The Tiger’s Prey. Wilbur Smith
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knew it too. He paused a moment to savour the situation. He didn’t know who Tom was, where he had come from or how he had got aboard, but he knew he had cost him his prize – and probably his ship also. Snarling with fury, he lunged at Tom with the musket to force him overboard.
Tom anticipated the blow, and jumped backwards off the gunwale. To Legrange’s astonishment, he did not drop into the waves below but he swung out into space, flying out from the ship’s side as if he had sprouted wings.
Legrange had not noticed the taut halyard attached to the ship’s yardarm high above, that Tom had seized hold of. Tom reached the limit of his arc and started swinging back, gathering speed as the ship’s hull rolled and gave him impetus. He pulled his knees up onto his chest and then shot them out as he swooped back at Legrange. Both his booted heels slammed into the pirate’s forehead, driving his head back so hard that clearly Tom heard his vertebrae snap. Legrange staggered backwards with his legs giving way under him. He fell into the leaping flames that were sweeping across the deck towards him. They engulfed him instantly. For a second, Tom had a hellish vision of Legrange wreathed in fire. His beard, hair and clothes alight and the skin of his face blistering and shrivelling.
Tom swung out over the water on the halyard, and when he reached the limit of its arc he released his grip and dropped into the water. With powerful overarm strokes he covered the distance to the Dowager easily, before the sharks could scent the blood on him. Dorian was waiting on the bottom rung to give him a boost aboard.
‘Where are Sarah and Yasmini?’ Tom gasped, before he had fully recovered his breath. Desperately he scanned the waters around the Dowager and then exhaled with a great sigh of relief as he saw her well clear of the burning hulk of the Fighting Cock.
Tom switched his attention back to the pirate ship. Pillars of fire engulfed her masts and ran along her yards, devouring the canvas and outlining her in flame. Men hurled themselves into the water, flames leaping from their backs. The pirates who had been trapped aboard the Dowager fared no better. The crew were in a savage mood: they’d been given no quarter, and they offered none now.
‘We should lower a boat,’ said Dorian, pointing to the pirates floundering in the ocean. Screams rang out across the water as the sharks closed in on them.
‘It would be no mercy, rescuing them so they could be hanged in Cape Town,’ Tom pointed out.
Just then an enormous explosion sucked the air out of their lungs, then blew it back in an angry breath. A huge wave rocked the ship and sent the men staggering across the deck. Burning debris rained down on the roiling waters. But the Fighting Cock had vanished. All that remained were charred timbers settling on the water.
Tom pulled himself upright. There was no point searching for survivors now. Any men in the water would have been knocked unconscious and drowned by the force of the blast.
‘Her powder magazine must have caught.’ A weather-beaten man joined them at the ship’s side. He’d lost his coat; and he was bleeding from his arm and an open wound on his cheek. Even so, Tom recognized the air of command that was imprinted on his face.
‘Are you the master of the Dowager?’
‘Josiah Inchbird.’ The man nodded at the remnants of the Fighting Cock, the wide field of flotsam spreading across the water. ‘Good riddance to her and the thieves that sailed in her.’
Tom waited for him to pass comment on the battle, to acknowledge the help he’d received. But Inchbird said nothing further.
‘It was lucky we were in sight when you were boarded,’ he said pointedly. ‘We saved your ship.’
Inchbird took his meaning at once. ‘You’ll get no salvage,’ he warned sharply.
‘Your ship was overrun by pirates. You’d surrendered,’ observed Dorian.
‘I never surrendered.’
‘Then you gave a convincing impression of doing so.’
‘If you want to press the matter, you can take it to the Admiralty court in London.’
Tom swallowed. He had left England fifteen years earlier as a fugitive from justice, wanted for the killing of his eldest brother, Billy. A black-hearted man, quick to fury, Billy had tried to kill Tom in a midnight ambush on the Thames docks. Tom had killed him in self-defence, not recognizing him in the dark, but that would count for little in an English court. If he went back, all he’d face would be the hangman’s noose.
Inchbird couldn’t have known that, but he sensed Tom’s weakness. ‘If you wish to pursue the case, I will gladly give you passage to London aboard my ship.’
‘I risked my life to save your ship.’ An excited chatter arose from the sailors on deck. The Centaurus had come alongside, and Aboli was helping Sarah and Yasmini aboard. ‘I risked my crew, my ship, and my family,’ Tom insisted.
Inchbird softened his tone. ‘You must understand, sir, my hands are tied. If I concede anything now, without consulting my owners, I will never see another command. For myself, I would gladly give you everything aboard for what you did. But for that, you will have to ask the supercargo.’
Tom nodded. The master was responsible for the ship, but the contents of her hold belonged to the supercargo. ‘Then I had best speak to him.’
Sarah and Yasmini climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck. Sarah put her hands on her hips and looked around the carnage on deck.
‘The trouble with men,’ she declared to Yasmini, ‘is that they always leave things in such a mess.’ She turned to Inchbird. ‘I apologize if my husband has caused your ship any distress.’
Inchbird gave an awkward bow. ‘We were just discussing that very matter.’
‘Your husband saved us all,’ said another voice. The woman Tom had earlier rescued from Legrange came up the companion-way. Her voice was low and husky, tinged with an accent Tom couldn’t place. She’d changed into a new dress from the one Legrange had sliced open with his sword. It was a simple blue calico that mirrored the sea around them, cinched just below her full breasts. Her hair was tied back in a ribbon, with a stray wisp floating just above her neck. She couldn’t be much past twenty, but there was strength and wisdom in her face beyond her age. Every man on deck stared at her. An hour ago, they’d seen her most private parts exposed, but she bore their attention now with unflinching equanimity.
‘I hope, Captain Inchbird, you have not forgotten your manners,’ she said. ‘These men saved our lives, and I do not even know their names.’
Tom gave a little bow. ‘My name is Tom,’ he said. ‘My brother, Dorian; his wife, Yasmini; and my wife, Sarah. I am glad we could have been of service.’
‘I am Ana Duarte. And those pirates would have robbed us of everything.’ A small shudder rippled through her body. ‘I understand why Captain Inchbird cannot offer you salvage for his ship. But I do not want you to think we are ungrateful. Whatever the pirates left of our goods, please take what you feel is fair recompense.’
Tom waited for Inchbird to protest. However the captain had gone curiously silent.
‘I’m glad of your concern, ma’am, but I fear the supercargo may not like you being so free and easy with his goods. Especially if he is of the same mind as Captain Inchbird here.’
She tilted her head. ‘They are my goods.’
‘Yours?’
‘I am the supercargo.’
‘You?’ Tom could not hide his astonishment.
Sarah jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Tom Courtney, you great booby. You’ve traded up and down the coast of Africa with every chieftain, brigand and cannibal you could find to take your goods. And now you are flummoxed to find a woman who can trade?’
Ana and Sarah shared a glance – some intuitive understanding that made Tom feel