They stared at the piles of corpses, their faces stiff and expressionless, concealing their horror at the foul plague that lurked there in the palm groves, concealing also their disappointment and chagrin at finding the anchorage deserted and Huron gone. Stop engine, Clinton broke the silence. 'Let go port anchor.'
Denham and Ferris turned to look at their Captain their carefully controlled expressions cracking with disbelieving dread; he was going to send a party ashore. They would come back aboard carrying the plague with them, they would all be doomed.
The bow anchor hit the mud of the estuary bottom, and Black Joke turned sharply, the flow of the tide swinging her across the narrow channel in her own length, the anchor holding her head until she was pointed directly back down the river towards the sea. Immediately Clinton gave the order, 'Slow ahead, and, as the ship breasted the tide, 'Up anchor, and the steam winch clattered merrily. The officers relaxed visibly, and Denham allowed himself to smile with relief. The Captain had used the anchor merely to turn the ship as swiftly as possible without going through the dangerous business of backing and filling in the narrow channel against the push of the tide.
As the anchor came back aboard with the gluey black mud clinging to its flukes, Clinton gave another series of orders. Half ahead. ' That was as fast as he dared push for the open sea. Secure from action stations.'
There was no enemy to fight and as the heavy longbarrelled thirty-two pounder guns were run in, Black Joke handled more easily. Mr. Ferris, we will fumigate the ship.'
The smoke from the pails of burning sulphur would redden all their eyes and for days would taint the food and water, but Clinton's dread of smallpox outweighed such small considerations as comfort, and, besides, he smiled wryly to himself, any change to the taste of Black lake's bullied beef and hard bread could only be an improvement.
The smile was fleeting. He was sickened by his brief glimpses of the barracoons, and his anger was a cold sharp thing like the blade of the cutlass on his belt. Mr. Denham, he said quietly, 'please plot a course for Good Hope. We'll come on to it the moment we clear the land He moved to the rail, half his mind on the job of conning Black Joke out of this stinking green river into the open sea, the other half of his mind running swiftly over the problem of bringing his ship into action against Huron.
How long was the start that the tall clipper had over his gunboat? Robyn Ballantyne's letter had been dated 16th November, today was the 27th November. Eleven days. That was too much. He could only hope that Robyn had been able to delay the sailing, as she had promised.
Clinton glanced back over his shoulder at the blue smoke column that blurred the horizon. How long had those fires in the barracoons been burning? Not more than three or four days, he guessed, with more hope than conviction. Yet even that was still too long a start. He had seen Huron on a wind and she was swift as a swallow, and light as a witch. Even with eight hundred slaves in her holds, and her water casks filled, she would toy with Black joke in any wind better than a light breeze.
His only advantage would be in the offing that Huron must make to get on the trades and weather the bulge of the continent, while Black joke could cut across the other arm of the triangle, hugging the land. It was small advantage, a few hundred leagues, and in the end it would all depend on the wind.
Clinton found he was pounding his clenched fist on the ship's rail, that he was glaring ahead with such ferocity that the idle hands of the lee rail were watching him curiously.
With an effort he forced his features to relax, and linked his hands at the small of his back, beneath the tails of his uniform coat, but his eyes still glittered pale sapphire blue and his lips were chalky with stress. It seemed too long for his patience before he could at last bring Black Joke on to her true course, and bend to the engine room voice-tube.
I want all the speed you can squeeze out of her, he told his engineer. 'There is twenty thousand pounds of prize money just below the horizon, but it's running like a fox and I'll need every pound of steam you can give me.'
He straightened up and the wind whipped his pale golden hair against his sun-gilded cheeks and forehead.
He glanced up at the sky and saw the ponderous roll of the monsoon clouds on the wind.
Huron would have it full and boisterous on her port beam, with that hull and rigging it was probably her best point of sailing.
He knew that there was not the remotest chance of finding the clipper on the open sea, there were millions of square miles of ocean to cover, not even a battle fleet with a full squadron of frigates ideally placed ahead of the fugitive would have much chance of finding a single ship in that infinity of water.
Clinton knew that his only chance was to reach the southern tip of the continent ahead of Huron and to take up station athwart the narrow shipping-lane that was threaded around Cape Point. However, once Huron rounded the southern cape, the whole of the wide Atlantic would lie ahead of her and she would be gone again.
Clinton's jawline clenched spasmodically at the thought of the American escaping into that limitless expanse of sea. If she had indeed eleven days, lead on him with this wind holding fair, she could even at this moment be raising the rocky cliffs of Cape Point. He put the thought from his mind and concentrated on coaxing every inch of speed from his ship over the long days and nights ahead.
Robyn had searched in vain for a subterfuge to delay Huron's departure from the Rio Save, even though she knew that if she succeeded she would be endangering the lives of all aboard her. However, Mungo St. John had swiftly regained his energy and determination as his wound healed and the effects of the inoculation passed.
Affected by Robyn's warning about the danger of battlefield plagues, he forced the pace of his crew in loading the slaves. They worked through the night by the light of tar-dipped rope torches, as well as by day, the crew every bit as eager as their Captain to be away from, this cursed river. Four days after the loading began, Huron's slave- decks were in place and her cargo of slaves aboard, and that evening at the full of the tide, using the last of the light and the first gusts of the offshore night breeze, Huron slipped over the bar, shook out her reefs and settled down to make her offing during the night.
At dawn they caught the steady push of the trades and Mungo brought her round on to a more southerly heading, close-hauled to make good their eastings before running for the bulge of Agulhas with the wind on the beam.
The sweet clean air of the open sea that had travelled thousands upon thousands of miles since last having touched land, swept through the ship, cleansing it of the dreadful stench of the plague barracoons, and Mungo's strict hygienic discipline helped to keep the holds free of the slave stink and impressed even Robyn, though reluctantly, with his forethought and his precautions.
By sacrificing a single slave deck, raising the space between each from the traditional 20 inches to 32 inches,
