Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
"I leave that decision to you."
"I have repairs to make to my rigging and hull. Damage we sustained in the gale. I need Mister Winterton on board to help with these. May I suggest three days hence, on the beach at sunrise?"
The Buzzard tugged at his beard as he considered this proposal. He would need a few days to make the arrangements he had in mind. Three days" delay would suit him perfectly.
"Agreed!" he said, and Llewellyn rose to his feet immediately and placed the purse in the pocket of his tunic.
"Will you not take that dram I offered you now, Christopher?" Cumbrae suggested, but again Llewellyn declined.
"As I told you, sit, I have much to do on board my ship." The Buzzard watched him go down to the beach and step into his longboat. As they were rowed back to where the Golden Bough was anchored, Llewellyn and Winterton were in deep and earnest conversation.
"Young Winterton is in for a surprise. He can never have seen the Dutchman with a sword in his hand to have agreed so lightly to the choice of weapons." He swigged back the few drops of whisky that remained in his mug, and grinned again. "We shall see if we cannot arrange a little surprise for Christopher Llewellyn also." He banged the mug onto the keg top, and bellowed, "Send Mister Bowles to me, and be quick about it."
Sam Bowles came smarming in, wriggling his whole body like a whipped dog to ingratiate himself with his captain. But his eyes were cold and shrewd.
"Sammy, me boy." Cumbrae gave him a slap on the arm that stung like a wasp, but did not upset the smile on the man's lips. "I have something for you, that should be much to your taste. Listen well."
Sam Bowles sat opposite him and cocked his head so as not to miss a word of his instructions. Once or twice he asked a question or chortled with glee and admiration as Cumbrae unfolded his plans.
"You have always wanted the command of your own ship, Sammy me laddy. This is your chance. Serve me well, and you shall have it. Captain Samuel Bowles. How does that sound to you?"
"I like the sound of it powerful well, your grace!" Sam Bowles bobbed his head. "And I'll not let you down."
"That you won't!" Cumbrae agreed. "Or not more than once, you won't. For if you do, you'll dance me a merry hornpipe while you dangle from the main yard of my Gull."
The riverbanks were lined with wild willow and dark green acacia trees, which were covered with a mantle of yellow blossom. The river ran broad and deep, slow and green between its rocky piers. The sandbanks were exposed and, as they looked down upon them from the steep slopes of the valley, Sukeena shuddered and whispered, "Oh, what foul and ugly creatures! Surely these are the very dragons we spoke of?"
"They are dragons indeed," Hal agreed, as they gazed down on the crocodiles that lay sunning on the white beach. There were dozens of them, some not much larger than lizards and other brutes with the beam and length of a ship's boat, massive grey monsters, which surely could swallow a man whole. They had found out how ferocious these creatures were on their first attempt to ford the river, when Billy Rogers had been seized by one and dragged beneath the surface. They had not recovered any part of his body.
"I tremble at the thought of trying to cross again, with these creatures still guarding the river," Sukeena whispered tremulously.
"Aboli knows them from his own land to the north, and his tribe have a way of dealing with them."
On the -rocky bluff, high above the river where the crocodiles could not reach, they stacked the piles of eland meat, which were already beginning to stink, in the hot sunlight. Then Hal sent some of the men to search the forest floor for dried logs that would float high in the water. Under Ned Tyler's instruction they shaped them with the cutlasses, although Hal hated to see the fine steel edges dulled and chipped. While this was being done Althuda, with Sukeena helping him, carefully slit the wet eland hides into long tough ropes as thick as her little finger.
Aboli sought out the species of tree he needed, and then chopped short supple stakes from its branches and carried bundles of these back to where the others were working. Big Daniel helped him to sharpen both ends of these short, resilient pieces of green wood into spear points, and harden them in the fire. Then, using a log of the correct circumference as a template, the two powerful men bent each stake around the log until it formed a circle, the sharpened points overlapping. While they held them in place, Hal lashed the ends together with strips of the raw eland hide. When they gingerly released the tension the coiled stakes were like the loaded steel springs of a musket lock, ready to fly open if the retaining strip of hide was severed. By sundown they had finished work on a pile of these snares.
They had learned from their encounter with the lion pride, and on this night they hoisted the legs of eland meat high into the top branches of one of the tallest trees that grew along the banks of the broad river. They built their stockade well downstream from this cache of meat, and made certain that the walls were of sturdy logs, and that the entrance was blocked with freshly cut thorn branches.
Though they slept little that night, lying and listening to the hyena and the jackal howling and gibbering below the tree where the meat hung, the lions did not trouble them again. In the dawn they left the stockade to begin work once more on their preparations for the river crossing.
Ned Tyler finished the construction of the raft by lashing the poles together with rawhide rope.
"Tis a rickety vessel." Sukeena eyed it with obvious misgivings. "One of those great river dragons could overturn it with a flick of its tail."
"That is why Aboli has prepared his snares for them." They went back up the slope to where Althuda and Zwaantie were helping Aboli wrap the coiled green-wood circlets with a thick covering of half-putrid eland meat.
