A Falcon Flies Read Online Free PDF

make out the ghostly figures of the Captain and her brother on the quarterdeck.
    Then just as suddenly they plunged out again into open sea, and sunny skies. The clouds which had covered them for all these weeks rolled away towards the south while the wind itself increased in strength and veered swiftly into the east, whipping the tops from the waves in graceful ostrich plumes of curling spray.
    At the same moment Robyn saw the other ship. It was startlingly close, and she opened her mouth to shout – but a dozen other voices forestalled her.

‘ S ail oh!’
    â€˜Sail fine on the port quarter.’
    She was close enough to make out the thin, tall smoke stack between the main and mizzenmasts. Her hull was painted black with a red line below her gunports; five guns each side.
    The black hull had a sinister air to it, and the pile of her canvas was not shimmering white as that of
Huron
, but was sullied dirty grey by the belchings from her smoke stack.
    Mungo St John played the field of his telescope swiftly over her. Her boilers were unlit, there was not even a tremble of heat from the mouth of her stack. She was under easy canvas only.
    â€˜Tippoo!’ he called softly, and it seemed that the mate’s bulk appeared beside him with the magical speed of a genie.
    â€˜Have you seen her before?’
    Tippoo grunted and turned his head to spit over the lee rail.
    â€˜Lime-juicer,’ he said. ‘I seen her last in Table Bay eight years back. She called
Black Joke
.’
    â€˜Cape Squadron?’
    Tippoo grunted, and at that moment the gunboat bore up sharply and at the same time her colours broke out at the masthead. The crisp white and bright scarlet of her ensign shrieked a challenge, a challenge that all the world had learned to heed, and heed swiftly. Only the ships of one nation on earth need not heave to the instant that challenge was flown. The
Huron
was immune, she had only to hoist the Stars and Stripes, and even this importunate representative of the Royal Navy would be forced to respect it.
    But Mungo St John was thinking swiftly. Six days before he sailed from Baltimore Harbour, in May, 1860, Abraham Lincoln had been nominated presidential candidate for the United States of America. If elected, as seemed highly likely, he would be invested early in the New Year, and then one of his first actions would surely be to grant to Great Britain the privileges agreed by the Treaty of Brussels, including the right of search of American ships upon the high seas which previous American presidents had so steadfastly denied.
    Soon, perhaps sooner than he expected, Mungo St John might have to run his clipper in deadly earnest against one of these ships of the Cape Squadron. It was a heaven-sent opportunity to match his ship, and to observe the capabilities of the other.
    He swept one last glance about him, that took in the sea, the wind-driven lines of foam upon it, the piled white pyramids of canvas above him and the evil black hull to leeward – and then his decision was made easier. On the wind came the thud of a gun, and a long feather of gunsmoke spurted from one of the gunboat’s bow-chasers, demanding instant obedience.
    Mungo St John smiled. ‘The insolent bastard!’ To Tippoo he said, ‘We’ll try him on a few points of sailing,’ to the helmsman beside him, softly, ‘Put the helm down.’ And as
Huron
paid off swiftly before the wind, beginning to point directly away from the threatening black ship, ‘Shake out all reefs, Mr Mate. Set fore and maintop, hoist studding sails and skysails, crack on the main royal – yes, and flying jib too. By God, we’ll show that grubby little coal-guzzling lime-juicer how they build them down Baltimore way!’
    Even in her anger, Robyn was thrilled by the manner in which the American worked his ship. With his crew swarming out across the yards to the reefing points, the mainsails swelled out to their full