Birds of Prey (84 page)

When they were almost within hail of the other ship, it broke out its colours. Hal was delighted to see the Union flag and the
croix pattée
of the Order streaming from her
masthead. He replied with the same show of cloth and both ships hove to within hail of each other.

‘What ship?’ Hal asked, and the reply came back across the blue swells, ‘The
Rose of Durham
. Captain Welles.’ She was an armed trader, a caravel with twelve guns a
side.

Hal lowered a longboat and had himself rowed across. He was greeted at the entryport by a spry, elfin captain of middle years. ‘
In Arcadia habito.
’

‘
Flumen sacrum bene cognosco
,’ Hal replied, and they clasped hands in the recognition grip of the Temple.

Captain Welles invited Hal down to his cabin where they drank a tankard of cider together and exchanged news avidly. Welles had sailed four weeks previously from the English factory of St George
near Madras on the east coast of Further India with a cargo of trade cloth. He intended to exchange this for slaves on the Gambian coast of West Africa, and then sail on across the Atlantic to the
Caribbean where he would barter his slaves for sugar, and so back home to England.

Hal questioned him on the availability of seamen from the English factories on the Carnatic, that stretch of the shore of Further India from East Ghats down to the Coromandel coast, but Welles
shook his head. ‘You’ll be wanting to give the whole of that coast a wide berth. When I left the cholera was raging in every village and factory. Any man you take aboard might bring death with him as a companion.’

Hal chilled at the thought of the havoc that this plague would wreak among his already depleted crew, should it take hold on the
Golden Bough
. He dared not risk a visit to those fever
ports.

Over a second mug of cider, Welles gave Hal his first reliable account of the conflict raging in the Great Horn of Africa. ‘The younger brother of the Great Mogul, Sadiq Khan Jahan, has
arrived off the coast of the Horn with a great fleet. He has joined forces with Ahmed El Grang, who they call the Left-handed, the king of the Omani Arabs who holds sway over the lands bordering
the Prester’s empire. These two have declared
jihad
, holy war, and together they have swept down like a raging gale upon the Christians. They have taken by storm and sacked the ports
and towns of the coast, burning the churches and despoiling the monasteries, massacring the monks and the holy men.’

‘I intend sailing to offer my services to the Prester to help him resist the pagan,’ Hal told him.

‘It is another crusade, and yours is a noble inspiration,’ Welles applauded him. ‘Many of the most sacred relics of Christendom are held by the holy fathers in the Ethiopian
city of Aksum and in the monasteries in secret places in the mountains. If they were to fall into the hands of the pagan, it would be a sad day for all Christendom.’

‘If you cannot yourself go upon this sacred venture, will you not spare me a dozen of your men, for I am sore pressed for the lack of good sailors?’ Hal asked.

Welles looked away. ‘I have a long voyage ahead of me, and there are bound to be heavy losses among my crew when we visit the fever coast of the Gambia and make the middle passage of the
Atlantic,’ he mumbled.

‘Think on your vows,’ Hal urged him.

Welles hesitated, then shrugged. ‘I will muster my crew, and you may appeal to them and call for volunteers to join your venture.’

Hal thanked him, knowing that Welles was on a certain wager. Few seamen at the end of a two-year voyage would forgo their share of profits and the prospect of a swift return home, in favour of a
call to arms to aid a foreign potentate, even if he were a Christian. Only two men responded to Hal’s appeal, and Welles looked relieved to be shot of them. Hal guessed that they were
trouble-makers and malcontents, but he could not afford to be finicky.

Before they parted, Hal handed over to Welles two packets of letters, stitched in canvas covers with the address boldly written on each. One was addressed to Viscount Winterton, and in the long
letter Hal had penned to him he set out the circumstances of Captain Llewellyn’s murder, and his own acquisition of the
Golden Bough
. He gave an undertaking to sail the ship in
accordance with the original charter.

The second letter was addressed to his uncle, Thomas Courtney, at High Weald, to inform him of the death of his father and his own inheritance of the title. He asked his uncle to continue to run
the estate on his behalf.

When at last he took leave of Welles, the two seamen he had acquired went with him back to the
Golden Bough
. From his quarterdeck Hal watched the top sails of the
Rose of Durham
drop below the southern horizon, and days afterwards the hills of Madagascar rise before him out of the north.

That night Hal, as had become his wont, came up on deck at the end of the second dog watch to read the traverse board and speak to the helmsman. Three dark shadows waited for him at the foot of
the mainmast.

‘Jiri and the others wish to speak to you, Gundwane,’ Aboli told him.

They clustered about him as he stood by the windward rail. Jiri spoke first in the language of the forests. ‘I was a man when the slavers took me from my home,’ he told Hal quietly.
‘I was old enough to remember much more of the land of my birth than these others.’ He indicated Aboli, Kimatti and Matesi, and all three nodded agreement.

‘We were children,’ said Aboli.

‘In these last days,’ Jiri went on, ‘when I smelled the land and saw again the green hills, old memories long forgotten came back to me. I am sure now, in my deepest heart,
that I can find my way back to the great river along the banks of which my tribe lived when I was a child.’

Hal was silent for a while, and then he asked, ‘Why do you tell me these things, Jiri? Do you wish to return to your own people?’

Jiri hesitated. ‘It was so long ago. My father and my mother are dead, killed by the slavers. My brothers and the friends of my childhood are gone also, taken away in the chains of the
slavers.’ He was silent awhile, but then he went on, ‘No, Captain, I cannot return, for you are now my chief as your father was before you, and these are my brothers.’ He
indicated Aboli and the others who stood around him.

Aboli took up the tale. ‘If Jiri can lead us back to the great river, if we can find our lost tribe, it may well be that we can find also a hundred warriors among them to fill the
watch-bill of this ship.’

Hal stared at him in astonishment. ‘A hundred men? Men who can fight like you four rascals? Then, indeed, the stars are smiling upon me again.’

He took all four down to the stern cabin, lit the lanterns and spread his charts upon the deck. They squatted around them in a circle, and the black men prodded the parchment sheets with their
forefingers and argued softly in their sonorous voices, while Hal explained the lines on the charts to the three who, unlike Aboli, could not read.

When the ship’s bell tolled the beginning of the morning watch, Hal went on deck and called Ned Tyler to him. ‘New course, Mr Tyler. Due south. Mark it on the traverse
board.’

Ned was clearly astounded at the order to turn back, but he asked no question. ‘Due south it is.’

Hal took pity on him, for it was evident that curiosity itched him like a burr in his breeches. ‘We’re closing the African mainland again.’

They crossed the broad channel that separated Madagascar from the African continent. The mainland came up as a low blue smudge on the horizon and, at a good offing, they turned and sailed
southwards once more along the coast.

Aboli and Jiri spent most of the hours of daylight at the masthead, peering at the land. Twice Jiri came down and asked Hal to stand inshore to investigate what appeared to be the mouth of a
large river. Once it turned out to be a false channel and the second time Jiri did not recognize it when they anchored off the mouth. ‘It is too small. The river I seek has four
mouths.’

They weighed anchor and worked out to sea again, then went on southwards. Hal was beginning to doubt Jiri’s memory but he persevered. Several days later he noticed the patent excitement of
the two men at the masthead as they stared at the land and gesticulated to each other. Matesi and Kimatti, who as part of the off-duty watch had been lazing on the forecastle, scrambled to their
feet and flew up the shrouds to hang in the rigging and stare avidly at the land.

Hal strode to the rail and raised Llewellyn’s brass-bound telescope to his eye. He saw the delta of a great river spread before them. The waters that spilled out from the multiple mouths
were discoloured and carried with them the detritus of the swamps and the unknown lands that must lie at the source of this mighty river. Squadrons of sharks were feeding on this waste, and their
tall, triangular fins zigzagged across the current.

Hal called Jiri down to him and asked, ‘What do your tribe call this river?’

‘There are many names for it, for the one river comes to the sea as many rivers. They are called Muselo and Inhamessingo and Chinde. But the chief of them is Zambere.’

‘They all have a noble ring to them,’ Hal conceded. ‘But are you certain this is the river serpent with four mouths?’

‘On the head of my dead father I swear it is.’

Hal had two men in the bows taking soundings as he crept inshore, and as soon as the bottom began to shelve steeply he dropped anchor in twelve fathoms. He would not risk the ship in the narrow
inland waters and the convoluted channels of the delta. But there was another risk he was unwilling to face.

He knew from his father that these tropical deltas were dangerous to the health of his crew. If they breathed the night airs of the swamp, they would soon fall prey to the deadly fevers that
were borne upon them, aptly named the malaria, the bad airs.

Sukeena’s saddle-bags, which with her mother’s jade brooch were her only legacy to Hal, contained a goodly store of the Jesuit’s powder, the extract of the bark of the Cinchona
tree. He had also discovered a large jar of the same precious substance among Llewellyn’s stores. It was the only remedy against the malaria, a disease that mariners encountered in every
known area of the oceans, from the jungles of Batavia and Further India to the canals of Venice, the swamps of Virginia and the Caribbean in the New World.

Hal would not risk his entire crew to its ravages. He ordered the two pinnaces swung up from the hold and assembled. Then he chose the crews for these vessels, which naturally included the four
Africans and Big Daniel. He placed a falconet in the bows of each and had a pair of murderers mounted in the sterns.

All the men in the expedition were heavily armed, and Hal placed three heavy chests of trade goods in each boat, knives and scissors and small hand mirrors, rolls of copper wire and Venetian
glass beads.

He left Ned Tyler in charge of the
Golden Bough
with Althuda, and ordered them to remain anchored well offshore, and await his return. The distress signal would be a red Chinese rocket:
only if he saw it was Ned to send the longboats in to find them.

‘We may be many days, weeks even,’ Hal warned. ‘Do not lose patience. Stay on your station as long as you do not have word of us.’

Hal took command of the leading boat. He had Aboli and the other Africans in his crew. Big Daniel followed in the second.

Hal explored each of the four mouths. The water levels seemed low, and some of the entrances were almost sealed by their sand bars. He knew of the danger of crocodiles and would not risk sending
men over the side to drag the boats over the bar. In the end he chose the river mouth with the greatest volume of water pouring through it. With the onshore morning breeze filling the lug sail and
all hands at the oars they forced their way over the bar into the hot, hushed world of the swamps.

Tall papyrus plants and stands of mangroves formed a high wall down each side of the channel so that their vision was limited and the wind was blanketed from them. They rowed on steadily,
following the twists of the channel. Each turn opened the same dreary view. Hal realized almost at once how easy it would be to lose his way in this maze and he marked each branch of the channel
with strips of canvas tied to the top branches of mangrove.

For two days they groped their way westwards, guided only by the compass and the flow of the waters. In the pools wallowed herds of the great grey river-cows which opened cavernous pink jaws and
honked at them with wild laughter as they approached. At first they steered well clear of them, but once they became more familiar with them Hal began to ignore their warning cries and displays of
rage, and pushed on recklessly.

His bravado at first seemed justified and the animals submerged when he drove straight at them. Then they came round another bend into a large green pool. In the centre was a mud-bank, and on it
stood a huge female hippopotamus and at her flank a new-born calf not much bigger than a pig. The cow bellowed at them threateningly as they rowed towards her, but the men laughed with derision and
Hal shouted from the bows, ‘Stand aside, old lady, we mean you no harm, but we intend to pass.’

The great beast lowered her head and, grunting belligerently, charged across the mud in a wild, ungainly gallop that hurled up clods of mud. As soon as he realized that the brute was in earnest
Hal snatched up the slow-match from the tub at his feet. ‘By heavens, she means to attack us.’

He grabbed the iron handle of the falconet and swung it to aim ahead, but the hippopotamus reached the water and plunged into it at full tilt, sending up a sheet of spray and disappearing
beneath the surface. Hal swung the barrel of the falconet from side to side, seeking a chance to fire, but he saw only a ripple on the surface as the animal swam deep below it.

‘It is coming straight for us!’ Aboli shouted. ‘Wait until you get a clear shot, Gundwane!’

Hal peered down, the burning match held ready, and through the clear green water he saw a remarkable sight. The hippo was moving along the bottom in a slow dreamlike gallop, clouds of mud
boiling up under her hoofs with each stride. But she was still a fathom deep and his shot could never reach her.