On board cook’s ship, sailors swiftly pulled out Stuart and his men one by one from the stranded fishing boats. From the high deck, Cook and Hemley were silently watching the total rescue effort. Once onboard, those unfortunate souls were surrounded by the confused and yet excited sailors, who wanted to know everything about what had happened. This excitement resulted in a little chaos on board.
Cook guessed that pirates won’t have escaped far away. He decided to give a chase. So he intervened breaking the chaos by firing a shot in the air. He raised his hands to request everyone to be quiet while he walked down the stairs towards Stuart.Cooks asked him “Was it pirates?” Stuart nodded. “Do you know where they have escaped?” asked Cook.
Stuart still shaken from whole ordeal replied, “They were talking about going north and then conveying at some meeting place. Probably it is their favourite hideout.”
“But we can’t really trust their words. I saw them heading towards the north east possibly trying to get furthest away from us as quickly as possible.” Stuart added.
Cook assured “That’s all right. Let’s start the chase. Then we will discuss how this all happened.”
He promptly dispatched all his sailors to their duties and their ships started moving in northern direction. Both ships combed the sea keeping visible distance between them. But in vast seas finding missing ships was like searching a needle in the haystack. Soon Cook came to the conclusion that they were not going anywhere. But he realized that it was necessary to restoring morale of crew and salvage some pride tarnished by these attacks.
Meanwhile Cook resumed the discussion with Stuart. With a big astonishment in his eyes, he asked, “Stuart, it’s such a shame. How possibly you could let this happen?”
Stuart replied with heavy dose of embarrassment in his voice, “I was totally caught off guard, Sir”
He continue, “We were passing through this strait and we were really expecting your caravan to escort us. Then their ship approached us. It was decorated exactly like our ships. It even had all of our flags hoisted at correct place. So we assumed that it was English ship approaching us.”
Cook said while scratching his chin, “So they pretended to be Company ship.”
Stuart with tone of complaint in his voice said, “Yes, They even perfectly knew our engagement signals as their ship came close. This is really puzzling to me that how did they knew our codes. We had no reason to suspect them till the ships came very close to each other.”
Stuart continued narrating, “When the ships were really close and lined up in parallel, all off a sudden, bunch of pirates jumped on our ship with swing ropes wielding bare swards and pistols. My crew had no fighting experience and neither were they armed. We were overpowered quickly.”
Now Stuart in attempt to salvage some pride said, “Our second ship did try to make an escape, but they shot it down with lethal cannon fire. Simple merchant ship like that does not stand any chance against armed war ship.”
Stuart added, “They must have planned this whole thing well in advance. After getting control on us, they took our ships to the nearby bay little off the shipping lanes.”
Hemley suggested, “Possibly they have some mole placed inside our organization. Without that how can they know about our codes?”
Cook still trying to get more insight asked, “Do you know who they were? Any resemblance to someone you have seen before in local fishing villages?”
Stuart as if trying to remember something said, “None that I have seen before. They were lead by a middle edge man. They did not take each other’s names specifically. They just called their leader as Sarkar or something.”
Stuart kept on going “One of the local man in my crew said that these people are from what was the Kadamba Navy. I guess they are out of job now and they have picked up piracy for living.”
Cook warned, “So let it be. I will not tolerate this anymore. Once we reach Kadamba, I will ask Cornell to comb through the fishing towns to find these culprits.”
“May be I should suggest Cornell to recruit these locals to defend the shipping lanes rather than relying on your team.” said Cook sarcastically. Stuart could not do anything except accepting the blame quietly.
They waited on the deck of the ship as search progressed for a while. But it turned fruitless in the end. Pirates had disappeared without any trace.
It was really getting dark, so Cook decided to abandon the chase. He ordered the ships to head towards Kadamba.
