Birds of Prey Read Online Free Page B

lips of the wound together with his left hand, Hal laid neat sailmaker’s stitches across it, digging the needle point through the
elastic skin and pulling his knots up tight. When he was done, he reached for the pot of hot tar that Aboli had ready. He smeared the sewn wound thickly and nodded with satisfaction at his
handiwork.
    Aboli stood up and lifted his canvas petticoats. ‘Now we will see to your ear,’ he told Hal, as his own fat penis overflowed his fist by half its length.
    Hal recoiled swiftly. ‘It is but a little scratch,’ he protested, but Aboli seized his pigtail remorselessly and twisted his face upwards.
    A t the stroke of the bell the company crowded into the waist of the ship, and stood silent and bare-headed in the sunlight – even the black
tribesmen, who did not worship exclusively the crucified Lord but other gods also whose abode was the deep dark forests of their homes.
    When Sir Francis, great leather-bound Bible in hand, intoned sonorously, ‘We pray you, Almighty God, deliver the enemy of Christ into our hands that he shall not triumph …’
his eyes were the only ones still cast heavenward. Every other eye in the company turned towards the east from where that enemy would come, laden with silver and spices.
    Half-way through the long service a line squall came boring up out of the east, wind driving the clouds in a tumbling dark mass over their heads and deluging the decks with silver sheets of
rain. But the elements could not conspire to keep Sir Francis from his discourse with the Almighty, so while the crew huddled in their tar-daubed canvas jackets, with hats of the same material tied
beneath their chins, and the water streamed off them as off the hides of a pack of beached walrus, Sir Francis missed not a beat of his sermon. ‘Lord of the storm and the wind,’ he
prayed, ‘succour us. Lord of the battle-line, be our shield and buckler …’
    The squall passed over them swiftly and the sun burst forth again, sparkling on the blue swells and steaming on the decks.
    Sir Francis clapped his wide-brimmed cavalier hat back on his head, and the sodden white feathers that surmounted it nodded in approval. ‘Master Ned, run out the guns.’
    It was the proper course to take, Hal realized. The rain squall would have soaked the priming and wet the loaded powder. Rather than the lengthy business of drawing the shot and reloading, his
father would give the crews some practice.
    ‘Beat to quarters, if you please.’
    The drum-roll echoed through the hull, and the crew ran grinning and joking to their stations. Hal plunged the tip of a slow-match into the charcoal brazier at the foot of the mast. When it was
smouldering evenly, he leapt into the shrouds and, carrying the burning match in his teeth, clambered up to his battle station at the masthead.
    On the deck he saw four men sway an empty water cask up from the hold and stagger with it to the ship’s side. At the order from the poop, they tossed it over and left it bobbing in the
ship’s wake. Meanwhile the guncrews knocked out the wedges and, heaving at the tackles, ran out the culverins. On either side of the lower deck there were eight, each loaded with a bucketful
of powder and a ball. On the upper deck were ranged ten demi-culverins, five on each side, their long barrels crammed with grape.
    The Lady Edwina was low on iron shot after her two-year-long cruise, and some of the guns were loaded with water-rounded flint marbles hand-picked from the banks of the river mouths where
the watering parties had gone ashore. Ponderously she came about, and settled on the new tack, beating back into the wind. The floating cask was still two cables’ length ahead but the range
narrowed slowly. The gunners strode from cannon to cannon, pushing in the elevation wedges and ordering the training tackles adjusted. This was a specialized task: only five men aboard had the
skill to load and lay a gun.
    In the crow’s nest, Hal swung the