"Africa!" The sound of that mysterious name on his own lips raised goose pimples along his arms and made the thick dark hair prickle on the back of his neck.
"Africa!" The uncharted land of dragons and other dreadful creatures, who ate the flesh of men, and of darkskinned savages who also ate men's flesh and wore their bones as decoration.
"Africa!" The land of gold and ivory and slaves and other treasures, all waiting for a man bold enough to seek them out, and, perhaps, to perish in the endeavour. Hal felt daunted yet fascinated by the sound and promise of that name, its menace and challenge.
Long hours he had pored over the charts in his father's cabin when he should have been learning by rote the tables of celestial passages, or declining his Latin verbs. He had studied the great interior spaces, filled with drawings of elephants and lions and monsters, traced the outlines of the Mountains of the Moon, and of lakes and mighty rivers confidently emblazoned with names such as "Khoikhoi', and "Camdeboo', "Sofala" and "the Kingdom of Prester John'. But Hal knew from his father that no civilized man had ever travelled into that awesome interior and wondered, as he had so many times before, what it would be like to be the first to venture there. Prester John particularly intrigued him. This legendary ruler of a vast and powerful Christian empire in the depths of the African continent had existed in the European mythology for hundreds of years. Was he one man, or a line of emperors? Hal wondered.
Hal's reverie was interrupted by shouted orders from the quarterdeck, faint on the wind, and the feel of the ship as she changed course. Looking down, he saw that his father intended to intercept the Gull of Moray. Under top sails only, and with all else reefed, the two ships were now converging, both running westward towards the Cape of Good Hope and the Atlantic. They moved sluggishly they had been too long in these warm southern waters, and their timbers were infested with the Toredo worm. No vessel could survive long out here. The dreaded shipworrns grew as thick as a man's finger and as long as his arm, and they bored so close to each other through the planks as to honeycomb them. Even from his seat at the masthead Hal could hear the pumps labouring in both vessels to lower the bilges. The sound never ceased: it was like the beating of a heart that kept the ship afloat. It was yet another reason why they must seek out the Dutchmen: they needed to change ships. The Lady Edwina was being eaten away beneath their feet.
As the two ships came within hailing distance the crews swarmed into the rigging and lined the bulwarks to shout ribald banter across the water.
The numbers of men packed into each vessel never failed to amaze Hal when he saw them in a mass like this. The Lady Edwina was a ship of 170 tons burden, with an overall length of little more than 70 feet, but she carried a crew of a hundred and thirty men if you included those now manning the two pinnaces. The Gull was not much larger, but with half as many men again aboard.
Every one of those fighting men would be needed if they were to overwhelm one of the huge Dutch East India galleons. Sir Francis had gathered intelligence from all the corners of the southern ocean from other Knights of the Order, and knew that at least five of these great ships were still at sea. So far this season twenty-one of the Company's galleons had made the passage and had called at the tiny victualling station below the towering Tafelberg, as the Dutch called it, or Table Mountain at the foot of the southern continent before turning northwards and voyaging up the Atlantic towards Amsterdam.
Those five tardy ships, still straggling across the Ocean of the Indies, must round the Cape before the southeasterly trades fell away and the wind turned foul into the north-west. That would be soon.
When the Gull of Moray was not cruising in the guerre de course, which was a euphemism for privateering, Angus Cochran, Earl of Cumbrae, rounded out his purse by trading for slaves in the markets of Zanzibar.
Once they had been shackled to the ring bolts in the deck of the long narrow slave hold, they could not be released until the ship docked at the end of her voyage in the ports of the Orient. This meant that even those poor creatures who succumbed during the dreadful tropical passage of the Ocean of the Indies must lie rotting with the living in the confined spaces of the "tween decks. The effluvium of decaying corpses, mingled with the waste odour of the living, gave the slave ships a distinctive stench that identified them for many leagues down wind. No amount of scouring with even the strongest lyes could ever rid a slaver of her characteristic smell.
As the Gull crossed upwind, there were howls of exaggerated disgust from the crew of the Lady Edwina. "By God, she stinks like a dung-heap."
"Did you not wipe your backsides, you poxy vermin? We can smell you from here!" one yelled across at the pretty little frigate. The language bawled back from the Gull made Hal grin. Of course, the human bowels held no mysteries for him, but he did not understand much of the rest of it, for he had never seen those parts of a woman to which the seamen in both ships referred in such graphic detail, nor knew of the uses to which they could be put, but it excited his imagination to hear them so described. His amusement was enhanced when he imagined his father's fury at hearing it.
Sir Francis was a devout man who believed that the fortunes of war could be influenced by the god-fearing behaviour of every man aboard.
He forbade gambling, blasphemy and the drinking of strong spirits.
He led prayers twice a day and exhorted his seamen to gentle and dignified behaviour when they put into port although Hal knew that this advice was seldom followed. Now Sir Francis frowned darkly as he listened to his men exchange insults with those of the Buzzard but, as he could not-have half the ship's company flogged to signal his disapproval, he held his tongue until he was in easy hail of the frigate.
In the meantime he sent his servant to his cabin to fetch his cloak. What he had to say to the Buzzard was official and he should be in regalia. When the man returned, Sir Francis slipped the magnificent velvet cloak over his shoulders before he lifted his speaking trumpet to his lips. "Good morrow, my lord!"
The Buzzard came to his rail and lifted one hand in salute. Above his plaid he wore half-armour, which gleamed in the fresh morning light, but his head was bare, his red hair and beard bushed together like a haystack, the curls dancing on the wind as though his head was on fire. "Jesus love you, Franky!" he bellowed back, his great voice easily transcending the wind.
"Your station is on the eastern flank! "The wind and his anger made Sir Francis short. "Why have you deserted it?" The Buzzard spread his hands in an expressive gesture of apology. "I have little water and am completely out of patience. Sixty-five days are enough for me and my brave fellows. There are slaves and gold for the taking along the Sofala coast." His accent was like a Scottish gale.
"Your commission does not allow you to attack Portuguese shipping."
"Dutch, Portuguese or Spanish," Cumbrae shouted back. "Their gold shines as prettily. You know well that there is no peace beyond the Line. " "You are well named the Buzzard," Sir Francis roared in frustration, "for you have the same appetite as that carrion bird!" Yet what Cumbrae had said was true. There was no peace beyond the Line.