Birds of Prey

The cave beyond was in darkness but Sir Francis stood up and reached to a stone shelf above his head where he groped for the flint and steel he had left there. He lit the candle he had brought with him, and then looked around the cave.

Nothing had been touched since his last visit. Five chests stood against the back wall. That was the booty from the Heerlycke Nacht, mostly silver plate and a hundred thousand guilders in coin that had been intended for payment of the Dutch garrison in Batavia. A pile of gear was stacked beside the entrance, and Sir Francis began work on this immediately. It took him almost half an hour to rig the heavy wooden beam as a gantry from the ledge outside the cave entrance, and then to lower the tackle to the boat moored below.

"Make the first chest fast!" he called down to Hal.

Hal tied it on and his father hauled it upwards, the sheave squeaking at each heave. The chest disappeared and a few minutes later the rope end dropped back and dangled where Hal could reach it. He tied on the next chest.

It took them well over an hour to hoist all the ingots and the sacks of coin and stack them in the back of the cave. Then they started work on the powder kegs and the bundles of weapons. The last item to go up was the smallest. a box into which Sir Francis had packed a compass and backstaff, a roll of charts taken from the Standvasdgheid, flint and steel, a set of surgeon's instruments in a canvas roll, and a selection of other equipment that could make the difference between survival and a lingering death to a party stranded on this savage, unexplored coast.

"Come up, Hal," Sir Francis called down at last, and Hal went up the cliff with the speed and ease of one of the young baboons.

When Hal reached him, his father was sitting comfortably on the narrow-ledge, his legs dangling and his clay stemmed pipe and tobacco pouch in his hands.

"Give me a hand here, lad." He pointed with his empty pipe at the vertical crack in the face of the cliff. "Close that up again."

Hal spent another half-hour packing the loose rock back into the entrance, to conceal it and to discourage intruders. There was little chance of men finding the cache in this deserted gorge, but he and his father knew that the baboons would return. They were as curious and mischievous as any human.

When Hal would have started back down the cliff, Sir Francis stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "There is no hurry. The others will not have finished refilling the water casks."

They sat in silence on the ledge while Sir Francis got his long-stemmed pipe to draw sweetly. Then he asked, through a cloud of blue smoke, "What have I done here?"

"Cached our share of the treasure."

"Not only our share alone, but that of the Crown and of every man aboard, sir Francis corrected him. "But why have I done that?"

"Gold and silver is temptation even to an honest man." Hal repeated the lore his father had drummed into his head so many times before.

"Should I not trust my own crew?" Sir Francis asked.

"If you trust no man, then no man will ever disappoint you. "Hal repeated the lesson.

"Do you believe that?" Sir Francis turned to watch his face as he replied, and Hal hesitated. "Do you trust Aboli?" "Yes, I trust him," Hal admitted, reluctantly, as though it were a sin.

"Aboli is a good man, none better. But you see that I do not bring even him to this place." He paused, then asked, "Do you trust me, lad?"

"Of course."

"Why? Surely I am but a man and I have told you to trust no man?"

"Because you are my father and I love you."

Sir Francis's eyes clouded and he made as if to caress Hal's cheek. Then he sighed, dropped his hand and looked down at the river below. Hal expected his father to censure his reply, but he did not. After a while Sir Francis asked another question. "What of the other goods I have cached here? The powder and weapons and charts and the like. Why have I placed those here?"

"Against an uncertain future, Hal replied confidently he had heard the answer often enough before. "A wise fox has many exits to his earth."

Sir Francis nodded. "All of us who sail in the guerre de course are always at risk. One day, those few chests may be worth our very lives."

His father was silent again as he smoked the last few shreds of tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. Then he said softly, "If God is merciful, the time will come, perhaps not too far in the future, when this war with the Dutch will end. Then we will return here and gather up our prize and sail home to Plymouth. It has long been my dream to own the manor of Gainesbury that runs alongside High Weald-" He broke off, as if not daring to tempt fate with such imagining. "If harm should befall me, it is necessary that you should know and remember where I have stored our wi

"No harm can ever come your way!" Hal exclaimed in agitation. It was more a plea than a statement of conviction. He could not imagine an existence without this towering presence at the centre of it.

"No man is immortal," said Sir Francis softly. "We all owe God a death." This time he allowed his right hand to settle briefly on Hal's shoulder. "Come, lad. We must still fill the water casks in our own boat before dark." the longboats crept back down the edge of the darkening lagoon, Aboli had taken Sir *-AFrancis's place on the rowing thwart, and now Hal's father sat in the stern, wrapped in a dark woollen cloak against the evening chill. His expression was. remote and sombre. Facing aft as he worked one of the long oars, Hal could study him surreptitiously.

Their conversation at the mouth of the cave had left him troubled with a presentiment of ill-fortune ahead.