"I hope you're right," Keje grumbled. "It looked to me that all it did was turn their bowels to water."
Matt arched an eyebrow."You should've seen us when the Japs bombed Cavite."
Walker steadied on course and gradually increased speed. Spanky was fully aware of the state of their bunkers and there was no pell-mell acceleration. Matt glanced about, trying to find something to use as a gauge for wind direction and speed. He settled on one of the fishing feluccas that pelted by in the opposite direction. The small, beamy ship sailed admirably close to the wind. Keje saw him studying it.
"Yes. The enemy has a favorable wind with their . . . I think you call it `square rig'? It's much the same principle as our `wings,' and it serves best running with the wind on a quarter from behind, ah, quartering? Astern?"
He shook his head. "I learn your language good, I think, but some words don't work yet."
Matt grinned at him. "They work fine, as far as I can tell."
Keje bowed in thanks. "Still, I think you could catch him before he makes it into the strait." Matt glanced at Garrett, who cast a quick look at the Lemurian. Matt nodded.
"He's in easy range, Skipper," Garrett confirmed. The Grik ship was less than two miles away, gaining speed. But the course reversal had cost him. Keje grunted as if to say, "I thought so."
"Very well. Let's let him get some more water under his keel, though.
I don't want to sink him in the channel. Tell Spanky he can ease off the juice. Make him think he's keeping the distance." Matt smiled ruefully. "By the way, Mr. Garrett, my apologies. I have the deck. Please take your post on the fire-control platform. If there's another one, we might have some fancy shooting to do."
"Aye, aye, sir. Captain has the deck," he announced. After he was gone, Matt shook his head. Got excited, he chided himself. Not too good for the image of the stoic, all-knowing captain.
"What about me, sir?" asked Dowden. "You want me aft?"
"Not yet. This'll probably be as close to shooting fish in a barrel as we'll ever get. But I may have a chore for you. Helm," he said to Tolson, "keep us dead astern of the enemy, if you please. Adjust speed as needed."
"Dead astern and as needed, aye."
The Grik ship was leaning on her wide beam, the pyramid of white canvas contrasting sharply with the dark red hull and the blue, whitecapped waves. A long, foaming trail spread astern. "You can say what you like about those damn lizards," he said, "but they make pretty ships."
The mouth of the bay widened. Beyond the Grik, the open ocean of the Makassar Strait looked vast and empty. A few high clouds moved with deliberation across the otherwise clear blue sky. A touch of gray brooded over Celebes, but the local visibility was near perfect. Where was the other ship?
"Lookout reports a sail beyond the headland, bearing two two five," proclaimed the talker. Matt shifted his glass, but saw nothing because of the dense jungle that grew right down to the shoreline off the starboard bow. The lookout had a better vantage point, and the high masts of the Grik allowed them to see and signal at an even greater distance.
"Well, two for sure," Matt said speculatively. "Question now is whether the one we're chasing will turn to join her consort or continue on, leading us away. It might tell us a lot about them."
"Will it make a difference?" Keje asked anxiously.
"It shouldn't, in the short term." Matt was silent for a moment. "Say you had two or three fast ships and had just found the home of the Grik. They pursue. There's no way you can win a fight, but it's vitally important that someone get away with the information. What would you do?"
Theoretical speculation wasn't always a Lemurian strong point, Matt had noticed, but now Keje stared at the stern of the Grik ship while his mind sorted possibilities.
"I'd flee in a direction different than my consorts and hope they might chase me or one of the others. Perhaps one might escape. Much like the original Leaving. If the herd splinters, the hunters cannot get them all."
Matt nodded. "Or the hunters might get them all one at a time. But what else might you try? If it looked like none would escape?"
"I might fight them, to delay them. Or ask one of the others to do so."
"Yeah." He paced to the helmsman and glanced at the compass pelorus in front of the wheel. Then he returned and looked at the sky, gauging the wind again. The Grik ship was in the strait. They also saw the other enemy ship, crowding more sail and hugging the coastline, sailing southsouthwest. If the closer ship intended to follow, now was the time to turn.
"The question is," Matt continued, "would you have ever thought the Grik might do such a thing?"
Keje was flabbergasted by the thought. He found it difficult enough to believe they were running away at all. The idea of any strategic or selfsacrificing thought entering a Grik head was so foreign and horrifying that it left him momentarily speechless. And yet he'd been watching the wind. Unlike the destroyerman, who relied so much on his engines, Keje was always conscious of the wind. He didn't need a compass to tell him the Grik should have already turned.
"If they think information about Baalkpan is more important than their lives, it would imply a more sophisticated enemy than the `rear up and run at 'em' sort we thought we faced." Matt was watching the lizard ship as he spoke, and then he suddenly peered through the binoculars again. "Damn," he muttered as sails shivered and the enemy's hull changed aspect. "I sure hoped I was wrong. They can't get away, but they're not changing course to follow their friend—a heading that would give them more speed, by the way. Anyway"—he looked at Keje—"they want to fight. To `delay' us." He shook his head. "Not happy about that at all." To the talker: "Have Mr. Garrett commence firing. Helm? Let's go after the other one. We don't have the fuel to screw around."
The salvo buzzer screeched. While Walker described a leisurely turn to starboard, three rounds from the number two gun left the large, once beautiful ship a shattered, smoking wreck, sinking in their wake. A fourinch projectile isn't very large in the grand scheme of naval riflery, but high-explosive against a wooden hull is no contest. Two rounds should have been enough, but Silva was pointer and his crewmates had noticed he wasn't quite himself. Good-natured ribbing followed his first inexplicable miss, but the 'Cats on board were suitably impressed by the effect of the second and third shells. Now Walker loped after the other red ship . . . and Silva glared at Chack. A moment later he grinned.
Keje stood beside Matt, sitting in his sacred chair on the starboard side of the pilothouse. Far ahead, but slowly growing, was their next quarry.
Matt was impressed by its speed. There was a fine breeze and it must have been making close to thirteen knots. A short while before, they'd passed half-submerged casks and other objects and it was clear the Grik were lightening ship. He gauged the distance.
"Keje," he said, "I'd like to take that ship. They came snooping around to find out about us, and I want to return the favor. There's just too much about them we don't know, like where they come from, what they're doing and what they want. Do they really have a dozen ships in the Java Sea?
More? I'm sick of never knowing what my people have to face!" He paused.
"After we take out her masts, I'll have the machine guns and rifles kill as many as they can. Then we'll board. My question to you is do you think we can do it with a minimal . . . loss of life? My guess is they'll mass in the open, to receive us, and we'll be able to whittle them down considerably.