It was the master’s duty to bring sea signs to Kydd’s attention, and this was one that could be of significance in the Caribbean in the hurricane season. ‘Oh? How’s the glass?’
‘Fluky – we’re under twenty-nine an’ a quarter, but hasn’t dropped worth remarking these last four hours.’
Kydd had been in hurricanes before and had no real wish to try his ship against one now; it was prudent to be wary. He glanced ahead: storms swept in from the east and all were individual in their characteristics but there were common portents. At the moment the horizon was clear and there was no high overcast. His concern diminished – it looked to be a regular blow coming in from the Atlantic, more boisterous than usual perhaps but-
‘Sail! I see sail – no, two – up agin the coast!’ The lookout’s hail broke into his thoughts, but already the heavier frigate with her greater height of eye was preparing to go about and Kydd lost no time in conforming. Two sail together was unusual to the point of incredible – there was every possibility that their hunt was over.
After an hour only, the pair were visible from the deck: two pale blobs against the darker green-brown of the Cuban coast, quartering the wind and making remarkably good speed. There was movement out on the yard at Anson’s main-course – she was setting bridles to the forward leech of the sail, with bowlines stretching it out into the teeth of the wind to claw the last particle of drawing power. They must do the same, for any delay in closing with the fast-moving chase there across their bows would end with L’Aurore losing them into the distance.
They were steering an intercepting course, paying off downwind as the two passed ahead five miles distant, then angling in to a stern chase. By now it was certain: the two were French frigates and they were declining action, preserving their ships for their primary task of hunting helpless prey.
It settled quickly into a hard chase. The two ahead stayed tightly together and had every stitch of canvas they could abroad, barrelling into the gathering sunset. L’Aurore and Anson similarly stayed close and tried every trick they could to claw their way up on the pair, but as time passed it was clear they had little chance of hauling up on them before dark.
Dusk drew in, the waves in contrast as they became shadowed, the white of combers startling in the gloom.
Anson set lanthorns aglow in her mizzen-top and, without needing orders, Kydd fell in astern for the night, the weather showing no signs of easing.
There was a moon. It was clear and bright behind them, and with its light on their sails, the enemy frigates were pitilessly revealed.
It was an even match – the contest was anyone’s to lose, and by any man aboard: a mistake in the deceptive light, a line let go too soon putting intolerable strain on a spar, and the ship would be out of the race. Worse – for the remaining frigate it would then be two against one and a different story entirely. Of course it applied to the French as welclass="underline" if it happened to them, L’Aurore had to be ready to take on the wounded bird while Anson raced on after the other.
Nerves at concert pitch, the four ships stretched out over the sea – until everything changed. A veil of light cloud had spread up from the horizon behind them, high and innocent; now it was joined by denser, lower cloud, which crept out, hiding the stars one by one until it reached the moon. Obscured, its light dimmed, the gloom deepened, then assumed the blackness of night, and the frigates ahead were lost to sight.
It was decision time and Kydd did not envy Lydiard the task. Because their speeds were so even, it was probable that the French would still be in sight in the morning. But they had the opportunity to get away, to make off under cover of dark. They could not turn to starboard for there lay the Cuban coast, but they could to larboard.
The enemy commander would be weighing the advantages of a turn-away against the probability that his opponent would second-guess that he would seize the chance to strike out from his course at some point in the night, in which case his best move would be to keep right on.
Which would Lydiard decide?
The seas were increasing: Kydd felt their savage urge under L’Aurore’s counter, heard the muffled swearing of the two helmsmen as they fought to keep her steady, and knew in his heart what it meant. Before midnight he had confirmation – the barometer was dropping. It was the rate of fall that was the most important, and since the afternoon, it had passed the twenty-nine-inch mark with no sign of slowing.
Somewhere out in the night bluster a storm was gathering, but whether or not it was a dreaded revolving tropical tempest – a hurricane – only time would tell.
The lights of Anson were still ahead. The decision had been made: it was to stay on their course. Kydd could only guess Lydiard had reasoned that, all other things being equal, the French had chosen to keep on the track their mission required, quite in keeping with the overriding need to fly at utmost speed from one place to another.
He slept fitfully in the jerking cot and woke in the crepuscular pre-dawn light, dressing hurriedly. The motion of the ship was the same but more exaggerated – could they fight a blazing action in this? He crushed the worries as they rose, for when day broke the French might well have gone, Lydiard’s decision the wrong one.
Anson’s bulk materialised ahead as the dawn asserted itself, grey and sombre. She was plunging on regardless, a comforting sight, but all eyes were on the steadily widening circle of visibility – and then suddenly, gloriously, there were the French.
Some way to starboard but still ahead, and appreciably closer.
But that made for difficulties. Normally the chase would continue until either the quarry got away or were overhauled. Then it would be battle – but the conditions overnight had worsened, the winds veering even further aft. Waves were leaving long streaks as they were tumbled on before the relentless pummelling, which now had real force behind its steady streaming from the north-east, and the low cloud was starting to drive before it.
Everything now pointed to the near certainty that a hurricane was out there and all prudent mariners would be taking steps to get out of its way. But in the fast deteriorating conditions all four still plunged on before the storm.
‘Mr Kendall,’ Kydd called across to the grave-faced master, ‘shall we talk?’
‘Aye, sir.’
They stood together, each with a firm grip on a rope, eyeing the white-streaked seascape with concern.
‘Glass is at twenty-eight an’ three-fourths last time I looked, sir.’
Kydd glanced up to the fast-moving clouds overhead. ‘Yes, it looks like a hurricane right enough,’ he said. ‘And we’re driving before it.’
There was a rule of thumb that said to face into the wind and the whirling chaos of the centre was somewhere off nine points on the right hand.
Kendall sniffed the wind. ‘And it veers,’ he muttered. ‘That means …’
He didn’t have to explain it to Kydd. The winds feeding the massive gyre did so at an angle, coming in the same all around the rotating mass. Generations of mariners had learned, however, that all was not equal, finding out the hard way that while there were two directions to step out of the way of the onrushing storm only one was to be trusted.
Turning off to the north side would find the ship up against headwinds, which by their angle would try their malignant best to suck the vessel into the centre. Not only that, as the hurricane track nearly always curved to the north, it would continue to bear down on the fleeing ship.
A turn to the south, though, would have the same winds impelling the ship under and behind the deadly system, much to be preferred. This side was called the navigable, the other the dangerous semicircle.