The Monsoon (38 page)

Hal used this opportunity to inspect the ship’s bottom for evidence of the presence of the teredo worm, which in these warm waters could eat away the bottom timbers of a ship. At times these creatures grew as long as a man’s arm and as thick as his thumb. During heavy infestations they drilled their holes so close to each other that only a thin layer of wood was left between them. A ship so afflicted could have the bottom drop out of her in heavy seas. Hal was relieved to find that the layer of tar and canvas that covered the hull had deterred not only the ship-worm but also the growth of weed that would slow the Seraph’s passage through the water. She was as clean as he could hope for, but he could not afford the time to scrape away the light growth of weed and barnacles.

As soon as the tide lifted her off the sand they towed the Seraph back to her anchorage in the deep water of the bay. The joint in the foremast was not strong enough to withstand the pressure of sails in a high wind, and the carpenters worked to reinforce it. First they fashioned hardwood fishes to act as splints over the joint. When these were in place they clapped on seizings of soaked hemp rope and tightened these with the capstan. When the rope dried, it was iron hard.

When Hal inspected the finished work, the master carpenter boasted, “That joint is stronger than the mast itself. Once the stays and shrouds are rigged, no matter what you do to her, no matter how much canvas you pile on her in any gale, she’ll never break at the same place again.”

“Good fellow!” Hal commended him.

“Now stand by to swing aloft her new yards and spars.” When the work was done, and Seraph rode at anchor under her new foremast with all her canvas furled under the gaskets, ready to be cast looseNed Tyler came to Hal on the quarterdeck, with all the other ship’s officers behind him, and made the formal report.

“Shipshape, and in all respects ready for sea, Captain.”

“Very good, Mr. Tyler.” Ned hesitated, then took his courage in both hands.

“If you please, sir, whither are we bound? Do you have a course for me to steer?”

“I hope to have a course for you in very short order,” Hal promised grimly. No one had seen him smile since they had lost Dorian.

“Have the prisoners paraded on deck.” The Arab captives were brought out of the forecastle, dressed only in their loin cloths and wearing leg shackles.

The links of the chains clinked as they hobbled in a bedraggled file to the foredeck and stood there, blinking in the strong sunlight.

Hal ignored them and crossed instead to the ship’s rail. He stared down into the water. It was so clear that he could see the sea cucumbers crawling along the sandy bottom, and the shoals of small fish that hovered around the Seraph’s bull. Then, abruptly, a dark shape glided from under the ship. It was as long as one of the longboats, and as broad. Its back was banded with darker wavy lines and the monstrous tail beat to a lazy rhythm.

The Seraph had been long enough at this mooring for the galley slops and sewage she had dumped into the bay to attract the tiger sharks from the deep water beyond the reef. Hal felt his skin prickle as he watched the monster turn with a flick of its tail and disappear under the ship.

The tiger shark was the creature that haunted the nightmares of every mariner in these tropical waters.

Hal left the rail and walked slowly down the line of prisoners.

At last his grief had a target on which to focus.

it took all his will-power to keep his anger under control and his expression neutral as he peered into the faces of the corsairs. Rachid was at the far end of the line. A filthy bloodstained rag of a bandage covered his injured ear. Hal stopped in front of him.

“What is the penalty for piracy?” he asked Rachid quietly, still holding his rage in check.

“What does the Koran say of the murderer and the rapist? Speak to me of the law of Shari’ah. Expound to me the law of Islam.” Rachid could not meet his eyes, but he trembled like a man in fever and the sweat ran down his cheeks to drip from his chin.

He had learned how ruthless was this Frankish sea-devil who confronted him now.

“Does not the Prophet tell us what must be the fate of the murderer? Does he not give the killer into the hands of the father of the victim?” Hal asked.

“Does he not exhort us, have no mercy upon him who has the blood of the innocent upon his hands?” Rachid fell to his knees on the deck and tried to kiss Hal’s feet.

“Mercy, great lord! I place my worthless soul in your hands.” Hal kicked him away as though he were a cur, and walked back down the line.

“The Prophet tells us that the penalty for murder is death. You are all murderers taken bloody-handed in the act of piracy. I am a servant of the English king, charged and empowered by His Majesty with the duty of ridding these seas of such offal as you.” Hal turned to Ned Tyler.

“Mr. Tyler, have a rope reeved at the yard-arm for each of the prisoners.” He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, head thrown back to watch the ropes carried aloft and run through the sheaves.

“Ready to proceed with punishment,” Ned reported at last, when the nooses were set and a party of sailors stood ready at the tail of each rope.

“Leave that rogue for last.” Hal gestured at Rachid, who still cringed upon his knees.

“Hang the others.” Still in their chains, squealing and struggling, crying to Allah for mercy, the nooses were dropped over their heads and tightened around their necks. Then the men on the rope tails walked away with them. stomping their bare feet on the deck in unison and chanting as though they were setting the mainsail. Three and four at a time, the Arabs were hoisted kicking and gasping to the high yard Gradually their struggles quieted and they hung there like” bunches of grotesque fruit, their necks twisted awkwardly, their tongues protruding, purple and swollen, from their gaping mouths.

At last Rachid was alone on the deck. Hal went back to stand over him.

“I gave them an easy death,” he said.

“But you have deprived me of my youngest son. You will not be so fortunate, unless you can tell me what I need to know.”

“Anything in my power, effendi,” Rachid blubbered.

“You need only ask it of me.”

“I need to know where I can find al-Auf and my son.) “I do not know that, effendi.” Rachid shook his head so violently that his tears sprayed like water from a spaniel’s back. Hal reached down and lifted him to his feet, twisted one arm up between his shoulder-blades and marched him to the ship’s rail.

“Look down there!” he whispered in the man’s mutilated ear.

“See what waits you.” Rachid let out a piercing Wail, as the tiger shark slid silently through the bright waters below, rolling slightly so that they could see every detail of the grotesque foreshortened head. It looked up at them with a single pig-like eye.

“Where can I find al-Auf? Where is his sally-art? Tell it to me and you will die swiftly and go to your God in one piece, not through the maw of that unclean creature down there.”

“I know not.”

Rachid sobbed.

“Very few men know where al-Auf has his citadel.

I am only a poor fisherman.”

“Abolfl” Hal called, and the tall black man strode to his side with the tail of the last hanging rope in his hand.

“Head firstP Hal ordered.

Aboli knelt swiftly and looped the rope through the chains that fettered the Arab’s ankles.

“Heave away!” he told the sailors who held the rope’s other end and Rachid was hoisted feet first into the air, swinging out like a pendulum over the ship’s side.

“Where is al—Auff Hal called to him.

“Where can I find my son?”

“I know not. I call on God to witness,” Rachid screamed.

“Lower away!” Hal told the men on the rope end, and Rachid dropped jerkily towards the surface of the water.

“Avast!” He stopped them when Rachid’s face was only a foot above the water. The man tried to turn his head to look back at Hal, who was leaning far out over the rail.

“I know not. I swear by all things holy,” he screamed.

“I know not where al-Auf has your son.” Hal nodded to Aboli.

“Feed the beast!” Aboli lifted one of a row of leather buckets filled with slops from the galley that he had ready beside the rail. He poured the contents over the side and the mess of fish1 heads guts and peelings splattered into the sea. The shoals of small fish darted upwards to the feast and churned the surface in their frantic greed.

Aboli threw another bucketful overboard.

Within a minute there was a dark, menacing movement below the tiny milling shoals. Then a broad, striped back pushed up from the depths with awful majesty. The shoals of smaller fish scattered and the behemoth rose to the surface and opened its jaws, which could have engulfed a man’s torso. It’s multiple rows of teeth rose erect as it snapped at the scraps, stirring the waters even though it was still deep beneath where Rachid hung suspended. ” “You can never pass through the gates of Paradise if your body has been devoured by such an obscene, unclean fish,” Hal called down to him.

His prisoner wriggled helplessly on the end of the line.

His voice was shrill and incoherent.

“No! I know not.

Mercy, great lord.”

“Down!” Hal gestured to the men on the rope, and they let Rachid drop until his head and shoulders were submerged.

“Hold him there.” Hal watched him kick and struggle. The great shark sensed the disturbance and circled under him, rising slowly and cautiously out of the depths.

Rachid’s movements were becoming weak and spasmodic as he drowned.

“Heave away!” Hal signalled, and they lifted Rachid clear of the surface. He dangled there upside down. He had lost the bloody bandage from around his head, and his long sodden locks dangled in the water.

He was fighting for breath, twisting and writhing at the end of the rope.

“Speak to me!” Hal bellowed.

“Speak to me of my youngest son.”

He felt cold, devoid of any pity or compassion. The shark smelt the blood on the drifting bandage and rose to it. Again, the huge jaws opened and it sucked in the scrap of cloth. As it dived, arching its back, its tail fin broke through the surface and struck the hanging man a heavy blow. Rachid squealed with terror and swung back and forth on the rope.

“Speak!” Hal encouraged him.

“I wait to hear about my son.”

“I

cannot tell what I do not know,” Rachid howled back, and Hal waved to the men on the rope. They dropped him back into the water, as far as his waist. Deep down the shark swirled with an agility and speed that seemed impossible in such a huge creature and rushed up towards the surface, growing even larger as it approached.

“Heave!” Hal called sharply, and they lifted Rachid clear just as the great jaws snapped closed, plucking him out of their reach with only inches to spare.

“It is still not too late,” Hal said, just loudly enough to reach Rachid through his terror and failing strength.

“Tell me and end it swiftly.”

“I do not know where you can find al-Auf, but I know a man who does,” Rachid answered, his voice broken and rough with terror.

“Give me his name.”

“His name is Grey effendi in Zanzibar. He was the one who told us of the great treasure you carry in your ship.”

“Down!” Hal gave the signal, and as they lowered Rachid, the tiger shark rushed up to meet him. This time Hal did not attempt to pluck him away, he was of no further value. He sent Rachid to his punishment without a qualm, and watched dispassionately as the shark’s jaws closed over the man’s head, engulfing him to the shoulders.

The shark hung from the rope, flexing and whipping its tail from side to side, jackknifing its massive body, working its fangs in a shearing action, cutting through flesh and bone. Its great weight and the violence of its movements jerked the men on the other end of the rope off their feet, and sent them skidding across the deck.

Then the fangs met and sheared away Rachid’s head cleanly. The shark dropped back, leaving his corpse dangling and twitching over the surface, blood spraying from the severed neck and clouding the waters.

Hal drew his sword from the sheath on his belt and with a single backhanded slash cut the rope. The headless body dropped into the sea and sank slowly, turning end over end in dark curtains of its own blood. The shark came back and, like a dog accepting a titbit, took the body almost gently in its half-moon mouth and swam away with it into the deeper water. Hal moved away from the ship’s side.

“The tide will turn in an hour, Mr. Tyler.” He looked up at the dead men hanging at the yard-arm.

“Rid the ship of those. Throw them overboard. We will sail for Zanzibar on the ebb tide.” They rounded the point of Ras Ibn Khum with every sail set to the royals and came on to the wind in a broad reach.

“Your new course is northeast by north, Mr. Tyler,” Hal said.

“With this wind, we should be off Zanzibar again before sunset tomorrow evening.” al did not wish to give forewarning of his arrival so during the night he hove to in the channel, and took the Seraph into Zanzibar harbour in the dawn. He dipped his colours in courtesy to the fort, and the moment the anchor grabbed a hold on the bottom he ordered the longboat away. Then he hurried down to his cabin and took the brace of double-barrelled rifled pistols from his desk and thrust them into his sword-belt.

As he stepped out of his cabin, Tom was waiting for him. He had his cap on his head, a sword on his belt and boots on his usually bare feet.

“I wish to come with you, sir,” Tom said. Hal hesitated there might be fighting ashore, but Tom went on quickly, “I shared the oath with you, Father.”

“Come on, then.” Hal ran onto the deck.

“Be ready to sail again at a moment’s notice,” he told Ned Tyler, and went down into the longboat with Tom and a dozen men.

At the quay he left All Wilson and four seamen to take care of the boat.

“Stand off from the quay, but be ready to come in and pick us up in a hurry,” he told All, then said to Aboli, “Take us back to the consul’s house. Go swiftly.

Stay together.” They went through the narrow streets at a trot, in double file, shoulder to shoulder, their weapons at the ready. When they reached the front door of Grey’s house Hal nodded at Aboli, who beat on the carved panels with the butt of the pike he carried. The blows reverberated through the quiet house. After an interval they heard shuffling footsteps approaching from the other side of the door, and the latch was lifted. An ancient female slave stared out at the party of armed men. Her wrinkled features crumpled in consternation, and she tried to slam the door shut again. Aboli blocked it with his shoulder.