"The captain assures me that, with this wind holding fair, we should drop anchor in Table Bay within ten days."
"The Lord give me strength to survive that long."
"He has invited us to dine today with him and his officers," replied the Governor. "It is a pity, but I will send a message that you are indisposed."
Katinka's head and shoulders popped up over the screen. "You will do no such thing!" she snapped. Her breasts, round and white and smooth, quivered with agitation.
One of the officers interested her more than a little. He was Colonel Cornelius Schreuder, who, like her own husband, was en route to take up an appointment at the Cape of Good Hope. He had been appointed military commander of the settlement of which Pettus van de Velde would be Governor. He wore pointed moustaches and a fashionable van Dyck beard, and bowed to her most graciously each time she went on deck. His legs were well turned, and his dark eyes were eagle bright and gave her goose pimples when he looked at her. She read in them more than just respect for her position, and he had responded most gratifyingly to the sly appraisal she had given him from under her long eyelashes.
When they reached the Cape, he would be her husband's subordinate.
Hers also to command and she was sure that he could relieve the monotony of exile in the forsaken settlement at the end of the world that was to be her home for the next three years.
"I mean," she changed her tone swiftly, "it would be churlish of us to decline the captain's hospitality, would it not?"
"But your health is more important," he protested.
"I will find the strength." Zelda slipped petticoats over her head, one after another, five in all, each fluttering with ribbons.
Katinka came from behind the screen and raised her arms. Zelda lowered the blue silk dress over them and drew it down over the petticoats. Then she knelt and carefully tucked up the skirts on one side to reveal the petticoats beneath, and the slim ankles clad in white silk stockings. It was the very latest fashion. The Governor watched her, entranced. If only the other parts of your body were as big and busy as your eyeballs, Katinka thought derisively, as she turned to the long mirror and pirouetted before it.
Then she screamed wildly and clutched her bosom as, from the deck directly above them, there came the sudden deafening roar of gunfire. The Governor screamed as shrilly and flung himself from the bench onto the Oriental carpets that covered the deck.
"Through the lens of the telescope Sir Courtney read the name off her gilded transom. "The Standvastigheid. the Resolution." He lowered the glass and grunted, "A name which we will soon put to the test!"
As he spoke a long bright plume of smoke spurted from the ship's upper deck, and a few seconds later the boom of the cannon carried across the wind. Half a cable's length ahead of their bows, the heavy ball plunged into the sea, making a tall white fountain. They could hear drums beating urgently in the other ship, and the gun ports in her lower decks swung open. Long barrels prodded out.
"I marvel that he waited so long to give us a warning shot," Sir Francis drawled. He closed the telescope, and looked up at the sails. "Put up your helm, Master Ned, and lay us under his stern." The display of false colours had won them enough time to duck in under the menace of the galleon's crushing broadside.
Sir Francis turned to the carpenter, who stood ready at the stern rail with a boarding axe in his hands. "Cut her loose!" he ordered.
The man raised the axe above his head and swung it down. With a crunch the blade sliced into the timber of the stern rail, the drogue line parted with a whiplash crack and, free of her restraint, the Lady Edwina bounded forward, then heeled as Ned put up the helm.
Sir Francis's manservant, Oliver, came running with the red-quartered cloak and plumed cavalier hat. Sir Francis donned them swiftly and bellowed at the masthead, "Down with the colours of the Republic and let's see those of England!" The crew cheered wildly as the Union flag streamed out on the wind.
They came boiling up from below decks, like ants from a broken nest, and lined the bulwarks, roaring defiance at the huge vessel that towered over them. The Dutchman's decks and rigging swarmed with frantic activity.
The cannon in the galleon's ports were training around, but few could cover the caravel as she came flying down on the wind, screened by the Dutchman's own high counter.
A ragged broadside thundered out across the narrowing gap but most of the shot fell wide by hundreds of yards or howled harmlessly overhead. Hal ducked as the blast of a passing shot lifted the cap from his head and sent it sailing away on the wind. A neat round hole had appeared miraculously in the sail six feet above him. He flicked his long hair out of his face, and peered down at the galleon.
The small company of Dutch officers on the quarterdeck were in disarray. Some were in shirtsleeves, and one was stuffing his night-shirt into his breeches as he came up the companion-ladder.
One officer caught his eye in the throng: a tall man in a steel helmet with a van Dyck beard was rallying a company of musketeers on the foredeck. He wore the gold-embroidered sash of a colonel over his shoulder, and from the way he gave his orders and the alacrity with which his men responded seemed a man to watch, one who might prove a dangerous foe.
Now at his bidding the men ran aft, each carrying a murderer, one of the small guns especially used for repelling boarders. There were slots in the galleon's stern rail into which the iron pin of the murderer would fit, allowing the deadly little weapon to be traversed and aimed at the decks of an enemy ship as it came alongside. When they had boarded the Heerlycke Nacht Hal had seen the execution the murderer could wreak at close range. It was more of a threat than the rest of the galleon's battery.
He swivelled the falconet, and blew on the slow-match in his hand.