Birds of Prey Read online

  Almost immediately they crept out from behind the island they could see the lights on the mainland, two or three pinpricks from the watchfires on the walls of the fort, and lantern beams from the buildings outside the walls, spread out along the seafront.

  The three vessels he had spotted from the saddle of the mountains were still anchored in the roads. Each showed a riding lantern at the masthead, and another at the stern. Cumbrae grinned in the darkness. ‘Most obliging of the cheese-heads to put out a welcome for us. Don’t they know there’s a war a-raging?’

  From this distance he was not yet able to distinguish one ship from the others, but his boat-crews pulled eagerly, the scent of the prize in their nostrils. Half an hour later, even though they were still well out in the bay, Cumbrae was able to pick out the Lady Edwina. He discarded her from his calculations and switched all his interest to the other vessel, which had not changed position and still lay furthest away from the batteries of the fort.

  ‘Steer for the ship on the larboard side,’ he ordered his boatswain in a whisper. The longboat altered a point, and the beat of the oars picked up. The second boat was close astern, like a hunting dog at heel, and Cumbrae peered back at its dark shape, grunting with approval. All the weapons were covered, there was no reflection of moonlight off a naked blade or pistol barrel to flash a warning to the watch on board the chase. Neither was there a lit match to send the reek of smoke down the wind, or a glow of light ahead of their arrival.

  As they glided in towards the anchored vessel Cumbrae read her name from her transom, De Swael,the Swallow. He was alert for any sign of an anchor watch: this was a lee shore, with the sou’-easter swirling unpredictably around the mountain, but either the Dutch captain was remiss or the watch was asleep for there was no sign of life aboard the dark ship.

  Two sailors stood ready to fend off from the side of the Swallow as they touched, and mats of knotted oakum hung over the longboat’s side to soften the impact. A solid contact of timbers against hull would carry through the ship like the sounding body of a viol and wake every hand aboard.

  They touched with the gentleness of a virgin’s kiss, and one of the men, chosen for his simian climbing prowess, shot up the side and immediately made a line fast to the shackle of a gun train and dropped the coil back into the boat below.

  Cumbrae paused long enough to lift the shutter of the storm lantern and light the slow-match from the flame, then seized the line and went up on bare feet hardened by hunting the stag without boots. In a silent rush the crews of both boats, also barefoot, followed him.

  Cumbrae jerked the marlinspike from his belt and, his boatswain at his side, raced silently to the bows. The anchor watch was curled on the deck, out of the wind, sleeping like a hound in front of the hearth. The Buzzard stooped over him and clipped his skull with one sharp blow of the iron spike. The man sighed, uncurled his limbs and sagged into an even deeper state of unconsciousness.

  His men were already at each of the Swallow’s hatches, leading to the lower decks, and as Cumbrae ran back towards the stern they were quietly closing the covers and battening them down, imprisoning the Dutch crew below decks.

  ‘There’ll no’ be more than twenty of a crew on board her,’ he muttered to himself. ‘And, like as not, de Ruyter will have taken most of the prime seamen for the Navy. They’ll be only boys and fat old fools on their last legs. I doubt they’ll give us too much trouble.’

  He looked up at the dark figures of his men silhouetted against the stars as they raced up the shrouds and danced out along the yards. As the sails unfurled, he heard from forward the soft clunk of an axe blow as the anchor cable was severed. Immediately the Swallow came alive and unfettered under his feet as she paid off before the wind. Already his boatswain was at the whipstaff.

  ‘Take her straight out. Due west!’ Cumbrae snapped, and the man put her head up into the wind as close as she would point.

  Cumbrae saw at once that the heavily laden ship was surprisingly handy, and that they would be able to weather Robben Island on this tack. Ten armed men waited ready to follow him. Two carried shuttered storm lanterns, all had match burning for their pistols. Cumbrae seized one of the lanterns and led his men at a run down into the officers’ quarters in the stern. He tried the door of the cabin that must open out onto the stern galleries and found it unlocked. He went through it swiftly and silently. When he flashed the lantern, a man in a tasselled night cap sat up in the bunk.

  ‘Wie is dit?’ he challenged sleepily. Cumbrae swept the bedclothes over his head to smother any further outcry, left his men to subdue and bind the captain, ran out into the passageway and burst into the next cabin. Here another Dutch officer was already awake. Plump and middle-aged, his greying hair tangled in his eyes, he was still staggering groggily with sleep as he groped for his sword where it hung in its scabbard at the foot of his bunk. Cumbrae shone the lantern in his eyes, and placed the sharp point of his claymore at the man’s throat.

  ‘Angus Cumbrae, at your service,’ said the Buzzard. ‘Yield, or I’ll feed you to the gulls a wee bittie at a time.’

  The Dutchman might not have understood the burred Scots accent, but Cumbrae’s meaning was unmistakable. Gaping at him, he raised both hands above his head and the boarding-party swarmed over him and bore him to the deck, wrapping his bedclothes around his head.

  Cumbrae ran on to the last cabin but, as he laid his hand on the door, it was flung open from inside with such force that he was thrown across the passage into the bulkhead. A huge figure charged out of the darkened doorway with a blood-curdling yell. He aimed a full overhead blow at the Buzzard, but in the narrow confines of the passageway the blade of his sword slashed into the door lintel, giving Cumbrae an instant to recover. Still bellowing with rage the stranger cut at him again. This time the Buzzard parried and the blade sped over his shoulder to shatter the panel behind him. The two big men raged down the passageway, fighting at close range, almost chest to chest. The Dutchman was shouting insults in a mixture of English and his own language, and Cumbrae answered him in full-blooded Scottish tones: ‘You blethering cheese-headed nun-raper! I’ll stuff your giblets down your ear-holes.’ His men danced around them with clubs raised, waiting for an opportunity to cut down the Dutch officer, but Cumbrae shouted, ‘Don’t kill him! He’s a dandy laddie, and he’ll fetch a pretty price at ransom!’

  Even in the uncertain lantern light, he had recognized his adversary’s quality. Freshly roused from his bunk the Dutchman wore no wig on his shaven head but his fine pointed moustaches showed him to be a man of fashion. His embroidered linen nightshirt and the sword he wielded with the panache of a duelling master all proved that he was a gentleman, and no mistake.

  The longer blade of the claymore was a disadvantage in the restricted space, and Cumbrae was forced to use the point rather than the double edges. The Dutchman thrust, then feinted low and slipped in under his guard. Cumbrae hissed with anger as the steel flew under his raised right arm, missing him by a finger’s width and slashing a shower of splinters from the panel behind him.

  Before his adversary could recover, the Buzzard whipped his left arm around the man’s neck and enfolded him in a bear-hug. Locked together in the narrow passage, neither man could use his sword. They dropped them and wrestled from one end of the corridor to the other, snarling and snapping like a pair of fighting dogs, then grunting and howling with pain and outrage as first one then the other threw a telling fist to the head or smashed his elbow into the other’s belly.

  ‘Crack his skull,’ Cumbrae gasped at his men. ‘Knock the brute down.’ He was unaccustomed to being bested in a straight trial of muscle, but the other was his match. His upthrust knee crashed into the Buzzard’s crotch, and he howled again, ‘Help me, damn your poxy yellow livers! Knock the rogue down!’

  He managed to get one hand free and lock it round the man’s waist then, bright crimson in the face with the effort, he lifted him and swung him round so that his back was presented to a seam
an waiting with a raised oak club in his fist. It cracked down with a practised and controlled blow on the back of the shaven pate, not hard enough to shatter bone, but with just sufficient force to stun the Dutchman and turn his legs to jelly under him. He sagged in Cumbrae’s arms.

  Puffing, the Buzzard lowered him to the deck, and all four seamen bounced on him, pinning his limbs and straddling his back. ‘Get a rope on this hellion,’ he panted, ‘afore he comes to and wrecks us and smashes up our prize.’

  ‘Another filthy English pirate!’ the Dutchman mouthed weakly, shaking his head to clear his wits and thrashing around on the deck as he tried to throw off his captors.

  ‘I’ll not put up with your foul insults,’ Cumbrae told him genially, as he smoothed his ruffled red beard and retrieved his claymore. ‘Call me a filthy pirate if you will, but I’m no Englishman and I’ll thank you to remember it.’

  ‘Pirates! All you scum are pirates.’

  ‘And who are you to call me scum, you with your great hairy arse sticking in the air?’ In the scuffle the Dutchman’s night shirt had rucked up around his waist leaving him bare below. ‘I’ll not argue with a man in such indecent attire. Get your clothes on, sir, and then we will continue this discourse.’

  Cumbrae ran up onto the deck, and found that they were already well out to sea. Muffled shouts and banging were coming from under the battened-down hatches, but his men had full control of the deck. ‘Smartly done, you canty bunch of sea-rats. The easiest fifty guineas you’ll ever put in your purses. Give yerselves a cheer, and cock a snook at the devil,’ he roared so that even those up on the yards could hear him.

  Robben Island was only a league dead ahead, and as the bay opened before them they could make out the Gull lying on the moonlit waters.

  ‘Hoist a lantern to the masthead,’ Cumbrae ordered, ‘and we’ll put a wee stretch of water between us before the cheese-heads in the fort rub the sleep out of their eyes.’

  As the lantern went aloft, the Gull repeated the signal to acknowledge. Then she hoisted her anchor and followed the prize out to sea.

  ‘There is bound to be a good breakfast in the galley,’ Cumbrae told his men. ‘The Dutchies know how to tend their bellies. Once you have them locked neatly in their own chains, you can try their fare. Boatswain, keep her steady as she goes. I’m going below to have a peep at the manifest, and to find what we’ve caught ourselves.’

  The Dutch officers were trussed hand and foot, and laid out in a row on the deck of the main cabin. An armed seaman stood over each man. Cumbrae shone the lantern in their faces, and examined them in turn. The big warlike officer lifted his head and bellowed up at him, ‘I pray God that I live to see you swinging on the rope’s end, along with all the other devil-spawned English pirates who plague the oceans.’ It was obvious that he had fully recovered from the blow to the back of his head.

  ‘I must commend you on your command of the English language,’ Cumbrae told him. ‘Your choice of words is quite poetic. What is your name, sir?’

  ‘I am Colonel Cornelius Schreuder in the service of the Dutch East India Company.’

  ‘How do you do, sir? I am Angus Cochran, Earl of Cumbrae.’

  ‘You, sir, are nothing but a vile pirate.’

  ‘Colonel, your repetitions are becoming just a wee bit tiresome. I implore you not to spoil a most promising acquaintanceship in this manner. After all, you are to be my guest for some time until your ransom is paid. I am a privateer, sailing under the commission of His Majesty King Charles the Second. You, gentlemen, are prisoners of war.’

  ‘There is no war!’ Colonel Schreuder roared at him scornfully. ‘We gave you Englishmen a good thrashing and the war is over. Peace was signed over two months ago.’

  Cumbrae stared at him in horror, then found his voice again. ‘I do not believe you, sir.’ Suddenly he was subdued and shaken. He denied it more to give himself time to think than with any conviction. News of the English defeat at the Medway and the battle of the Thames had been some months old when Richard Lister had given it to him. He had also reported that the King was suing for peace with the Dutch Republic. Anything might have happened in the meantime.

  ‘Order these villains of yours to release me, and I will prove it to you.’ Colonel Schreuder was still in a towering rage, and Cumbrae hesitated before he nodded at his men.

  ‘Let him up and untie him,’ he ordered.

  Colonel Schreuder sprang to his feet and smoothed his rumpled moustaches as he stormed off to his own cabin. There, he took down a silk robe from the head of his bunk. Tying the belt around his waist he went to his writing bureau and opened the drawer. With frosty dignity, he came back to Cumbrae and handed him a thick bundle of papers.

  The Buzzard saw that most were official Dutch proclamations in both Dutch and English, but that one was an English news-sheet. He unfolded it with trepidation, and held it at arm’s length. It was dated August 1667. The headline was in heavy black type two inches tall:

  PEACE SIGNED WITH DUTCH REPUBLIC!

  As his eye raced down the page, his mind tried to adjust to this disconcerting change in circumstances. He knew that with the signing of the peace treaty all Letters of Marque, issued by either side in the conflict, had become null and void. Even had there been any doubt about it, the third paragraph on the page confirmed it:

  All privateers of both combatant nations, sailing under commission and Letters of Marque, have been ordered to cease warlike expeditions forthwith and to return to their home ports to submit themselves to examination by the Admiralty assizes.

  The Buzzard stared at the news-sheet without reading further, and pondered the various courses of action open to him. The Swallow was a rich prize, the Good Lord alone knew just how rich. Scratching his beard he toyed with the idea of flouting the orders of the Admiralty assizes, and hanging on to it at all costs. His great-grandfather had been a famous outlaw, astute enough to back the Earl of Moray and the other Scottish lords against Mary, Queen of Scots. After the battle of Carberry Hill they had forced Mary to abdicate and placed her infant son James upon the throne. For his part in the campaign his ancestor had received his earldom.

  Before him all the Cochrans had been sheep thieves and border raiders, who had made their fortunes by murdering and robbing not only Englishmen but members of other Scottish clans as well. The Cochran blood ran true, so the consideration was not a matter of ethics. It was a calculation of his chances of getting away with this prize.

  Cumbrae was proud of his lineage but also aware that his ancestors had come to prominence by adroitly avoiding the gibbet and the hangman’s ministrations. During this last century, all the seafaring nations of the world had banded together to stamp out the scourge of the corsair and the pirate that, since the times of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, had plagued the commerce of the oceans.

  Ye’ll not get away with it, laddie, he decided silently, and shook his head regretfully. He held up the news-sheet before the eyes of his sailors, none of whom was able to read. ‘It seems the war is over, more’s the pity of it. We will have to set these gentlemen free.’

  ‘Captain, does this mean that we lose out on our prize money?’ the coxswain asked plaintively.

  ‘Unless you want to swing from the gallows at Greenwich dock for piracy, it surely does.’

  Then he turned and bowed to Colonel Schreuder. ‘Sir, it seems that I owe you an apology.’ He smiled ingratiatingly. ‘It was an honest mistake on my part, which I hope you will forgive. I have been without news of the outside world these past months.’

  The Colonel returned his bow stiffly, and Cumbrae went on, ‘It gives me pleasure to return your sword to you. You fought like a warrior and a true gentleman.’ The Colonel bowed a little more graciously. ‘I will give orders to have the crew of this ship released at once. You are, of course, free to return to Table Bay and to continue your voyage from there. Whither were you bound, sir?’ he asked politely.

  ‘We were on the point of sailing for Amsterdam
before your intervention, sir. I was carrying letters of ransom to the council of the VOC on behalf of the Governor designate of the Cape of Good Hope who, together with his saintly wife, was captured by another English pirate, or rather,’ he corrected himself, ‘by another English privateer.’

  Cumbrae stared at him. ‘Was your Governor designate named Petrus van de Velde, and was he captured on board the company ship the Standvastigheid?’ he asked. ‘And was his captor an Englishman, Sir Francis Courtney?’

  Colonel Schreuder looked startled. ‘He was indeed, sir. But how do you know these details?’

  ‘I will answer your question in due course, Colonel, but first I must know. Are you aware that the Standvastigheid was captured after the peace treaty was signed by our two countries?’

  ‘My lord, I was a passenger on board the Standvastigheid when she was captured. Certainly I am aware that she was an illegal prize.’

  ‘One last question, Colonel. Would not your reputation and professional standing be greatly enhanced if you were able to capture this pirate Courtney, to secure by force of arms the release of Governor van de Velde and his wife, and to return to the treasury of the Dutch East India Company the valuable cargo of the Standvastigheid?’

  The Colonel was struck speechless by such a magnificent prospect. That image of violet-coloured eyes and hair like sunshine, which since he had last looked upon it had never been far from his mind, now returned to him in every vivid detail. The promise that those sweet red lips had made him outweighed even the treasure of spice and bullion that was at stake. How grateful the lady Katinka would be for her release, and her father also, who was president of the governing board of the VOC. This might be the most significant stroke of fortune that would ever come his way.

  He was so moved that he could barely manage a stiff nod of agreement to the Buzzard’s proposition.

  ‘Then, sir, I do believe that you and I have matters to discuss that might redound to our mutual advantage,’ said the Buzzard, with an expansive smile.