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sea. There, so low on the horizon it could only be viewed with glasses, was a small cloud. The captain,
after studying it for a while, gave orders to increase the speed of theHwaelgold. He explained that the
vessel might be peaceful, perhaps a merchantman from South Africa. But if the contact with the ship
could be avoided, it would be best.
By dusk, the smoke had come closer. Its estimated speed placed it out of the category of
merchant; it could only be a warship, either a destroyer or cruiser. "The direction from which it comes
should make it an Ikhwani. But it could be a Perkunishan raider."
At the end of the second day, the pursuer (if it was one) was a little over a mile away. It glittered
whitely in the sun and was identifiable as Arabic.
"I don't think they'll sink us," the captain said. "We are too valuable a prize, a large well-built
British craft the Ikhwani can use to enrich their merchant fleet. But they can't put a prize crew aboard and
take theHwaelgold back to South Africa. It doesn't have enough fuel or provisions to make the voyage.
So, the only thing the Arabs can do is to sail us into Kualono and refuel it there."
"What will happen to us?" Ilmika said.
"The Ikhwani might make some of the sailors help sail theHwaelgold to Ikhwan," he replied.
"The rest of us should be left on Hivika, free to make our way back to Blodland as best we can. The
Ikhwani won't want to take more prisoners than they can help. After all, they'd have to feed us. Unless
we could be used as slaves. That's a possibility. Tell the truth, I don't know. It's up to God and the
Ikhwani."
Night fell. The cruiser kept a quarter-mile behind theHwael-gold, its searchlights pinning the
merchantman. The captaintook no vain evasive action but continued to run his vessel at top speed. He
could do nothing else unless the Ikhwani sent a shell over him and ordered him to stop. This the cruiser
would undoubtedly do when dawn arrived.
At midnight, the rainstorm that the captain had been pray-ing for swept like a dropped net out of
the west. With it came rough seas. Two seconds after the rain and darkness struck, the captain ordered
theHwaelgold to turn sharply southwards. In a short time, the lights of the cruiser had dis-appeared.
When the sun came up, it shone only upon the Blod-land ship. The captain ordered a normal cruising
speed, since he had been worried about his engines giving way under the long strain.
17
The seas were empty of alien smoke for the next five days. The dawn of the sixth day, the
captain took a reading and verified that their position was only a hundred miles east of Kualono. Within
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an hour, they should be sighting Miki'ao, a small island. Exactly forty minutes later, the 500-foot peak of
Miki'ao reared above the horizon. The captain's grin of pride, however, was wiped off when smoke was
sighted to the rear. He gave the orders for full speed ahead and spent most of the next two hours
watching to the aft. This time, the Ikhwani had approached much closer before being detected. It was
coming up fast to the southward and at an angle that would intercept them long before they reached the
safety of Kualono.
The captain conferred with Gilbert and then ordered theHwaelgold to turn at a 45-degree angle
northward. "There are dangerous reefs just above the harbor," he said. "I know them well. We'll make a
run through them; perhaps the Ikhwani will pile up on them. If they don't we'll run it ashore, if there's a
place on those forbidding cliffs to do so. In any case, the Arabs won't get their hands on my ship."
Gilbert said, "He's making for Lapu Mountain, where the Cave of the Outer Gods is. If we land
there, we'll have a good excuse for trespassing on tabu property. We won't get there until a little before
dusk. So, if the Hivikans don't see us. . ."
Two Hawks replied to Gilbert's smile with one of his own. "We bulldoze our way in then? Great!
And what if the Ikhwani respect the marine sovereignty of Hivika and refuse to follow us in? What do we
use for an excuse?"
"If they respected the Hivika sovereignty, they would have quit long ago," the captain said.
"Hivika claims extend to fifty miles out from the coast. No, they're not going to quit unless they come
across a Hivikan naval ship. Maybe not then. Ikhwan would like an excuse to go to war with Hivika; it
has coveted Hivika for a long time. Only the threat of war with Blodland and Perkunisha kept them from
conquest. Now, I don't know."
TheHwaelgold, her engines pounding, beat northwestward. Its pursuer steadily cut down the
distance between them. By the time that the black headlands of the coast had become quite high, the
cruiser was only a half-mile behind. Then smoke flared out of the muzzle of one of its eight-inchers, and a
geyser soared up twenty yards off the starboard bow of theHwaelgold. Twenty seconds later, a second
waterspout ap-peared fifteen yards off the port bow.
By then, the captain was taking his ship on a zigzag course. The path was not chosen at random,
however, since the vessel was steering through the narrow channels between the reefs. Some of these
were evident only by the darker blue of the water; others were near enough to the surface to cause the
seas to boil.
By then, the cruiser had quit firing. Evidently, it had not meant to hit its quarry but had only hoped
that the shells would make it surrender. Seeing that theHwaelgold intended to make a run for it, the
Ikhwani went after them. It, too, zigged and zagged but at a more cautious pace. Two Hawks wondered
why the Arabs were taking such chances. Why should they be so determined to capture them? What
was special about the merchantman? Perhaps, their espionagesystem in Blodland had learned that he was
on his way to Hivika. It would then have sent a radio message, by spark-gap transmitter, to an Ikhwani
vessel somewhere in the vicinity. And the message would have been relayed by various ships until the
cruiser had received it.
This would explain why theHwaelgold had not been sunk. He was wanted alive so that the
Arabs could use his knowledge, just as the Perkunishans and Blodlandish had. That would explain not
only their hunting through the reefs but their ignoring the Hivika sea-domain.
The mountain of Lapu was at the very edge of the waters. It rose steeply on both the south and
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north sides; on the eastern, it sloped much more gently and terminated in a wide black-sand beach.
Towards this, the captain steered the ship after it had slipped through a narrow channel. There was a
slight scraping of the plates of the keel on the rocks, and the vessel was in calmer waters. Captain Wilftik
heaved a sigh of relief and grinned.
"The cruiser won't make it through there without tearing her bottom out. I hope she tries it."
He gave orders to stop the ship and to lower two lifeboats. The cruiser did not attempt the
passage; it slid on by alongside the reef, turned as closely as it could to avoid another reef, and then
pointed her nose outwards. While her engines kept her from drifting backwards against the reef, it
lowered two power launches. Two Hawks, observing them through his bin-oculars, saw that the launches
were equipped with several two-inch cannons and mortars. Each held about thirty marines, in addition to
the crews. The marines looked like medieval Saracens with their turbans above which rose the gleaming
points of the helmets, steel cuirasses, great leather belts, scabbards containing scimitars, scarlet baggy
pants, and calf-length boots with turned-up toes. Each had a large blue sack strapped to his belt and
carried a rifle. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]