Seaflower - Kydd 03 Page 10

  The boat nosed in to the coral-rock quay, ending up neatly under a stout wooden crane where the single sail was dowsed. 'Where's Mr Caird?' Kydd asked the crew. It seemed that he could be found at the boat-house. Kydd heaved out his sea-bag and started to head in the direction they had indicated.

  Then incredulous shouts came from the hoy. He looked back and saw Luke clambering out from under old sails. 'Be damned! You're a wicked rascal, to think on desertin' y'r ship like this,' Kydd said hotly. 'Y’r goin' straight back aboard.'

  'Not wi' us, he ain't - we got other work t'do,' came a swift rejoinder from one of the hoy's crew.

  'Well, how c'n he . . .'

  'Not our problem, mate.'

  Kydd swore, but saw the appeal in Luke's big eyes, his little bundle of belongings over his shoulder, and knew that, if he insisted, he would be condemning the lad. He swore again. 'Follow me, y' ill-lookin' swab,' he growled, and set out for the boat-house. Obediently Luke fell into step behind.

  The boat-house consisted of an extensive loft rested on lines of tall stone pillars. Below, boats were floated inside, then hoisted to the workshop floor. The resinous aroma of timber lay strongly on the breeze that played through the pillars, a clean, welcome scent in the overall reek of a harbour. Mr Caird stepped out from the store-room at the back. Kydd recognised him at once as the master shipwright who had surveyed Trajan.

  "Thomas Kydd, who's been sent fr'm Trajan for service ashore.'

  Caird looked at him keenly. 'What was your rate aboard?'

  Again Kydd was struck by the calm gaze, the certainty in his manner. 'Quartermaster's mate, sir.'

  Caird nodded. 'If I may observe, you're young for the rate, are you not?' A series of flat thumps with a mallet sounded to one side.

  Kydd returned his look defiantly.

  'But, of course, you will have earned it,' Caird added quickly. 'You may need it. Have you had experience of men of colour?'

  Taken aback by the question Kydd paused. There were no slaves in England, and the only black men he had seen at sea were all free, as he was. 'Not as y' might say,' he said cautiously.

  'I have it in mind to employ you as a Master of the King's Negroes - to take my shipwright's sidesmen in charge.'

  'Aye, sir,' Kydd said carefully.

  'To see they're mustered at work each morning, that they're not in want of what they need - but ye need to know, I'll not have them abused, sir.'

  Thoughts racing, Kydd murmured assent. This was utterly beyond his expectations. Caird regarded him thoughtfully, then his gaze slipped to Luke, who smiled up at him uncertainly.

  'And this is — your servant?' Caird said. 'You are entitled, of course, as a master, but we have our own, you know.'

  Caught off-balance, Kydd stuttered an acknowledgement.

  Caird's eyebrows rose. 'Well, if you insist — but he will have to share servants' quarters.'

  "Th-thank you,' Kydd said, not daring to look at Luke.

  'Hercules will show you to your lodgings. I will see you at my office at four o'clock, if you please.'

  Kydd followed the black man along the road, past workshops and sawpits, Luke walking silently behind with his bundle. They went through the dockyard gate and stopped at one of a row of small but neat two-storey houses. 'In dis house — youse in de top floor, massa.'

  Kydd opened the little wicket gate and stepped inside: there was an external flight of stairs to the top storey. The man looked once more at him, then touched his forehead and left.

  At the top of the stairs the door held a key: Kydd turned it and entered. The small room smelt stuffy and unused. There was a low bed, a side dresser with a jug, and little else. Kydd crossed the room and opened one of two doors to a tiny sitting room with armchair and table. The other led to a snug veranda overlooking the hills beyond. 'Hey, now,' Kydd said, with satisfaction. 'So I'm t' be a master, an' live in a house.'

  By late afternoon Kydd had the place in order. On the lower floor, it seemed, was the chief caulker, now absent. He would pay his respects later.

  'Where do I go, Mr Kydd?' said Luke, overawed by events.

  'Why, with th' other servants, o' course.' Kydd chuckled. Luke's face fell. Kydd couldn't keep it up. 'But then again, I c'd have ye close at hand, see t' my wants at any time. Oh, yes! So I decides I want you to doss down here, younker, but mark you, mind has proper respect f'r yer master.'

  'Yes, an' I will, Mr Kydd,' said Luke, seriously.

  The office of the master shipwright was with the master attendant and commissioner, right at the far end, but the dockyard was compact and well laid out. Kydd was shown into the airy office. Caird sat at his desk, his quill scratching busily. He glanced up as Kydd approached. 'A minute, if you please.'

  The room was extremely clean, furniture well polished, and ornamented only with a series of charts and half-breadth shipyard models. A Christian devotional etching hung in the centre of one wall.

  Caird swivelled round. 'Please be seated, Mr Kydd,' he said, motioning to a cane chair on one side. 'I am the master shipwright here, as you know, and my responsibilities are extensive. It would be gratifying if I could rely on those the good Lord sees fit to set under me.' He paused, looking intently at Kydd. 'This is not always the case, I am grieved to say.'

  The interview continued with a clear and unequivocal setting-out of Kydd's new duties, which were also carefully written down for him. It concluded with a stern warning on conduct. 'Do you mark my words, Mr Kydd, I will suffer no man in my charge to corrupt himself by yielding up his body to drink and carnality. Should he so dishonour me, I shall cast him out without mercy.'

  Kydd was by no means a tippler: he disliked the surrender of will involved in drunkenness, and as to carnality, he had not seen a female of any age anywhere. 'Aye, sir, ye need have no fears of me,' he said positively.

  'Ah, that is good. Your predecessor did grievously disappoint in this. I wish you well for the future, and we may expect your presence on the morrow at the boat-house.'

  Later, in the privacy of his room, Kydd studied the paper containing full details of his duties. The King's Negroes were slaves, but superior slaves, it seemed, for not only did they have considerable skills but, to Kydd's surprise, some even had slaves of their own. He would have a driver, a foreman, who would be responsible to him for the others, and a line of responsibility to the yard boatswain.

  'Y'r pardon, Mr Kydd,' said Luke anxiously. He stood at the door respectfully. 'I c'n have yer scran alongside, should yer want it now.'

  Kydd felt abashed: he had not really meant it when he told Luke he was a servant. Now the lad was taking him at his word. On reflection, however, he realised that, given the circumstances, it might be the best thing. 'Thank ye, Luke, I will.'

  Kydd returned to his paper. The King's Negroes' chief employment was as a skilled crew to assist shipwrights and riggers in major operations, such as in heaving down ships for underwater repairs or replacing whole masts. His would be the first party to board men-o'-war entering harbour having been wounded in battle or savaged by a hurricane.

  Luke spread a small tablecloth on the sitting-room table. Without looking up, he carefully laid a single place with pewter plate and knife, and withdrew.

  Kydd finished the paper, smiling to himself at the strictures on keeping his men sober and diligent.

  The cool of the morning showed Antigua in its best light: delicate tints, clarity of air, and everywhere the sparkling translucence of the sea.

  On the flat grassy area next to the boat-house Kydd surveyed the King's Negroes. They returned his contemplation with stony indifference, or looked away with disinterest. Big, well-muscled and hard-looking, they were dressed in canvas trousers and buttoned waistcoat over naked skin. Some wore old-fashioned three-cornered cocked hats, others a bandanna. Unusually for slaves, all carried a sheathed seaman's knife.

  'An' who's the driver?' Kydd asked, in even tones. The men kept silent, staring back at him. Kydd tried to sense their feelings, but the
re was a barrier.

  'The driver!' he snapped. If it was going to be this way, so be it, but then the hardest-looking of them pulled himself up slowly and confronted Kydd. The driver,' he said, his voice deep and strong. He regarded Kydd impassively from under hooded black eyes, his arms folded.

  Kydd looked at the others. There was no feeling in their expressions. They existed in stasis, much like beasts of the field, it appeared. 'I'm Kydd, and I'm th' new master,' he said. There was no response, no interest. 'What's y'r name?' he demanded of the driver.

  'Juba,' he said.

  'What are their names?' said Kydd. 'They are t' tell me themselves,' he added.

  A flicker of curiosity showed in their faces. 'Nero,' grunted an older one. Kydd nodded, and prompted the man next to him.

  'Quamino.'

  'An' you?' Kydd went on. 'Ben Bobstay.'

  One by one, he had a name from each. He hesitated over whether to make a strict speech of introduction, but thought better of it. 'If ye does y'r duty, ye'll have nothing t' fear fr'm me,' he said firmly, and turned to greet Caird, who had just arrived.

  'I see you have mustered your crew already,' Caird said. 'Fort Shirley has signalled that Rose frigate will be here this morning — she has a sprung foremast, which we shall in course replace.' He stopped to take a sheaf of lists from a waiting shipwright and scanned them quickly. 'Where are your roves, sir?' he asked impatiently. 'Were you thinking to secure with nails?' His forehead creased, and the shipwright cringed. Caird turned to Kydd again. 'We shall not need the sheer hulk — the boatswain of the yard will rig sheers on her foredeck.'

  Kydd had no experience of such skilled work, and if he was expected to take charge . ..

  'The boatswain will be overseer,' said Caird, as if sensing Kydd's thoughts. 'It only requires that you tell your driver the task — he has done this work, and you may feel sure that he knows what to do.'

  The 28-gun frigate Rose sailed in without warping, even with minimal sail at the fore, a fine piece of seamanship in the exuberant late-summer breezes. She had suffered at the hands of the hurricane — sea-whitened timbers and ropes leached of their tar, stoppers seized at places in her rigging, the patchy wooden paleness of new repairs showing here and there. But she rounded to, and her sails came in smartly, as if her company were conscious of their fortune in being spared by the fates.

  The boatswain of the yard, sitting in the stern-sheets of the dockyard boat with Kydd, stared idly ahead. The rowers pulled heavily, towing two massive sheer-legs in the water.

  To Kydd, it was strangely affecting to step over the bulwarks and be in a sea world belonging to others.

  While the boatswain talked to the Captain, his eyes strayed to little things that would be embedded in the consciousness of the ship's company - the dog-vane to point the direction of the wind and fashioned into a red-petalled rose, the binnacle finished with a varnished bolt-rope, the smart black japanned speaking trumpet also with a painted rose - all these would be the familiar images of daily life at sea,

  Rose's seamen looked at him curiously, his small band of black men at his back. 'What cheer, mate?' said one. 'Where's to go on th' ran-tan?'

  Spared from having to answer by the boatswain's hail from forward, Kydd reported himself and his men. 'You, Kydd, get y'r men out o' the way fer now, but I'll want 'em on the cross spar afore we cants the sheers,' the boatswain said, and turned to his own crew.

  Kydd stared at the scene with some anxiety. The fo'c'sle was a maze of ropes and blocks laid out along the deck each side from when the topmast had been struck. How it was possible to pluck the feet-thick foremast, like a tooth, straight out from where it ended morticed into its step on the keel he had no idea. Juba did not volunteer a word. He stood aside, watching with a patience that seemed limitless and at the same time detached.

  The boatswain's men ranged mighty three-fold purchases. The sheaved blocks were each nearly double the size of a man's head, the falls coiled in fakes yards long. Lesser tackles were made fast to knightheads and kevels, and all was ready to bring aboard the sheers. But then the boatswain stepped back, his arms folded. Kydd saw why: in a nice division of responsibilities, it was men of the Rose who manned the jeer capstan to take the weight, then lower the heavy seventy-five-foot width of the foreyard, indecently shorn of its usual complexity of buntlines and halliards.

  The foremast now stood alone, its wound clearly visible as a long bone-coloured fracture under the capstan bars, which had been splinted around it. 'Kydd, y'r cross spar!' the boatswain called impatiently.

  Kydd had been too interested in the proceedings and was caught unawares but he swiftly rounded on Juba. 'Cross spar!' he snapped, stepping towards the sheers. He looked fearlessly at the man, who hesitated just a moment, looking into Kydd's eyes, then moved into action. In low tones he called to the other negroes, in words incomprehensible to Kydd. The men split into two parties and slid the fore topgallant yard athwartships, then up against the splayed end of the sheers. They stopped and Juba looked up slowly. Kydd turned to the men at the cross-piece of the sheers and told them to pass the seizing.

  'Like a throat-seizing an' not too taut,' the boatswain suggested.

  'Aye,' said Kydd, happy with a new-found realisation: no matter how complex and technical the task, it could be rendered down to a series of known seamanlike evolutions.

  The sheers were duly canted, tilted up so the guys could get an angle to sway the sheer-legs aloft. At the same time tackles at their feet held them firmly in place. It was almost an anti-climax, knocking aside the mast wedges, freeing the partners and hearing the massive tackle creak as it strained in a vertical pull up on the mast, which gave in a sudden and alarming jerk upwards.

  There was suddenly nothing to do as the freed mast was angled and slowly lowered over the ship's side to be floated ashore, a fearsome thing that could spear the heart out of the frigate if it was accidentally let go. Kydd glanced at the motionless Juba, intrigued by the man's self-possession. Unexpectedly Juba allowed a brief smile to appear. Kydd smiled back, and pretended to follow the progress of the mast over the side.

  The softness of a Caribbean evening was stealing over the waters when Kydd was finally able to return to the dockyard.

  The replacement foremast had needed work. Awkwardly placed along the deck of the frigate it had had to be held securely on trestles while shipwrights went to work with adze and angled mast axe. As the chips flew, the craftsmen held Kydd in awe at their skill with such awkward tools. He now knew a good deal more than he had at break of day, and he felt happier than he had at any time since he had left Trajan: this was better than being a spare hand to whatever ship would claim him.

  Closer in to the dockyard, he could hear the cries and laughter of the ship's company of Avenger, a ship-sloop whose bulbous, naked hull was heaved right over for careening on the other side of the water. These men would be accommodated ashore while their ship was in such a condition, and were making the most of the relaxing of discipline, taking their evening grog around the shore galley near the capstan house with raucous frivolity. Kydd eased into a grin at the familiar antics.

  The injured mast could wait in the water off the mast-house for the morning and he could now dismiss his crew and get some supper. 'Well done, m' lads,' he said, unconsciously regarding them in the same way as a party of seamen after a hard day. Too late the thought came that possibly he should treat slaves in some other way, more at a distance, perhaps. However, they did not respond, and padded off silently together, he couldn't help wondering where.

  The shore galley manned, Luke was able to get a hearty platter for him, complete with leaves of some mysterious local vegetable, and he tucked in with a will. It was hard to eat alone, though, with nothing but a candle and circling moths for company.

  The conviviality flowing from the capstan house was hard to resist, and Kydd found himself strolling in the warm dark of the evening towards the sounds of merriment. The open frontage of the low building, with i
ts three great capstans, was a favourite place to gather in the growing soft darkness. The lanthorns hung along the beams welcomed him in with splashes of golden light. Men lolled about, taking a clay pipe of tobacco or drinking deep from their pots, in time-honoured sailor fashion outdoing each other in sea yarns and remembrances.

  Kydd knew none of them, but could recognise the types even though they were of another ship: the hard, confident petty officers in short blue jackets with brass buttons that glittered in the light of the lanthorns; young seamen bred to the sea, with an easy laugh and a tarry queue unclubbed so its plaited length hung a foot or more down their backs; the lined old shellbacks, whose sea wisdom it would be folly to question.

  A man hauled himself up to sit on one of the capstan heads and his fiddle was passed up to him. After a few flourishes he nodded to a handsome seaman with side-whiskers next to him. The man stepped forward and sang in a resonant tenor:

  'Oh! Life is the Ocean, and Man is the Boat

  That over its surface is destin'd to float;

  And joy is a cargo so easily stor'd

  That he is a fool who takes sorrow on board!'

  The well-known chorus drowned the singer, who affected vexation, stumping around the capstan in high dudgeon. Kydd laughed heartily with the rest, and raised his wooden tankard in salute.

  Sensing the mood, the singer stalked to the front of the capstan, and stood akimbo, arms folded, glaring at his audience. The chatter died away expectantly.

  A movement on the opposite side caught Kydd's eye. One of the seamen had a woman under his arm, a black woman. Kydd shifted his gaze back to the singer, who leaned forward as though in confidence, and there launched into the racy, driving strains of 'The Saucy Arethusa':