Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
It had taken half the morning of hard hiking, following the game trails along the steep and narrow ledges, to reach this lookout point, which Cumbrae knew well. He had used it more than once before. A Hottentot they had captured on the beach had first led him to it. Now as he settled comfortably on a rock that formed a throne-like seat, the Hottentot's white bones lay at his feet in the undergrowth. The skull gleamed like a pearl, for it had lain here three years and the ants and other insects had picked it clean. It would have been foolhardy of Cumbrae to allow the savage to carry tales of his arrival to the Dutch colony at Good Hope.
From his stone throne Cumbrae had a breathtaking panoramic view of two oceans and of rugged mountain scenery spread out all around him. When he looked back the way he had come he could see the Gull of Moray anchored not far off a tiny rind of beach that clung precariously to the foot of the soaring rocky cliffs where the mountains fell into the sea. There were twelve distinct peaks in this maritime range, marked on the Dutch charts he had captured as the Twelve Apostles.
He stared at the Gull through his telescope but could see little evidence of the fire damage she had suffered to her stern. He had been able to replace the mizzen yards, and furled new sails upon them. From this great height and distance she looked lovely as ever, tucked away from inquisitive eyes in the green water cove below the Apostles.
The longboat that had brought Cumbrae through the surf was still drawn up on the beach, ready for a swift departure if he should run into trouble ashore. However, he expected none. He might encounter a few Hottentots among the bushes but they were a harmless, half-naked tribe, a pastoral people with high cheekbones and slanted Asiatic eyes, who could be scattered willy-nilly by a musket shot over their heads.
Much more dangerous were the wild animals that abounded in this harsh, untamed land. The previous night, from the deck of the anchored Gull, they had heard terrifying, blood-chilling roars, rising and falling, then ending in a diminishing series of grunts and groans that sounded like the chorus of all the devils of hell.
"Lions!" the older hands who knew the coast had whispered to each other, and the ship's company had listened in awed silence. In the dawn they had seen one of the terrible yellow cats, the size of a pony, with a dense dark mane of hair covering its head and reaching back behind its shoulder, sauntering along the white beach sands with a regal indolence. After that it had taken the threat of the lash to force the boat crew to row Cumbrae and his party to the shore.
He reached into the leather pouch that hung in front of his plaid and brought out a pewter flask. He tipped its base to the sky and swallowed twice, then sighed with pleasure and screwed the stopper back into the neck. His boatswain and the two seamen watched him intently, but he grinned at them and shook his head. "It would do you no good. Mark my words, whisky is the devil's own hot piss. If you have no pact with him, as I have, you should never let it past your lips."
He slipped the flask back into the pouch, and lifted the telescope to his eye. On his left hand rose the sphimshaped mountain top that the earliest mariners had named Lion's Head, when viewing it from the sea. At his right hand stood the sheer cliff that towered up to the flat top of the mighty Table Mountain that dominated the horizon and gave its name to the bay that opened out beneath it.
Far below where he sat, Table Bay was a lovely sweep of open water, nursing a small island in its arms. The Dutch called it Robben Island, for that was their name for the thousands of seals that infested it.
Beyond that was the endless wind-flecked expanse of the south Atlantic. Cumbrae scrutinized it for any sign of a strange sail, but when he could pick out nothing he transferred his attention below to the Dutch settlement of Good Hope.
There was little to make it stand out from the wild and rocky wilderness that surrounded it. The roofs of the few buildings were of thatch and blended into their surroundings. The Company gardens, which had been laid out to grow provisions for the VOC ships on their passage to the east, were the most obvious sign of man's intrusion. The regular rectangular fields were either bright green with crops or chocolate brown with new-turned earth.
Just above the beach was the Dutch fort. Even from this distance Cumbrae could see that it was unfinished. He had heard from other captains that since the outbreak of war with England the Dutch had tried to speed up the construction, but there were still raw gaps in the defensive outer walls, like missing teeth.
The fort, and its half-completed state, were of interest to Cumbrae only in as much as it could afford protection to the ships that lay at anchor in the bay, under its guns. At this moment three large vessels were there, and he fastened his attention on them.
One looked like a naval frigate. She flew the ensign of the Republic, orange, white and blue, from her masthead. Her hull was painted black, but the gun ports were picked out in white. He counted sixteen on the side she presented to him. He judged that she would outgun the Gull if it ever came to a set-piece engagement with her. But that was not. his intention. He wanted easier pickings, and that meant one of the other two vessels in the bay. Both were merchantmen, and both flew the Company ensign.
"Which one is it to be?" he mused, as he glassed them with the closest attention.
One looked familiar. She rode high in the water, and he reckoned that she was probably in ballast and on the eastern leg of her voyage, heading out to the Dutch possessions to take on valuable cargo.
"No, by God, I recognize the cut of her jib now," he exclaimed aloud. "She's the Lady Edwina, Franky's old ship. He told me he'd sent her back to the Cape with his ransom demand." He studied her a while longer. "She's been stripped bare even the guns are out of her."
Losing interest in her as a possible prize, Cumbrae turned his telescope on the second merchantman. This ship was slightly smaller than the Lady Edwina but she was heavy with her cargo, riding so low that her lower ports were almost awash. Clearly she was on her return voyage, and stuffed with the treasures of the Orient. What made her even more attractive was that she was anchored further off the beach than the other merchantman, at least two cables" length from the walls of the fort. Even under the best conditions that would be impossibly long cannon-shot for the Dutch gunners on the shore.
