Into Uncharted Seas Read online

  Dave had no doubt that this was the case. Landry's rapid rise from AB to warrant gunner was due in large part to his steely determination to get everything right. Dave let the matter drop. They talked instead of a few minor issues of crew discipline, and parted, Dave to return to the tiny quarterdeck.

  At noon, Dave and Midshipman Cameron took the sun's altitude and calculated their latitude, noting the time of transit to adjust ship's clocks. They were making a steady four-plus knots, and if they maintained that speed would arrive at their destination within the week.

  Their objective was Zanzibar, and their mission was to reconnoiter the island as thoroughly as possible consistent with remaining undetected by the pirates. Commodore Bowditch was convinced that Zanzibar had to be the main pirate base and settlement in the southern Indian Ocean, for reasons that were compelling – reasons of geography, weather, economics, and history. The big island was well located as a base for raiding the Kerguelenian Indian Ocean settlements and trade, the prevailing winds favored the passage of the Caliphate's war-dhows to and from their cruising grounds, and the island could support a big enough economy, based on farming, fishing, and light industry, to maintain a naval base. And finally, there was ample precedent: Zanzibar had been an Arab sultanate and a major center for Arab maritime trade in antiquity.

  On her way back to Nosy Be, assuming she had escaped detection to that point, Scorpion was ordered to take a discreet look at Mafia Island, which was well sited as an advanced base for a Kerguelenian campaign against Zanzibar – that is, if the island was uninhabited, or alternatively occupied by people who could be persuaded to allow a Kerg settlement there.

  Unlike the pirates, who were in the habit of brutally displacing indigenous peoples who were in their way, Kerguelenians sought uninhabited islands for settlement, or, in the case of occupied lands, strove to reach a friendly accommodation with the present tenants. Dave thought it was likely that Mafia was inhabited. Even if it had been completely depopulated during the Troubles, as was the fate of much of the world, it was so close to the African mainland that it was easily accessible even by small dugout canoes, and so could have been re-settled. Still, the Commodore thought it was worth a look.

  He was interrupted in these reflections by the arrival of his lunch: the usual salt fish, a generous helping of boiled rice, and a much more parsimonious serving of Kerg cabbage than he had enjoyed at breakfast. The rationing had clearly already begun. He ate quickly and returned to the quarterdeck.

  There he paced the windward side of the deck, hands clasped behind his back, in unconscious imitation of Commodore Sam Bowditch. He had been plain Captain Bowditch when Schofield had joined the Navy as a midshipman, a considerable step down for Dave from his former lofty status as chief officer and relieving master on a three-masted schooner. From lowly “gadget” – the merchant marine nickname for a cadet, carried over into the Navy and applied to midshipmen – he had risen to Lieutenant and command of the Scorpion. True, she was no bigger than a Kerg deep-sea fishing boat, but she was in fact an armed warship of the Navy of the Republic of Kerguelen.

  He remembered vividly the humiliation of being addressed as “Gadget” again, after having commanded a vessel very like Albatros – or at least like Come, Angel Band, the merchant schooner that had been transformed into the Albatros. It was like starting at the bottom all over again. Was it worth it?

  Well, yes. Yes it was. The Navy was so much a part of him now that he couldn't imagine doing anything else. And while his present command was admittedly tiny, standing on her quarterdeck as her commanding officer gave him a great deal more personal and professional satisfaction than his pair of voyages as relieving master of a much larger merchant vessel.

  He was confident, too, that if he survived – for he was realistic about the dangers of the service he had joined – he would someday pace a much grander quarterdeck, command a bigger and more powerful warship. The Kerguelenian Navy had grown during its brief history from a single vessel to four, and no one doubted that it would have to double and double again in size in order to cope with the threat.

  The fourth vessel to be commissioned into the Kerg Navy, the Roland, was a two-masted schooner, larger than the Scorpion. But Dave was pleased to have been given his present command. The Roland was showing the flag along the east coast of Madagascar to prevent the pirates from taking too much advantage of the lengthy repair and refit of the Albatros and the Joan in Hell-ville, and in the course of that cruise making a recruiting call at Reunion, looking for hands to fill out the battle-depleted crews of the two bigger warships – and to compensate for the inroads into their already-reduced numbers made by the requirement to man two more vessels.

  The Scorpion was, however, on a more critical and a very much more dangerous mission. Dave was satisfied that he had received the more important assignment.

  These musings brought to the forefront of his thoughts a nagging worry that was always in the back of his mind lately: the future of Commodore Bowditch as the Navy's senior officer and de-facto commander in chief. The Council of the Republic, after the first flush of outrage at the pirates' atrocities on Mauritius, had reverted to their usual centime-pinching ways, begrudging every franc spent on the Navy. The Council had repeatedly to be convinced that a single ship, however victorious, could only be in one place at a time, and at regular intervals that place necessarily had to be in port, for resupply, refit, and crew rest and recreation. Of course, everything boiled down to politics, and most of the members of the Council were averse to spending a single franc of the Republic's money on anything that did not, in effect, buy them votes for their re-election.

  Council members representing French Port and Port Molloy could be brought to support the first two warships, since the vessels were converted in shipyards in those towns, creating local employment. Port Joan-of-Arc, another populous district, was seduced by civic pride in being the namesake of the second ship, and also by implicit promises of future shipyard work from the Navy. Also, both had economies based almost entirely on maritime trade, directly or indirectly, and thus felt immediately threatened by the depredations of the pirates. Since the two towns combined had the densest concentration of voters on Kerguelen, their support of the Navy was crucial.

  Members representing the outports, however, were stubbornly opposed to the Navy, since they could see no direct interest of theirs at stake in the war with the pirates. They had no shipbuilding and repair facilities, just tiny boatyards capable only of turning out inshore fishing vessels, and their local economies were based on fishing and farming.

  Of course, it was short-sighted of them not to realize that the current relative prosperity of the Rock, in which they shared indirectly but substantially through higher prices for their fish and produce, was completely dependent on ocean trade. But the insistence of citizens on voting for their own narrow interests regardless of the greater good had been one of the drawbacks of democracy since its beginnings.

  With regard to the direct security of Kerguelen itself, and her older settlements throughout the Southern Ocean, many Kergs complacently assumed that the Roaring Forties constituted an impenetrable barrier to the pirates, through which they could never pass in their frail dhows. Knowing the high level of Arab seamanship, and the ingenuity and adaptability the pirates had exhibited from the beginning of the war, neither Dave nor anyone else in the Navy were so sure this would always be true.

  During a drinking bout ashore in Hell-ville, one of Dave's brother officers had suggested facetiously that the Scorpion should be sent south through the forties to Kerguelen, crew disguised as pirates, to mount a mock raid on one of the north shore outports; that would certainly increase the Navy's political support!

  What caused Dave to worry about Commodore Bowditch's future tenure as C-in-C was the high-handed way he had taken both Scorpion and Roland into the Navy, buying the latter, and refitting them both in Hell-ville, on the Republic's credit – and only later reporting his actions by radi
o to the Kerguelenian government. He was overheard remarking to his XO that he would rather “...apologize than beg forgiveness”.

  This left the government in the awkward position of having to choose between repudiating Bowditch's actions, after the owner of the schooner had been paid with supposedly irrevocable warrants on the Republic and work on the conversion of both vessels had already begun, or acquiescing in what the bureaucrats would certainly see as an outrageous abuse of authority on the part of the Commodore.

  And they could also, of course, sack Bowditch as commander-in-chief of the Navy, revoke his commission, perhaps even bring a criminal action for unauthorized expenditure of public funds. This was what worried Dave the most, for he, like all his brother officers and virtually every man and woman in the Navy, idolized Sam Bowditch.

  They could only hope that the Navy's little band of loyal supporters in French Port could save the situation. Simone “Mother” Moreau, chair of the Council committee on maritime trade and fisheries, now the cognizant Council committee on Naval affairs, was a formidable politician and the Navy's best friend in the government. She had earned her nickname originally because of her many children, but she had also, more recently, become known as the “Mother of the Navy”.

  Commander Foch, Republic of Kerguelen Naval Volunteer Reserve, the head of the Navy's small Intelligence division, had numerous political contacts, gained through his civilian job as a senior officer in the French Port Police Service and chief of its criminal intelligence department, which he used in support of the naval budgets. And Captain Lee, Director of the Kerguelenian Bureau of Shipping, the influential non-governmental organization that controlled every aspect of the offshore maritime industries, from vessel design and equipment to determining and certifying the qualifications of officers and seamen, was also a friend of the Navy, and not shy about using the influence of the KBS on its behalf. But would their advocacy, however forceful, be enough to save Sam Bowditch's job?

  Dave decided that there was no point in fretting about a situation he was powerless to affect, and so, with an effort, pushed the issue out of his mind. He realized that, in his preoccupation, he had been gazing around at the horizon without really seeing anything, and he redoubled his concentration. After a few moments, he thought he saw a tiny nick on the northern horizon, then it disappeared. When it re-appeared – so small that it could very well be his imagination – he reached for his telescope in its rack on the binnacle.

  At that moment, the masthead lookout shouted, “Sail ho! Deck, there – sail, fine on the starboard bow.” Dave raised his scope and swept the horizon. There it was, now a blob rather than a speck, but still vague and shapeless.

  Dave tucked his telescope into the sash that held his Arab gown close, and strode forward. He kicked off his shoes and swung himself up onto the long yard from which the vast lateen sail was suspended, then shinnied up it to a point just below the lookout's perch where the yard crossed the masthead. There he balanced himself a-straddle of the yard and focused his telescope once again on the strange sail. From this vantage, it resolved into two tiny triangles: almost certainly a two-masted dhow.

  “Battle stations!” Dave shouted as he slid down the yard at a headlong rate. Not bothering to re-don his shoes, he ran barefoot to the quarterdeck as the calls of the bosun's mates trilled the pipe “All hands to battle stations”.

  The deck came alive in a flurry of activity as the seamen dropped whatever they were doing, rushed below to the armory for their weapons, and returned topsides. In a matter of moments, both of the long-barreled 25 mm rifles were quickly mounted to the starboard rail. The gunners of the landing force had their repeating rifles loaded, cocked, and ready, and the rest of the crew were armed with short double-barreled shotguns, or revolvers in the case of the officers and leading petty officers. The lookout was replaced at the masthead by their lone sharpshooter, a former seal hunter, who was armed with a long-barreled 7.62 mm rifle, deadly accurate in his hands out to a range of four cables.

  There followed a long period of tense, watchful waiting, as the strange dhow drew closer. Dave took bearings and worked out a rough relative-motion plot in his head. The dhow would pass several miles to starboard of the Scorpion – unless it changed course to investigate.

  “Deck, there – enemy vessel signaling,” called down the sharpshooter. Then: “Belay that – she's hoisting pirate colors at the fore.” Dave swept up his telescope and saw that the green banner of the Caliphate had been raised to the foremast head of the strange dhow.

  Assuming this was a challenge, Dave ordered: “Hoist the enemy colors.” The Scorpion's own green banner, captured with her, soared to the mast head. It was a smaller version of the Caliphate flag, tattered and dirty, but Dave hoped it was clearly visible.

  Dave then watched the pirate vessel with anxious alertness for any sign of a course change. The pirate was on a close reach, and could easily fall off to close the Scorpion with very little inconvenience to herself.

  “Everybody lie down flat, behind the bulwarks!” Dave ordered. The two vessels were so far apart that Dave could distinguish no human figure on the pirate's deck, which meant that the reverse ought to be true – but why take chances? What if the pirate captain had a more powerful telescope? Dave desperately hoped that the Scorpion appeared harmless to the pirates, that their captain couldn't be bothered to alter course to investigate her. It wasn't so much that he was afraid of the certain death that would inevitably follow their exposure – although he was as fond of life as most healthy young men – as that he hated the thought of failure in his mission. The Scorpion had no hope of either out-running or outfighting a Caliphate war-dhow. Although she could certainly kill a lot of pirates in a battle, she was out-gunned and out-numbered, and her ultimate end was sure.

  A tense hour followed, as the strange dhow cruised down-wind in the distance, first coming abeam of the Scorpion, then gradually disappearing astern. Dave did not stand his crew down from battle stations until the pirate dhow was once again a mere nick on the distant horizon.

  After the pipe “secure from battle stations” was made, Landry came aft, and, in his usual formal way, requested permission to join Dave on the quarterdeck. Once there, he said, “Looks like our disguise held, Skipper – this time.”

  “Ja, Chief – this time. I hope there won't be a next time. My nerves couldn't stand it.”

  Landry laughed. “Your nerves. You're a young man, Captain – think of mine!” Dave laughed, too, but privately thought that Landry was just being sympathetic – the man didn't have nerves.

  “We only have a few more days until we reach Zanzibar. God wil, we won't sight any more close traffic during daylight hours,” Dave said, rapping on the wooden rail for luck.

  “Amen, Skipper.”

  Their luck held, or God indeed willed it, depending upon one's point of view; they didn't sight another sail during daylight. A couple of times, at night, they saw the faint yellow glow of the all-around stern lantern that seemed to be the only running light Caliphate vessels ever showed. Since Scorpion sailed without showing any lights at all, this traffic passed her in complete ignorance of her existence.

  Dave spent hours poring over the single large-scale chart of Zanzibar available to him. It was a copy of an ancient chart based mostly on surveys conducted a century earlier than the original chart's publication date. It showed harbors and navigational aids that almost certainly no longer existed, and soundings that were, after the passage of so much time, totally unreliable. So far as he could determine, no Kerguelenian vessel had ever visited Zanzibar, or even sailed this far north. In that respect, this cruise of the Scorpion was an historic event.

  Dave cared little for making history, but a great deal for the successful completion of his mission. And the riskiest phase was approaching fast. The landing force, composed of a squad of the Navy's elite corps of seamen-gunners, was trained in night reconnaissance ashore, and they could be landed under Landry's command to survey covertl
y the defenses and facilities of Zanzibar's main harbor, although Dave hoped this would prove unnecessary. This was intended to be preparation for a combined raid and reconnaissance in force, if the island proved to be, as the Commodore was convinced, a principle base of the pirates, and if an attack was militarily feasible.

  The trouble was, no one knew where the main harbor of Zanzibar was now, only where it used to be. It made sense that the ancient site of Stone Town, Zanzibar's capital and largest city in ancient times, would still be the logical place for a port. It had a sheltered harbor, and was situated on the west coast opposite the African mainland. But the big island had other suitable harbors, and the pirates could very well have developed one of them as their base.

  This meant that, to find the pirate base, and then select a suitable landing site, the Scorpion would have to circumnavigate the big island in daylight in order to make a visual survey. The dangers of this were obvious and grave, but Dave could see no alternative. He certainly wasn't going to land the bulk of his crew at night, at a random spot on an enemy shore, to wander around in the dark hoping to stumble over the intelligence they needed.

  Zanzibar had an area of about 1600 square kilometers. It was the biggest island off the east African coast after Madagascar. To survey the entire coastline would require sailing nearly 150 sea-miles. Accomplishing this in daylight would take two full days, hauling offshore and heaving-to during hours of darkness. And it would all have to be done without attracting undue attention from Caliphate craft or shore-side observers.

  On the evening of the sixth day out of Hell-ville, Dave and Cameron got a good star fix and their projected dead reckoning track indicated that the vessel would close the island during the small hours of the next morning. Unwilling to risk approaching an unknown shore in darkness, Dave ordered a switch to the smaller beating sail in order to reduce speed. Frequent estimation of their speed through the water by chip log during the night allowed the dhow to so regulate her progress that at first light the southern tip of the island appeared dead ahead.