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sails.’
    He waited only another few seconds, as men grunted and strained to shift the heavy cannons as best they could towards the general area of the approaching ships. This would be our one chance. The cutlass came down. The
Orion
shook with our broadside. Momentarily deaf from the noise, we raced up the ratlines to lower sail as fast as we could.
    As my hearing returned, I could hear angry shouting amid the screams of the wounded. At least some of our shot had found its target. It felt as if we had stirred up a wasps’ nest. ‘Let’s hope there’s enough wind to carry us away,’ I said to Richard. We could still not see behind us.
    There, high up in the sails, I saw musket flashes from the praus and shots whistled past my ears. The handful of men on our quarterdeck returned fire. The
Orion
lurched forward as the wind filled her sails. ‘All hands to the guns,’ barked Evison into a speaking trumpet, loud and clear across the water. ‘Grapeshot. Rapid fire.’ He was bluffing. With so few of us it would take five minutes at least to reload these guns. But it might make the pirates think twice about getting close to us.
    Then he beckoned his crew together. ‘Just man the two starboard guns nearest the stern, and the two stern chasers. The more shot we can get off at them the better.’
    The rain began to pelt down. The wind picked up. Thestorm was coming closer but the elements were in our favour. Six of us manned the stern chaser on the larboard side of the rudder. Whenever we saw our quarry in a lightning flash, we fired a round of grapeshot. We were getting away and they had no big guns to punish us. We would have been done for though, if they had got close enough to board us.
    We sailed on. I was glad we were on our way. If one lot of pirates felt safe enough operating in these waters, then who was to say there wouldn’t be more. Ahead lay Coupang, where Evison had announced he would be going ashore, and Richard would be leaving.
    For now, I was the hero of the hour. Seeing the pirates coming, I had saved the ship from a surprise attack. Several men who had previously ignored or jostled me clapped me on the shoulder to thank me. Something good had come of this encounter after all and in the days that followed there seemed to be a grudging acceptance of us among the crew.



CHAPTER 5
Peculs and Catties
    I felt some trepidation when we first set eyes on Coupang. We had heard a lot about how dangerous these islands could be for sailors like us. But the settlement I could see looked safe enough to me. It was a small town, surrounded by palm trees behind, and with a forest of tall ships in the harbour, here to trade or resupply. Amid all this greenery stood a church, a fort and other European buildings. They looked out of place in the savage splendour of the landscape, dwarfed as they were by the mountains that surrounded the town. The natives had their own buildings in the foothillsabove. There were scores of little huts, fashioned in a beehive shape.
    The forest shoreline looked familiar enough, but what lurked beyond the settlement? The closer we got to the shore, the hotter and stickier the air became. It drained our strength and teemed with pestilent vapours. I wondered about the alien creatures that lurked in the forest. Were the spiders and snakes as poisonous as the ones we had found in the bush of New South Wales?
    Late on an overcast afternoon we lowered our anchor. There had been no downpour that day but the sky was swollen with rain. Purple light shone through the hazy clouds, giving the place a dream-like air.
    Captain Evison announced we would go ashore the following morning. That evening, as the sun sank over the western horizon, I stood on the deck with Bel and Richard, watching a vivid sunset. Was Richard really going to leave us tomorrow? I couldn’t quite believe it.
    Purple and orange light filled the sky. The world felt utterly still. Bel said, ‘Makes it all worthwhile, dunnit – all the