Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗

"That's Sam Bowles in the stern," Hal said, and his voice was filled with loathing.

"Captain Bowles now, if what "Jiri tells me is true," Aboli corrected him.

"It is almost time to move," Hal said, as the shapes of the anchored ships began to merge with the dark mass of the forest behind them. "You know what to do, and God go with you, Aboli." Hal gripped his arm briefly.

"And with you also, Gundwane." Aboli rose to his feet and went down into the water. He made no noise as he swam across the channel, but he left a faint phosphorescent trail on the dark surface.

Hal found his way back through the bush to where the others waited by the ungainly shapes of the two fireships. He made them sit in a tight circle around him while he spoke to them softly. At the end he made each repeat his instructions, and corrected them when they erred.

"Now nothing remains but to wait until Aboli has done his work."

Aboli reached the mainland and left the water quickly. He moved quietly through the &_)kforest, and the warm breeze had dried his body before he reached the cave of the paintings. He squatted beside the powder kegs and made his preparations as Hal had instructed him.

He cut two fuses from the slow-match. One was only a fathom in length, but the second was a coil thirty feet long. The time delay was an imprecise calculation and the first might burn for ten minutes, but the second for almost thrice as long.

He worked swiftly, and when both kegs were ready he tied the bundle of three cutlasses on his back, swung a powder keg up onto each shoulder and crept out of the cave. He remembered that the previous night when he had visited the hut in which Jiri and the other slaves were being held, he had observed that the Buzzard's men had become careless. The uneventful months they had been camped here had lulled them into a complacent mood.

The sentries were no longer vigilant. Still he was not relying on their sloth.

Stealthily he moved closer to the camp, until he could clearly make out the features of the men sitting around the cooking fires. He recognized many, but there was no sign of either Cumbrae or Sam Bowles.

He set up the first keg in a patch of scrub on the perimeter of the camp, as close as he dared approach, and then, without lighting the fuse, moved away until he reached one of the trenches where the Buzzard's men had been digging for treasure.

He placed the keg with the longest fuse on the lip of the trench and covered it with sand and debris from the excavation. Then he paid out the coiled fuse and took the end of it down into the trench. He crouched there and shielded the flint and steel with his body so the flare of sparks would not alert the men in the camp as he lit the slow-match. When it was glowing evenly he lit the fuse from it and watched it for a minute to make certain that it was also burning well. Then he climbed out of the trench and moved swiftly and silently back to the first keg. From the slow match in his hand he lit the shorter fuse.

"The first explosion will bring them running," Hal had explained. "Then the second keg will go off in their faces." Still carrying the bundle of cutlasses, Aboli moved away swiftly. There was always the danger that the flame of one of the fuses might jump ahead and set off the keg prematurely. Once he was clear, and moving with more caution, he found the path that ran down towards the beach. Twice he was forced to leave the path as other figures came towards him out of the darkness. Once he was not quick enough but he brazened it out, exchanging a gruff "Good night!" with the pirate who brushed past him.

He picked out the mud hut against the glow of the campfires and crept up to the back wall. Jiri responded immediately to his whisper. "We are ready, brother." His tone was crisp and fierce, no longer the cringing whine of the slave.

Aboli laid down the bundle of weapons and, with his own cutlass, severed the twine that held them. "Here!" he whispered, and Jiri's hand came out through the crack in the mud wall. Aboli passed the cutlasses through to him.

"Wait until the first keg blows," he told him, through the hole in the wall.

"I hear you, Aboli."

Aboli crept to the corner of the hut and glanced round it. The guard sat in his usual position in front of the door. Tonight he was awake, smoking a long-stemmed clay pipe. Aboli saw the burning tobacco glow in the bowl as he drew upon it. He squatted behind the corner of the wall and waited.

The time passed so slowly that he began to fear that the fuse on the first keg had been faulty and had burned out before reaching it. He decided that he would have to go back to check it, but as he began to rise to his feet the blast swept through the camp.

It tore branches from the trees and sent clouds of burning ash and sparks swirling from campfires. It struck the mud hut, knocking down half the front wall and ripping the thatch from the roof. It hit the guard by the front door and hurled him over backwards. He floundered about on his back, trying to sit up, but his big belly made him ungainly. While he struggled Aboli stood over him, placed one foot on his chest, pinning him to the earth, swung the cutlass and felt the hilt jar in his hand as the edge hacked into the man's neck. His whole body spasmed and then lay still. Aboli leaped away from him and grabbed the rope handle of the rough-hewn door to the hut. As he heaved at it the three men inside hurled their combined weight upon it from the far side, and it burst open.

"This way, brethren." Aboli led them down towards the beach.

The camp was in uproar. The darkness was full of men blundering about, swearing, shouting orders and alarms.

"To arms! We are attacked."

"Stand to here, they heard the Buzzard roar. "Have at them, lads!"

"Petey! Where are you, me darling boy?" a wounded man screamed for his ship wife "I am killed. Come to me, Petey." Burning brands from the campfires had been carried into the scrub and the flames were taking hold in the forest. They gave the scene a hellish illumination, and men's shadows made monsters of them as they rushed about, startling each other. Someone fired a musket, and immediately there was a wild fusillade as panic-stricken sailors fired at shadows and at one another. More screams and cries as the flying musket balls took their toll among the scurrying figures.