Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
He pointed out through the empty windows at the cluster of ships lying at anchor beyond the surf line. "My report on the affair will go to Amsterdam on the same ship, together with my condemnation of you in the strongest possible terms. You will stand before the Seventeen and make your excuses to them in person." He leered at the colonel gloatingly. "Your military career is destroyed, Schreuder. I suggest you consider taking up the calling of whoremaster, a vocation for which you have demonstrated considerable aptitude. Goodbye, Colonel Schreuder. I doubt I shall have the pleasure of your company ever again."
Aching with the Governor's insults as though he had taken twenty lashes of the cat, Schreuder strode out to the head of the staircase. To give himself time in which to regain his composure and his temper, he paused to survey the damage that the explosion had inflicted on the buildings surrounding the courtyard. The armoury had been destroyed, blown into a rubble heap. The roof timbers of the north wing were shattered and blackened by the fire that had followed the blast, but the outer walls were intact and the other buildings only superficially damaged.
The sentries who once would have leapt to attention at his appearance now delayed rendering him his honours, and when finally they tossed him a lackadaisical salute, one accompanied it with an impudent grin. In the tiny community of the colony news spread swiftly, and clearly his dishonourable discharge from the Company's service was already known to the entire garrison. Jacobus Hop must have taken pleasure in spreading the news, Schreuder decided, and he rounded on the grinning sentry. "Wipe that smirk off your ugly face or, by God, I will shave it off with my sword." The man sobered instantly and stared rigidly ahead. However, as Schreuder crossed the courtyard, Manseer and the overseers whispered together and smiled behind their fists. Even some of the recaptured prisoners, now wearing chains, who were repairing the damage to the armoury stopped work to grin slyly at him.
Such humiliation was painfully hard for a man of his pride and temperament to bear, and he tried to imagine how much worse it would become when he returned to Holland and faced the Council of Seventeen. His shame would be shouted in every tavern and port, in every garrison and regiment, in the salons of all the great houses and mansions of Amsterdam. Van de Velde was correct. he would become a pariah.
He strode out through-the gates and across the bridge of the moat.
He did not know where he was going, but he turned down towards the foreshore and stood above the beach staring out to sea. Slowly he brought his turbulent emotions under some control, and began to look for some escape from the scorn and the ridicule that he could not bear.
I shall swallow the ball, he decided. It's the only way open to me. Then, almost instantly, his whole nature revolted against such a craven course of action. He remembered how he had despised one of his brother officers in Batavia who, over the matter of a woman, had placed the muzzle of a loaded pistol in his mouth and blown away the back of his skull. "It is the coward's way!" Schreuder said aloud. "And not for me."
Yet he knew he could never obey van de Velde's orders to return home to Holland. But neither could he remain here at Good Hope, nor travel to any Dutch possession anywhere upon this globe. He was an outcast, and he must find some other land where his shame was unknown.
Now his gaze focused on the cluster of shipping anchored out in Table Bay. There was the Weltevreden, upon which van de Velde wished to send him back to face the Seventeen. His eye moved on over the three other Dutch vessels lying near it. He would not sail on a Dutch ship but there were only two foreign vessels. One was a Portuguese slaver, outward-bound for the markets of Zanzibar. Even the thought of sailing on a slaver was distasteful he could smell her from where he stood above the beach. The other ship was an English frigate and, by the looks of her, newly launched and well found. Her rigging was fresh and her paintwork only lightly marred by the Atlantic gales. She had the look of a warship, but he had heard that she was privately owned and an armed trader. He could read her name on her transom. the Golden Bough. She had fifteen gun ports down the side, which she presented to him as she rode lightly at anchor, but he did not know whence she had come nor whither she was bound. However, he knew exactly where to find this information so he settled his Hat firmly over his wig and struck out along the shore, heading for the nearest of the insalubrious cluster of hovels that served as brothels and gin halls to the seafarers of the oceans.
Even at this hour of the morning the tavern was crowded, and the windowless interior was dark and rank with tobacco smoke and the fumes of cheap spirits and unwashed humanity. The whores were mostly Hottentots but there were one or two white women who had grown too old and pox-ridden to work in even the ports of Rotterdam or St. Pauli. Somehow they had found ships to carry them southwards and had come ashore, like rats, to eke out their last days in these squalid surroundings before the French disease burned them out entirely.
His hand on the hilt of his sword, Schreuder cleared a small table for himself with a sharp word and haughty state. Once he was seated he summoned one of the haggard serving wenches to bring him a tankard of small beer. "Which are the sailors from the Golden Bough?" he asked, and tossed a silver rix-dollar onto the filthy table top. The trull snatched up this largesse and dropped it down the front of her grubby dress between her pendulous dugs before she jerked her head in the direction of three seamen at a table in the far corner of the room.
"Take each of those gentlemen another chamber pot filled with whatever foul piss you're serving them and tell them that I'm paying for it."
When he left the tavern half an hour later Schreuder knew where the Golden Bough was heading, and the name and disposition of her captain. He sauntered down to the beach and hired a skiff to row him out to the frigate.
The anchor watch on board the Golden Bough spotted him as soon as he left the beach, and could tell by his dress and deportment that he was a man of consequence. When Schreuder hailed the deck of the frigate and asked for permission to come aboard, a stout, florid-faced Welsh petty-officer gave him a cautious greeting at the entry port then led him down to the stern cabin where Captain Christopher Llewellyn rose to welcome him. Once he was seated, he offered Schteuder a pewter pot of porter. He was obviously relieved to find that Schreuder spoke good English. Llewellyn soon accepted him as a gentleman and an equal, relaxed and spoke easily and openly.
