Seaflower: A Kydd Novel Page 7

  ‘That’s a fuckin’ long way off, cully,’ said an older seaman, in measured tones.

  The group fell quiet. ‘Y’r right – fifty miles if it’s a yard,’ Kydd snapped. ‘So, let’s be havin’ ye.’

  There would be no rations, no water until they made the safety of the fort, but in fact it could be no more than five miles away. ‘On y’r feet!’ Kydd barked. The men stirred, and got up in ones or twos.

  ‘Marines, get into y’r line an’ lead off.’ They shuffled into file and stood to attention, staring ahead blankly as they always did. ‘Right – march away!’ Kydd shouted, not at all sure of the form of orders to start men marching. The marines, after a moment’s confusion, stepped out, and the little band of men tramped off down the dusty road out of town. Kydd felt a swell of pride – his men, obeying his orders, going on a military mission of importance.

  Some time later the gates of the small Petit Bourg citadel hove in sight for the footsore and dusty band; security, food, drink and, above all, the warmth of company of their own kind.

  ‘Halt!’ This was not a welcome: what had happened? For a moment Kydd thought that the French had reached here and were enticing them into a trap.

  ‘The fort ahoy!’ shouted Kydd. ‘Party o’ men fr’m Pwun-a-Peter, come t’ join.’ He could now hand over responsibility for ‘his’ men – he felt a slight pang.

  A different voice came from high above, and Kydd saw the shako of an army officer. ‘Well done, you men.’ There was a pause, and the head and shoulders of the officer showed. ‘You should understand that we may have fever . . .’ there was a stirring of alarm among Kydd’s men ‘. . . and therefore you may not wish to enter.’

  ‘Sod it! Any place ’as vittles, somewhere ter flake out,’ said the older seaman coarsely.

  ‘Hold y’r jabber,’ Kydd told him briefly. ‘Where else c’n we go, sir?’ he hailed.

  ‘Wouldn’t advise you to remain here,’ the officer called. ‘I expect an assault any hour.’ Kydd’s heart lurched. ‘Yet I do know where there are more of you fellows. You might wish to join them.’ His tone became apologetic. ‘It’s all of twenty miles or so further along this road, around the south part of this island – Fort Mathilda.’ Silence. ‘I do believe you should make your dispositions soon,’ the officer said, and indicated across the bay to where they had come from.

  Pointe à Pitre was now a bleak scene, ruined gaps in rows of houses, smoke from burning buildings. The smell of devastation lay on the wind. The bombardment had stopped, which meant that the French were in possession of the town. ‘No choice, is there, mates?’ he heard from beside him.

  He remembered Renzi’s way with logic and forced himself to think. If they entered they would be safe for the time being, but at the risk of yellow fever. If they started on a march of twenty miles or more there was every chance that they would be overtaken by the French. Or they might make it, without exposure to the fever. The elements shuffled themselves in his head at vertiginous speed and came down on a course of cool certainty. They would march on. If there was a chance they could reinforce Fort Mathilda with some able-bodied men, then their duty was plain.

  ‘We march!’ he growled. He hailed the fort again. ‘We go on, sir! Chance o’ some rations – an’ some water?’

  The officer removed his hat. ‘Very commendable, my man. I will see to it.’ His figure disappeared downwards.

  ‘There is a choice, yer knows.’ The older seaman confronted him, his eyes fixing Kydd’s. ‘We’re not in kilter fer a long piece o’ walkin’ so we ’as ter do what we must – we gives it all away, we got nothin’ ter worry of, not like them royalists, we’ll get treated square . . .’

  Kydd’s fist slammed into the man’s stomach, doubling him over. The next blow took him on the chin, knocking him to the dust, where he lay sullenly feeling his jaw. Kydd turned back to the fort.

  A bucket on the end of a piece of rope appeared. In it, covered by a grey blanket, were army biscuits, two cooked haunches of rabbit and a hand of bananas. Three canteens of water followed. ‘March!’ Kydd ordered. They stepped off, the fallen man left to catch up. As they rounded a curve he saw the officer still looking in their direction. The marines had a rhythm of marching that was relaxed and economic, but the seamen were fast becoming tired and slow.

  ‘Up there,’ Kydd said suddenly, pointing at the sugarcane field. They stared at him dully. ‘Are ye thinkin’ of walkin’ all th’ way?’ It didn’t need much smart thinking to realise that cane-fields had carts for the cut cane, and these would be pulled by horses or some other animal.

  It was more difficult than it appeared. ‘Don’ be daft!’ One of the marines, an ex-farmhand, chuckled, and took the reins from Kydd’s hands. Kydd surrendered them gratefully. The single ox was placid but sure, and the sugar-cane cart jerked forward. Sprawled in the back were his men, and he had provided for them. Before he fell asleep under the hot sun, Kydd felt a certain satisfaction.

  Fort Mathilda was small, but built securely into the rock of the coast. A surprised lieutenant met them inside the gates and asked immediately about the situation in Pointe à Pitre. Then the little fort stood to, awaiting the inevitable.

  It wasn’t long in coming: rising dustclouds inland showed the approach of a substantial column – but the satisfying sight of men-o’-war coming round the point with Trajan in the van settled their fate in a much more agreeable way.

  Chapter 5

  The deck of a ship at dawn was the most beautiful sight he could think of, Kydd decided. Even the swish and slop of the men swabbing the deck did not intrude. The easy, domestic sounds in the cool of the early morning were balm to his troubled soul.

  The quality of the dawn light on the anchored ship was of a gossamer hesitancy, a soft emerging of colour through grey; the tropical sea began its transition from dark grey-blue anonymity to its usual striking transparent greens and deep-water blue. Within the hour it would bear the hard glitter of the sun, and this magical time would be dismissed into memory. A sigh forced itself on him. The land with all its brutal ways could now be relinquished for the sea – the pure, stern, manly sea. A smile broke through. Renzi had not yet returned to Trajan from the brig of refugees, but they would have much to talk about when he did.

  The line of men had nearly reached the half-deck. The men on the poop had finished and were stowing wash-deck gear. Stirk sauntered over to Kydd. ‘D’ye fancy ter step ashore agen, cully?’ he said, nodding to the palm-studded coast not a mile away, the sun’s light playing stronger on the mass of deep greens and dark ravines of the interior.

  ‘Wish t’ hell I could, Toby,’ Kydd said lightly. ‘Had m’self a thunderin’ good time ashore, the women an’ all . . .’

  Stirk kept his smile, but his eyes searched Kydd’s face. ‘Did ’ear ’twas bad cess, them Crapauds, a-killin’ their own kind like they did.’

  Kydd’s tone changed. ‘If they does, only leaves less f’r us.’ His hands whitened on the rope he held, and his face turned seawards. ‘Bolderin’ weather to the nor’east’d,’ he said firmly. From the direction of the reliable north-east trade winds the clouds were piling up, more than the usual wet-season rain squalls. It would mean soaked shirts for all again that afternoon.

  ‘Haaaands to unmoor ship!’

  At last! Out to sea, away from the nightmarish memories. From his position in the mizzen-top Kydd could see both accompanying frigates weigh and proceed, a satisfying picture in the trade winds of the open sea. Trajan cast to starboard when she had won her anchor and followed in their wake.

  When he came on deck after the midday meal for his watch at the conn, the weather was clamping in. On the quarterdeck, Kydd took position next to the helm, and noticed Auberon’s set expression. He was gazing at the easterly horizon, at the growing darkness – a peculiar darkness in the clouds, which had an ugly copper tinge. There was also a swell that was out of keeping with the wave patterning, a deepening, driven swell that told of a mighty storm somewhere, raging and l
ashing. And it was from the north-east.

  Auberon rounded on the duty midshipman. ‘M’duty to the Captain, and I would be happy to see him join me on deck,’ he snapped.

  Bomford did not waste time, appearing in his shirtsleeves and without his hat. Auberon merely indicated. ‘Sir.’

  Bomford paused for only seconds. ‘Pass the word for Mr Quist,’ he said quietly. The sailing master knew these waters well.

  The warrant officer deliberated for long minutes. ‘In my opinion, sir, it looks very like a hurricanoe.’ He used a telescope to traverse the front of the approaching storm. ‘I cannot be sure o’ more, ’cepting we must shape a more southerly course an’ run.’

  Bomford looked at him sharply. ‘Why southerly, if you please?’

  ‘Sir, in these parts, if y’ faces into the wind then ye’ll find the centre of the storm nine, ten points on y’r right hand – an’ this means we needs t’ be athwart it directly.’

  There was no denying the quiet authority in the man’s voice. This was a man who had prevailed in the devastating hurricane that had decimated Rodney’s fleet in these very waters less than a dozen years earlier. The master lifted an eyebrow and looked at the Captain. ‘We can’t outrun it – whether we’re a-swim on the morrow or no depends squarely on the winds, gentlemen. In the next few hours, if the wind backs, with God’s protection we’re safe – mauled an’ bedundered but we’ll live. If th’ wind veers . . .’

  ‘Very well,’ Bomford said. A moment’s flash of uncertainty shadowed his face. Then he turned to Auberon. ‘Do you bear away to the south’ard, and pipe the starbowlines on deck. I believe we will clear away and batten down.’

  There had been other times, in other ships, when Kydd had worked to snug a vessel down for dirty weather but this was different: an apprehensive urgency was building, a knowledge that their very lives could depend on the rightness of a splice, the strength of a preventer. Details now were a matter of life or death.

  As quartermaster’s mate Kydd held allegiance in the first instance to the sailing master. Quist was calm but firm. There would be nothing left to chance that could conceivably be met by forethought and diligence. For the first time Kydd saw extreme measures being taken at sea, and he absorbed it all.

  Quist’s first care was to the rudder. If it carried away under stress of weather they could easily broach to, broadside to the deadly combers, and the result would be inevitable – they would be rolled over to their doom. The little party made its way below to the wardroom flat, aft on the gundeck. There, the true origin of control of the rudder lay: the mighty twenty-six-foot length of a tiller, high up just under the deckhead, connected by tackle and an endless rope up through the decks to the wheel-drum. As Kydd watched, it creaked and moved with the motions of the unseen helmsman high above, with its powerful leverage ready to sweep from one side of the deck to the other.

  Three seamen arrived with a spare tiller to lay along the deck. Kydd’s arms ached as he held up one side of the relieving tackles to be reeved. If the tiller-ropes parted in furious seas, these tackles would do no less than save the ship.

  ‘Ask th’ boatswain t’ kindly step over, lad,’ Quist told his messenger, a solemn midshipman, when they had regained the deck. The boy darted off. As master, Quist was senior to the boatswain, who arrived without delay. ‘C’n we have rudder tackles rigged, d’ye think, Nathan?’

  There were chains leading up each side of the rudder from its trailing part. They were unshackled and taken to the channel of the mizzen shrouds. A strong luff tackle was applied, its fall led into a gunport, and the chain becketed up under the counter. This was pure seamanship and Kydd looked down thoughtfully while he worked above the noisy foaming around the rudder – he had voyaged around Cape Horn and knew what heavy seas could do.

  Back at the wheel, Quist paused as a portable compass was lashed in place near the binnacle. Nodding approval, he said, ‘And we’ll have a quartermaster on th’ wheel, and his lee helmsman’s going t’ be his mate.’ Kydd would be experiencing his first hurricane from the helm, mate to Capple.

  ‘And we’ll have weather cloths in the shrouds.’ Quist was considerate as well as competent: these old sails stretched along the shrouds to weather would take some of the brutal sting out of the spindrift and blast coming in on the helmsman.

  While they laboured Kydd kept his eye on the ominous build-up to their larboard. They were crossing the path of the storm rather than trying to outrun it, a rationale that made sense to the master – he would ask about the reasoning afterwards. If there was an afterwards . . .

  Rolling tackles were clapped on to the big lower yards. Vicious rolling could have the heavy yards moving out of synchrony with the hull, tearing sail and rigging; the whipping movement would be damped with the tackles. At the same time, at the ends of the yards where the big braces pulled them round to meet the wind, preventer lines were applied. If the braces parted and the yard swung back it would probably take the mast with it like a felled tree.

  It was hard, continuous work, but there would be no complaints. Double tacks and sheets rove, storm canvas roused out; fore, main and mizzen storm staysails were cleared away and baggywrinkle mats seized on everywhere. In the complexity of rigging there was a danger that cordage madly flogging in the bluster of the storm would chafe to destruction.

  Kydd took a last look at the vast storm before going below for his meal. It stretched now across half the sky and, labouring at her best speed as she was, Trajan was not going to escape. The frigates were nearly out of sight ahead and would probably get away with a battering, but the old ship-of-the-line would be facing the full force of the hurricane.

  There was no chatter at the mess-table. All the petty officers knew the odds, could bear witness to tempests around the world. There was nothing to be said. Kydd met Stirk’s eye: there was an imperceptible lift to his eyebrow but beyond that the hard-featured quarter gunner seemed unruffled. He had been with Kydd in Artemis when the vessel had been racked to pieces on an Atlantic rock and lived through many other dire times that he had never discussed. Kydd felt claustrophobic. The hatches were sealed with tarpaulin over the gratings, which were secured with nailed battens along the sides. Thus battened down there was no air movement and he felt breathless.

  With a terrifying creaking along the whole length of the gundeck there was a massive unseen lurch to leeward. ‘’Ere she comes, mates,’ Stirk said, and got up. Kydd rose also; he had an urgent need to be out on deck.

  The pealing of the silver calls of the boatswain’s mates met him on the way up. ‘All haaaands! All the hands ahoy! All haaaands on deck! Haaands to shorten sail!’

  There was now no point in trying to get away. Like a fleeing animal, Trajan could no longer run and had to turn, confront her pursuer, then fight to survive. Reduced to topsails and staysails, the Captain wanted more. First the topgallant and next the topmasts were struck on deck, the lack of high canvas resulting in a different kind of movement, an ugly, whipping roll that felt sullen and resentful. The sight of the truncated masts, only reaching up to the fighting tops, added to Kydd’s unease.

  The reliable trade winds fell away, then returned, but in gusts. The energetic waves were falling over themselves and the first rain drove in, coming in fretful squalls, chill and spiteful. Capple screwed up his eyes at the onslaught and took up position at the weather side of the wheel, motioning Kydd to the lee side. ‘Capple at th’ helm, Kydd to loo’ard,’ he called to the knot of officers on the quarterdeck, looking gravely out to the spreading darkness in the north-east. The wheel kicked under Kydd’s hands – the vigour in the seas was a reality – and he watched Capple closely as in turn the seaman watched the leech of the reefed topsail aloft. It would be hours before he saw his mess again.

  ‘Dyce – no higher.’ Quist appeared from behind them, studying the bellying canvas. Far forward, the bows lifted and smashed down in a broad swash of foam as she came round, now going more before the increasingly blustery winds, w
hich Kydd gauged were already at gale strength.

  Men moved carefully about the decks, the motion making it more of a controlled stagger. There was still more to be done, and Kydd watched the carpenter at the base of each mast check the wedges for play, the boatswain and his men stropping the anchors with extra painters to hold them securely against the tearing pull of the sea as the vessel’s heavy downward roll buried them once again in a roaring mass of foam.

  Braced against the wheel, Kydd’s muscles bunched and gave with the effort of keeping the rudder straight under the impact of the seas coming in from astern. The shock of the impacts came regularly and massively, and it was difficult to time their movements.

  The first seas came over the bulwarks to flood the decks just as the horizon faded in white froth and spume torn from wave-crests, but with a thrill Kydd saw from the binnacle that the streaming blast of air was now from the north, tending north-westerly – it was backing! As long as they could keep the seas then, according to the master, they would pass safely through this chaos of sea and air. He looked across the deck to where Quist stood alone, buffeted by the still-increasing gale, his old dark tarpaulins plastered to his body. He felt an upwelling of feeling for the man, who held in his mind so much cool knowledge about this raging of nature, and who––

  Under his feet Kydd sensed a sudden rupture, a rending crack – and he fell to the deck, the wheel spinning uselessly above him. Stunned, he heard Capple shout something about the helm before his wits returned and he realised the tiller-ropes must have parted. The ship began to fall away, but Auberon’s voice came instantly, bullying over the dull roar of the storm down the main hatchway. ‘Relieving tackles – get going, y’ lubbers!’

  A bigger pitch than usual forced the bows at an angle to the sea and a comber crowded aboard in a mad welter of white, crashing, invading. From up the hatchway came an indistinct shouting. Quist emerged, grabbed Kydd’s shoulder and hurled him down the ladder, yelling that the tiller had broken in the rudder-head. Capple clattered down behind him.