Conquest Read online

  ‘You presume too much, sir!’ the captain snarled. ‘Get off this ship – now!’

  ‘Sir, if you would—’

  ‘Now!’

  Kydd drew himself up and bowed. ‘Then I am obliged to point out that it is my duty to convey your . . . views to my commodore and the matter will be taken out of my hands. Sir, I beg you will reconsider, if only for the sake of the brave men who must soon die.’

  The expression was stony and he went on doggedly with the only card he had left to play. ‘I’ll take my leave, sir, but shall delay my return to the commodore for the space of one hour.’

  He paused significantly, looking about the other officers on the quarterdeck, then turned quickly and left. There was a chance that, even given their proud history, he would relent under pressure from the crew, hearing of a squadron of feared Royal Navy battleships nearby.

  The passage back gave Kydd time to think. It was a hollow threat he had made: Popham would not take kindly to a request to deal with a situation that should have been resolved diplomatically, that risked his valuable fleet assets with damage that could never be repaired in this distant outpost. In fact, it was most unlikely that he would quit his station directly off Cape Town at this critical time.

  Should he leave Bato isolated for dealing with later? There were already soldiers heading south to Simon’s Town in a hazardous march to occupy the only pretence at naval facilities in the colony. If they were met by the murderous broadside of a ship-of-the-line . . .

  Expectant faces met him in L’Aurore: was there a likelihood of prize money? They were the only ones present and rules on gun money and head money were very clear. Kydd, however, was in no mood to indulge them.

  The dilemma was his alone. At the end of the hour, what should he do? Run back to Popham with his tail between his legs – or fight it out? Or wait until dark and perform a daring cutting-out operation? Against an alerted ship-of-the-line?

  His thoughts raced, with no solution in sight. He couldn’t talk it over with Gilbey. A captain made his own decisions and this would be seen as a worrying weakness by his first lieutenant.

  The deadline approached. Should he give them more time? How much?

  Gilbey broke into his thoughts. ‘Some sort of signal, is that, sir?’

  Kydd snatched the glass. ‘That’s their national Batavian flag,’ he said peevishly. ‘I’d desire you’ll take the trouble to recognise it in future.’

  Something made him linger on the image. Did this mean they were about to open fire? The flag mounted up the main-mast halyards – but at the truck it rested for a moment, then slowly descended to half-mast where it remained. ‘Barge alongside this instant!’ The hoist could have only one meaning: capitulation. His heart leaped.

  Kydd took the surrender in the huge old-fashioned great cabin, fighting down exultation. To his knowledge, not even at Trafalgar had a ship-of-the-line struck to a mere frigate. The terms agreed were straightforward enough: colours to be hauled down immediately and unconditionally, in return for the officers and crew to be allowed ashore to await their fate in the Simon’s Town establishment rather than endure confinement aboard. That was most convenient: only a token party from L’Aurore needed to take possession while the crew would be held in custody later by the approaching soldiers.

  Kydd allowed the captain his sword in recognition of the fact that the capitulation was force majeure other than an act of war by L’Aurore. That it was the threat of an English battle-squadron in the offing remained unspoken.

  Even as they returned to the upper deck, boats were being swung out and manned by Dutch seamen. The captain kept aloof, avoiding Kydd’s eye.

  The seamen, dark-tanned and lithe, tumbled into the boats with their sea-bags as if desperate to be quit of the scene, and it wasn’t long before the captain went to the side, turned stiffly and, after a short bow to Kydd, looked up to where the Batavian flag still flew and removed his hat. After a few moments, and without a second glance, he swung over the ship’s side and was gone, leaving Kydd gloriously alone on the quarterdeck.

  He savoured the moment, taking in the forlorn disorder about the decks and the odd smell of a Dutch ship, then strode to the side and signalled for his barge. It came alongside and he motioned the rest of the crew aboard. ‘Haul down the colours, Poulden,’ he ordered. His coxswain had an English ensign under his waistcoat and proceeded to bend it on, sending it soaring up.

  ‘A fine day’s work,’ Kydd pronounced, to the grinning men, ‘as will give you a dog-watch yarn none may beat.’ There were eight altogether. With none of the usual challenges of a new-captured ship – securing prisoners, frantic pumping to keep afloat and the rest – it would be enough.

  L’Aurore was under orders to keep off until he returned, in case of a trick, but it didn’t matter for he’d simply leave a couple of hands and, on return, send back more. He smothered a sigh and sent his men to carry out a quick inspection – it would not do to have to rouse out later any drunken and resentful crew who’d remained onboard.

  The afternoon sun beamed down, and while he waited, Kydd considered what to do next. To keep men aboard Bato in idleness while L’Aurore sailed away was not the best use of a frigate’s prime seamen. If he delayed for a day or so he could send to Cape Town for guard-duty soldiers, but his orders were for critical haste.

  A muffled cry came up the main hatchway – and another. If it was a trap it made no sense: Kydd and his men had been outnumbered before – why wait until now to spring it? Kydd raced over to the hatchway as two of his men burst up from below, horror on their faces.

  ‘S-Sir! Ship’s afire, sir!’

  Over the fore-hatch Kydd saw a shimmering that did not owe itself to noon-day heat. Somewhere below . . . ‘Follow me!’ he roared. The Dutch had fired the ship, but if they moved fast they had a chance. It was worth taking almost any risk – at stake was a ship-of-the-line. The guns alone were . . .

  He raced down the fore-hatch. The air below was hot and acrid with resinous smoke from Stockholm tar, which was almost certainly what they had used to start the blaze. It was a sailor’s worst nightmare, but Kydd knew his men were with him. He flew down the steps to the next deck. Now smoke was swirling around him but there were no visible flames.

  Was it even further below? The orlop? He made out a flickering orange glow in the gloom forward. Coughing, he plunged into it, tripping on rubbish strewn about the decks, and soon saw a hasty pile of carpenter’s stores – chippings, glue, resin – well alight.

  ‘The fire engine! Find it ’n’ rig it!’ he shouted hoarsely. Poulden beckoned a seaman and hurried aft. ‘The rest, grab a hammock to smother it – move y’rselves!’

  He looked round wildly: there was a roll of old canvas to one side. ‘Get the other corner,’ he spluttered at a seaman, and they drew it clumsily at the fire. It died away for a moment but, choking, they had not managed to aim well and flames began licking out from under the material.

  One seaman screamed, the whites of his eyes vivid in the gloom. He fell back, mesmerised. Kydd tried to reposition the canvas but now it was only fuelling the fire.

  ‘Sir – we found an engine but it was in pieces, like,’ Poulden shouted nervously from behind.

  Flames eagerly took to the canvas flaring some old paint encrusted on it and Kydd felt real heat now. The fire engine was wrecked: what else was to hand? He shielded his eyes from the glare, looking about wildly. The cunning Dutch had started the fire low in the ship – a bucket brigade was useless this far down and even a whole crew would be hard put to stop it now.

  Some of the braver souls unfurled hammocks and dragged them over the fire but it was hopeless and the flames rose even quicker, licking at the deckhead, spreading evilly. There was a dull whoomf as some tar barrels caught and then a general retreat through the choking smoke.

  Suddenly there was a scream from the hatchway. ‘Save y’rselves, mates! There’s another fire forrard!’ On the upper-deck, flames had followed the lines of tar an
d leaped to the rigging.

  There was an instant stampede; there came a point when a fire became a ravening beast let loose with death in its heart, and this no man could withstand.

  It was time to leave the ship to her fiery doom. ‘Muster aft, all the hands!’ Kydd bellowed. A quick tally revealed two were missing. ‘Poulden,’ Kydd ordered.

  The coxswain snatched at the sleeve of a sailor and they disappeared below. The others shuffled nervously, but Kydd was damned if he’d let them save themselves before the four returned.

  The fire forward was spreading astonishingly quickly. The rigging was stiff with preservative tar and the flames shot up the foremast halyards voraciously, catching the varnish of spars and racing along tarry ropes between the masts to start fresh blazes.

  One by one they gave way, swinging down in a shower of cinders. Yards robbed of their suspending gear jerked and swayed dangerously. Then sparks began dropping on Kydd and the others from the main-mast, whose rigging had caught.

  ‘Into the boat, then!’ he snapped. They needed no urging and, yanking it alongside, began scrambling in. Kydd stayed on deck, praying Poulden would soon appear as a rain of burning fragments drove them further aft.

  Then Poulden’s smoke-blackened figure burst out of the after-hatchway with his mate, dragging a body with them. ‘Couldn’t get t’ Lofty,’ he said, his voice breaking. The other man looked around piteously and Kydd shied from the thought of what must have passed below.

  ‘We’re leaving now,’ he said brusquely, and they hurried to the side, Kydd pausing to snatch a line from a belaying pin and fashion a bowline on a bight to lower the corpse down. Anxious faces looked up, flinching at the burning fragments falling from aloft.

  Without warning there was a loud, splintering crack above them. Before Kydd could look up, a weather-darkened spar swung down jerkily, trailing flaming ropes and brutally knocking them aside. It ended its careering rush through the centre of the boat, like a giant’s spear.

  A shriek of agony from an unfortunate who’d been skewered ended in choking bubbles of his own blood. The cries of the trapped turned to frantic gurgling as the smashed boat filled. Frightened seamen scrabbled back up the side and joined the shocked group on deck, staring at the wreckage containing their dead shipmates settling low in the water.

  ‘What d’ we do now, sir?’ Poulden asked, ashen-faced. ‘No boat.’

  Kydd had no quick answer. L’Aurore’s orders were not to approach Bato on any account, to guard against trickery, and simply await their return. The firing of the ship would have been spotted and the assumption made that it was Kydd’s action. But, worst of all, the boat was on the blind side and nothing would have been seen of their catastrophe. There would be no rescue.

  The crackle of blazing timber from forward redoubled; in the light winds flames leaped vertically and now spread across the width of the ship, advancing aft in an unstoppable wall of fire. Kydd saw there was no longer any option – at any moment the fire would reach the ship’s magazines and they would be blown to kingdom come. ‘Into the water!’ he shouted, throwing aside his coat. ‘The magazines are ready to go!’

  The seamen raced to the side but stopped dead as one shrieked, ‘Jus’ look at ’em!’ He pointed down, terrified. Lazily flicking past was the huge pale bulk of a shark. Another pallid blur cruised further out, accustomed to the ditching of ‘gash’ overside from Bato – galley scraps and the like.

  ‘Mr Kydd, sir?’ Poulden beseeched.

  The fire – or the sharks? He was the captain.

  Kydd snatched another glance over the side. At least three of the monsters were now in view. And the magazine could blow in the next second.

  ‘We go in!’ he ordered. ‘On m’ order, we jump together next to the boat as will frighten the buggers off. Soon as you’re in, pull yourselves into the wreck.’

  It was a last and very desperate hope, but he didn’t allow the men time to think about it. ‘Ready, all? Then go!’ He plummeted into the sea. The others joined him in a confused crash of bodies. Gasping for breath, Kydd saw what was left of the boat, awash and at a crazy angle with the spar projecting, and clumsily struck out for it.

  Almost immediately there was a burbling scream and frantic splashing. Twisting round, Kydd saw a giant shark fin cleaving the water towards them at shocking speed. Before his frozen mind could react, it was on them – but, incredibly, it passed them by. Kydd felt a glancing touch from the hard, muscular body.

  With frantic desperation, he flailed for the boat, grasped the gunwale and was about to heave himself in when he realised why the sharks had left them alone. Attracted by the blood in the water, they were going for the trapped bodies in savage, battering charges.

  More came to join in the frenzy of snapping and tearing: when that meat was gone they would turn on anything to sate their lust for flesh. They had seconds to live.

  Against the brutish frenzy the distant hoarse cry was like a dream: ‘Raak niet in paniek Engelsen, we komen!’ Kydd jerked around. A Dutch longboat was pulling strongly out for them – they had seen what had happened and humanity had overcome the imperatives of war. They were saved.

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  ‘I suppose we must address you now as “Mr Colonial Secretary Renzi”, should we not?’ Baird harrumphed, but he was clearly taken with his first appointment as governor.

  ‘As you wish, Sir David.’ Renzi was secretly gratified at his elevation – the honours of the post had not turned his head but at Baird’s right hand he was above the petty manoeuvring yet at the centre of events, well placed to gather his ethnical curiosities.

  ‘There’ll be a mort of hard work for us both, you may be sure – but satisfying for all that.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Baird paused, then looked at him keenly. ‘Forgive me, Renzi, but you do present as something of a man o’ mystery. What makes you tick, sort o’ thing? Wine, women – any vice as will be revealed to me in due course?’

  ‘To me, sir, the pleasures of the mind are the more perdurant and grateful to the senses. I’ve been these last years labouring over a study that seeks to relate ethnical character to economic response and . . . and it’s showing promise,’ he ended abruptly.

  ‘Ethnicals! Then, sir, you should go to India. There you’ll find every kind of God-forsaken creature and outlandish practice as would be meat for a thousand tomes!’ He guffawed, then sobered in reflection. ‘With cruelty and corruption in great palaces, side b’ side with the deepest sort o’ thinkers, who’d give pause to Pythagoras himself.’

  ‘As opportunity permits, of course,’ Renzi answered politely. ‘The Dutch as incomers to a tribal Africa should be a diverting enough ethnical spectacle.’

  Baird’s eyes narrowed. ‘You have objection to the civilising of savages?’

  ‘Sir, the deed is done, as is the way of the world. My interest is in its outworking, the play of peoples and nature, threat and reply, never the sterile confrontations of politics.’

  ‘Then I declare I’ve a colonial secretary of the first water! You’ll find there’s the conquered Dutch, the Hottentots o’ various stripe, and who knows what we’ll see up-country? All these to keep content and govern for His Majesty, and I’ve a notion you’ll have a contribution to make.’

  Baird sat back, contemplating. ‘So, we begin. You have experience of conjuring a government ex nihilo, from a vacuity as it were? No? Then neither have I.’

  It was going to be a task of monumental proportions: the creation of a system of rule, its codifying, and then its declaration and promulgating on a subject people. From the detail of ceremonials to the rule of law. Allegiance, tax revenues, land-holding, defence of the realm, municipal water supply.

  ‘I conceive, as first step, a committee, a cabinet of advisers as will give their views when asked. Not too big, say . . . half a dozen? Hmm. Dasher Popham, of course, and a military type? Ferguson will do. We’ll have a doctor – public health and so forth. Munro would lik
e the job, I’m sure – he’s our senior regimental surgeon.’

  ‘Could I suggest a gentleman of an accounting persuasion?’ Renzi offered quietly. ‘We’ll be facing problems of revenue and expense of quite another kind.’

  ‘Just so. Then I think it’s to be Tupley, our quartermaster general. Dry old stick, but knows his financials. There’ll be others, but this will do for a start, I believe. Well, now, I must see about finding you an office and assistants, Mr Secretary. Oh, and in the matter of a salary, I fear at this stage we must be cautious. Would, say, four hundred per annum satisfy at all?’

  Incredibly, his income was now greater than Kydd’s. ‘There’s need of a residence of sorts,’ Renzi replied, greatly daring.

  ‘Why, most certainly. Grace ’n’ favour of the Crown, of course. Can’t have a secretary as won’t be found when needed.’

  ‘I’m most grateful, sir.’

  ‘Right! Then let’s whip in this kitchen cabinet and start our business.’

  ‘Gentlemen. I’m grateful to see you all here at such short notice. Time is of the essence, as you’ll understand.’

  It was an informal gathering: Baird at one end of a table, pointedly in civilian dress, and Renzi at the other. The rest were in military uniforms.

  ‘You’ll be remarking this room.’ By its location it was certainly discreet, but although smallish it had rich hangings of Dutch origin. ‘I choose to make my headquarters and reside here in the castle rather than at Government House, from where all administration of a gubernatorial nature will be conducted.’ A ghost of a smile passed. ‘Apart from feeling a damn sight safer within these walls, I judge it to be a nod to Dutch sensibilities – recollect, their governor is still at large at the head of an army.’

  He neatened the papers in front of him deliberately. ‘We all know each other, o’ course, no need for introductions. Except Mr Renzi here.’ There were curious looks as he added, ‘Who is to be acting colonial secretary.’

  ‘Renzi?’ Popham frowned. ‘Is he not some sort of clerk in one of my vessels?’