in both vessels to lower the bilges. The sound never ceased: it was like the beating of a heart that kept the ship afloat. It was yet another reason why they must seek out the Dutchmen: they needed to change ships. The Lady Edwina was being eaten away beneath their feet.
As the two ships came within hailing distance the crews swarmed into the rigging and lined the bulwarks to shout ribald banter across the water.
The numbers of men packed into each vessel never failed to amaze Hal when he saw them in a mass like this. The Lady Edwina was a ship of 170 tons burden, with an overall length of little more than 70 feet, but she carried a crew of a hundred and thirty men if you included those now manning the two pinnaces. The Gull was not much larger, but with half as many men again aboard.
Every one of those fighting men would be needed if they were to overwhelm one of the huge Dutch East India galleons. Sir Francis had gathered intelligence from all the corners of the southern ocean from other Knights of the Order, and knew that at least five of these great ships were still at sea. So far this season twenty-one of the Company's galleons had made the passage and had called at the tiny victualling station below the towering Tafelberg, as the Dutch called it, or Table Mountain at the foot of the southern continent before turning northwards and voyaging up the Atlantic towards Amsterdam.
Those five tardy ships, still straggling across the Ocean of the Indies, must round the Cape before the southeasterly trades fell away and the wind turned foul into the north-west. That would be soon.
When the Gull of Moray was not cruising in the guerre de course, which was a euphemism for privateering, Angus Cochran, Earl of Cumbrae, rounded out his purse by trading for slaves in the markets of Zanzibar.
Once they had been shackled to the ring bolts in the deck of the long narrow slave hold, they could not be released until the ship docked at the end of her voyage in the ports of the Orient. This meant that even those poor creatures who succumbed during the dreadful tropical passage of the Ocean of the Indies must lie rotting with the living in the confined spaces of the 'tween decks. The effluvium of decaying corpses, mingled with the waste odour of the living, gave the slave ships a distinctive stench that identified them for many leagues down wind. No amount of scouring with even the strongest lyes could ever rid a slaver of her characteristic smell.
As the Gull crossed upwind, there were howls of exaggerated disgust from the crew of the Lady Edwina. 'By God, she stinks like a dung-heap.'
'Did you not wipe your backsides, you poxy vermin? We can smell you from here!' one yelled across at the pretty little frigate. The language bawled back from the Gull made Hal grin. Of course, the human bowels held no mysteries for him, but he did not understand much of the rest of it, for he had never seen those parts of a woman to which the seamen in both ships referred in such graphic detail, nor knew of the uses to which they could be put, but it excited his imagination to hear them so described. His amusement was enhanced when he imagined his father's fury at hearing it.
Sir Francis was a devout man who believed that the fortunes of war could be influenced by the god-fearing behaviour of every man aboard.
He forbade gambling, blasphemy and the drinking of strong spirits.
He led prayers twice a day and exhorted his seamen to gentle and dignified behaviour when they put into port although Hal knew that this advice was seldom followed. Now Sir Francis frowned darkly as he listened to his men exchange insults with those of the Buzzard but, as he could not-have half the ship's company flogged to signal his disapproval, he held his tongue until he was in easy hail of the frigate.
In the meantime he sent his servant to his cabin to fetch his cloak. What he had to say to the Buzzard was official and he should be in regalia. When the man returned, Sir Francis slipped the magnificent velvet cloak over his shoulders before he lifted his speaking trumpet to his lips. 'Good morrow, my lord!'
The Buzzard came to his rail and lifted one hand in salute. Above his plaid he wore half- armour, which gleamed in the fresh morning light, but his head was bare, his red hair and beard bushed together like a haystack, the curls dancing on the wind as though his head was on fire. 'Jesus love you, Franky!' he bellowed back, his great voice easily transcending the wind.
'Your station is on the eastern flank! 'The wind and his anger made Sir Francis short. 'Why have you deserted it?' The Buzzard spread his hands in an expressive gesture of apology. 'I have little water and am completely out of patience. Sixty-five days are enough for me and my brave fellows. There are slaves and gold for the taking along the Sofala coast.' His accent was like a Scottish gale.
'Your commission does not allow you to attack Portuguese shipping.'
'Dutch, Portuguese or Spanish,' Cumbrae shouted back. 'Their gold shines as prettily. You know well that there is no peace beyond the Line. ' 'You are well named the Buzzard,' Sir Francis roared in frustration, 'for you have the same appetite as that carrion bird!' Yet what Cumbrae had said was true. There was no peace beyond the Line.
A century and a half ago, by Papal Bull Inter Caetero of 25 September 1493, the Line had been drawn down the mid- Atlantic, north to south, by Pope Alexander VI to divide the world between Portugal and Spain. What hope was there that the excluded Christian nations, in their envy and resentment, would honour this declaration? Spontaneously, another doctrine, was born: 'No peace beyond the Line!' It became the watchword of the privateer and the corsair. And its meaning extended in their minds to encompass all the unexplored regions of the oceans.
Within the waters of the northern continent, acts of piracy, rapine and murder whose perpetrator previously would have been hunted down by the combined navies of Christian Europe and hanged from his own yard-arm were condoned and even applauded when committed beyond the Line. Every embattled monarch signed Letters of Marque that, at a stroke, converted his merchantmen into privateers, ships of war, and sent them out marauding on the newly discovered oceans of the expanding globe.
Sir Francis Courtney's own letter had been signed by Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, the Lord Chancellor of England, in the name of His Majesty King Charles II. It sanctioned him to hunt down the ships of the Dutch Republic, with which England was at war.
'Once you desert your station, you forfeit your rights to claim a share of any prize!' Sir Francis called across the narrow strip of water between the ships, but the Buzzard turned away to issue orders to his helmsman.
He shouted to his piper, who stood at the ready, 'Give Sir Francis a tune to remember us by!' The stirring strains of 'Farewell to the Isles' carried across the water to the Lady Edwina, as the Buzzard's topmast men clambered like monkeys high into the rigging, and loosed the reefs. The Gull's top-hamper billowed out. The main sail filled with a boom like the discharge of cannon, she heeled eagerly to the south-easter and pressed her shoulder into the next blue swell, bursting it asunder.
As the Buzzard pulled away rapidly he came back to the stern rail, and his voice lifted above the skirling of the pipes and the whimper of the wind. 'May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ shield you, my revered brother Knight.' But on the Buzzard's lips it sounded like blasphemy.
With his cloak, which was quartered by the crimson croix pat tie of the Order, billowing and flapping from his wide shoulders, Sir Francis watched him go.
Slowly the ironic cheering and heavy banter of the men died away. A sombre new mood began to infect the ship as the company realized that their forces, puny before, had been more than halved in a single stroke. They had been left alone to meet the Dutchmen in whatever force they might appear. The seamen that crowded the Lady Edwina's deck and rigging were silent now, unable to meet each other's eyes.
Then Sir Francis threw back his head and laughed. 'All the more for us to share!' he cried, and they laughed with him and cheered as he made his way to his cabin below the poop deck.
For another hour Hal stayed at the masthead. He wondered how long the men's buoyant mood could last, for they were down to a mug of water twice a day. Although the land and its sweet rivers lay less than half a day's sailing away, Sir Francis had not dared detach even one of the pinnaces to fill the casks. The Dutchmen might come at any hour, and when they did he would need every man.
At last a man came aloft to relieve Hal at the lookout. 'what is there to see, lad?' he asked, as he slipped into the canvas crow's nest beside Hal.
'Precious little,' Hal admitted, and pointed out the tiny sails of the two pirmaces on the distant horizon. 'Neither carries any signals,' Hal told him. 'Watch for the red flag it'll mean they have the chase in sight.'
The sailor grunted. 'You'll be teaching me to fart next.' But he smiled at Hal in avuncular fashion the boy was the ship's favourite.
Hal grinned back at him. 'God's truth, but you need no teaching, Master Simon. I've heard you at the bucket in the heads. I'd rather face a Dutch broadside. You nigh crack every timber in the hull.'
Simon let out an explosive guffaw, and punched Hal's shoulder. 'Down with you, lad, before I teach you to fly like an albatross.'
Hal began to scramble down the shrouds. At first he moved stiffly, his muscles cramped and chilled after the long vigil, but he soon warmed up and swung down lithely.
Some of the men on the deck paused at their labours on the pumps, or with palm and needle as they
