There, now! I can even recognize her figurehead. She's the Goddess. I know of no other ship on this ocean with a naked Venus at her bowsprit."

"Captain Richard Lister, it is," Sir Francis agreed. "I feel easier for having him here. He's a good man though, God knows, I trust neither of them all the way."

As the Buzzard came sailing in down the channel past the gun emplacements, he must have picked out the bright spot of Sir Francis's cloak against the lichen covered rocks, for he dipped his standard in salute.

Sir Francis lifted his Hat in acknowledgement, but grated between his teeth, "I'd rather salute you with a bouquet of grape, you Scottish bastard. You've smelt the spoils, have you? You're come to beg or steal, is that it? But how did you know?"

"Father!" Hal shouted again. "Look there, in the futtock shrouds I'd know that grinning rogue anywhere. That's how they knew. He led them here."

Sir Francis swivelled his glass. "Sam Bowles. It seems that even the sharks could not stomach that piece of carrion. I should have let his shipmates deal with him while we had the chance."

The Gull moved slowly past them, reducing sail progressively, as she threaded her way deeper into the lagoon. The Goddess followed her, at a cautious distance. She also flew the croix pott6e at her masthead, along with the cross of St. George and the Union flag. Richard Lister was also a Knight of the Order. They picked out his diminutive figure on his quarterdeck as he came to the rail and shouted something across the water that was jumbled by the wind.

"You are keeping strange company, Richard." Even though the Welshman could not hear him, Sir Francis waved his Hat in reply. Lister had been with him when they captured the Heerlycke Nacht, they had shared the spoils amicably, and he counted him a friend. Lister should have been with them, Sir Francis and the Buzzard while they spent those dreary months on blockade off Cape Agulhas. However, he had missed the rendezvous in Port Louis on the island of Mauritius. After waiting a month for him to appear, Sir Francis had been obliged to accede to the Buzzard's demands, and they had sailed without him.

"Well, we'd best put on a brave face, and go to greet our uninvited guests," Sir Francis told Hal, and went down to the beach as Daniel brought the longboat across the channel between the heads.

As they rowed back up the lagoon the two newly arrived vessels lay at anchor in the main channel. The Gull of Moray was only half a cable's length astern of the Resolution. Sir Francis ordered Daniel to steer directly to the Goddess. Richard Lister was at the entry port to greet him as he and Hal came aboard.

"Flames of hell, Franky. I heard the word that you had taken a great prize from the Dutch. Now I see her lying there at anchor." Richard seized his hand. He did not quite stand as tall as Sir Francis's shoulder but his grip was powerful. He sniffed the air with the great florid bell of his nose, and went on, in his singing Celtic lilt, "And is that not spice I smell on the air? I curse me self for not having found you at Port Louis."

"Where were you, Richard? I waited thirty-two days for you to arrive."

"It grieves me to have to admit it but I ran full tilt into a hurricane just south of Mauritius. Dismasted me and blew me clear across to the coast of St. Lawrence Island."

"That would be the same storm that dismasted the Dutchman." Sir Francis pointed across the channel at the galleon. "She was under-jury-rig when we captured her. But how did you fall in with the Buzzard?"

"I thought that as soon as the Goddess was fit for sea again I would look for you off Cape Agulhas, on the off chance that you were still on station there. That's when I came across him. He led me here."

"Well, it's good to see you, my old friend. But, tell me, do you have any news from home?" Sir Francis leaned forward eagerly. This was always one of the foremost questions men asked each other when they met out here beyond the Line. They might voyage to the furthest ends of the uncharted seas, but always their hearts yearned for home. Almost a year had passed since Sir Francis had received news from England.

At the question, Richard Lister's expression turned sombre. "Five days after I sailed from Port Louis I fell in with Windsong, one of His Majesty's frigates. She was fifty six days out from Plymouth, bound for the Coromandel coast."

"So what news did she have?" Sir Francis interrupted impatiently.

"None good, as the Lord is my witness. They say that all of England was struck by the plague, and that men, women and children died in their thousands and tens of thousands, so they could not bury them fast enough and the bodies lay rotting and stinking in the streets."

"The plague!" Sir Francis crossed himself in horror. "The wrath of God."

"Then while the plague still raged through every town and village, London was destroyed by a mighty fire. They say that the flames left hardly a house standing."

Sir Francis stared at him in dismay. "London burned? It cannot be! The King is he safe? Was it the Dutch that put the torch to London? Tell me more, man, tell me more."

"Yes, the Black Boy is safe. But no, this time it was not the Dutch to blame. The fire was started by a baker's oven in Pudding Lane and it burned for three days without check. St. Paul's Cathedral is burned to the ground and the Guildhall, the Royal Exchange, one hundred parish churches and God alone knows what else besides. They say that the damage will exceed ten million pounds."

"Ten millions!" Sir Francis stared at him aghast. "Not even the richest monarch in the world could rise to such an amount. Why, Richard, the total Crown revenues for a year are less than one million!

It must beggar the King and the nation."

Richard Lister shook his head with gloomy relish. "There's more bad news besides. The Dutch have given us a mighty pounding. That devil, de Ruyter, sailed right into the Medway and the Thames. We lost sixteen ships of the line to him, and he captured the Royal Charles at her moorings in Greenwich docks and towed her away to Amsterdam."

"The flagship, the flower and pride of our fleet. Can England survive such a defeat, coming as it does so close upon the heels of the plague and the fire?"

Lister shook his head again. "They say the King is suing for peace with the Dutch. The war might be over at this very moment. It may have ended months ago, for all we know."

"Let us pray most fervently that is not so." Sir Francis looked across at the Resolution. "I took that prize barely three weeks past. If the war was over then, my commission from the Crown would have expired. My capture might be construed as an act of piracy."

"The fortunes of war, Franky. You had no knowledge of the peace. There is none but the Dutch will blame you for that." Richard Lister pointed with his inflamed trumpet of a nose across the channel at the Gull of Moray. "It seems that my lord Cumbrae feels slighted at being excluded from this reunion. See, he comes to join us."

The Buzzard had just launched a boat. It was being rowed down the channel now towards them, Cumbrae himself standing in the stern. The boat bumped against the Goddess's side and the Buzzard came scrambling up the rope ladder onto her deck.

"Franky!" he greeted Sir Francis. "Since we parted, I have not let a single day go past without a prayer for you." He came striding across the deck, his plaid swinging. "And my prayers were heard. That's a bonny wee galleon we have there, and filled to the gunwales with spice and silver, so I hear."

"You should have waited a day or two longer, before you deserted your station. You might have had a share of her." The Buzzard spread his hands in amazement. "But, my dear Franky, what's this you're telling me? I never left my station. I took a short swing into the east, to make certain the Dutchies weren't trying to give us the slip by standing further out to sea. I hurried back to you just as soon as I could. By then you were gone."

"Let me remind you of your own words, sir. "I am completely out of patience. Sixty-five days are enough for me and my brave fellows?" "My words, Franky?" The Buzzard shook his head, "Your ears must have played you false. The wind tricked you, you did not hear me fairly."

Sir Francis laughed lightly. "You waste your talent as Scotland's greatest liar. There is no one here for you to amaze. Both Richard and I know you too well."

"Franky, I hope this does not mean you would try to cheat me out of my fair share of the spoils?" He contrived to look both sorrowful and incredulous. "I agree that I was not in sight of the capture, and I would not expect a full half share. Give me a third and I will not quibble."

"Take a deep breath, sir." Sir Francis laid his hand casually on the hilt of his sword. "That whiff of spice is all the share you'll get from me."

The Buzzard cheered up miraculously and gave a huge, booming laugh. "Franky, my old and dear comrade in arms. Come and dine on board my ship this evening, and we can discuss your lad's initiation into the Order over a dram of good Highland whisky."

"So it's Hal's initiation that brings you back to see me, is it? Not the silver and spice?"

"I know how much the lad means to you, Franky to us all. He's a great credit to you. We all want him to become a Knight of the Order. You have spoken of it often. Isn't that the truth?"

Sir Francis glanced at his son, and nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Well, then, you'll not get a chance like this again in many a year. Here we are, three Nautonnier Knights together. That's the least number it takes to admit an acolyte to the first degree. When will you find another three Knights to make up a Lodge, out here beyond the Line?"

"How thoughtful of you, sir." And, of course, this has no bearing on a share of my booty that you were claiming but a minute ago? "Sir Francis's tone dripped with irony.

"We'll not speak about that again. You're an honest man, Franky. Hard but fair. You'd never cheat a brother Knight, would you?"

Sir Francis returned long before the midnight watch from dining with Lord Cumbrae aboard S the Gull of Moray. As soon as he was in his cabin he sent Oliver to summon Hal.

"On the coming Sunday. Three days from now. In the forest," he told his son. "It is arranged. We will open the Lodge at moonrise, a little after two bells in the second dog watch."

"But the Buzzard," Hal protested. "You do not like or trust him. He let us down, -" "And yet Cumbrae was right. We might never have three knights gathered together again until we return to England. I must take this opportunity to see you safely ensconced within the Order. The good Lord knows there might not be another chance."

"We will leave ourselves at his mercy while we are ashore," Hal warned. "He might play us foul."

Sir Francis shook his head. "We will never leave ourselves at the mercy of the Buzzard, have no fear of that." He stood up and went to his sea-chest.

"I have prepared against the day of your initiation." He lifted the lid. "Here is your uniform." He came across the cabin with a bundle in his hands and dropped it on his bunk. "Put it on. We will make certain that it fits you." He raised his voice and shouted, "Oliver!"

His servant came at once with his housewife tucked under his arm.

Hal stripped off his old worn canvas jacket and petticoats and, with Oliver's help, began to don the ceremonial uniform of the Order. He had never dreamed of owning such splendid clothing.

The stockings were of white silk and his breeches and doublet of midnight-blue satin, the sleeves slashed with gold. His shoes had buckles of heavy silver and the polished black leather matched that of his cross belt. Oliver combed out his thick tangled locks, then placed the Cavalier officer's Hat on his head. He had picked the finest ostrich feathers in the market of Zanzibar to decorate the wide brim.

When he was dressed, Oliver circled Hal critically, his head on one side, "Tight on the shoulders, Sir Francis. Master Hal grows wider each day. But it will take only a blink of your eye to fix that."

Sir Francis nodded, and reached again into the chest. Hal's heart leaped as he saw the folded cloak in his father's hands. It was the symbol of the Knighthood he had studied so hard to attain. Sir Francis came to him and spread it over his shoulders, then fastened the clasp at his throat. The folds of white hung to his knees and the crimson cross bestrode his shoulders.

Sir Francis stood back and scrutinized Hal carefully. "It lacks but one detail, "he grunted, and returned to the chest. From it he brought out a sword, but no ordinary sword. Hal knew it well. It was a Courtney family heirloom, but still its magnificence awed him. As his father brought it to where he stood, he recited to Hal its history and provenance one more time. "This blade belonged to Charles Courtney, your great-grandfather. Eighty years ago, it was awarded to him by Sir Francis Drake himself for his part in the capture and sack of the port of Rancheria on the Spanish Main. This sword was surrendered to Drake by the Spanish governor, Don Francisco Manso."

He held out the scabbard of chased gold and silver for Hal to examine. It was decorated with crowns and dolphins and sea sprites gathered around the heroic figure of Neptune enthroned. Sir Francis reversed the weapon and offered Hal the hilt. A large star sapphire was set in the pommel. Hal drew the blade and saw at once that this was not just the ornament of some Spanish fop. The blade was of the finest Toledo steel inlaid with gold. He flexed it between his fingers, and rejoiced in its spring and temper.

"Have a care," his father warned him. "You can shave with that edge."

Hal returned it to its scabbard and his father slipped the sword into the leather bucket of Hal's cross belt, then stood back again to examine him critically. "What do you think of him? "he asked Oliver.

"Just the shoulders." Oliver ran his hands over the satin of the doublet. "It's all that wrestling and sword-play that changes his shape. I shall have to resew the seams."

"Then take him to his cabin and see to it." Sir Francis dismissed them both and turned back to his desk. He sat and opened his leather-bound log-book.

Hal paused in the doorway. "Thank you, Father. This sword-" He touched the sapphire pommel at his side, but could not find words to continue. Sir Francis grunted without looking up, dipped his quill and began to write on the parchment page. Hal lingered a little longer in the entrance until his father looked up again in irritation. He backed out and shut the door softly. As he turned into the passage, the door opposite opened and the Dutch Governor's wife came through it so swiftly, in a swirl of silks, that they almost collided.

Hal jumped aside and swept the plumed Hat from his head. "Forgive me, madam."

Katinka stopped and faced him. She examined him slowly, from the gleaming silver buckles of his new shoes upwards. When she reached his eyes she stared into them coolly and said softly, "A pirate whelp dressed like a great nobleman." Then, suddenly, she leaned towards him until her face almost touched his and whispered, "I have checked the panel. There is no opening. You have not performed the task I set you."

"My duties have kept me ashore. I have had no chance." He stammered as he found the Latin words.

"See to it this very night," she ordered, and swept by him. Her perfume lingered and the velvet doublet seemed too hot and constricting. He felt sweat break out on his chest.

Oliver fussed over the fit of his doublet for what seemed to Hal half the rest of the night. He unpicked and re sewed the shoulder seams twice before he was satisfied and Hal fumed with impatience.

When at last he left, taking all Hal's newly acquired finery with him, Hal could barely wait to set the locking bar across his door, and kneel at the bulkhead. He discovered that the panel was fixed to the oak framework by wooden dowels, driven flush with the woodwork.

One at a time, with the point of his dirk, he prised and whittled the dowels from their drilled seats. It was slow work and he dared make no noise. Any blow or rasp would reverberate through the ship.

It was almost dawn before he was able to remove the last peg and then to slip the blade of his dagger into the joint and lever open the panel. It came away suddenly, with a squeal of protesting wood against the oak frame that seemed to carry through the hull, and must surely alarm both his father and the Governor.

With hated breath he waited for terrible retribution to fall around his head, but the minutes slid by, and at last he could breathe again.

Gingerly he stuck his head and shoulders through the rectangular opening. Katinka's toilet cabin beyond was in darkness, but the odour of her perfume made his breath come short. He listened intently, but could hear nothing from the main cabin beyond. Then, faintly, the sound of the ship's bell reached him from the deck above and he realized with dismay that it was almost dawn and in half an hour his watch would begin.

He pulled his head out of the opening, and replaced the panel, securing it with the wooden dowels, but so lightly that they could be removed in seconds.

Would you allow the Buzzard's men ashore?" Hal asked his father respectfully. "Forgive me, IS Father, but can you trust him that far?"

"Can I stop him without provoking a fight?" Sir Francis answered with another question. "He says he needs water and firewood, and we do not own this land or even this lagoon. How can I forbid it to him?"

Hal might have protested further, but his father silenced him with a quick frown, and turned to greet Lord Cumbrae as the keel of his longboat kissed the sands of the beach and he sprang ashore his legs beneath the plaid furred with wiry ginger hair like a bear's.

"All God's blessings upon you this lovely morning, Franky," he shouted, as he came towards them. His pale blue eyes darted restlessly as minnows in a pool under his beetling red brows.

"He sees everything," Hal murmured. "He has come to find out where we have stored the spice."

"We cannot hide the spice. There's a mountain of it," Sir Francis told him. "But we can make the thieving of it difficult for him. "Then he smiled bleakly at Cumbrae as he came up. "I hope I see you in good health, and that the whisky did not trouble your sleep last night, sir."

"The elixir of life, Franky. The blood in my veins." His eyes were bloodshot as they darted about the encampment at the edge of the forest. "I need to fill my water casks. There must be good sweet water hereabouts."

"A mile up the lagoon. There's a stream comes in from the hills."

"Plenty of fish." The Buzzard gestured at the racks of poles set up in the clearing upon which the split carcasses were laid out over the slow smoking fires of green wood. "I'll have my lads catch some for us also. But what about meat? Are there any deer or wild cattle in the forest?"

"There are elephants, and herds of wild buffalo. But all are fierce, and even a musket ball in the ribs does not bring them down. However, as soon as the ship is careened I intend sending a band of hunters inland, beyond the hills to see if they cannot find easier prey."

It was apparent that Cumbrae had asked the question to give himself space, and he hardly bothered to listen to the reply. When his roving eyes gleamed, Hal followed their gaze. The Buzzard had discovered the row of thatched lean-to shelters a hundred paces back among the trees, under which the huge casks of spice stood in serried ranks.

"So you plan to beach and careen the galleon." Cumbrae turned away from the spice store, and nodded across the water at the hull of the Resolution. "A wise plan. If you need help, I have three first-rate carpenters."

"You are amiable," Sir Francis told him. "I may call upon you "Anything to help a fellow Knight. I know you would do the same for me." The Buzzard clapped him warmly on the shoulder. "Now, while my shore party goes to refill the water casks, you and I can look for a suitable place to set up our Lodge. We must do young Hal here proud. It's an important day for him."

Sir Francis glanced at Hal. "Aboli is waiting for you." He nodded to where the big black man stood patiently a little further down the beach.

Hal watched his father walk away with Cumbrae and disappear down a footpath into the forest. Then he ran down to join Aboli. "I am ready at last. Let us go."

Aboli set off immediately, trotting along the beach towards the head of the lagoon. Hal fell in beside him. "You have no sticks?"

"We will cut them from the forest." Aboli tapped the shaft of the hand axe, the steel head of which was hooked over his shoulder, and turned off the beach as he spoke. He led Hal a mile or so inland until they reached a dense thicket. "I marked these trees earlier. My tribe call them the kweti. From them we make the finest throwing sticks."

As they pushed into the dense thicket, there was a explosion of flying leaves and crashing branches as some huge beast charged away ahead of them. They caught a glimpse of scabby black hide and the flash of great bossed horns.

"Nyati!"Aboli told Hal. "The wild buffalo."

"We should hunt him." Hal unslung the musket from his shoulder, and reached -eagerly for the flint and steel in his pouch to light his slow-match. "Such a monster would give us beef for all the ship's company."

Aboli grinned and shook his head. "He would hunt you first. There is no fiercer beast in all the forest, not even the lion. He will laugh at your little lead musket balls as he splits your belly open with those mighty spears he carries atop his head." He swung the axe from his shoulder. "Leave old Nyati be, and we will find other meat to feed the crew."

Aboli hacked at the base of one of the kwed saplings and, with a dozen strokes, exposed the bulbous root. After a few more strokes he lifted it out from the earth, with the stern attached to it.

"My tribe call this club an iwisa," he told Hal, as he worked, and today I will show you how to use it." With skilful cuts, he sized the length of the shaft and peeled away the bark. Then he trimmed the root into an iron hard ball, like the head of a mace. When he was finished he hefted the club, testing its weight and balance. Then he set it aside and searched for another. "We need two each."

Hal squatted on his heels and watched the wood chips fly under the steel. "How old were you when the slavers caught you, Aboli?" he asked, and the dextrous black hands paused in their task.

A shadow passed behind the dark eyes, but Aboli started working again before he replied, "I do not know, only that I was very young."

"DO you remember it, Aboli?"

"I remember that it was night when they came, men in white robes with long muskets. It was so long ago, but I remember the flames in the darkness as they surrounded our village."

"Where did your people live? "Far to the north. On the shores of a great river. My father was a chief yet they dragged him from his hut and killed him like an animal. They killed all our warriors, and spared only the very young children and the women. They chained us together in lines, neck to neck, and made us march, many days, towards the rising of the sun, down to the coast." Aboli stood up abruptly, and picked up the bundle of clubs he had finished. "We talk like old women while we should be hunting."

He started back through the trees the way they had come. When they reached the lagoon again, he looked back at Hal. "Leave your musket and powder flask here. They will be no use to you in the water."

As Hal hid his weapon in the undergrowth, Aboli selected a pair of the lightest and straightest of the iwisa. When Hal returned he handed him the clubs. "Watch me. Do what I do," he ordered, as he stripped off his clothing and waded out into the shallows of the lagoon. Hal followed him, naked, into the thickest stand of reeds.

Waist deep, Aboli stopped and pulled the stems of the tall reeds over his head plaiting them together to form a screen over himself. Then he sank down into the water, until only his head was exposed. Hal took up a position not far from him, and quickly built himself a similar roof of reeds. Faintly he could hear the voices of the watering party from the Gull, and the squeaking of their oars as they rowed back from the head of the lagoon where they had filled their casks from the sweet-water stream.

"GoodV Aboli called softly, "Be ready now, Gundwane! They will put the birds into the air for us."

Suddenly there was a roar of wings, and the sky was filled with the same vast cloud of birds they had watched before. A flight of ducks that looked like English mallard, except for their bright yellow bills, sped in a low Vformation towards where they were hidden.

"Here they come," Aboli warned him, in a whisper, and Hal tensed, his face turned upwards to watch the old drake that led the flock. His- wings were like knife blades as they stabbed the air with quick, sharp strokes.

"Now!" shouted Aboli, and sprang up to his full height, his right arm already cocked back with the iwisa in his fist. As he hurled it cartwheeling into the air, the line of wild duck flared in panic.

Aboli had anticipated this reaction and his spinning club caught the drake in the chest and stopped him dead. He fell in a tangle of wings and webbed feet, trailing feathers, but long before he struck the water Aboli had hurled his second club. It spun up to catch a younger bird, snapping her outstretched neck and dropping her close beside the floating carcass of the old drake.

Hal hurled his own sticks in quick succession, but both flew well wide of his mark and the splintered flock raced away low over the reed beds.

"You will soon learn, you were close with both your throws" Aboli encouraged him, as he splashed through the reeds, first to pick up the dead birds, and then to recover his iwisa. He floated the two carcasses in a pool of open water in front of him, and within minutes they had decoyed in another whistling flock that dropped almost to the tops of the reeds before he threw at them.

"Good throw, Gundwane!" Aboli laughed at Hal as he waded out to pick up another two dead birds. "You were closer then. Soon you may even hit one."

Despite this prophecy, it was mid-morning before Hal brought down his first duck. Even then it was broken-winged, and he had to plunge and swim after it half-way down the lagoon before he could get a hand to it and wring its neck. In the middle of the day the birds stopped flighting and sat out in the deeper water where they could not be reached.

"It's enough!" Aboli put an end to the hunt, and gathered up his kill. From a tree at the water's edge he cut strips of bark and twisted these into strings to tie the dead ducks into bunches. They made up a load almost too heavy for even his broad shoulders to bear but Hal carried his own meagre bag without difficulty as they trudged back along the beach.

When they came round the point and could look into the bay where the three ships lay at anchor, Aboli dropped his burden of dead birds to the sand. "We will rest here." Hal sank down beside him, and for a while they sat in silence, until Aboli asked, "Why has the Buzzard come here? What does your father say?"

"The Buzzard says he has come to make a Lodge for my initiation."

Aboli nodded. "In my own tribe the young warrior had to enter the circumcision lodge before he became a man." Hal shuddered and fingered his crotch as if to check that all was still in place. "I am glad I will not have to give myself to the knife, as you did."

"But that is not the true reason that the Buzzard has followed us here. He follows your father as the hyena follows the lion. The stink of treachery is strong upon him."

"My father has smelt it also," Hal assured him softly. "But we are at his mercy, for the Resolution has no mainmast and the cannon are out of her."

They both stared down the lagoon at the Gull of Moray, until Hal stirred uneasily. "What is the Buzzard up to now?"

The longboat from the Gull was rowing out from her side to where her anchor cable dipped below the surface of the lagoon. They watched the crew of the small boat latch onto it and work there for several minutes.

"They are screened from the beach, so my father cannot see what they are up to." Hal was thinking aloud. "Tis a furtive air they have about them, and I like it not at all."

As he spoke the men finished their secretive task and began to row back to the Gull's side. Now Hal could make out that they were. laying a second cable over their stern as they went. At that he sprang to his feet in agitation. "They are setting a spring to their anchor!" he exclaimed.

"A spring?" Aboli looked at him. "Why would they do that?"

"So that with a few turns of the capstan the Buzzard can swing his ship in any direction he chooses."

Aboli stood up beside him, his expression grave. "That way he can train his broadside of cannon on our helpless ship or sweep our encampment on the beach with grape shot," he said. "We must hurry back to warn the captain."

"No, Aboli, do not hurry. We must not alert the Buzzard to the fact that we have spotted his trick."

Sir Francis listened intently to what Hal was saying, and when his son had finished he stroked his chin reflectively. Then he sauntered to the rail of the Resolution and casually raised his telescope to his eye. He made a slow sweep of the wide expanse of the lagoon, barely pausing as his gaze passed over the Gull so that no one could mark his sudden interest in the Buzzard's ship. Then he closed the telescope and came back to where Hal waited. There was respect in Sir Francis's eyes as he said, "Well done, my boy. The Buzzard is up to his usual tricks. You were right. I was on the beach and could not see him setting the spring. I might never have noticed it."

"Are you going to order him to remove it, Father?"

Sir Francis smiled and shook his head. "Better not to let him know we have tumbled to him."

"But what can we do?"

"I already have the culver ins on the beach trained on the Gull. Daniel and Ned have warned every man-" "But, Father, is there no ruse we can prepare for the Buzzard to match the surprise he clearly plans for us?" In his agitation Hal found the temerity to interrupt, but his father frowned quickly and his reply was sharp.

"No doubt you have a suggestion, Master Henry."

At this formal address Hal was warned of his father's rising anger, and he was immediately contrite. "Forgive my presumption, Father, I meant no impertinence."

"I am pleased to hear that." Sir Francis began to turn away, his back still stiff.

"Was not my great-grandfather, Charles Courtney, with Drake at the battle of Gravelines?"

"He was, indeed." Sir Francis looked round. "But as you already know the answer well enough, is this not a strange question to put to me now?"

"So it may well have been Great-grandfather himself who proposed to Drake the use of devil ships against the Spanish Armada as it lay anchored in Calais Roads, may it not?"

Slowly Sir Francis turned his head and stared at his son. He began to smile, then to chuckle, and at last burst out laughing. "Dear Lord, but the Courtney blood runs true! Come down to my cabin this instant and show me what it is you have in mind."

Sir Francis stood at Hal's shoulder as he sketched a design on the slate. "They need not be sturdily constructed, for they will not have far to sail, and will have no heavy seas to endure," Hal explained deferentially' Yes but once they are launched they should be able to hold a true course, and yet carry a goodly weight of cargo," his father murmured, and took the chalk from his son. He drew a few quick lines on the slate. "We might lash two hulls together. it would not do to have them capsize or expend themselves before they reach their destination."

"The wind has been steady from the south-east ever since we have been anchored here," said Hal. "There is no sign of it dropping. So we must hold them up-wind. If we place them on the small island across the channel, then the wind will work for us when we launch them."

"Very well." Sir Francis nodded, "How many do we need?" He could see how much pleasure he gave the lad by consulting him in this fashion. Drake sent in eight against the Spaniards, but we do "not have the time to build so many. Five, perhaps?" He looked up at his father, and Sir Francis nodded again. "Yes, five should do it. How many men will You neeD?" Daniel must remain in command of the culver ins on the beach, The Buzzard may spring his trap before we are ready, But I will send Ned Tyler and the carpenter to help You build them and Aboli, of course."

Hal stared at his father in awe. you will trust me to take charge of the building?" he asked. It is your plan so if it fails I must be able to lay full blame upon you," his father replied, with only the faintest smile upon his lips. "Take your men and go ashore at once to begin work. But be circumspect. Don't make it easy for the Buzzard." al's axe men cleared a small opening on the far side of the heavily forested island across-Hthe channel where they were hidden from the Gull of Moray. After a circuitous detour through the forest on the mainland, he was also able to ferry his men and material across to the island out of sight of the lookouts on the Buzzard's vessel.

That first night they worked by the wavering light of pitch-soaked torches until after midnight. All of them were aware of the urgency of their task, and when they were exhausted they simply threw themselves on the soft bed of leaf mould under the trees and slept until the dawn gave enough light to begin work again.

By noon of the following day all five of the strange craft were ready to be carried to their hiding place in the grove at the edge of the lagoon. At low tide, Sir Francis waded across from the mainland and made his way down the footpath through the dense forest that covered the island to inspect the work.

He nodded dubiously. "I hope sincerely that they will float," he mused, as he walked slowly round one of the ungainly vessels.

"We will only know that when we send them out for the first time."

Hal was tired, and his temper was short. "Even to please you, Father, I cannot arrange a prior demonstration for the benefit of Lord Cumbrae." His father glanced at him, concealing his surprise. The PUPPY grows into a young dog and learns how to growl, he thought, with a twinge of paternal pride. He demands respect, and, truth to tell, he has earned it.

Aloud he said, "You have done well in the time at your disposal," which deftly turned aside Hal's anger. "I will send fresh men to help you transport them, and place them in the grove." al was so tired that he could barely drag himself up the rope ladder to the entry poTt &-of the Resolution. But even though his task was complete, his father would not let him escape to his cabin.

"We are anchored directly behind the Gull." He pointed across the moonlit channel at the dark shape of the other ship. "Have you thought what might happen if one of your fiendish vessels drifts past the mark and comes down upon us here? Dismasted as we are, we cannot manoeuvre the ship."

"Aboli has already cut long bamboo poles in the forest." Hal's tone could not conceal that he was weary to his bones. "We will use them to deflect any drifters from us and send them harmlessly "up onto the beach over there." He turned and pointed back towards where the fires of the encampment flickered among the trees. "The Buzzard will he taken by surprise, and will not be equipped with bamboo poles."

At last his father was satisfied. "Go to your rest now. Tomorrow night we will open the Lodge, and you must be able to make your responses to the catechism." al came back reluctantly from the abyss of sleep into which he had sunk. For some moments he was not certain what had woken him. Then the soft scratching came again from the bulkhead.

Instantly he was fully awake, every vestige of fatigue forgotten He rolled off his pallet, and knelt at the panel. The scratching was now impatient and demanding. He tapped a swift reply on the woodwork, then fumbled in the darkness to find the stopper of his peep-hole. The moment he removed it, a yellow ray of lamp-light shone through but was cut off as Katinka placed her lips to the opening on the far side and whispered angrily, "Where were you last night?"

"I had duties ashore, "he whispered back.

"I do not believe you," she told him. "You try to escape your punishment. You deliberately disobey me."

"No, no, I would not-" "Open this panel at once."

He groped for his dirk, which hung on his belt on the hook at the foot of his bunk, and prised out the dowels. The panel came away in his hands with only the faintest scraping sound. He set. it aside, and a square of soft light fell through the hatch.

"Come! her voice ordered, and he wriggled into the gap. It was a tight squeeze, but after a short struggle he found himself on his hands and knees on the deck of her cabin. He started to rise to his feet, but she stopped him.

"Stay down there." He looked up at her as she stood over him, She was dressed in a flowing night-robe of some gossamer material. Her hair was loose and hung in splendour to her waist. The lamp-light shone through the cloth of her robe and silhouetted her body, the lustre of her skin gleaming through the transparent folds of silk.

"You have no shame," she told him, as he knelt before her as though she were the sacred image of a saint. (You come to me naked. You show me no respect. I "I am sorry!" he gasped. In his anxiety to obey her he had forgotten his own nudity, and now he cupped his hands over his privy parts. "I Meant no disrespect."

"No! DO not cover Your shame.) She reached down and pulled away his hands. Both stared down at his groin. They watched him slowly stretch out and thicken, thrusting out towards her, his prepuce peeling back of its own accord.

"Is there nothing I can do to stop such revolting behaviour?" Katinka took him by the hand and dragged him to his feet and after her into the splendid cabin where first he had laid eyes on her beauty.

She dropped onto the quilted bed, and sat facing him. The white silk skirts parted and fell back on each side of her long slim thighs. She twisted the handful of his curls, and said, in a voice that was suddenly breathless, "You must obey me in all things, you child of the dark pit."

Her thighs fell apart, and she pulled his face down and pressed it hard at their apex against the impossibly soft and silky mound of golden curls.

He smelt the sea in her, brine and kelp, and the scent of the sparkling living things of the oceans, the warm soft odour of the islands, of salt surf breaking on a sun-baked beach. He drank it in through flaring nostrils, and then tracked down the source of this fabulous aroma with his lips.

She wriggled forward on the satin covers to meet his mouth, her thighs spread wider, and she tilted her hips forward to open herself to him. With a handful of his curls, she moved his head, guiding him to that tiny bud of pink, taut flesh that nestled in its hidden crevice. As he found it with the tip of his tongue she gasped and she began to move herself against his face as though she rode bareback upon a galloping stallion. She gave. small incoherent contradictory cries. "Oh, stop! Please stop! No! Never stop! Go on for ever!" Then suddenly she wrenched his head out from between her straining thighs, and fell backwards upon the covers lifting him over her. He felt her hard little heels dig into the small of his back as she wrapped her legs around him, and her fingernails, like knives, cutting into the tensed muscles of his shoulders. Then the pain was lost in the sensation of slippery engulfing heat as he slid deeply into her, and he smothered his cries in the golden tangle of her hair.

The three Knights had set up the Lodge on the slope of the hills above the lagoon, at the foot of a small waterfall that dropped into a basin of dark water surrounded by tall trees hung with lichens and lianas.

The altar stood within the circle of stones, the fire burning before it. Thus all the ancient elements were represented. The moon was in its first quarter, signifying rebirth and resurrection.

Hal waited alone in the forest while the three Knights of the Order opened the Lodge in the first degree. Then his father, his bared sword in his hand, came striding through the darkness to fetch him, and led him back along the path.

The other two Knights were waiting beside the fire in the sacred circle. Their swords were drawn, the blades gleaming in the reflection of the flames. Lying upon the stone altar under a velvet cloth, he saw the shape of his great-grandfather's Neptune sword. They paused outside the circle of stones and Sir Francis begged entrance to the Lodge.

"In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost!"

"Who would enter the Lodge of the Temple of the Order of St. George and the Holy Grail?" Lord Cumbrae thundered, in a voice that tang against the hills, his long two-edged claymore glinting in his hairy red fist.

"A novice who presents himself for initiation into the mysteries of the Temple," Hal replied, "Enter on peril of your eternal life," Cumbrae warned him, and Hal stepped into the circle. Suddenly the air seemed colder and he shivered, even as he knelt in the radiance of the watch fire

"Who sponsors this novice?" the Buzzard demanded again.

"I do." Sir Francis stepped forward and Cumbrae turned back to Hal.

"Who are you?" "Henry Courtney, son of Francis and Edwina." The long catechism began as the starry wheel of the firmament turned slowly overhead and the flames of the watch fire sank lower.

It was after midnight when, at last, Sir Francis lifted the velvet covering from the Neptune sword. The sapphire on the hilt reflected a pate blue beam of moonlight into Hal's eyes as his father placed the hilt in his hands.

"Upon this blade you will confirm the tenets of your faith."

"These things I believe," Hal began, "and I will defend them with my life. I believe there is but one God in Trinity, the Father eternal, the Son eternal and the Holy Ghost eternal."

"Amen!" chorused the three Nautonnier Knights.

"I believe in the communion of the Church of England, and the divine right of its representative on earth, Charles, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith."

"Amen!" Once Hal had recited his beliefs, Cumbrae called upon him to make his knightly vows.

"I will uphold the Church of England. I will confront the enemies of my sovereign lord, Charles." Hal's voice quivered with conviction and sincerity. "I renounce Satan and all his works. I eschew all false doctrines and heresies and schisms. I turn my face away from all other gods and their false prophets."

"I will protect the weak. I will defend the pilgrim. I will succour the needy and those in need of justice. I will take up the sword against the tyrant and the oppressor."

"I will defend the holy places. I will search out and protect the precious relics of Christ Jesus and his Saints. I will never cease my quest for the Holy Grail that contained his sacred blood."

The Nautonnier Knights crossed themselves as he made this vow, for the Grail quest stood at the centre of their belief. It was the granite column that held aloft the roof of their Temple.

"I pledge myself to the Strict Observance. I will obey the code of my Knighthood. I will abstain from debauchery and fornication," Hal's tongue tripped on the word, but he recovered swiftly, "and I will honour my fellow Knights. Above all else, I will keep secret all the proceedings of my Lodge."

"And may the Lord have mercy on your soul!" the three Nautonnier Knights intoned in unison. Then they stepped forward and formed a ring around the kneeling novice. Each laid one hand on his bowed head and the other on the hilt of his sword, their hands overlapping each other.

"Henry Courtney, we welcome you into the Grail company, and we accept you as brother Knight of the Temple of the Order of St. George and the Holy Grail."

Richard Lister spoke first, in his sonorous Welsh voice, almost singing his blessing. "I welcome you into the Temple. May you always follow the Strict Observance."

Cumbrae spoke next. "I welcome you into the Temple. May the waters of far oceans open wide before the bows of your ship," and may the force of the wind drive you on."

Then Sir Francis Courtney spoke with his hand firmly set on Hal's brow. "I welcome you into the Temple. May you always be true to your vows, to your God and to yourself " Then between them the Nautonnier Knights lifted him to his feet and, one after another, embraced him. Lord Cumbrae's whiskers were stiff and pricking as a garland of thorns from the traitor's bush. have a hold filled with my share of the spices that you and I took from Heerlycke Nacht, enough to buy me a castle and five thousand acres of the finest land in Wales," said Richard Lister, as he clasped Sir Francis's right hand in his, using the secret grip of the Nautonniers. "And I have a young wife and two stout sons upon whom I have not laid eyes for three years. A little rest in green and pleasant places with those I love, and then, I know, the wind will summon. Perhaps we will meet again on far waters, Francis."

"Take the tide of your heart, then, Richard. I thank You for your friendship, and for what you have done for my son." Sir Francis returned his grip. "I hope one day to welcome both your boys into the Temple."

Richard turned away towards his waiting longboat, but hesitated and came back. He placed one arm around Sir Francis's shoulders and his brow was grave, his voice low, as he said, "Cumbrae had a proposition for me concerning you, but I liked it not at all and told him so to his face. Watch your back, Fran kY and sleep with one eye open when he is around you."

"You are a good friend," Sir Francis said, and watched Richard walk to his longboat and cross to the Goddess- As soon as he went up the ladder to the quarterdeck his crew weighed the anchor. All her sails filled and she moved down the channel, dipping her pennant in farewell as she disappeared out through the heads into the open sea.

"Now we have only the Buzzard to keep us company.-" Hal looked across at the Gull of MoraY where she lay in the centre of the channel, her boats clustered around her discharging water casks, bundles of firewood and dried fish into her holds.

"Make your preparations to beach the ship, please, Mister Courtney," Sir Francis replied, and Hal straightened his spine. He was unaccustomed to his father addressing him thus. It was strange to be treated as a Knight and a full officer, instead of as a lowly ensign. Even his mode of dress had changed with his new status. His father had provided the shirt of fine white Madras cotton on his back, as well as his new moleskin breeches, which felt soft as silk against his skin after the rags of rough canvas he had worn before today.

He was even more surprised when his father deigned to explain his order. "We must go about our business as if we suspect no treachery. Besides which the Resolution will be safer upon the beach if it comes to a fight."

"I understand, sir." Hal looked up at the sun to judge the time. "The tide will be fair for us to take her aground at two bells in tomorrow's morning watch. We will be prepared."

All the rest of that morning the crew of the Gull behaved like that of any other ship preparing for sea, and though Daniel and his gun crews with cannon loaded and aimed, and with slow-match burning, watched the Gull from their hidden emplacements dug into the sandy soil along the edge of the forest, she gave them no hint of treachery.

A little before noon Lord Cumbrae had himself rowed ashore and came to find Sir Francis where he stood by the fire upon which the cauldron of pitch was bubbling, ready to begin caulking the Resolution's hull when she was careened.

"It's farewell, then." He embraced Sir Francis, throwing a thick red arm around his shoulders. "Richard was right. There's no prize to be won if we sit here upon the beach and scratch our backsides."

"So you're ready to sail?" Sir Francis kept his tone level, not betraying his astonishment.

"With tomorrow morning's tide, I'll be away. But how I hate to leave you, Franky. Will you not take a last dram aboard the Gull with me now? I would fain discuss with you my share of the prize money from the Standvastigheid."

"My lord, your share is nothing. That ends our discussion, and I wish you a fair wind."

Cumbrae let fly a great blast of laughter. "I've always loved your sense of fun, Franky. I know you only wish to spare me the labour of carrying that heavy cargo of spice back to the Firth of Forth." He turned and pointed with his curling beard at the spice store under the forest trees. "So I shall let you do it for me. But, in the meantime, I trust you to keep a fair accounting of my share, and to deliver it to me when next we meet plus the usual interest, of course."

"I trust you as dearly, my lord." Sir Francis lifted his Hat and swept the sand with the plume as he bowed.

Cumbrae returned the bow and, still rumbling with laughter, went down to the longboat and had himself rowed to the Gull.

During the course of the morning the Dutch hostages had been brought ashore and installed in their new lodgings, which Hal and his gang had built for them. These were set well back from the lagoon and separated from the compound in which the Resolution's crew were housed.

Now the ship was empty and ready for beaching. As the tide pushed in through the heads the crew, under the direction of Ned Tyler and Hal, began warping it in towards the beach. They had secured the strongest sheaves and blocks to the largest of the trees. Heavy hawsers were fastened to the Resolution's bows and stern, and with fifty men straining on the lines, the ship came in parallel to the beach.

When her bottom touched the white sand they secured her there, As the tide receded they hove her down with tackle attached to her mizzen and foremasts, which were still stepped. The ship heeled over steeply until her mastheads touched the tree-tops. The whole of the starboard side of her hull, down as far as the keel, was exposed, and Sir Francis and Hal waded out to inspect it. They were delighted to find little sign of shipworm infestation.

A few sections of planking had to be replaced and the work began immediately. When darkness fell the torches were lit, for the work on the hull would continue until the return of the tide put a halt to it. When this happened Sir Francis went off to dine in his new quarters, while Hal gave orders to secure the hull for the night. The torches were doused and Ned led away the men to find their own belated dinner.

Hal was not hungry for food. His appetites were of a different order, but it would be at least another hour before he could satisfy them. Left alone on the beach, he studied the Gull across the narrow strip of water. It seemed that she was settled in quietly enough for the night. Her small boats still lay alongside, but it would not take long to lift them on board and batten down her hatches ready for sea.

He turned away and moved back into the trees. He went down the line of gun emplacements, speaking softly to the men on watch behind the culver ins He checked once more the laying of each, making sure that they were truly aimed at the dark shape of the Gull, as she lay in a spangle of star reflections on the surface of the still, dark lagoon.

For a while he sat next to Big Daniel, dangling his legs into the gun pit

"Don't worry, Mister Henry." Even Daniel used the new and more respectful form of address naturally enough. We're keeping a weather eye on that red-bearded bastard, You can go off and get your supper."

"When did you last sleep, Daniel?" Hal asked.

"Don't worry about me. The watch changes pretty soon now. I'll be handing over to Timothy." outside his hut Hal found Aboli sitting as quietly as a shadow by the fire, waiting for him with a bowl that contained roasted duck and hunks of bread, and a jug of small beer.

"I'm not hungry, Aboli," Hal protested.

"Eat." Aboli thrust the bowl into his hands. you will need your strength for the task that lies ahead tonight." Hal accepted the bowl, but he tried to determine Aboli's expression and to read from it the deeper meaning of his admonition. The firelight danced on his dark enigmatic features, like those of a pagan idol, highlighting the tattoos on his cheeks, but his eyes were inscrutable.

Hal used his dirk to split the carcass of the duck in half and offered one portion to Aboli. "What task is this that I have to perform?" he asked carefully.

Aboli tore a piece off the duck's breast and shrugged as he chewed. "You must be careful not to scratch the tender est parts of yourself on a thorn as you go through the hole in the stockade to do your duty."

Hal's jaw stopped moving and the duck in his mouth lost its taste.

Aboli must have discovered the narrow passage through the thorn fence behind Katinka's hut that Hal had so secretly left open.

"How long have you known?" he asked, through his mouthful.

"Was I supposed not to know?" Aboli asked. "Your eyes are like the full moon when you look in a certain direction, and I have heard your roars like those of a wounded buffalo coming from the stern at midnight."

Hal was stunned. He had been so careful and cunning. "Do you think my father knows?" he asked with trepidation.

"You are still alive," Aboli pointed out. "If he knew, that would not be so."

"You would tell no one?" he whispered. "Especially not him?" "Especially not him," Aboli agreed. "But take a care that you do not dig your own grave with that spade between your legs."

"I love her, Aboli," Hal whispered. "I cannot sleep for the thought of her."

"I have heard you not sleeping. I thought you might wake the entire ship's company with your sleeplessness."

"Do not mock me, Aboli. I will die for lack of her." "Then I must save your life by taking you to her."

"You would come with me?" Hal was shocked by the offer.

"I will wait at your hole in the stockade. To guard you. You might need my help if the husband finds you where he would like to be."

"That fat animal!" Hal said furiously, hating the man with all his heart.

"Fat, perhaps. Sly, almost certainly. Powerful, without doubt. Do not underrate him, Gundwane. "Aboli stood up. "I will go first to make sure the way is clear."

The two slipped quietly through the darkness, and paused at the rear of the stockade.

"You don't have to wait for me, Aboli," Hal whispered, "I might be a little while."

"If you were not, I would be disappointed in you," Aboli told Hal in his own language. "Remember this advice always, Gundwane, for it will stand you in good stead all the days of your life. A man's passion is like a fire in tall, dry grass, hot and furious but soon spent. A woman is like a magician's cauldron that must simmer long upon the coals before it can bring forth its spell. Be swift in all things but love."

Hal sighed in the darkness. "Why must women be so different from us, Aboli?"

"Thank all your Gods, and mine also, that they are." Aboli's teeth gleamed in the darkness as he grinned. He pushed Hal gently towards the opening. "If you call I will be here."

The lamp still burned in her hut. The slivers of yellow light shone through the weak places in the thatch. Hal listened softly at the wall, but heard no voices. He crept to the door, which stood open a crack. He peered through it, at the huge four-poster bed that his men had carried from her cabin in the Resolution. The curtains were closed to keep out the insects, so he could not be certain that there was only one person behind them.

Soundlessly he slipped through the door and crept to the bed. As he touched the curtains, a small white hand reached through the folds, seized his outstretched hand and dragged him in. "Do not speak." she hissed at him. "Say not a word!" Her fingers flew nimbly down the buttons of his shirt front, opening it to the waist, then her nails dug painfully into his breast'.

At the same time her mouth covered his. She had never kissed him before and the heat and softness of her lips astonished him. He tried to grasp her breasts but she seized his wrists and held them at his sides as her tongue slipped into his mouth and twined with his, slithering and twisting like a live eel, goading and teasing him slowly, higher than he had ever been before.

Then still holding his hands at his side she forced him over backwards. Her swift fingers opened the fastening of his moleskin breeches, and then in a flurry of silks and laces she bestrode his hips and pinned him to the satin coverlet. Without using her hands she searched with her pelvis until she found him and sucked him into her secret heat.

Much later, Hal fell into a sleep so deep that it was like a little death.

An insistent hand on his bare arm woke him, and he started up in alarm. "What-" he began, but the hand whipped over his mouth and gagged his next word.

"Gundwane! Make no noise. Find your clothes and come with me. Quickly!"

Hal rolled gently off the bed, careful not to disturb the woman beside him, and found his breeches where she had thrown them.

Neither spoke again until they had crept out through the gap in the stockade. There, they paused as Hal glanced up at the sky and saw, by the angle of the great Southern Cross to the horizon, that it lacked only an hour or so till dawn. This was the witching hour when all human resources were at their lowest ebb. Hal peered back at Aboli's dark shape. "What is it, Aboli?" Hal demanded. "Why did you call me?"

"Listen!" Aboli laid a hand on his shoulder and Hal cocked his head.

"I hear nothing. "Wait!" Aboli squeezed his shoulder for silence.

Then Hal heard it, far off and faint, blanketed by the trees, a shout of uncontrolled laughter.

"Where?"... Hal was puzzled. "At the beach."

"God's wounds!" Hal blurted. "What devilry is this now?" He began to run, Aboli at his side, heading for the lagoon, stumbling in the darkness on the uneven forest floor with low branches whipping into their faces.

As they reached the first huts of the encampment, they heard more noise ahead, a snatch of slurred song and a hoot of crazed laughter.

"The gun pits Hal panted, and at that moment saw, in the last glimmer from the dying watch fire a pale human shape ahead.

Then his father's voice challenged him. "Who is that?" "Tis Hal, Father."

"What is happening?" It was clear that Sir Francis had only just awakened for he was in his shirt sleeves and his voice was groggy with sleep, but his sword was in his hand.

"I don't know," Hal said. There was another roar of stupid laughter. "It comes from the beach. The gun pits Without another word, all three ran on, and came together to the first culverin. Here, at the edge of the lagoon, the canopy of leaves overhead was thinner, allowing the last rays of the moon to shine through, giving them enough light to see one of the gun crew draped over the long bronze barrel. When Sir Francis aimed an angry kick at him he collapsed in the sand.

It was then that Hal spotted the small keg standing on the lip of the pit. Oblivious to their arrival, one of the other gunners was on his hands and knees in front of it, like a dog, lapping up the liquid that dribbled from the spigot. Hal smelt the sugary aroma, heavy on the night air like the emanation of some poisonous flower. He jumped down into the pit and seized the gunner by his hair.

"Where did you get the rum?" he snarled. The man peered back at him blearily. Hal drew back his fist and struck him a blow that made his teeth clash together in his jaw. "Damn you for a sot! Where did you get it?" Hal pricked him with the point of his dirk. "Answer me or I'll split your windpipe."

The pain and the threat rallied his victim. "A parting gift from his lordship," he gasped. "He sent a keg across from the Gull for us to drink his health and wish him God speed."

Hal flung the drunken creature from him and leapt onto the parapet. "The other gun crews Has the Buzzard sent gifts to all of them?"

They ran down the line of emplacements, and in each found sweetly reeking oaken kegs and inert bodies. Few of rthe crews were still on their feet, but even those who were, were staggering and slobbering in intoxication, Few English seamen could resist the ardent essence of the sugar cane.

Even Timothy Reilly, one of Sir Francis's trusted coxswains, had succumbed, and although he tried to answer Sir Francis's accusation, he reeled on his feet. Sir Francis struck him a blow with the hilt of his sword across the side of his head and the fellow collapsed in the sand.

At that moment, Big Daniel came running from the encampment. "I heard the uproar, Captain. What has happened?"

"The Buzzard has plied the gun crews with liquor. They are all of them witless." His voice shook with fury. "it can only mean one thing- There is not a moment to lose. Rouse the camp. Stand the men to arms but softly, mind!"

As Daniel raced away, Hal heard a faint sound from the dark ship across the still lagoon waters, a distant clank of ratchet and pawl, that sent tingling shocks up his spine.

"The cap scan he exclaimed. "The Gull is tightening up on her anchor spring. They stared a cross the channel, and in the moonlight saw the silhouette of the Gull begin to alter, as the hawser running from the anchor to her capstan Pulliede her stern round, and her full broadside was presented. "the "guns are run out!" Sir Francis exclaimed, moonlight glinted on the barrels. Behind each they could now make out the faint glow of the burning slow-match in the hands of the Gulls gunners.

"Satan's breath, they're going to fire on us! Down!" shouted Sir Francis. "Get down!" Hal leapt over the parapet of the gun pit and flung himself flat on the sandy floor.

Suddenly the night was lit brightly, as if by a flash of lightning. An instant later the thunder smote their eardrums and the tornado of shot swept across the beach and thrashed into the forest around them. The Gull had fired all her cannon into the encampment in a single devastating broadside.

The grape shot tore through the foliage above and branches, clusters of leaves and slabs of wet bark rained down upon them. The air was filled with a lethal swarm of splinters blasted from the tree-trunks.

The frail huts gave no protection to the men within. The broadside slashed through, sending poles flying and flattening the flimsy structures as though they had been hit by a tidal wave. They heard the terrified yells of men awakening into a nightmare, and the sobs, screams and groans of those cut down by the hail of shot or skewered by the sharp, ragged splinters.

The Gull had disappeared behind the pall of her own gunsmoke, but Sir Francis leapt to his feet and snatched the slow-match from the senseless hand of the gunner and glanced over the sights of the culverin and saw that it was still aimed into the swirling smoke behind which the Gull lay. He pressed the match to the hole. The culverin bellowed out a long silver gush of touc smoke and bounded back against its tackle. He could not see the strike of his shot, but he roared an order to those gunners down the line still sober enough to obey. "Fire! Open fire! Keep firing as fast as you can!"

He heard a ragged salvo but then saw many of the gun crews heave themselves up and stagger away drunkenly among the trees.

Hal jumped onto the lip of the emplacement, shouting for Aboli and Daniel. "Come on! Each of you bring a match and follow me. We must get across to the island!"

Daniel was already helping Sir Francis reload the culverin, swabbing out the smoking barrel to douse the burning sparks.

"Avast that, Daniel. Leave that work to others- I need your help," As they started off together along the shore, the fog bank that covered the Gulf drifted aside and she fired her next broadside, It had been but two minutes since the first. Her gunners were fast and well trained and they had the advantage of surprise. Again the Storm of shot swept the beach and ploughed into the forest with deadly effect.

Hal saw one of their culverin struck squarely by a lead ball. The tackle snapped and it was hurled backwards off its train, so that its muzzle pointed to the stars.

The cries of the wounded and dying swelled in the Pandemonium of despair as men deserted their posts and fled among the trees. The desultory return fire from the gun pits shrivelled until there was only an occasional bang and flash of cannon. Once the battery was silenced, the Buzzard turned his guns on the remaining huts and the clumps of bush in which the Resolution's crew had taken shelter.

Hal could hear the crew of the Gull cheering wildly as they reloaded and fired. "The Gull and Cumbrae!" they shouted.

There were no more broadsides, but a continuous stuttering roll of thunder as each gun fired as soon as it was ready. Their muzzle flashes flickered and flared within the sulphurous white smoke bank like the flames of hell.

As he ran Hal heard his father's voice behind him, fading with distance as he tried to rally his shattered, demoralized crew. Aboli ran at his shoulder and Big Daniel was a few paces further back, losing ground to the two swifter runners.

"We will need more men to launch," Daniel panted, "They're heavy "You will not find them to help you now. They're all hog drunk or running for their very lives," Hal grunted, but even as he spoke he saw Ned Tyler speed out of the forest just ahead, leading five of his seamen. All seemed sober enough.

"Good manNed!" Hal shouted. "But we must hurry. The Buzzard will be sending his men onto the beach as soon as he has silenced our batteries."

They charged in a group across the shallow channel between them and the island. The tide was low so at first they staggered through the glutinous mud-flat that sucked at their feet, then plunged into the open water. They waded, swam and dragged themselves across, the thunder of the Gull's barrage spurring them onwards.

"There is only a breath of wind from the sou'-west," Big Daniel gasped, as they staggered out, streaming water, onto the beach of the island. "It will not be enough to serve us."

Hal did not reply but broke off a dead branch and lit it from his slow-match. He held it high to give himself light to see the path and ran on into the forest. In minutes they had crossed the island and reached the beach on the far side. Here Hal paused and looked across at the Gull in the main channel.

The dawn was coming on apace, and the night fled before it. The light was turning grey and silvery, the lagoon gleaming softly as a sheet of polished pewter.

The Buzzard was training his guns back and forth, with the use of his anchor spring, swinging the Gull on her moorings so that he could pick out any target on the shore.

There was only the odd flash of answering fire from the gun pits on the beach, and the Buzzard responded immediately to these, swinging his ship and bringing to bear the full power of his broadside, snuffing them out with a whirlwind of grape, flying sand and falling trees.

All of Hal's party were blown by the hard run across the mud-flats and the plunge through the channel. "No time to rest." Hal's breath whistled in his throat. The devil ships were coveted with mounds of cut branches and they dragged them clear. Then they formed a ring round the first of these vessels, and each took a handhold.

"Together now!" Hal exhorted them, and between them they just lifted the keels of the double-hulled vessel clear of the sand. It was heavy with its cargo, faggots of dried wood drenched with pitch to make it more flammable.

They staggered down the beach with it, and dropped it into the shallows, where it wallowed and rolled in the wavelets, the square of dirty canvas on the stubby mast stirring idly in the light puffs of wind coming down from the heads. Hal took a turn of the painter around his wrist to prevent it drifting away.

"Not enough wind!" Big Daniel lamented, looking to the sky. "For the sweet love of God, send us a breeze."

"Keep your prayers for later." Hal secured the vessel, and led them back at a run into the trees. They carried, shoved and dragged two more of the boats down to the water's edge.

"Still not enough wind." Daniel looked across at the Gull. , In the short time it had taken them to launch, the morning light had strengthened, and now, as they paused for a moment to regain their breath, they saw the Buzzard's men leave their guns, and, cheering wildly, brandishing cutlass and pike, swarm down into the boats.

"Will you look at those swine! They reckon the fight's over, "grunted Ned Tyler. "They're going in for the looting." Hal hesitated. Two more devil ships still lay at the edge of the forest, but to launch them would take too long. "Then we must give them aught to change their opinion," he said grimly, and gripped the burning match between his teeth. He waded out as deep as his armpits to where the first devil ship bobbed, just off the beach, and lobbed the slow-match onto the high pile of cordwood. It spluttered and flared, blue smoke poured from it and drifted away on the sluggish breeze as the pitch-soaked logs caught fire.

Hal grabbed the painter attached to the bows, and dragged her out into the channel. Within a dozen yards he was into deeper water and had lost the bottom. He swam F_ round to the stern, and found a purchase on it, kicked out strongly with both legs and the boat moved away.

Aboli saw what he was doing and plunged headlong into the lagoon. With a few powerful strokes he reached Hal's side. With both of them swimming it out, the boat moved faster.

With one hand on the stern Hal lifted his head clear of the water to orientate himself and saw the flotilla of small boats from the Gull heading in towards the beach. They were crowded with wildly yelling seamen, their weapons glinting in the morning light. So certain was the Buzzard of his victory that he could have left only a few men aboard to guard the ship.

Hal glanced over his shoulder and saw that both Ned and Daniel had followed his example. They had led the rest of the gang into the water and were clinging to the stems of two more craft, kicking the water to a white froth behind them as they pushed out into the channel. From all three boats rose tendrils of smoke as the flames took hold in the loads of pitch-soaked firewood.

Hal dropped back beside Aboli and set himself to work doggedly with both legs, pushing the boat ahead of him, down the channel to where the Gull lay at anchor. Then the incoming tide caught them firmly in its flood and, like a trio of crippled ducks, bore them along more swiftly.

As Hal's boat swung its bows around he had a better view of the beach. He recognized the flaming red head and beard of the Buzzard in the leading longboat heading into the attack on the encampment, and fancied that, even in the uproar, he heard peals of his laughter carrying over the water.

Then he had something else to think about for the fire in the cargo above him gained a firm hold and roared into boisterous life. The flames crackled and leapt high in columns of dense black smoke. They danced and swayed as their heat created its own draught, and the single sail filled with more determination.

"Keep her moving!" Hal panted to Aboli beside him. "Steer her two points more to larboard."

A gust of heat swept over him so fiercely that it seemed to suck the air from his lungs. He ducked his head beneath the surface and came up snorting, water cascading down his face from his sodden hair, but still kicking with all his strength. The Gull lay less than a cable's length dead ahead. Daniel and Ned followed close behind him, both their vessels wreathed in tarry black smoke and dark orange flame.

The air over them quivered and throbbed with the heat like a desert mirage.

"Keep her going," Hal blurted. His legs were beginning to ache unbearably, and he spoke more to himself than to Aboli. The painter tied to the bows of the devil ship trailed back, threatening to wrap around his legs, but he kicked it away there was no time to loosen it.

He saw the first of the Gull's longboats reach the beach and Cumbrae leap ashore, swinging his claymore in flashing circles around his head. As he landed on the sand he threw back his head, uttered a blood-curdling Gaelic war-cry, then went bounding up the steep beach. As he reached the trees he looked back to make certain his men were following him. There he paused with his sword held high, and stared back across the channel at the tiny squadron of devil ships, blooming with smoke and flame and bearing down steadily upon his anchored Gull.

"Nearly there!" Hal gasped, and the waves of heat that broke over his head seemed to fry his eyeballs in their sockets. He plunged his head underwater again to cool it, and this time when he came up he saw that the Gull lay only fifty yards ahead.

Even above the crackling roar of the flames he heard the Buzzard's roar. "Back! Back to the Gull. The bastards are sending fireships at her." The frigate was stuffed with the booty of a long, hard privateering cruise, and her crew sent up a wild chorus of outrage as they saw the fruits of three years so endangered. They raced back to their boats even faster than they had charged up the beach.

The Buzzard stood in the bows of his, prancing and gesticulating so that he threatened to upset her balance. "Let me get my hands on the pox-ridden swine. I'll rip out their windpipes, I'll split their stinking-" At that moment he recognized Hal's head at the stern of the leading fire ship lit by the full glare of the swirling flames, and his voice rose a full octave. "It's Franky's brat, by God! I'll have him!

I'll roast his liver in his own fire!" he shrieked, then lapsed into crimson-faced, inarticulate rage and hacked at the air with his claymore to spur his crew to greater speed.

Hal was only a dozen yards now from the Gull's tall side, and found fresh strength in his exhausted legs. TireIlessly Aboli swam on, using a powerful frog-kick that pushed back the water in a swirling wake behind him.

With the Buzzard's longboat bearing down swiftly upon them, they covered the last few yards and Hal felt the fire ship bows thump heavily into the Gulls stern timbers. The push of the tide pinned her there, swinging her broadside so that the flames were fanned by the rising morning breeze to lick up along the Gulls side, scorching and blackening the timbers.

"Latch onto her!" bellowed the Buzzard. "Get a line on her and tow her off!" His oarsmen shot straight in towards the fire ship but, as they felt the full heat blooming out to meet them, they quailed. In the bows the Buzzard threw up his hands to cover his face, and his red beard crisped and singed. "Back off!" he roared. "Or we'll fry." He looked at his coxswain. "Give me the anchor! I'll grapple her, and we'll tow her off."

Hal was on the point of diving and swimming under water out of the circle of heat but he heard Cumbrae's order. The painter still trailed around his legs, and he groped beneath the surface for the end, clenching it between his feet. Then he sank below the water and swam under the fire ship hull, coming up in the narrow gap between it and the Gull.

The Gull's rudder stock broke the surface and, spitting lagoon water from his mouth, Hal threw a loop of the painter around the pintle. His face felt as though it were blistering as the heat beat down upon his head with hammer strokes, but he hitched the flaming craft securely to the Gull's stern.

Then he dived again and came up next to Aboli. "To the beach!" he gasped. "Before the fire reaches the Gull's powder store."

Both struck out overarm, and Hal saw the longboat, close by, almost close enough to touch, but the Buzzard had lost all interest in them. He was whirling the small anchor around his head, and as Hal watched he hurled it out over the burning vessel, hooking onto her.

"Lie back on your oars!" he shouted at his crew. "Tow her off." The boatmen went to it with all their strength, but immediately the fire ship came up short on the mooring line Hal had tied, and their blades beat the water vainly. She would not tow, and now the planking of the Gull's side was smouldering ominously.

Fire was the terror of all seamen. The ship was built of combustibles and stuffed with explosives, wood and pitch, canvas and hemp, tallow, spice barrels and gunpowder. The faces of the longboat's crew were contorted with terror. Even the Buzzard was wild-eyed in the firelight as he looked up and saw the other two fireships drifting remorselessly upon him. "Stop those others!" he pointed with his claymore. "Turn them away!" Then he turned his attention back to the burning vessel moored to the Gull.

By now Hal and Aboli were fifty yards away, swimming for the beach, but Hal rolled onto his back to watch and trod water. He saw at once that the Buzzard's efforts to tow away the fire ship had failed.

Now he rowed around to the Gull's bows and scrambled up onto her deck. As his crew followed him he roared, "Buckets! Get a bucket chain going. Pumps! Ten men on the pumps. Spray the flames!" They scurried to obey, but the fire was spreading swiftly, eating into the stern and dancing along the gunwale, reaching up hungrily towards the furled sails on their outstretched yards.

One of the Gull's longboats had grappled Ned's fire shiP and, with frantically beating oars, was dragging it clear. Another was trying to get a line on Big Daniel's fire shiP but the flames forced them to keep their distance. Each time they succeeded in hooking on, Daniel swam round and cut the rope with a stroke of his knife. The men in the longboat who carried muskets and pistols were firing wildly at his bobbing head, but though the balls kicked up spray all around him, he seemed invulnerable.

Aboli had swum on ahead, and now Hal rolled onto his belly and followed him "back to the beach. Together they raced up the white sand, and into the shot-shattered forest. Sir Francis was still in the gun pit where they had left him, but he had gathered around him a scratch crew of the Resolution's survivors- They were reloading the big gun as Hal ran up to him and shouted, "What do you want me to do?" Come find more of the men. "Take Aboli with You to Load another culverin.

Bring the Gull under fire. Sir Francis did not look up from the gun, and Hal ran back among the trees. He found half a dozen men, and he and Aboli kicked and dragged them out of the holes and bushes where they were cowering, and led them back to the silenced battery.

In the few short minutes it had taken him to gather the gm crew the scene out on the lagoon had changed completely.. Daniel had guided his fire ship up to the Gull's side and had secured her there. Her flames were adding to the confusion and panic on board the frigate.

Now he was swimming back to the beach. He had seized two of his men, who could not swim, and was dragging them through the water.

The Gull's crew had snared Ned's fire ship they had lines on it and were dragging it clear. Ned and his three fellows had abandoned it, and were also floundering back towards the shore. But, even as Hal watched, one gave up and slipped below the surface.

The sight of the drowning spurred Hal's anger. he poured a handful of powder into the culverin's touch hole as Aboli used an iron marlin spike to train the barrel around. It bellowed deafeningly, and Hal's men shouted with delight as the full charge of grape smashed into the longboat towing Ned's abandoned craft. It disintegrated at the blast, and the men packed into her were hurled into the lagoon. They splashed about, screaming for aid and trying to clamber into another longboat nearby, but it was already overcrowded and the men in her tried to beat off the frantic seamen with their oars. Some, though, managed to get a hold on the gunwale, and yelling and fighting among themselves, they caused the longboat to list heavily, until suddenly she capsized. The water around the burning hulks was filled with wreckage and the heads of struggling swimmers.

Hal was concentrating on reloading, and when he looked up again, he saw that some of the men in the water had reached the Gull and were climbing the rope ladders to the deck.

The Buzzard had at last got his pumps working. Twenty men were bobbing up and down like monks at prayer as they threw their weight on the handles, and white jets of water were spurting from the nozzles of the canvas hoses, aimed at the base of the flames, which were now spreading over the Gull's stern.

Hal's next shot shattered the wooden rail on the GulPs larboard side, and went on to sweep through the gang serving the bow pump. Four were snatched away, as though by an invisible set of claws, their blood splattering the others beside them on the handles. The jet of water from the hose shrivelled away.

"More men here!" Cumbrae's voice resounded across the lagoon, as he sent others to take the places of the dead. At once the jet of water was revived, but it made little impression on the leaping flames that now engulfed the Gull's stern.

Big Daniel reached the shore, and dropped the two men he had rescued on the sand. He ran up into the trees, and Hal shouted, "Take command of one of the guns. Load with grape and aim at her decks. Keep them from fighting the fire."

Big Daniel grinned at Hal with black teeth and knuckled his forehead. "We'll play his lordship a pretty tune to dance to," he promised.

The crew of the Resolution, who had been demoralized by the Gull's sneak attack, now began to take heart again at the swing in fortunes. One or two more emerged from where they had been skulking in the forest. Then, as the fire started to crash from the beach batteries and thump into the Gull's hull, the others grew bold and rushed back to serve the guns.

Soon a sheet of flame and smoke was tearing from out of the trees across the water. Flames had reached the Gull's mizzen-yards and were taking hold in the furled sails.

Hal saw the Buzzard striding through the smoke, lit by the flames of his burning ship, an axe in his hand. He stood over the anchor rope where it was drawn tightly through its fair lead and, with one gigantic swing he cut it free.

Immediately the ship began to drift across the wind. He raised his head and bellowed an order to his seamen, who were clambering up the shrouds.

They shook out the main sail and the ship responded quickly. As she caught the rising breeze, the flames poured outwards, and the fire-fighters were able to run forward and direct the water from the hoses onto the base of the fire.

She towed the two fireships for a short distance, but when the lines that secured them burned through, the Gull left them as she headed slowly down the channel.

Along the beach the culver ins continued to pour salvo after salvo into her but, as she drew out of range, the battery fell silent. Still streaming smoke and orange flame behind her, the Gull headed for the open sea. Then, as she entered the channel between the heads and looked to have sailed clear away, the batteries hidden in the cliffs opened up on her. Gunsmoke billowed out from among the grey rocks and cannonballs kicked up spouts of foam along the Gull's waterline or punched holes in her sails.

Painfully she ran this gauntlet, and at last left the smoking batteries out of range.

"Mister Courtney!" Sir Francis shouted at Hal even in the heat of the battle he had used the formal address. "Take a boat and cross to the heads. Keep the Gull under observation."

Hal and Aboli reached the far side of the bay, and climbed up to the high ground on top of the heads. The Gull was already a mile offshore, reaching across the wind with sail set on her two forward masts. Wisps of dark grey smoke trailed from her stern, and Hal could see that her mizzen sails and her spanker were blackened and still smouldering. Her decks seethed with the tiny figures of her crew as they snuffed out the last of the fire and laboured to get the ship under full control and sailing handily again.

"We have given his lordship a lesson he'll long remember, Hal exulted. "I doubt we'll be having any more trouble from him for a while," "The wounded lion is the most dangerous, Aboli grunted. "We have blunted his teeth, but he still has his claws."

When Hal stepped out of the boat onto the beach below the encampment he found that his father already had a gang of men at work, repairing the damage to the battery of culver ins along the shore.

They were building up the parapets and levelling the two guns that had been shot off their mountings by the Gull's broadsides.

Where she lay careened on the beach, the Resolution had been hit by shot. The Gull's fire had knocked great raw wounds in the timbers. Grape shot had peppered her sides but had not penetrated her stout planks. The carpenter and his mates were already at work cutting out the damaged sections and checking the frames beneath them, preparatory to replacing them with new oak planking from the ship's stores. The pitch cauldrons were bubbling and smoking over the coals, and the rasping of saws and soughing of planes resounded through the camp.

Hal found his father further back among the trees, where the wounded had been laid out under a makeshift canvas shelter. He counted seventeen and, at a glance, could tell that at least three were unlikely to see tomorrow's dawn. Already the aura of death hung over them.

Ned Tyler doubled as the ship's surgeon he had been trained for the role in the rough empirical school of the gundeck, and he wielded his instruments with the same rude abandon as the carpenters working on the Resolution's punctured hull.

Hal saw that he was performing an amputation. One of the topmast-men had taken a blast of grape in his leg just below the knee and the limb hung by a taller of flesh and exposed stringy white sinew from which protruded sharp white splinters of the shin bone. Two of Ned's mates were trying to hold down the patient on a sheet of blood-soaked canvas, as he bucked and writhed. They had thrust a doubled layer of leather belt between his teeth. The sailor bit down so hard upon it that the sinews in his neck stood out like hempen ropes. His eyes started out of his straining crimson face and his lips were drawn back in a terrifying rictus. Hal saw one of his rotten black teeth explode under the pressure of his bite.

He turned his eyes away and began his report to Sir Francis. "The Gull was heading west the last I saw of her. The Buzzard seems to have the fire in hand, although she is still making a cloud of smoke, -" He was interrupted by screams as Ned laid aside his knife and took up the saw to trim off the shattered bone. Then, abruptly, the man lapsed into silence and slumped back in the grip of the men who held him. Ned stepped back and shook his head. "Poor bastard's taken shore leave. Bring one of the others." He wiped the sweat and smoke from his face with a blood-caked hand and left a red smear down his cheek.

Although Hal's stomach heaved, he kept his voice level as he went on with his report. "Cumbrae was cracking on all the sail the Gull would carry." He was determined not to show weakness in front of his men and his father, but his voice trailed off as Ned started to pluck a massive wood splinter from another seaman's back. Hal could not drag away his eyes.

Ned's two brawny assistants straddled the patient's body and held him down, while he got a grip on the protruding end of the splinter with a pair of blacksmith's tongs. He placed one foot on the man's back to give himself purchase and leaned back with all his weight. The raw splinter was as thick as his thumb, barbed like an arrowhead and relinquished its grip in the living flesh only with the greatest reluctance. The man's screams rang through the forest.

At that moment Governor van de Velde came waddling towards them through the trees. His wife was on his arm, weeping pitifully and barely able to support her own weight. Zelda followed her closely, attempting to thrust a green bottle of smelling-salts under her mistress's nose.

"Captain Courtney!" van de Velde said. "I must protest in the strongest possible terms. You have placed us in the most dire danger. A ball passed through the roof of my abode. I might have been killed."

He mopped at his streaming jowls with his neck cloth

At that moment the wretch who had been receiving Ned's ministrations let out a piercing shriek as one of the assistants poured hot pitch to staunch the bleeding into the deep wound in his back.

"You must keep these oafs of yours quiet." Van de Velde waved disparagingly towards the severely wounded seaman. "Their barnyard bleatings, are frightening and offending my wife."

With a last groan the patient sagged back limply into silence, killed by Ned's kindness. Sir Francis's expression was grun as he lifted his Hal to Katinka. "Mevrouw, you cannot doubt our consideration for your sensibilities. It seems that the rude fellow prefers to die rather than offend you further." His expression was hard and unkind as he went on, "Instead of caterwauling and indulging in the vapours, perhaps you might like to assist Master Ned with his work of tending the wounded?"

Van de Velde drew himself to his full height at the suggestion and glared at him. "Mijnheer, you insult my wife. How dare you suggest that she might act as a servant to these coarse peasants?"

"I apologize to your lady, but I suggest that if she is to serve no other purpose here other than beautifying the landscape you take her back to her hut and keep her there. There will almost certainly be further unpleasant sights and sounds to test her forbearance." Sir Francis nodded at Hal to follow him, and turned his back on the Governor. Side by side, he and his son strode towards the beach, past where the sail makers were stitching the dead into their canvas shrouds and a gang was already digging their graves. In such heat they must be buried the same day. Hal counted the canvas-covered bundles.

"Only twelve are ours," his father told him. "The other seven are from the Gull, washed up on the beach. We have taken eight prisoners too. I'm going to deal with them now."

The captives were under guard on the beach, sitting in a line with their hands clasped behind their heads. As they came up to them Sir Francis said, loudly enough for all to hear, "Mister Courtney, have your men set eight nooses from that tree." He pointed to the outspreading branches of a huge wild fig. "We will hang some new fruit from them." He gave a chuckle so macabre that Hal was startled.

The eight sent up a wail of protest. "Don't hang us, sir. It were his lordship's orders. We only did as we was bade."

Sir Francis ignored them. "Get those ropes hung up, Mister Courtney."

For a moment longer Hal hesitated. He was appalled at the prospect of having to carry out such a cold-blooded execution, but then he saw his father's expression and hurried to obey.

In short order ropes were thrown over the stout branches and the nooses were knotted at the hanging ends. A team of the Resolution's sailors stood ready to heave their victims aloft.

One at a time the eight prisoners from the Gull were dragged to a rope's end, their hands bound behind their backs, their heads thrust through the waiting nooses. At his father's orders Hal went down the line and adjusted the knots under each victim's ears. Then he turned back to face his father, pale-faced and sick to the stomach. He touched his forehead. "Ready to proceed with the execution, sir."

Sir Francis's face was turned away from the condemned men and he spoke softly from the corner of his mouth. "Plead for their lives."

"Sir?" Hal looked bewildered.

"Damn you." Sir Francis's voice cracked. "Beg me to spare them."

"Beg your pardon, sir, but will you not spare these men?" Hal said loudly.

"The blackguards deserve nothing but the rope's end," Sir Francis snarled. "I want to see them dance a jig to the devil."

"They were only carrying out the orders of their captain." Hal warmed to the role of advocate. "Will you not give them a chance?"

The noosed heads of the eight men swung back and forth as they followed the argument. Their expressions were abject, but their eyes held a faint glimmer of hope.

Sir Francis fingered his chin. "I don't know." His face was still ferocious. "What would we do with them? Turn them loose into the wilderness to serve as fodder for wild beasts and cannibals? It would be more merciful to string them up."

"You could swear them in as crew to replace the men we have lost," Hal pleaded.

Sir Francis looked still more dubious. "They would not take an oath of allegiance, would they?" He glared at the condemned men who, had not the nooses restrained them, might have fallen to their knees.

"We will serve you truly, sir. The young gentleman is right. You'll not find better men nor more loyal than US."

"Bring my Bible from my hut," Sir Francis growled, and the eight seamen took their oath of service with the nooses round their necks.

Big Daniel freed them and led them away, and Sir Francis watched them go with satisfaction. "Eight prime specimens to replace some of our losses," he murmured. "We'll need every hand we can find if we are to have the Resolution ready for sea before the end of this month." He glanced across the lagoon at the entrance between the headlands. "Only the good Lord knows who our next visitors might be if we linger here."

He turned back to Hal. "That leaves only the drunken sots who lapped up the Buzzard's rum. Do you fancy another flogging, Hal?"

"Is this the time to render half our crew useless with the cat, Father? If the Buzzard returns before we are fit for sea, then they'll fight no better with half the meat stripped off their backs."

"So you say let them go scot free?" Sir Francis asked coldly, his face close to Hal's.

"Why not fine them their share of the spoils from the Standvastigheid and divide it among the others who fought sober?"

Sir Francis stared at him a moment longer, then smiled grimly. "The judgement of Solomon! Their purses will give them more pain than their backs, and it will add a guilder or three to our own share of the prize."

Angus Cochran, Earl of Cumbrae, stepped out on the saddle of the mountain pass at least a thousand feet above the beach where he had come ashore from the Gull. His boatswain and two seamen followed him. They all carried muskets and cutlasses. One of the men balanced a small keg of drinking water on his shoulder, for the African sun speedily sucks the moisture from a man's body.

It had taken half the morning of hard hiking, following the game trails along the steep and narrow ledges, to reach this lookout point, which Cumbrae knew well. He had used it more than once before. A Hottentot they had captured on the beach had first led him to it. Now as he settled comfortably on a rock that formed a throne-like seat, the Hottentot's white bones lay at his feet in the undergrowth. The skull gleamed like a pearl, for it had lain here three years and the ants and other insects had picked it clean. It would have been foolhardy of Cumbrae to allow the savage to carry tales of his arrival to the Dutch colony at Good Hope.

From his stone throne Cumbrae had a breathtaking panoramic view of two oceans and of rugged mountain scenery spread out all around him. When he looked back the way he had come he could see the Gull of Moray anchored not far off a tiny rind of beach that clung precariously to the foot of the soaring rocky cliffs where the mountains fell into the sea. There were twelve distinct peaks in this maritime range, marked on the Dutch charts he had captured as the Twelve Apostles.

He stared at the Gull through his telescope but could see little evidence of the fire damage she had suffered to her stern. He had been able to replace the mizzen yards, and furled new sails upon them. From this great height and distance she looked lovely as ever, tucked away from inquisitive eyes in the green water cove below the Apostles.

The longboat that had brought Cumbrae through the surf was still drawn up on the beach, ready for a swift departure if he should run into trouble ashore. However, he expected none. He might encounter a few Hottentots among the bushes but they were a harmless, half-naked tribe, a pastoral people with high cheekbones and slanted Asiatic eyes, who could be scattered willy-nilly by a musket shot over their heads.

Much more dangerous were the wild animals that abounded in this harsh, untamed land. The previous night, from the deck of the anchored Gull, they had heard terrifying, blood-chilling roars, rising and falling, then ending in a diminishing series of grunts and groans that sounded like the chorus of all the devils of hell.

"Lions!" the older hands who knew the coast had whispered to each other, and the ship's company had listened in awed silence. In the dawn they had seen one of the terrible yellow cats, the size of a pony, with a dense dark mane of hair covering its head and reaching back behind its shoulder, sauntering along the white beach sands with a regal indolence. After that it had taken the threat of the lash to force the boat crew to row Cumbrae and his party to the shore.

He reached into the leather pouch that hung in front of his plaid and brought out a pewter flask. He tipped its base to the sky and swallowed twice, then sighed with pleasure and screwed the stopper back into the neck. His boatswain and the two seamen watched him intently, but he grinned at them and shook his head. "It would do you no good. Mark my words, whisky is the devil's own hot piss. If you have no pact with him, as I have, you should never let it past your lips."

He slipped the flask back into the pouch, and lifted the telescope to his eye. On his left hand rose the sphimshaped mountain top that the earliest mariners had named Lion's Head, when viewing it from the sea. At his right hand stood the sheer cliff that towered up to the flat top of the mighty Table Mountain that dominated the horizon and gave its name to the bay that opened out beneath it.

Far below where he sat, Table Bay was a lovely sweep of open water, nursing a small island in its arms. The Dutch called it Robben Island, for that was their name for the thousands of seals that infested it.

Beyond that was the endless wind-flecked expanse of the south Atlantic. Cumbrae scrutinized it for any sign of a strange sail, but when he could pick out nothing he transferred his attention below to the Dutch settlement of Good Hope.

There was little to make it stand out from the wild and rocky wilderness that surrounded it. The roofs of the few buildings were of thatch and blended into their surroundings. The Company gardens, which had been laid out to grow provisions for the VOC ships on their passage to the east, were the most obvious sign of man's intrusion. The regular rectangular fields were either bright green with crops or chocolate brown with new-turned earth.

Just above the beach was the Dutch fort. Even from this distance Cumbrae could see that it was unfinished. He had heard from other captains that since the outbreak of war with England the Dutch had tried to speed up the construction, but there were still raw gaps in the defensive outer walls, like missing teeth.

The fort, and its half-completed state, were of interest to Cumbrae only in as much as it could afford protection to the ships that lay at anchor in the bay, under its guns. At this moment three large vessels were there, and he fastened his attention on them.

One looked like a naval frigate. She flew the ensign of the Republic, orange, white and blue, from her masthead. Her hull was painted black, but the gun ports were picked out in white. He counted sixteen on the side she presented to him. He judged that she would outgun the Gull if it ever came to a set-piece engagement with her. But that was not. his intention. He wanted easier pickings, and that meant one of the other two vessels in the bay. Both were merchantmen, and both flew the Company ensign.

"Which one is it to be?" he mused, as he glassed them with the closest attention.

One looked familiar. She rode high in the water, and he reckoned that she was probably in ballast and on the eastern leg of her voyage, heading out to the Dutch possessions to take on valuable cargo.

"No, by God, I recognize the cut of her jib now," he exclaimed aloud. "She's the Lady Edwina, Franky's old ship. He told me he'd sent her back to the Cape with his ransom demand." He studied her a while longer. "She's been stripped bare even the guns are out of her."

Losing interest in her as a possible prize, Cumbrae turned his telescope on the second merchantman. This ship was slightly smaller than the Lady Edwina but she was heavy with her cargo, riding so low that her lower ports were almost awash. Clearly she was on her return voyage, and stuffed with the treasures of the Orient. What made her even more attractive was that she was anchored further off the beach than the other merchantman, at least two cables" length from the walls of the fort. Even under the best conditions that would be impossibly long cannon-shot for the Dutch gunners on the shore.

"A lovely sight." The Buzzard grinned to himself. "Fair makes one's mouth water to behold her."

He spent another half-hour studying the bay, noting the lines of foam and spindrift that marked the flow of current along the beach and the set of the wind as it swirled down from the heights. He planned his entry into Table Bay. He knew that the Dutch had a small post on the slopes of Lion's Head whose lookouts would warn. the settlement of the approach of a strange ship with a cannonshot.

Even at midnight, with the present phase of the moon, they might be able to pick out the gleam of his sails while he was still well out at sea. He would have to make a wide circle, out below the horizon and then come in from the west, using the bulk of Robben Island as a stalking horse to creep in unobserved by even the sharpest lookout.

His crew were well versed in the art of cutting out a prize from under the shore batteries. It was a special English trick, one beloved of both Hawkins and Drake. Cumbrae had polished and refined it, and considered himself the master of either of those great Elizabethan pirates. The pleasure of plucking out a prize from under the enemy's nose rewarded him far beyond the spoils it yielded. "Mounting the good wife while the husband snores in the bed beside her so much sweeter than tipping up her skirts while he's off across the seas with no danger in it." He chuckled, and swept the bay with his telescope, checking that nothing had changed since his last visit, that there were no lurking dangers such as newly em placed cannon along the shore.

Even though the sun was past its noon and it was a long journey back to where the longboat waited on the beach, he spent a little longer studying the rigging of the prize through the glass. Once he had seized her, his men must be able to get her sails up speedily, and work her off the lee shore in the darkness.

It was after midnight when the Buzzard, using as his landmark the immense bulk of Table Mountain which blotted out half the southern sky, brought the Gull into the bay from the west. He was confident that, even on a clear starry night like this with half a moon shining, he was still well out of sight of the lookout on Lion's Head.

The dark whale shape of Robben Island rose with startling suddenness out of the gloom ahead. He knew there was no permanent settlement on this barren piece of rock so he was able to bring the Gull close into its lee, and drop his anchor in seven fathoms of protected water.

The longboat on deck was ready to launch. No sooner had the cat ted anchor splashed into the easy swells, than it was swung outboard and dropped to the surface. The Buzzard had already inspected the boarding-party. They were armed with pistol and cutlass and oak clubs, and their faces were darkened with lamp-black so that they looked like a party of wild savages with only their eyes and teeth gleaming. They were dressed in pitch-blackened sea-jackets, and two men had axes to cut the anchor cable of the prize.

The Buzzard was the last man down the ladder into the longboat, and as soon as he was aboard they pushed off. The oars were muffled, the row locks padded, and the only sound was the dip of the blades, but even this was lost in the breaking of the waves and the gentle sighing of the wind.

Almost immediately they crept out from behind the island they could see the lights on the mainland, two or three pinpricks from the watch fires on the walls of the fort, and lantern beams from the buildings outside the walls, spread out along the se afront

The three vessels he had spotted from the saddle of the mountains were still anchored in the roads. Each showed a riding lantern at the masthead, and another at the stern. Cumbrae grinned in the darkness. "Most obliging of the cheese-heads to put out a welcome for us. Don't they know there's a war a-raging?"

From this distance he was not yet able to distinguish one ship from, the others, but his boat-crews pulled eagerly, the scent of the prize in their nostrils. Half an hour later, even though they were still well out in the bay, Cumbrae was able to pick out the Lady Edwina. He discarded her from his calculations and switched all his interest to the other vessel, which had not changed position and still lay furthest away from the batteries of the fort.

"Steer for the ship on the larboard side," he ordered his boatswain in a whisper. The long-boat-altered a point, and the beat of the oars picked up. The second boat was close astern, like a hunting dog at heel, and Cumbrae peered back at its dark shape, grunting with approval. All the weapons were covered, there was no reflection of moonlight off a naked blade or pistol barrel to flash a warning to the watch on board the chase. Neither was there a lit match to send the reek of smoke down the wind, or a glow of light ahead of their arrival.

As they glided in towards the anchored vessel Cumbrae read her name from her transom, De Swael, the Swallow. He was alert for any sign of an anchor watch. this was a lee shore, with &e sou'-easter swirling unpredictably around the mountain, but either the Dutch captain was remiss or the watch was asleep for there was no sign of life aboard the dark ship.

Two sailors stood ready to fend off from the side of the Swallow as they touched and mats of knotted oakum hung over the longboat's side to soften the impact. A solid contact of timbers against hull would carry through the ship like the sounding body of a viol and wake every hand aboard.

They touched with the gentleness of a virgin's kiss, and one of the men, chosen for his simian climbing prowess, shot up the side and immediately made a line fast to the shackle of a gun train and dropped the coil back into the boat below.

Cumbrae paused long enough to lift the shutter of the storm lantern and light the slow-match from the flame, then seized the line and went up on bare feet hardened by hunting the stag without boots. In a silent rush the crews of both boats, also barefoot, followed him.

Cumbrae jerked the marlin spike from his belt and, his boatswain at' his side, raced silently to the bows. The anchor watch was curled on the deck, out of the wind, sleeping like a hound in front of the hearth. The Buzzard stooped over him and clipped his skull with one sharp blow of the iron spike. The man sighed, uncurled his limbs and sagged into an even deeper state of unconsciousness.

His men were already at each of the Swallow's hatches, leading to the lower decks, and as Cumbrae ran back towards the stern they were quietly closing the covers and battening them down, imprisoning the Dutch crew below decks.

"There'll not be more than twenty of a crew on board her," he muttered to himself. "And, like as not, de Ruyter will have taken most of the prime seamen for the Navy. They'll be only boys and fat old fools on their last legs. I doubt they'll give us too much trouble."

He looked up at the dark figures of his men silhouetted against the stars as they raced up the shrouds and danced out along the yards. As the sails unfurled, he heard from forward the soft clunk of an axe blow as the anchor cable was severed. Immediately the Swallow came alive and unfettered under his feet as she paid off before the wind. Already his boatswain was at the whipstall.

"Take her straight out. Due west!" Cumbrae snapped, and the man put her head up into the wind as close as she would point.

Cumbrae saw at once that the heavily laden ship was surprisingly handy, and that they would be able to weather Robben Island on this tack. Ten armed men waited ready to follow him. Two carried shuttered storm lanterns, all had match burning for their pistols. Cumbrae seized one of the lanterns and led his men at a run down into the officers" quarters in the stern. He tried the door of the cabin that must open out onto the stern galleries and found it unlocked. He went through it swiftly and silently. When he flashed the lantern, a man in a tasselled night cap sat up in the bunk.

Wic is dit?" he challenged sleepily. Cumbrae swept the bedclothes over his head to smother any further outcry, left his men to subdue and bind the captain, ran out into the passageway and burst into the next cabin. Here another Dutch officer was already awake. Plump and middle-aged, his greying hair tangled in his eyes, he was still staggering groggily with sleep as he groped for his sword where it hung in its scabbard at the foot of his bunk. Cumbrae shone the lantern in his eyes, and placed the sharp point of his claymore at the man's throat.

"Angus Cumbrae, at your service," said the Buzzard. "Yield, or I'll feed you to the gulls a wee bit tie at a time." The Dutchman might not have understood the buffed Scots accent, but Cumbrae's meaning was unmistakable. Gaping at him, he raised both hands above his head and the boarding-party swarmed over him and bore him to the deck, wrapping his bedclothes around his head.

Cumbrae ran on to the last cabin but, as he laid his hand on the door, it was' flung open from inside with such force that he was thrown across the passage into the bulkhead. A huge figure charged out of the darkened doorway with a blood-curdling yell. He aimed a full overhead blow at the Buzzard, but in the narrow confines of the passageway the blade of his sword slashed into the door lintel, giving Cumbrae an instant to recover. Still bellowing with rage the stranger cut at him again. This time the Buzzard parried and the blade sped over his shoulder to shatter the panel behind him. The two big men raged down the passageway, fighting at close range, almost chest to chest. The Dutchman was shouting insults in a mixture of English and his own language, and Cumbrae answered him in full-blooded Scottish tones. "You blethering cheese-headed nun-raper! I'll stuff your giblets down your ear-hqles." His men danced around them with clubs raised, waiting for an opportunity to cut down the Dutch officer, but Cumbrae shouted, "Don't kill him! He's a dandy laddie, and he'll fetch a pretty price at ransom!"

Even in the uncertain lantern light, he had recognized his adversary's quality. Freshly roused from his bunk the Dutchman wore no wig on his shaven head but his fine pointed moustaches showed him to be a man of fashion. His embroidered linen nightshirt and the sword he wielded with the panache of a duelling master all proved that he was a gentleman, and no mistake.

The longer blade of the claymore was a disadvantage in the restricted space, and Cumbrae was forced to use the point rather than the double edges. The Dutchman thrust, then feinted low and slipped in under his guard. Cumbrae hissed with anger as the steel flew under his raised right arm, missing him by a finger's width and slashing a shower of splinters from the panel behind him.

Before his adversary could recover, the Buzzard whipped his left arm around the man's neck and enfolded him in a bear-hug. Locked together in the narrow passage, neither man could use his sword. They dropped them and wrestled from one end of the corridor to the other, snarling and snapping like a pair of fighting dogs, then grunting and howling with pain and outrage as first one then the other threw a telling fist to the head or smashed his elbow into the other's belly.

"Crack his skull," Cumbrae gasped at his men. "Knock the brute down." He was unaccustomed to being bested in a straight trial of muscle, but the other was his match. His up-thrust knee crashed into the Buzzard's crotch, and he howled again, "Help me, damn your poxy yellow livers! Knock the rogue down!"

He managed to get one hand free and lock it round the man's waist then, bright crimson in the face with the effort, he lifted him and swung him round so that his back was presented to a seaman waiting with a raised oak club in his fist. It cracked down with a practised and controlled blow on the back of the shaven pate, not hard enough to shatter bone, but with just sufficient force to stun the Dutchman and turn his legs to jelly under him. He sagged in Cumbrae's arms.

Puffing, the Buzzard lowered him to the deck, and all four seamen bounced on him, pinning his limbs and straddling his back. "Get a rope on this hellion," he panted, "afore he comes to and wrecks us and smashes up our prize."

"Another filthy English pirate!" the Dutchman mouthed weakly, shaking his head to clear his wits and thrashing around on the deck as he tried to throw off his captors.

"I'll not put up with your foul insults," Cumbrae told him genially, as he smoothed his ruffled red beard and retrieved his claymore. "Call me a filthy pirate if you will, but I'm no Englishman and I'll thank you to remember it."

"Pirates! All you scum are pirates."

"And who are you to call me scum, you with your great hairy arse sticking in the air?" In the scuffle the Dutchman's night shirt had tucked- up around his waist leaving him bare below. "I'll not argue with a man in such indecent attire. Get your clothes on, sir, and then we will continue this discourse."

Cumbrae ran up onto the deck, and found that they were already well out to sea. Muffled shouts and banging were coming from under the battened-down hatches, but his men had full control of the deck. "Smartly done, you canty bunch of sea-rats. The easiest fifty guineas you'll ever put in your purses. Give yerselves a cheer, and cock a snook at the devil," he roared so that even those up on the yards could hear him.

Robben Island was only a league dead ahead, and as the bay opened before them they could make out the Gull lying on the moonlit waters.

"Hoist a lantern to the masthead," Cumbrae ordered, "We we'll put a wee stretch of water between us before the cheese-heads in the fort rub the sleep out of their eyes."

As the lantern went aloft, the Gull repeated the signal to acknowledge. Then she hoisted her anchor and followed the prize out to sea.

"There is bound to be a good breakfast in the galley," Cumbrae told his men. "The Dutchies know how to tend their bellies. Once you have them locked neatly in their own chains, you can try their fare. Boatswain, keep her steady as she goes. I'm going below to have a peep at the manifest, and to find what we've caught ourselves."

The Dutch officers were trussed hand and foot, and laid out in a row on the deck of the main cabin. An armed seaman stood over each man. Cumbrae shone the lantern in their faces, and examined them in turn. The big warlike officer lifted his head and bellowed up at him, "I pray God that I live to see you swinging on the rope's end, along with all the other devil-spawned English pirates who plague the oceans." It was obvious that he had fully recovered from the blow to the back of his head.

"I must commend you on your command of the English language," Cumbrae told him. "Your choice of words is quite poetic. What is your name, sir?"

"I am Colonel Cornelius Schreuder in the service of the Dutch East India Company."

"How do you do, sir? I am Angus Cochran, Earl of Cumbrae."

"You, sit, are nothing but a vile pirate."

"Colonel, your repetitions are becoming just a wee bit tiresome. I implore you not to spoil a most protriising acquaintanceship in this manner. After all, you are to be my guest for some time until your ransom is paid. I am a privateer, sailing under the commission of His Majesty King Charles the Second. You, gentlemen, are prisoners of war."

"There is no war!" Colonel Schreuder roared at him scornfully. "We gave you Englishmen a good thrashing and the war is over. Peace was signed over two months ago."

Cumbrae stared at him in horror, then found his voice again. "I do not believe you, sir." Suddenly he was subdued and shaken. He denied it more to give himself time to think than with any conviction. News of the English defeat at the Medway and the battle of the Thames had been some months old when Richard Lister had given it to him. He had also reported that the King was suing for peace with the Dutch Republic. Anything might have happened in the meantime.

"Order these villains of yours to release me, and I will prove it to you." Colonel Schreuder was still in a towering rage, and Cumbrae hesitated before he nodded at his men. "Let him up and untie him," he ordered.

Colonel Schreuder sprang to his feet and smoothed his rumpled moustaches as he stormed off to his own cabin. There, he took down a silk robe from the head of his bunk. Tying the belt around his waist he went to his writing bureau and opened the drawer. With frosty dignity, he came back to Cumbrae and handed him a thick bundle of papers.

The Buzzard saw that most were official Dutch proclamations in both Dutch and English, but that one was an English news-sheet. He unfolded it with trepidation, and held it at arm's length. It was dated August 1667. The headline was in heavy black type two inches tall. PEACE

SIGNED WITH DUTCH REPUBLIC!

As his eye raced down the page, his mind tried to adjust to this disconcerting change in circumstances. He knew that with the signing of the peace treaty all Letters of Marque, issued by either side in the conflict, had become null and void. Even had there been any doubt about it, the third paragraph on the page confirmed it. All privateers of both combatant nations, sailing under commission and Letters of Marque, have been ordered to cease warlike expeditions forthwith and to return to their home ports to submit themselves to examination by the Admiralty assizes.

The Buzzard stared at the news-sheet without reading further, and pondered the various courses of action open to him. The Swallow was a rich prize, the Good Lord alone knew just how rich. Scratching his beard he toyed with the idea of flouting the orders of the Admiralty assizes, and hanging on to it at all costs. His great-grandfather had been a famous outlaw, astute enough to back the Earl of Moray and the other Scottish lords against Mary, Queen of Scots. After the battle of Carberry Hill they had forced Mary to abdicate and placed her infant son James upon the throne. For his part in the campaign his ancestor had received his earldom.

Before him all the Cochrans had been sheep thieves and border raiders, who had made their fortunes by murdering and robbing not only Englishmen but members of other Scottish clans as well. The Cochran blood ran true, so the consideration was not a matter of ethics. It was a calculation of his chances of getting away with this prize.

Cumbrae was proud of his lineage but also aware that his ancestors had come to prominence by adroitly avoiding the gibbet and the hangman's ministrations. During this last century, all the seafaring nations of the world had banded together to stamp out the scourge of the corsair and the pirate that, since the times of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, had plagued the commerce of the oceans.

Ye'll not get away with it, laddie, he decided silently, and shook his head regretfully. He held up the news-sheet before the eyes of his sailors, none of whom was able to read. "It seems the war is over, more's the pity of it. We will have to set these gentlemen free."

"Captain, does this mean that we lose out on our prize money?" the coxswain asked plaintively.

"Unless you want to swing from the gallows at Greenwich dock for piracy, it surely does."

Then he turned and bowed to Colonel Schreuder. "sir, it seems that I owe you an apology." He smiled ingratiatingly. "It was an honest mistake on my part, which I hope you will forgive. I have been without news of the outside world these past months."

The Colonel returned his bow stiffly, and Cumbrae went on, "It gives me pleasure to return your sword to you. You fought like a warrior and a true gentleman." The Colonel bowed a little more graciously. "I will give orders to have the crew of this ship released at once. You are, of course, free to return to Table Bay and to continue your voyage from there. Whither were you bound, sir? "he asked politely.

"We were on the point of sailing for Amsterdam before your intervention, sir. I was carrying letters of ransom to the council of the VOC on behalf of the Governor designate of the Cape of Good Hope who, together with his saintly wife, was captured by another English pirate, or rather," he corrected himself, "by another English privateer."

Cumbrae stared at him. "Was your Governor designate named Petrus van de Velde, and was he captured oh board the company ship the Standvastigheid?" he asked. "And was his captor an Englishman, Sir Francis Courtney?"

Colonel Schreuder looked startled. "He was indeed, sir. But how do you know these details?"

"I will answer your question in due course, Colonel, but first I must know. Are you aware that the Standvastigheid was captured after the-peace treaty was signed by our two countries?"

"My lord, I was a passenger on board the Standvastigheid when she was captured. Certainly I am aware that she was an illegal prize."

"One last question, Colonel. Would not your reputation and professional -standing be greatly enhanced if you were able to capture this pirate Courtney, to secure by force of arms the release of Governor van de Velde and his wife, and to return to the treasury of the Dutch East India Company the valuable cargo of the Standvastigheid?"

The Colonel was struck speechless by such a magnificent prospect. That image of violet-coloured eyes and hair like sunshine, which since he had last looked upon it had never been far from his mind, now returned to him in every vivid detail. The promise that those sweet red lips had made him outweighed even the treasure of spice and bullion that was at stake. How grateful the lady Katinka would be for her release, and her father also, who was president of the governing board of the VOC. This might be the most significant stroke of fortune that would ever come his way.

He was so moved that he could barely manage a stiff nod of agreement to the Buzzard's proposition.

"Then, sir, I do believe that you and I have matters to discuss that might redound to our mutual advantage," said the Buzzard, with an expansive smile.

The following morning the Gull and the Swallow sailed in company back into Table Bay, and as soon as they had anchored under the guns of the fort the Colonel and Cumbrae went ashore. They landed through the surf, where a party of slaves and convicts waded out shoulder deep to drag their boat up the beach before the next wave could capsize it, and stepped out onto dry land without wetting their boots. As they strode together towards the gates of the fort they made a striking and unusual pair. Schreuder was in full uniform, his sashes, ribbons and the plumes in his Hal fluttering in the sou'-easter. Cumbrae was resplendent in his plaid of red, russet, yellow and black. The population of this remote ways station had never seen a man dressed in such garb and crowded to the verge of the unpaved parade ground to gape at him.

Some of the doll-like Javanese slave girls caught Cumbrae's attention, for he had been at sea for months without the solace of feminine company. Their skin shone like polished ivory, and their dark eyes were languid. Many had been dolled up in European style by their owners, and their small, neat bosoms were jaunty under their lacy bodices.

Cumbrae acknowledged their admiration like royalty on a progress, lifting his beribboned bonnet to the youngest and prettiest of the girls, reducing them to titters and blushes with the bold stare of his blue eyes over the fiery bush of his whiskers.

The sentries at the gates of the fort saluted Schreuder, who was well known to them, and they went through into the interior courtyard. Cumbrae glanced around him with a penetrating eye, assessing the strength of the de fences It might be peace now, but who could tell what might transpire a few years from now? One day he might be leading a siege against these walls.

He saw that the fortifications were laid out in the shape of a five-pointed star. Clearly they had as their model the new fortress of Antwerp, which had been the first to adopt this innovative ground-plan.

Each of the five points was crowned by a redoubt, the salient angles of which made it possible for the defenders to lay down a covering fire on the curtain walls of the fort, which before would have been dead ground, and indefensible. Once the massive outer walls of masonry were completed, the fort would be well nigh impregnable to anything other than an elaborate siege. It might take many months to sap and mine the walls before they could be breached.

However, the work was far from finished. Gangs of hundreds of slaves and convicts were labouring in the moat and on top of the half-raised walls. Many of the cannon were stored in the courtyard and had not yet been sited in their redoubts atop the walls overlooking the bay.

"An opportunity lo stP the Buzzard wailed. This intelligence had come to him too late to be of profit. "With another few Knights of the Order to help me Richard Lister, and even Franky Courtney, before we fell out I could have taken this fort and sacked the town. If we had combined our forces, the three of us could have sat here in comfort, commanding the entire southern Atlantic and snapping up every Dutch galleon that tried to round the Cape."

As he looked around the courtyard, he saw that part of the fort was also used as a prison. A file of convicts and slaves in leg-irons was being led up from the dungeons under the northern wall. Barracks for the military garrison had been built above these foundations.

Although piles of masonry and scaffolding littered the courtyard, a company of musketeers in the green and gold doublets of the VOC was drilling in the only open space in front of the armoury.

Oxdrawn wagons, heavily laden with lumber and stone, rumbled in and out of the gates or cluttered the yard, and a coach, standing in splendid isolation, waited outside the entrance to the south wing of the building. The horses were a matching team of greys, groomed so that their hides gleamed in the sunlight. The coachman and footmen were in the green and gold Company livery.

"His excellency is in his office early this morning. Usually we don't see him before noon," Schreuder grunted. "News of your arrival must have reached the residence."

They went up the staircase of the south wing and entered through teak doors with the Company crest carved into them. In the entrance lobby, with its polished yellowwood floors, an aide-de-camp took their hats and swords, and led them through to the antechamber. "I will tell his excellency that you are here," he excused himself, as he backed out of the room. He returned in minutes. "His excellency will see you now."

The Governor's audience room overlooked the bay through narrow slit windows. It was furnished in a strange mixture of heavy Dutch furniture and Oriental artifacts. Flamboyant Chinese rugs covered the polished floors, and the glass-fronted cabinets displayed a collection of delicate ceramic ware in the distinctive and colourful glazes of the Ming dynasty.

Governor Kleinhans was a tall, dyspeptic man in late middle age, his skin yellowed by a life in the tropics and his features creased and wrinkled by the cares of his office. His frame was skeletal, his Adam's apple so prominent as to seem deformed, and his full wig too young in style for the withered features beneath it.

"Colonel Schreuder." He greeted the officer stiffly, with, out taking his faded eyes, in their pouches of jaundiced skin, off the Buzzard. "When I woke this morning and saw your ship was gone I thought you had sailed for home without my leave."

"I beg your pardon, sir. I will give you a full explanation, but may I first introduce the Earl of Cumbrae, an English nobleman." "Scots, not English," the Buzzard growled.

However, Governor Kleinhans was impressed by the title, and switched into good grammatical English, marred only slightly by his guttural accent. "Ah, I bid you welcome to the Cape of Good Hope, my lord. Please be seated. May I offer you a light refreshment a glass of Madeira, perhaps?"

With long-stemmed glasses of the amber wine in their hands, their high-backed chairs drawn up in a circle, the colonel leaned towards Kleinhans and murmured, "Sir, what I have to tell you is a matter of the utmost delicacy," and he glanced at the hovering servants and aide-de-camp. The Governor clapped his hands and they disappeared like smoke on the wind. Intrigued, he inclined his head towards Schreuder. "Now, Colonel, what is this secret you have for me?"

Slowly, as Schreuder talked, the Governor's gloomy features lit with- greed and anticipation, but, when Schreuder had finished his proposition he made a show of reluctance and scepticism. "How do we know that this pirate, Courtney, will still be anchored where last you saw him? "he asked Cumbrae.

"As recently as twelve days ago the stolen galleon, the Standvastigheid, was careened upon the beach with all her cargo unloaded and her mainmast un stepped I am a mariner, and I can assure you that Courtney could not have had her ready for sea again within thirty days. That means that we still have over two weeks in which to make our preparations and to launch our attack upon him," the Buzzard explained.

Kleinhans nodded. "So whereabouts is the anchorage in which this rascal is hiding?" The Governor tried to make the question casual, but his fever-yellowed eyes glinted.

"I can only assure you that he is well concealed." The Buzzard side-stepped the question with a dry smile. "With, out my help your men will not be able to hunt him down."

"I see." With his bony forefinger the Governor picked at his nostril, then inspected the flake of dried snot he had retrieved. Without looking up, he went on,-still casually, "Naturally you would not require a reward for thus performing what is, after all, merely your bounden and moral duty, to root out this pirates" nest."

"I would not ask for a reward, other than a modest amount to compensate me for my time and expenses," Cumbrae agreed.

"One hundredth part of what we are able to recover of the galleon's cargo," Kleinhans suggested.

"Not quite so modest," Cumbrae demurred. "I had in mind a half."

"Half!" Governor Kleinhans sat bolt upright and his complexion turned the colour of old parchment. "You are jesting, surely, sir."

"I assure you, sir, that when it comes to money I seldom jest," said the Buzzard. "Have you considered how grateful the director-general of your company will be when you return his daughter to him unharmed, and without having to make the ransom payment? That alone would be a compelling factor in augmenting your pension, without even taking into account the value of the cargo of spice and bullion."

While Governor Kleinhans considered this he began to excavate his other nostril, and remained silent.

Cumbrae went on persuasively, of course, once van de Velde is released from the clutches of this villain and arrives here, you will be able to hand over your duties to him, and then you will be free to return home to Holland where the rewards of your long and loyal service await you." Colonel Schreuder had remarked on how avidly the Governor was looking forward to his imminent retirement, after thirty years in the Company's service.

Kleinhans stirred at such an inviting prospect, but his voice was harsh. "A tenth of the value of the recovered cargo, but not to include the value of any pirates captured and sold on the slave block. A tenth, and that is my final offer." Cumbrae looked tragic. "I shall have to divide the reward with my crew. I could not consider a lesser figure than a quarter."

"A fifth, "grated Kleinhans.

"I agree," said Cumbrae, well content.

"And, of course, I will need the services of that fine naval frigate anchored in the bay, and three companies of your musketeers with Colonel Schreuder here to command them. And my own vessel needs to be replenished with powder and cartridge, not to mention water and other provisions."

It had taken a prodigious effort by Colonel Schreuder, but by late afternoon the following day the three companies of infantry, each comprising ninety men, were drawn up on the parade ground outside the walls of the fort, ready to embark. The officers and non-commissioned officers were all Dutch, but the musketeers were a mixture of native troops, Malaccans from Malaysia, Hottentots recruited from the tribes of the Cape, and Sinhalese and Tamils from the Company's possessions in Ceylon. They were bowed like hunchbacks under their weapons and heavy backpacks but, incongruously, they were barefoot.