Birds of Prey

He turned and hurried back towards the bows. Hal grimaced rebelliously at his broad back, but climbed dutifully into the shrouds. When he reached the masthead he sca

He attached the ba

The day came upon them with the sudde

"Sail ho!" he pitched his voice so that it would carry to the deck below but not to the strange ship that lay, a full league away, across the dark waters. "Fine on the larboard beam!"

His father's voice floated back to him. "Masthead! Break out the colours!" Hal heaved on the signal halyard, and the silken bundle soared to the masthead. There it burst open and the tricolour of the Dutch Republic streamed out on the southeaster, orange and snowy white and blue, Within moments the other ba

The two ships were on converging courses even in darkness Sir Francis had judged well his interception. There was no call for him to alter course and alarm the Dutch captain. But within minutes it was clear that the Lady Edwina, despite her worm-riddled hull, was faster through the water than the galleon. She must soon begin to overtake the other ship, which he must avoid at all costs.

Sir Francis watched her through the lens of his telescope, and at once he saw why the galleon was so slow and ungainly: her mainmast was jury-rigged, and there was much other evidence of damage to her other masts and rigging. He realized that she must have been caught in some terrible storm in the eastern oceans which would also account for her belated arrival off her landfall on the Agulhas Cape. He knew that he could not alter sail without alarming the Dutch captain, but he had to pass across her stern. He had prepared for this. he signed to the carpenter, at the rail, who with his mate lifted a huge canvas drogue and dropped it over the stern. Like the curb on a head, strong stallion it bit deep in the water and pulled up the Lady Edwina sharply. Again Sir Francis judged the disparate speeds of the two vessels, and nodded with satisfaction.

Then he looked down his own deck. The majority of the men were concealed below decks or lying under the bulwarks where they were invisible even to the lookouts at the galleon's masthead. There was no weapon in sight, all the guns hidden behind their ports. When Sir Francis had captured this caravel she had been a Dutch trader, operating off the west African coast. In converting her to a privateer, he had been at pains to preserve her i

As he looked up again the ba

"She accepts us," Ned grunted, as he held the Lady Edwina stolidly on course. "She likes our sheep's clothing." "Perhaps!" Sir Francis replied. "And yet she cracks on more sail." As they watched, the galleon's royals and topgallants bloomed against the morning sky.

"There!" he exclaimed a moment later. "She is altering course, sheering away from us. The Dutchman is a cautious fellow."

"Satan's teeth! just sniff herV Ned whispered, almost to himself, as a trace of spices scented the air. "Sweet as a virgin, and twice as beautiful."

"It's the richest smell you'll ever have in your nostrils." Sir Francis spoke loudly enough for the men on the deck below to hear him. "There lies fifty pounds a head in prize money if you have the notion to fight for it." Fifty pounds was ten years of an English workman's wages, and the men stiffed and growled like hunting hounds on the leash.

Sir Francis went forward to the poop rail and lifted his chin to call softly up to the men in the rigging, "Make believe that those cheese-heads over there are your brothers. Give them a cheer and a brave welcome."

The men aloft howled with glee, and waved their bo

"There is another ship near us. Another Company ship. The first we have seen in all these terrible stormy weeks. I had begun to think there was not another Christian soul left in all the world," Zelda whined. "You are always complaining of boredom. It might divert you for a while."

Zelda was pale and wan. Her cheeks, once fat, smooth and greased with good living, were sunken. Her great belly was gone, and hung in folds of loose skin almost to her knees. Katinka could see it through the thin stuff of her nightgown.

She has puked away all her fat and half her flesh, Katinka thought, with a twinge of disgust. Zelda had been prostrated by the cyclones that had assailed the Standvastigheid and battered her mercilessly ever since they had left the Trincomalee coast.