Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
"There'll not be more than twenty of a crew on board her," he muttered to himself. "And, like as not, de Ruyter will have taken most of the prime seamen for the Navy. They'll be only boys and fat old fools on their last legs. I doubt they'll give us too much trouble."
He looked up at the dark figures of his men silhouetted against the stars as they raced up the shrouds and danced out along the yards. As the sails unfurled, he heard from forward the soft clunk of an axe blow as the anchor cable was severed. Immediately the Swallow came alive and unfettered under his feet as she paid off before the wind. Already his boatswain was at the whipstall.
"Take her straight out. Due west!" Cumbrae snapped, and the man put her head up into the wind as close as she would point.
Cumbrae saw at once that the heavily laden ship was surprisingly handy, and that they would be able to weather Robben Island on this tack. Ten armed men waited ready to follow him. Two carried shuttered storm lanterns, all had match burning for their pistols. Cumbrae seized one of the lanterns and led his men at a run down into the officers" quarters in the stern. He tried the door of the cabin that must open out onto the stern galleries and found it unlocked. He went through it swiftly and silently. When he flashed the lantern, a man in a tasselled night cap sat up in the bunk.
Wic is dit?" he challenged sleepily. Cumbrae swept the bedclothes over his head to smother any further outcry, left his men to subdue and bind the captain, ran out into the passageway and burst into the next cabin. Here another Dutch officer was already awake. Plump and middle-aged, his greying hair tangled in his eyes, he was still staggering groggily with sleep as he groped for his sword where it hung in its scabbard at the foot of his bunk. Cumbrae shone the lantern in his eyes, and placed the sharp point of his claymore at the man's throat.
"Angus Cumbrae, at your service," said the Buzzard. "Yield, or I'll feed you to the gulls a wee bit tie at a time." The Dutchman might not have understood the buffed Scots accent, but Cumbrae's meaning was unmistakable. Gaping at him, he raised both hands above his head and the boarding-party swarmed over him and bore him to the deck, wrapping his bedclothes around his head.
Cumbrae ran on to the last cabin but, as he laid his hand on the door, it was' flung open from inside with such force that he was thrown across the passage into the bulkhead. A huge figure charged out of the darkened doorway with a blood-curdling yell. He aimed a full overhead blow at the Buzzard, but in the narrow confines of the passageway the blade of his sword slashed into the door lintel, giving Cumbrae an instant to recover. Still bellowing with rage the stranger cut at him again. This time the Buzzard parried and the blade sped over his shoulder to shatter the panel behind him. The two big men raged down the passageway, fighting at close range, almost chest to chest. The Dutchman was shouting insults in a mixture of English and his own language, and Cumbrae answered him in full-blooded Scottish tones. "You blethering cheese-headed nun-raper! I'll stuff your giblets down your ear-hqles." His men danced around them with clubs raised, waiting for an opportunity to cut down the Dutch officer, but Cumbrae shouted, "Don't kill him! He's a dandy laddie, and he'll fetch a pretty price at ransom!"
Even in the uncertain lantern light, he had recognized his adversary's quality. Freshly roused from his bunk the Dutchman wore no wig on his shaven head but his fine pointed moustaches showed him to be a man of fashion. His embroidered linen nightshirt and the sword he wielded with the panache of a duelling master all proved that he was a gentleman, and no mistake.
The longer blade of the claymore was a disadvantage in the restricted space, and Cumbrae was forced to use the point rather than the double edges. The Dutchman thrust, then feinted low and slipped in under his guard. Cumbrae hissed with anger as the steel flew under his raised right arm, missing him by a finger's width and slashing a shower of splinters from the panel behind him.
Before his adversary could recover, the Buzzard whipped his left arm around the man's neck and enfolded him in a bear-hug. Locked together in the narrow passage, neither man could use his sword. They dropped them and wrestled from one end of the corridor to the other, snarling and snapping like a pair of fighting dogs, then grunting and howling with pain and outrage as first one then the other threw a telling fist to the head or smashed his elbow into the other's belly.
"Crack his skull," Cumbrae gasped at his men. "Knock the brute down." He was unaccustomed to being bested in a straight trial of muscle, but the other was his match. His up-thrust knee crashed into the Buzzard's crotch, and he howled again, "Help me, damn your poxy yellow livers! Knock the rogue down!"
He managed to get one hand free and lock it round the man's waist then, bright crimson in the face with the effort, he lifted him and swung him round so that his back was presented to a seaman waiting with a raised oak club in his fist. It cracked down with a practised and controlled blow on the back of the shaven pate, not hard enough to shatter bone, but with just sufficient force to stun the Dutchman and turn his legs to jelly under him. He sagged in Cumbrae's arms.
Puffing, the Buzzard lowered him to the deck, and all four seamen bounced on him, pinning his limbs and straddling his back. "Get a rope on this hellion," he panted, "afore he comes to and wrecks us and smashes up our prize."
"Another filthy English pirate!" the Dutchman mouthed weakly, shaking his head to clear his wits and thrashing around on the deck as he tried to throw off his captors.
"I'll not put up with your foul insults," Cumbrae told him genially, as he smoothed his ruffled red beard and retrieved his claymore. "Call me a filthy pirate if you will, but I'm no Englishman and I'll thank you to remember it."
"Pirates! All you scum are pirates."
"And who are you to call me scum, you with your great hairy arse sticking in the air?" In the scuffle the Dutchman's night shirt had tucked- up around his waist leaving him bare below. "I'll not argue with a man in such indecent attire. Get your clothes on, sir, and then we will continue this discourse."
Cumbrae ran up onto the deck, and found that they were already well out to sea. Muffled shouts and banging were coming from under the battened-down hatches, but his men had full control of the deck. "Smartly done, you canty bunch of sea-rats. The easiest fifty guineas you'll ever put in your purses. Give yerselves a cheer, and cock a snook at the devil," he roared so that even those up on the yards could hear him.
