A Falcon Flies (80 page)

Mungo snatched the bucket off the deck and with one arm around Tippoo's shoulders held it for him – but all that Tippoo could bring up was a little splash of blood and brown bile, and when he fell back on the bunk he was gasping unevenly, bathed in fresh sweat and his eyes rolled back in his skull until only a little half moon of the iris still showed.

Mungo stood beside his bunk for a full five minutes, bowed and attentive, swaying slightly to the ship's movement, but otherwise still and silent. His brow was creased with thought and his gaze remote, and watching him, Robyn knew he was making the dire decision – the throw of the dice of life, friendship against the loss of his ship and perhaps even his own liberty, for to go into a British port with slaves in his holds was an awful risk.

Strange, now that he was showing this gentler side of his nature, that her affection came flooding back at full strength, she felt mean and cheap for playing on his deepest emotions, and for torturing the huge yellow Muslim on the narrow bunk.

Mungo swore quietly but decisively and, still stooped under the low deck, strode from the cabin.

Robyn's affection turned to disgust and disappointment. Disgust that even the life of an old and loyal friend meant nothing to this cruel and merciless man whom she was doomed to love, and intense disappointment that her ruse had failed, that she had inflicted this dangerous suffering on Tippoo to no avail.

She sank down wearily and bitterly beside his bunk, took a cloth soaked in sea water and bathed the sweat-basted yellow head.

During their long voyage down the Atlantic, Robyn had grown sensitive to all
Huron
's moods, to the feel of the deck underfoot at every point of sailing, and to the sounds that her hull made in different sea and wind conditions, and now abruptly she felt the deck cant sharply beneath her. She heard the stamp of bare feet on the deck above as her yards were trained around and
Huron
's action became easier, the sounds of her hull and rigging muted as she took the wind in over her stern quarter and rode more easily.

‘He's altered course towards the west,' she breathed as she lifted her head to listen. ‘It worked. He is going in to Port Natal. Oh thank you Lord, it worked.'

H
uron
anchored well offshore, out on the thirty-fathom line of the shelving coast, so that she could not benefit from the shelter of the huge whale-backed bluff that protected Port Natal's natural harbour. Even with a powerful telescope, a watcher on the shore would be unable to make out any significant details of
Huron
's cargo, nor of her true occupation. However, the ship paid for her offshore berth by taking the unfettered scend of the sea and the wind. She pitched and she rolled and she jerked at her anchor chain.

At her peak she flew the stars and stripes of her country – and below that the yellow ‘Quebec', the plague flag which warned, ‘Stay away from me! I have plague on board!'

Mungo St John placed an armed watch on both sides of the ship and others at her bow and stern, and, despite Robyn's strident protest, she was confined to her cabin for the duration of the ship's call, with another armed guard outside her door.

‘You are very well aware of the reason, Doctor Ballantyne.' Mungo answered her protests calmly. ‘I do not wish you to have any communication whatsoever with your countrymen ashore.'

The whaler, when it took Tippoo ashore, was rowed by men that Mungo selected personally, and they were instructed to inform the Harbour Master that there was smallpox aboard, and to request that no other vessel be allowed near
Huron
.

‘I can only wait three days for you.' Mungo stooped over the litter on which Tippoo was carried on deck. ‘That is all I can risk. If you are not sufficiently recovered by then, you will have to stay here until my return. That cannot be more than five months.' He tucked a leather draw-string purse under Tippoo's blanket. ‘And that will pay your expenses in the meanwhile. Get well, Mr Tippoo, I need you.'

Robyn had administered another dose of the peppermint and ipecacuanha a few minutes previously, and Tippoo could reply only in an agonized whisper.

‘I will wait for you, Captain Mungo, as long as she takes.'

Mungo's voice was husky as he straightened and spoke to the seamen carrying the litter.

‘Handle him easy, you hear me.'

For three days Robyn sweated and fretted in the stuffy little cabin, trying to occupy her time with writing up her journals but distracted by any loud noise from the deck above, her heart pounding as she both hoped for and dreaded the hail from a British gun-boat, or the rush of a boarding-party coming in over
Huron
's side.

On the third morning Tippoo was rowed back to the ship, and he climbed up the side and in through the entry port unaided. Without further doses of ipecacuanha, his recovery had amazed the military surgeons ashore, but he was so thin that the skin hung in folds from his jowls like a bulldog, his belly had shrunk so that he had tied his breeches with a length of rope to keep them from sinking down past his flattened belly, but still they flapped around his shrunken buttocks.

His skin was the pale yellow of ancient ivory, and he was so weak he had to pause to rest when he reached the deck.

‘Welcome aboard, Mr Tippoo,' Mungo called from the quarterdeck. ‘And if you have finished your holiday ashore, I'll thank you to get this ship under way immediately.'

Twelve days later, having struggled with flukey and variable winds, Mungo St John played the field of his glass down the open gaping maw of False Bay. On his right hand rose the distinctive curved black peak of Hangklip, shaped from this angle like a shark's dorsal fin, and directly opposite it across the mouth of the bay the southernmost tip of the African continent, Cape Point, with its lighthouse perched high above the steep wet cliffs.

It was a magnificent Cape summer's day, a light and fickle breeze scratching dark patches on the surface of the rolling dark blue sea, leaving the rest of it with a satiny gloss. There were seabirds working, their wings twinkling like flurrying snow flakes in the sunlight, huge flocks of them that stretched low across the horizon.

Creeping along on the breeze, lying for minutes at a time completely becalmed,
Huron
took half a day to round the point and came on to west-north-west and a point north, the course that would carry her up the Atlantic, across the equator and finally into Charleston Roads.

Once they were on their new course, Mungo St John had leisure to inspect the other sails that were in sight. There were nine, no, ten other vessels in view now, for there was another far out to sea, just her topsails showing. They were small fishing craft out from Hout Bay and Table Bay, and the seabirds clouded the air about them, most of them were between
Huron
and the land, and all of them were bare-masted or under working sail as they plied their lines or their nets. Only the vessel furthest out was carrying topsails, and though she was hull down she gave to Mungo's seaman's eye the impression of being a bigger ship than the rest of the fishing fleet.

‘There's a ship for you!' Tippoo exclaimed, touching Mungo's arm to draw his attention and when he swung his glass back towards the land Mungo murmured with pleasure as a square-rigged East Indiaman came into view around the headland that guarded the entrance to Table Bay itself.

She was ass plendid a sight as
Huron
was herself, canvas piled to the sky and her paintwork gleaming in snowy white and Burgundy red, the two lovely ships on reciprocal courses passed each other by two cables' length, the officers eyeing each other through their telescopes with professional interest and appraisal as they paid passing honours.

Robyn was also at
Huron
's rail, pining towards the land. The proximity of the beautiful ship interested her hardly at all, it was that flat-topped mountain from which she could barely tear her gaze. It was so very close, marking as it did her one hope of succour, her friends there, the British Governor and the Cape Squadron, if they only knew that she was a prisoner aboard this slave ship.

The thought was interrupted by an abrupt movement that she caught from the corner of her eye – strange how receptive she was to Mungo St John's smallest movement, to his slightest change of expression – and now she saw that he had turned his back on the East Indiaman as she dwindled away astern, and instead he was peering intently over
Huron
's port side, his expression rapt, his whole body seemed charged with latent energy, and the hands that gripped the barrel of the telescope were ivory knuckled with tension.

Quickly she followed his gaze, and for the first time noticed a tiny shred of white on the horizon that did not fade like the white caps of the waves, but stood constant and bright in the sunlight, though even as she watched it seemed to alter its shape slightly and – was it her imagination, or was it a thin dark wavering line that seemed to appear behind it and spread slowly away in the direction of the wind?

‘Mr Tippoo, what do you make of that sail?' She heard the timbre of concern and alarm in Mungo St John's tone, and her heart leapt wildly, with hope and a Judas dread.

F
or Clinton Codrington it had been a desperate run down the eastern coastline of southern Africa, long days and sleepless nights of unceasing strain, when hope and despair pendulumed against each other. Each shift or change in the wind either alarmed or encouraged him, for it would either aid or hinder the tall clipper ship he was racing to head. The calms elated him, and the revival of the south-easterly prevailing winds sent his spirits plunging.

On the last days there was another worry to plague him. He had burned his coal like a spendthrift on the long thousand-mile run southwards, and his engineer came up on deck, a small red-headed Scot with the grease and coal-dust etched into his skin so that he seemed to be suffering from some debilitating and incurable disease.

‘The stokers' shovels be hitting the bottom of the bunkers already,' he told Clinton with mournful relish. ‘I warned ye, sir, that we'd not make it if you—'

‘Burn the ship's furniture if you must,' Clinton snapped at him. ‘You can start with my bunk, I'll not be needing it.'

And when the engineer would have argued further Clinton added, ‘I don't care how you do it, Mr MacDonald, but I want a full head of steam on your boiler until I reach Cape Point, and another full head of steam when I bring this ship into action.'

They raised the Cape Point lighthouse a few minutes after midnight the following night, and Clinton's voice was hoarse with fatigue and relief as he stooped over the voice pipe.

‘Mr MacDonald, you can let your fires damp down, but keep your furnaces warmed and ready to stoke. When I ask for steam again, I'll need it in a hurry.'

‘You'll be calling at Table Bay to take on fresh bunkers, of course, sir?'

‘I'll let you know when,' Clinton promised him, and snapped the lid of the speaking tube closed and straightened up.

The Cape naval base, with all its amenities lay only a few hours steaming away. By dawn he could be filling
Black Joke
with coal and water and fresh vegetables.

However, Clinton knew that within minutes of dropping anchor in Table Bay, Admiral Kemp or one of his representatives would be on his way out to the ship, and Clinton's term of independent command would be over. He would revert to being a very junior commander, whose recent actions needed a great deal of explanation.

The closer that Clinton drew to Admiralty House, the louder the warnings of Sir John Bannerman rang in his ears, and the more soberly he was forced to review his own position. The excitement of storming Arab barracoons and of seizing slave-laden dhows on the high seas had long ago cooled, and Clinton realized that once he entered it he would not be able to escape again from Table Bay for weeks, or possibly months. It would not even suit his immediate plans to be seen and recognized from the land, for a boat would immediately be sent out by Admiral Kemp to order him in to face judgement and retribution.

Clinton felt not the least trepidation about the Navy's ultimate judgement, he was so indifferent to the threat hanging over his career that he surprised even himself. There was only one desire, one object in his mind, that overshadowed all else. He must have his ship in position to intercept
Huron
as she rounded the Cape, if she had not already done so. Nobody and nothing must prevent him from doing so. After that he would face his accusers with complete equanimity.
Huron
and Robyn Ballantyne first, beside them all else was pale and insignificant.

‘Mr Denham,' he called his Lieutenant across the dark deck. ‘We will take up night patrol station ten miles off Cape Point, and I am to be called immediately the lights of any ship are sighted.'

As Clinton threw himself down, fully dressed and booted, upon his bunk, he experienced the first peace of mind since leaving Zanzibar harbour. He had done all that was in his power to reach Cape Point ahead of
Huron
, and now the rest was in the hands of God – and his trust in God was implicit.

He fell asleep almost instantly, and his steward woke him again an hour before dawn. He left the mug of coffee to grow cold beside his bunk and hurried on deck, reaching it a few seconds ahead of Lieutenant Denham.

‘No ships during the night, sir.' Ferris, who had the watch, saluted him.

‘Very well, Mr Ferris,' Clinton acknowledged. ‘We will take up our daylight patrol station immediately.'

By the time the light was strong enough for a watcher on the shore to make out any details,
Black Joke
had retreated tactfully below the horizon and it would have taken a sharp eye to pick out the occasional flash of her topsails, let alone to identify the gunboat and to speed a report to Admiral Kemp that his prodigal had returned.