Why doesn't he move? Was this all some bizarre, senseless jest?
Then Hawksworth saw the arrows. A neat row of thin bamboo shafts had pierced the soldier's Portuguese armor, riveting him to the mast.
A low-pitched hum swallowed the sudden silence, as volleys of bamboo arrows sang from the darkness of the shore. Measured, deadly. Hawksworth watched in disbelief as one by one the Portuguese soldiers around them crumpled, a few firing wildly into the night. In what seemed only moments it was over, the air a cacophony of screams and moaning death.
Hawksworth turned to Karim, noting fright in the pilot's eyes for the very first time.
"The arrows." He finally found his voice. "Whose are they?"
"I can probably tell you." The pilot stepped forward and deftly broke away the feathered tip on one of the shafts still holding the Portuguese to the mast. As he did so, the other arrows snapped and the Portuguese slumped against the gunwale, then slipped over the side and into the dark water. Karim watched him disappear, then raised the arrow to the moonlight. For an instant Hawksworth thought he saw a quizzical look enter the pilot's eyes.
Before he could speak, lines of fire shot across the surface of the water, as fire arrows came, slamming into the longboats as they drifted away on the tide. Streak after streak found the hulls and in moments they were torches. In the flickering light, Hawksworth could make out what seemed to be grapples, flashing from the shore, pulling the floating bodies of the dead and dying to anonymity. He watched spellbound for a moment, then turned again toward the stern.
"Karim, I asked whose arrows . . ."
The pilot was gone. Only the English seamen remained, dazed and uncomprehending.
Then the night fell suddenly silent once more, save for the slap of the running tide against the hull.