Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
Hal knew that on the south-east shore of the long island of St. Lawrence, which was also called Madagascar, the French Knights of the Order of the Holy Grail had a safe harbour which they called Fort Dauphin. If he called in there, as an English Knight of the Order he could expect a welcome but little else for his comfort, unless some rare circumstance such as a cyclone had caused a wreck and left sailors in the port without ship. However, he decided that he must take that chance and make Fort Dauphin his first call, and laid his course for the island.
As he sailed on northwards, with Madagascar as his goal, Africa was always there off the larboard beam. At times the land dreamed in the blue distance, and at other times it was so close that they could smell its peculiar aroma. It was the peppery scent of spice and the rich dark odour of the earth, like new-baked biscuit hot from the oven.
Often Jiri, Matesi and Kimatti clustered at the rail, pointing at the green hills and the lacy lines of surf, and talking together quietly in the language of the forests. When there was a quiet hour, Aboli would climb to the masthead and stare across at the land. When he descended his expression was sad and lonely.
Day after day they saw no sign of other men. There were no towns or ports along the shore that they could spy out, and no sail upon the sea, not even a canoe or coasting dhow.
It was not until they were less than a hundred leagues south of Cap St. Marie, the southernmost point of the island, that they raised another sail. Hal stood the ship to quarters and had the culverin loaded with grape and the slow-match lit, for out here beyond the Line he dared take no ship on trust.
When they were almost within hail of the other ship, it broke out its colours. Hal was delighted to see the Union flag and the croix pott6e of the Order streaming from her masthead. He replied with the same show of cloth and both ships hove to within hail of each other.
"What ship?" Hal asked, and the reply came back across the blue swells, "The Rose of Durham. Captain Welles." She was an an ned trader, a caravel with twelve guns a side.
Hal lowered a longboat and had himself rowed across. He was greeted at the entry port by a spry, elfin captain of middle years. "In Arcadia habito."
"Flurrien sac rum bene cognosco," Hal replied, and they clasped hands in the recognition grip of the Temple.. Captain Welles invited Hal down to his cabin where they drank a tankard of cider together and exchanged news avidly. Welles had sailed four weeks previously from the English factory of St. George near Madras on the east coast of Further India with a cargo of trade cloth. He intended to exchange this for slaves on the Gambian coast of West Africa, and then sail on across the Atlantic to the Caribbean where he would barter his slaves for sugar, and so back home to England.
Hal questioned him on the availability of seamen from the English factories on the Carnatic, that stretch of the shore of Further India from East Ghats down to the Coromandel coast, but Welles shook his head. "You'll be wanting to give the whole of that coast a wide berth.
When I left the cholera was raging in every village and factory. Any man you take aboard might bring death with him as a companion."
Hal chilled at the thought of the havoc that this plague would wreak among his already depleted crew, should it take hold on the Golden Bough. He dared not risk a visit to those fever ports.
Over a second mug of cider, Welles gave Hal his first reliable account of the conflict raging in the Great Horn of Africa. "The younger brother of the Great Mogul, Sadiq Khan Jahan, has arrived off the coast of the Horn with a great fleet. He has joined forces with Ahmed El Grang, who they call the Left-handed, the king of the Omani Arabs who holds sway over the lands bordering the Prester's empire. These two have declared jihad, holy war, and together they have swept down like a raging gale upon the Christians. They have taken by storm and sacked the ports and towns of the coast, burning the churches and despoiling the monasteries, massacring the monks and the holy men."
"I intend sailing to offer my services to the Prester to help him resist the pagan," Hal told him.
"It is another crusade, and yours is a noble inspiration," Welles applauded him. "Many of the most sacred relics of Christendom are held by the holy fathers in the Ethiopian city of Aksum and in the monasteries in secret places in the mountains. If they were to fall into the hands of the pagIan, it would be a sad day for all Christendom."
"If you cannot yourself go upon this sacred venture, will you not spare me a dozen of your men, for I am sore pressed for the lack of good sailors?" Hal asked.
Welles looked away. "I have a long voyage ahead of me, and there are bound to be heavy losses among my crew when we visit the fever coast of the Gambia and make the middle passage of the Atlantic,"he mumbled.
"Think on your vows," Hal urged him.
Welles hesitated, then shrugged. "I will muster my crew, and you may appeal to them and call for volunteers to join your venture."
Hal thanked him, knowing that Welles was on a certain wager. Few seamen at the end of a two-year voyage would forgo their share of profits and the prospect of a swift return home, in favour of a call to arms to aid a foreign potentate, even if he were a Christian. Only two men responded to Hal's appeal, and Welles looked relieved to be shot of them. Hal guessed that they were troublemakers and malcontents, but he could not afford to be finicky.
Before they parted, Hal handed over to Welles two packets of letters, stitched in canvas covers with the address boldly written on each. One was addressed to Viscount Winterton, and in the long letter Hal had penned to him he set out the circumstances of Captain Llewellyn's murder, and his own acquisition of the Golden Bough. He gave an undertaking to sail the ship in accordance with the original charter.
The second letter was addressed to his uncle, Thomas Courtney, at High Weald, to inform him of the death of his father and his own inheritance of the title. He asked his uncle to continue to run the estate on his behalf.
