The Cruise of the Albatros Read online

  Full daylight, coming with the suddenness usual in the tropics, displayed the creek mouth a few miles dead ahead of the Albatros, a fact that allowed Sam to congratulate Mr. Mooney on the precision of his navigation. The motor sloop was immediately launched, and Albatros, with all fore-and-aft sail set, began to cruise off the creek mouth in the light airs of early morning. Sam knew that, as the sun climbed the wind would freshen, but its present state suited him – he had no requirement for speed at the moment.

  On board the motor sloop, heading in toward the creek mouth, Mr. Kendall sat next to Midshipman Peltier, who had the tiller. Mr. Andri sat on the other side of the Mid, looking pale, wan, and a bit green around the gills, the very picture of patient misery. Kendall hoped he was up to this excursion. He knew that the seasickness would disappear as if by magic once he sat foot on dry land, but the weakness and inanition would linger far longer.

  Amidships, Mr. Yeo and his mate attended the engine, which was pushing them along at six or seven knots while making only slight whooshing noises. Kendall reflected that he was happy to sacrifice a few horsepower in place of the noise and stench of a diesel.

  Up in the bows, the one-inch gun crew was alert, a round of canister in the breech and the barrel trained forward. Packed into every foot in between were the remaining members of the motor sloop’s crew, and the thirty seamen-gunners of the landing force, in full landing rig – grayish-white unbleached working uniforms, straw hats, haversacks with three days rations, full ammo pouches and water bottles, and loaded rifles held upright between their knees. They looked fiercely martial so arrayed, and he had no doubts about their courage and discipline, but Kendall worried if they were yet up to a long march through the Malagasy jungle. They were all young men, strong and fit from their daily work as seamen – but their conditioning wasn’t of the sort necessary for long hikes in tropical heat and humidity, as they had learned on Mauritius.

  And, of course, there had been no time to procure better footwear for them on Reunion. LPO Landry had ordered them all to wear two pairs of socks, and lace their shoes up tight. Kendall had no idea if these measures would prevent blisters, or make them worse. Landry might be wrong about it, but he had the good NCO’s knack for projecting absolute confidence in the correctness – indeed, the righteousness – of any orders he issued, so the hands, at least, did not doubt that these measures would be effective.

  Albert Francois Kendall, known to his friends and messmates as “Al”, had been in the Navy no longer than anyone else aboard, a matter of months, but he already loved it passionately. He had never had any doubt from boyhood that he wanted to go to sea, but he had found life as a mate, and then a master commanding a schooner, strangely unsatisfying in some way he couldn’t define. There was nothing else he wanted to do, so he would no doubt have continued to go to sea as a master mariner, vaguely unfulfilled, until he retired. Then he heard about the creation of a navy, and the need for experienced officers on the Albatros. After one conversation – an interview, he supposed it must have been – with Bill Ennis, Kendall knew that he had found his calling.

  Nothing that had happened since had changed his mind. He found both his Captain and his XO congenial as superior officers, and Bill Ennis had, in addition, become one of his best friends. He was delighted to have been chosen for the senior lieutenant’s billet, but hoped for promotion. Bill often talked of the inevitable addition of vessels to the infant Navy, and both men aspired to command one of them.

  Strangers tended to underestimate Al Kendall on first meeting. He was somewhat forgettable in physical appearance – medium stature, medium-brown hair, medium-brown eyes, neither handsome nor ugly. But on longer acquaintance, people became aware of the keen intelligence, strong determination, and great competence beneath that nondescript exterior. He was greatly respected as a master mariner in maritime circles on Kerguelen, and equally respected on board the Albatros as the model of what a naval officer should be. Kendall was aware of his reputation without being in the least conceited about it; but as a matter of personal pride, he intended to do everything possible to maintain it.

  That meant this present mission had to produce results. Kendall was determined that either it would succeed, or he wouldn’t return from it. Even if there were no captives to liberate, as the Captain and XO thought likely, he knew there were pirates in the bush – he had seen their trails leading away from their camp, their fires still smoldering – and he intended to track down and kill as many as possible.

  “Slow ahead, Mister Yeo,” he called as the motor sloop entered the mouth of the creek. “Slow ahead, aye,” answered the engineer, and the sloop’s speed slackened to just more than bare steerage way.

  He remembered from his last transit of the creek how narrow, winding, and filled with snags and shoals it was; it had to be navigated with great caution, although there was plenty of water for the sloop in the unmarked channel scoured once or twice a day by the ebbing tide – tides were mixed on the east coast of Madagascar.

  It was not a purely tidal creek. It flowed fresh at slack low water, and the pirate camp was located at a point far enough up the stream that the water was always fresh there except at high tide. The channel was deep enough for ocean-going dhows and schooners to ascend to the camp site on a rising tide.

  The slight motion of the sloop in the mild swell outside ceased altogether in the calm waters of the creek, and Mr. Andri perked up considerably, gazing around him with interest, in sharp contrast to the apathy with which he had endured the passage from the Albatros to the mouth of the creek. Kendall was heartened by this sign, because he had been afraid that Andri, drained of all energy by his long bout of extreme sea-sickness, would be useless to them. This was not heartlessness on Kendall’s part – he sympathized with Andri’s plight. But the main – the only – priority, so far as he was concerned, was the success of his mission.

  They reached the site of the pirate camp, and Kendall ordered Mr. Yeo very quietly to reduce revolutions to those just necessary to stem the very slight current, while they took a good look around. PO Landry equally quietly ordered his men to train their weapons outboard.

  Nothing appeared to have changed since their last visit. The pirate dhow had burned to the waterline, Kendall noted with satisfaction – totally unsalvageable. Only ashes remained of the improvised shelters they had also set afire during their initial foray ashore here. No human presence was apparent, and the jungle sounds – bird calls, insect noises – struck Kendall as normal, although he didn’t know enough about the Madagascar forest to define “normal”.

  “What do you think, Mister Andri?” Kendall asked.

  “There’s no one about,” Andri replied confidently. He had now fully recovered his spirits, if not his strength, and was alert and watchful.

  “Give us a few more revs, Mister Yeo,” Kendall said. “Nose her into the bank, Gadget.”

  The motor sloop gently nudged her bow into the muddy creek bank, and a seaman jumped overboard with a line to make her fast to a convenient tree. At Midshipman Peltier's order, he simply led the line once around the trunk and took the end back to the sloop, so they could make a quick getaway, if necessary, without sending someone ashore to cast off the line. Kendall nodded to LPO Landry, who ordered the second squad to disembark. Fifteen of the seamen-gunners, plus Petty Officer Martin, splashed over the side into ankle-deep water and waded up the bank, slipping and cursing in the mud. “Quiet!” hissed Landry, and the cursing stopped.

  Once on the bank, Landry signaled the squad to fan out, then advance in open order through the campsite. The motor sloop, in the meantime, cast off, backed away from the bank and into the stream, then maintained enough engine revs to stem the gentle current, keeping bows-on to the campsite, the first squad and the one-inch gun's crew alert to any need to support the party ashore.

  Finally, Landry signaled “all clear”, and Kendall ordered “Put Mister Andri and myself ashore, now, Mister Peltier, then take the sloop back down to the
creek mouth. As we discussed, dedicate one lookout to watching for a rocket from me, and another for a rocket from the schooner. Remember, the schooner takes priority.”

  The motor sloop nosed back into the bank, and Kendall and Andri, by climbing over the bows, almost managed to get ashore dry-foot.

  “Good luck, Mister Kendall, Mister Andri,” said Peltier as the sloop reversed off the bank.

  “And the same to you, Gadget, and don’t forget your orders,” Kendall replied. The motor sloop managed to turn in the narrow confines of the creek, and headed back down stream.

  “No sign of life – looks like no one has been here since we left, sir,” Landry said to Kendall.

  “Let’s not take anything for granted, LPO – tell the lads to keep their eyes and ears open and their rifles at the ready.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “What do you think, Mister Andri?” asked Kendall. Andri, who was looking around with keen curiosity, immediately pointed and replied, “Here is a road, a path, Lieutenant. I think it must lead to a village. The people must come here for water when the tide is out.”

  Kendall stared blankly at what, to his eye, was a patch of bush indistinguishable from that which surrounded them. On closer examination, he could see that there was a narrow opening in the wall of vegetation, a trace of a path that might have been made by small animals.

  “Are you sure, Mister Andri?” Kendall, dubiously.

  “Yes, Lieutenant. If we follow that path, we will find people. Unless, of course, they have been frightened away by the pirates. But I think that, even if they were, they will have returned now that all the vazaha have gone. We will have to approach them very carefully, to avoid scaring them away again.”

  Andri said this between bites of the boiled potato he had taken from his ration bag and was devouring. Clearly, he had regained his appetite on setting foot on shore – a reassuring sign.

  “Very well, Mister Andri. LPO Landry, let’s proceed as directed by Mister Andri.”

  “Aye aye, sir. With respect, sir, proceeding single-file down that path looks like an invitation to an ambush to me.”

  “You have a point, LPO.”

  “Lieutenant, let me lead the way,” Andri said. I’ll know if there are people ahead, by the sounds of the forest creatures. They are an infallible alarm. You’ll notice the change yourself as we proceed. We must just stop at intervals, and listen quietly for awhile.”

  “Okay – sounds like a plan. LPO, put a reliable rifleman on point, followed by Mister Andri, myself, and the balance of the force. You bring up the rear, and police any stragglers.”

  “Aye, sir. Leading Gunner Lyons!”

  A young seaman doubled up to Landry, who said, “Leader, you take the point. Stay alert! When Mister Andri says stop, freeze and listen. Don’t proceed until he gives the word.”

  “Right, LPO.”

  The party moved off into the forest, Landry setting the intervals – as far apart as possible, given the need to maintain contact with one another in the dense bush.

  This was not the primeval rain forest of ancient Madagascar, but re-growth that had occurred since the Troubles. In the century or so before that generation-long series of disasters, and the population crash that had resulted, a growing, ever-poorer population in the region had caused a reduction by two-thirds or more of the original forest, through either slash-and-burn agriculture or clear-cutting for timber. This newer growth was lower and denser than the original rain forest, and made for slow going.

  Mr. Andri proved right about the sounds of the forest: when the group stood still and quiet, it was surprising how noisy it could be, with bird calls, the cries of the different species of lemurs, and insects all combining in a dissonant chorus. When they moved, they were immediately surrounded by a zone of silence, broken only by the warning cries of some social species, and they heard only the noises, further off, of the distant, undisturbed area. When they paused again, they were gradually once more enveloped in animal sounds, approaching nearer and nearer until the sources seemed under their very feet. After each pause, Andri, apparently satisfied, waved them onward.

  They proceeded slowly for upwards of an hour, for a distance that Kendall estimated could be traversed by someone knowledgeable of the trail, unafraid of any danger and walking normally, in ten or fifteen minutes. Mr. Andri then began calling softly, at intervals, in what was apparently a Malagasy dialect.

  Then, with a suddenness that almost made Kendall’s heart stop, a small, dark man stepped out of the undergrowth a few meters in front of Andri, and between him and the point man. The point man, LS Lyons, had apparently walked within a meter of the Malagasy native without detecting him. Considering this made Kendall hope fervently that the pirates were not this good at camouflage.

  Andri and the stranger, who was dressed only in an apron of animal skin and armed with a spear that was simply a sharpened stick with its point hardened in a fire, carried on a long conversation. Then Andri turned to Kendall and said “This is” – followed by a string of syllables that Kendall assumed constituted the man’s name, but knew he had no hope of remembering or pronouncing. Andri then addressed the stranger in his own language in a sentence from which Kendall could understand only his own name.

  Introductions complete, the little man nodded shyly at Kendall, who bowed formally in response.

  There was a further exchange between Andri and the small Malagasy.

  Andri then said to Kendall, “This gentleman – his nickname is “Zafy”, which you may find easier to remember – and his people live in this area. They don’t stay in one place for long, instead moving about in search of game and the fruits of the forest. But they never stray very far from the left bank of the creek, which is one boundary of their territory, and their source of fresh water.

  “As you can imagine, the arrival of the pirates frightened them considerably. They are not at all warlike, so they fled deeper into the bush and avoided contact – but they kept a close watch, for their own security. They were easily able to evade the notice of the pirates, who thrashed through the bush clumsily, making a lot of noise. Rather like us, he said,” Andri added, with a wry smile.

  By this point in the conversation, the rest of the party, impatient to know why they had stopped, had crowded up close to listen in. LPO Landry approached, and with a few blistering phrases had them spread back out along the path and kneel, facing in alternate directions, rifles at the ready and pointing into the bush. He then ordered them to remain silent and alert.

  “The pirates had with them, he said, some people – he’s rather vague about numbers – who appeared to be their slaves,” Andri continued. “They were guarded, and the men were shackled, and they were dressed differently from the pirates. And the women, especially, worked for the pirates, cooking, gathering firewood, washing clothes and the like. I asked him if the captives were lighter-skinned than their captors, but they all looked white to him – pirates and captives alike.”

  Kendall listened to this recital with growing excitement. “Ask Mister Zafy where the pirates who remained ashore went when they left their camp by the creek – where they took their captives!” he exclaimed.

  After another exchange with the man of the forest, Andri said, “He says they all went away around the time of the ‘thunder on the sea’. Apparently that’s a reference to your battle with the two pirate vessels. Some left on two of their ‘big canoes’, before the thunder began. The rest fled into the forest after the 'big noise', and just before you arrived – he must mean the first visit of the motor sloop to the pirate camp after the battle.

  “Incredibly, Lieutenant, Zafy seems to remember you! He recognizes you from that time, he says, but he added that you had different men with you. He was hiding in the bush, with a couple of comrades, keeping an eye on the pirates for the safety of his people, and watched you burn the shelters and the remaining ‘big canoe’.”

  “Does he know where the pirates went? The ones who fled into t
he forest, I mean.”

  More conversation Kendall couldn’t understand, then Andri said, “He says he’s not sure where they are now, but he knows in what direction they went, and where they spent the first night after they left their camp here.”

  “Can he guide us there?”

  Yet another incomprehensible exchange, then Andri said, “He’s willing to take us within view of the site where he last saw them, but he’s clearly afraid of them, and he says he won’t stay with us if there is a battle. He has a family to think of, he says.”

  “Fair enough, Mister Andri. It’s not his fight, after all. Tell Mister Zafy we’re very grateful for his assistance, and that we will reward him for his time.”

  A short exchange between the two Malagasy, and Zafy nodded in agreement and waved impatiently up the trail, speaking abruptly; he clearly wanted them to leave immediately.

  “He wants to get this over with, and get back to his family and his people,” Mister Andri translated. “ 'Walk fast’, he says.”

  Kendall turned to the gunner behind him, and said, “Pass the word back down the line to prepare to move out, and for PO Landry to pass the word back when he’s ready.” He had no idea how close they were to the pirates, so didn’t want any shouting of orders to alert any outposts or patrols they may have thrown out. The word was quickly passed back that the rear guard was ready to move out, and Landry waved the group forward.

  They moved much faster with Zafy in the lead. Kendall expressed concern about this to Andri, who replied, “Zafy knows this area intimately, and he’s far superior to me in knowledge of the ways of the forest here. I’m sure he can tell immediately if other people are in the vicinity.” Kendall nevertheless passed a reminder back down the line to remain alert.

  They marched briskly along the narrow path for another half-hour, by Kendall’s watch. Unlike Andri, Zafy did not pause periodically to listen, but kept moving at a steady pace. Kendall hoped Andri was right about Zafy’s forest skills, because the seamen were making a lot of noise as they blundered along; he wondered how the little Malagasy could hear anything else.