The Tiger’s Prey. Wilbur Smith

      The Dowager was carrying too much canvas. A warm monsoon breeze whipped the ocean into white peaks that glittered in the sun that shone from a sapphire sky. Her sails bulged, topsails and topgallants straining fit to snap their sheets. Her hull, heavy-laden, wallowed in the high waves rolling across the Indian Ocean. She was running for her life.

      Her master, Josiah Inchbird, stood on the quarterdeck and looked astern at the ship following them. She’d appeared at dawn, long and low and sleek as a ravenous wolf. Red-painted gun ports chequered her black hull. She was gaining on them.

      He checked the clouds of canvas flying overhead. The wind had stiffened; and the sails were straining at their seams. He dared not fly much more without risking disaster. On the other hand, disaster was certain if he did not take that risk.

      ‘Mr Evans,’ he hailed his mate. ‘All hands to set staysails.’

      Evans, a hollow-eyed Welshman in his late thirties, glanced up at the sails and frowned. ‘In this breeze, sir? She can’t take much more.’

      ‘Damn you, Mr Evans, but you’ll get those sails bent on now. I’ll hang our laundry from the yards if it’ll get us another half a knot.’

      Inchbird had spent twenty years sailing these oceans, working his way gradually up to command while lesser men with better connections had overhauled him at every turn. He’d survived voyages when half the crew had been buried over the side in their hammocks, in the pestilential ports of India and the Spice Islands. He wasn’t going to jeopardize his ship now.

      ‘What are you doing?’

      A woman’s voice, calm and authoritative, cut across the quarterdeck. Some of the crew paused, halfway up the ratlines. After three weeks at sea, the sight of a woman on the quarterdeck was still a spectacle they enjoyed.

      Inchbird bit back the curse that rose naturally to his lips. ‘Senhora Duarte. This doesn’t concern you. It is better if you remain below decks.’

      She glanced up at the sails. Her long dark hair blew out in the wind, framing a smooth olive-skinned face. Her body was so slim that it seemed a strong gust might have whipped her overboard. Yet Inchbird knew from bitter experience that she was not so frail.

      ‘Of course it concerns me,’ she said. ‘If you lose this ship, we all will die.’

      The men were still watching from the rigging. Evans, the mate, lashed out with his starter. ‘Get on with it, lads, or you’ll feel the bite of my rope end.’

      Reluctantly, they began to move again. Inchbird felt his authority ebbing away as the woman stared him down.

      ‘Get below,’ he ordered. ‘Do I have to tell you what pirates will do to ladies they capture?’

      ‘Deck there,’ called the lookout in the crosstrees. ‘She’s running up her colours.’ Then, so loud they all heard it on deck, ‘Sweet Jesus.’

      He didn’t have to say any more. They could all see it: the black flag snapping from their enemy’s mainmast and, a second later, the red flag at her fore.

      ‘No quarter!’ was the warning it gave them.

      On the Fighting Cock, Captain Jack Legrange watched the flags snap taut in the breeze and grinned hungrily. They’d been shadowing the merchantman for three days, ever since they sighted her off Madagascar. She’d sailed late in the season, missing the convoys that most ships used as protection against the pirates who infested the Indian Ocean. The breeze had backed in the night and he’d crowded on more sail, betting that his ship could sail closer to the wind than the fat merchantman. The wager had paid off: they were now only a league or so back, and closing fast.

      He looked down the length of his ship. She had started life as a Bristol slaver, plying the route from East Africa to the colonies in America and the Caribbean. Legrange had been first mate – until, one day, the master discovered him stealing and had him flogged. Next night, with the blood still soaking through his bandages, he’d led a gang from the forecastle and hanged the captain from his own yardarm. Then they’d sailed the ship to a deserted cove, where they’d cut down her forecastle and quarterdeck,