Near dawn, with the tide pushing back against the flow of the river, the groaning hull suddenly stopped protesting. With a ponderous, swooping sensation, Santa Catalina ’s stern finally freed itself from the muddy embrace that had clutched it for so long, and with an audible trembling moan, it swung a few degrees away from the jungle shore. Many of the expedition were asleep after a torturous night, but the unmistakable motion of the suddenly floating stern instigated a growing, exhausted cheer that soon included all the now nearly two hundred Lemurian sailors and Marines inhabiting the ship, as well as the half dozen humans.
“Pipe down, pipe down,” Chapelle called benevolently over the newly repaired shipwide circuit. He himself had fallen asleep on the bridge, sitting on one of the few chairs they’d preserved. He glanced at his watch, realizing he’d slept through the morning watch change. He wondered briefly if there’d been a change. No reason to do it on the bridge of a beached ship, he supposed. Hmm. Monk should be officer of the deck. “Major Mallory, Lieutenant Bekiaa, and Lieutenant Monk to the bridge, on the double. Bosun’s Mate Saama-Kera and Jannik-Fas will coordinate a detail to make sure we remain secure to the shore for now, but don’t swing around and beach again either.” He grinned. “The rest of you may continue to celebrate for one entire minute!”
The cheers resumed, punctuated by laughter, and the ship practically throbbed with stamping feet.
All around, in the water below, large yellow eyes popped up into the brightening day. The Great Mother of the Dry Folk had stirred from her sleep at last. They’d known she was alive, that she breathed once more for a couple of dark spans, but now she’d moved! They’d felt it in the water! All regretted their attack on the Dry Folk. They simply hadn’t known. Would that their meeting had been different! They certainly respected the Dry Folk now, not only as warriors but for their medicine as well. The wounded they’d returned were healing quickly, and they seemed near to healing their Great Mother! They actually envied them that. Not that the natives would ever want to heal a Great Mother, but it might be nice to have a Great Mother that inspired such devotion-an actual desire to heal her in the first place. Most extraordinary creatures.
CHAPTER 17
Respite Island
R espite Island appeared to be all its name implied as the squadron approached it from the northwest the following morning. Doubtless volcanic, the island featured a pair of high peaks near its western coast, and the land around them was a mixture of dense, exotic jungles, interspersed cultivated fields. Limestone cliffs jutted skyward along the north flank, heavily undermined by the relentless sea, but as the ships steamed east, they encountered a broad barrier reef that protected a vast anchorage on the northeast coast. Achilles was once more under her own power, but Icarus led the way, flying a large pennant to summon a pilot. Before long, a small, extreme, single- masted topsail schooner slashed its way toward them from beyond a point of land. It was a gorgeous little craft, Matt decided: around fifty feet long, painted dark blue with bright yellow trim and a white bottom. It was only about twice as large as one of Walker ’s launches, but carried a truly magnificent spread of canvas. It was fast too, faster than anything Matt had ever seen under sail. He grinned at the sight of her.
“Pretty little thing,” the Bosun commented.
“Yeah,” Matt replied. “One of these days when all this is over and I get to retire, I want one just like her!” His grin suddenly faded. “I bet Sandra would like that,” he murmured. Gray said nothing. What could he say?
Quickly, the little schooner raced to Icarus ’ side and the smaller Imperial frigate hoisted a clear signal to “follow me.” As they steamed around the point and farther out to sea to avoid the reef, the schooner dropped back and paced Walker for a distance, its crew openly gawking at the sleek, freshly touched-up old destroyer that moved along so apparently effortlessly with her twin screw propellers. Matt doubted they gawked with envy; they had no reason to be envious, given their trim, beautifully appointed little craft, but he conceded they might have been struck with amazement.
Imperial shipmakers had developed crude screw propellers, but they were virtually unused. Paddle wheels were “tried and true” and required no underwater hull piercings, which tended to leak. Matt firmly believed that paddle wheels were far more vulnerable, not only to battle damage but to heavy weather as well, but he could understand why a ship without them might look strange to people so accustomed to their use. However inefficient they were, they worked, and in a very visible way. Walker could throw up quite a wake at higher speeds, but right now there was little more than if she’d been under sail. This, combined with her odd appearance and obvious steel construction, had to make quite an impression even on people more technologically advanced than the Lemurians had been at first. The little schooner certainly made an impression on him.
Many of the Lemurians held up their hands, palm out, in their traditional greeting, and the schooner’s crew appeared to notice them for the first time. There was a sudden disarray among its sails, and then she was slanting away, back the direction she’d come. Some of the bridge watch chuckled, and Matt did too. He doubted the schooner was supposed to abandon her pilot-whoever she’d put aboard Icarus was probably throwing a fit.
After a long reach to eastward, the pilot must have indicated the channel, because Icarus turned and steamed back toward the island. Achilles made the same turn at the same point, and Walker followed suit. At their crawling pace, it would still be nearly an hour before they came under the guns of the looming limestone fortress overlooking the anchorage that Jenks had told them to expect. All the same, Matt summoned Boats Bashear.
“Another thirty minutes I should think, then line the sides, if you please.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Bashear replied and left the bridge, fingering his bosun’s pipe. Exactly half an hour later, the pipe trilled insistently and the crew turned out in style. White T-shirts, blue or white kilts and dungarees, and the ever-present Dixie cup hats had become the standard tropical (as if they’d needed any other kind) dress, and as the mixed crew lined the rails, Matt was pleased by how good they looked. Maybe a little bizarre-with humans and ’Cats, tall and short, the ’Cats with their multicolored furs-but good. Behind him, Chack’s Marines had lined the weather deck in full battle garb of dark blue kilts with red piping, white leather torso armor, and crossed black cartridge box straps. There were polished bronze greaves, sword hilts, and “tin hats” on their heads, and bright muskets on their shoulders with gleaming fixed bayonets. Chack paced among them, inspecting the troops for perfection, while he still wore his own battered American helmet, pattern of 1917 cutlass, and a Krag rifle suspended muzzle down by a strap over his shoulder.
Matt raised his binoculars. He hadn’t expected much harbor traffic, and he’d been right. There were several ships at anchor, but none appeared to be warships, and a couple even looked like they’d been through the recent storm. They were weathered and washed out, as if they’d been too long at sea, and their lines were a little jagged with missing rails and spliced yards and masts. Only one was a steamer and it was rather small. They were close enough now to see the Imperial flag floating high above the fortress, and when a thought struck him, Matt studied the ships once more. Hmm. All but the steamer were flying the Company banner. He had to force himself to consider the probability that regardless of how corrupt the Company may be, chances were that the officers and crews of those ships were just honest sailors working for a living. He wondered what cargo they’d brought, however.
More small boats of every description darted to and fro, seemingly suspended on air. Now that they’d entered the vast lagoon, the water was utterly clear, almost crystalline in its purity.
“Skipper,” Palmer said, “ Achilles sends that she’ll put in at the Company dock. It’s the biggest one. There’s no naval dock here. Commodore Jenks says he’ll signal Icarus to take up a blocking station to prevent those Company ships from getting underway, and asks if we’ll position ourselves to cover Icarus and Achilles with our guns. He… ah… begs that you’ll give the people here the benefit of the doubt for now, and he’s going to try to sort things out himself.”
Matt watched a series of signals race up a halyard aboard Jenks’s ship. “Very well,” he said, then lowered his voice to a grumble. “What does he think I’ll do? Just start blasting away?” He hadn’t meant for anyone to hear him, but the Bosun chuckled.
“Prob’ly. And why not?” He motioned at one of the Company flags. “We may not be at war with the Empire yet, but the last thing we saw with one of those flags shot at us without warning. We are at war with the Company, ain’t we?”
“The Company, but maybe not all Company ships. Yet.” Matt said.
“Jumpin’ Jesus!” Kutas almost chirped.
