It was easy enough to find out their situation. By the same rule of thumb, it could be seen that if the direction of the wind as the storm approached continued to veer against the compass, to change clockwise, they could be sure they were in the north; if it backed, they were in the south.
‘… and so we’re plumb within the dangerous semicircle,’ finished Kydd.
‘Sir.’
After his two experiences of a hurricane, years in the past, every instinct tore at him to put over the helm and flee before it was too late – but he could not. While the chase went on he was duty-bound to stay with it. And while the Frenchmen had their turn-aside threatened they were staying on course, and while they did so, Anson was never going to let up the chase and Kydd must stay with her as long as he could.
It was now a test of nerves: sooner or later they had to break and run. Who would be first?
Meanwhile, heavy-weather precautions had to be taken before conditions worsened further.
Royals and topgallants had long since been handed and, in conformity with Anson, a reef put in the topsails. Weather cloths were spread to give some relief to the helmsmen, and life-lines rigged fore and aft. Below decks it was vital to see to the securing of the guns, their breeching and tackles doubled and seized, while the spare tiller was laid along, and relieving tackles for its lines rigged. All that a prudent seaman should do aloft or alow was put in hand.
As the morning wore on, a gale developed, a hard, streaming pressure that had men staggering and all canvas hard as a board, a rising doleful drone among the lines from aloft shredding nerves. Spindrift was driven from seething crests to sting and blind, and L’Aurore began to stagger, an uncomfortable surge and jerking as the underlying swell grew.
By midday there was low racing scud above them, with an ominous thickening of the horizon to the east, an ugly darkness tinged with green edging that was the nightmare of a hurricane astern of them.
They were now down to close-reefed topsails on fore and main but with the mizzen staysail and storm mizzen in place of a topsail on the after mast, and still she laboured. Worry set in. Time was fast running out and with it their options.
It was crazy, but it was war. Through angry, foam-streaked seas in a hardening gale, four ships still clung to their duty, heaving and bucketing along in a chase to the death.
Kydd looked up for the thousandth time to the straining canvas and frantically thrumming lines and knew a decision could not long be delayed. He snatched a glance astern, then at the angle of the wind on their bow and finally at the tableau of fleeting ships – and made up his mind. The first ship to break away would be L’Aurore.
It was a giddy relief, and he could see the same in Kendall’s face when he told him.
‘We’s going to have a hard time of it, I’m thinking,’ he shouted, in Kydd’s ear. ‘Can’t turn aside to the nor’ard – land’s too close.’ Kydd was only too aware that the standard method of escaping the clutches of the dangerous semicircle, by taking the worst of the weather on the starboard bow and clawing out, was not possible.
The alternative was shocking. It required that they fall in with the wind and let it drive them across the very maw of the hurricane as fast as they dared in a bid to make the opposite side before they were overtaken by the ravening storm.
If that were not dangerous enough, there would be the fearful risk that conditions close in would be too much for their fine-lined ship and they would be forced to take in all canvas and lie a-try. When still within the dangerous semicircle, the end would be inevitable – with no ability to fight her way free, L’Aurore would be drawn unresisting into the very centre of the madness to her certain annihilation.
Kydd looked ahead for the final time, taking in the sight of Anson, the heavy frigate still smashing her way powerfully onwards after the distant pair, just visible huddling together in the rack of flying spray and mist, then ordered, ‘Up helm!’
Like a nervous colt, L’Aurore slewed around until the winds came in from astern and then began her mad run downwind across the path of the hurricane. Never at her best dead before the wind, she began an edgy, screwing roll that made moving about the bucking deck a trial, but she picked up speed like the thoroughbred she was. He knew that Lydiard would see them departing but he would understand what was going on. He comforted himself with the thought that, as the lightest of them all, it stood to reason that his ship would be first to break out.
The last he saw of Anson, she was still pressing on into the wind-torn seas after her now invisible foe until all were swallowed up in the ferocious weather.
Now it was a fight for survival, all thoughts of the chase gone. Inescapably every mile made took them closer to the heart of the storm but at the same time urged them nearer to the other side.
This was, quite simply, a race, and one determined by the skill and nerve of the captain in keeping sail on to the last moment to avoid the dreaded lying to. And hanging over it all was the unthinkable catastrophe of but a single spar carried away under the strain, in turn throwing intolerable stress on others until L’Aurore was nothing more than a drifting wreck, to be fallen upon by the triumphant hurricane.
The scene was grand – breathtaking and awful at the same time. Seas were lashed into a fury, their seething crests smoking white and leaving long, tiger-clawed lines of foam as they raggedly advanced in a heaving surge, seeming oddly bright under the dark, hellish sky. The heart of the hurricane was somewhere to larboard in the worst of the contrasting darkness and stinging white – it held a quality of supernatural dread, a terrible beast drumming towards them, its banshee howl making conversation impossible.
Calmly, the master was at the compass with a slate, squinting into the wind and taking regular bearings. It was a vital task, for after plotting they would know the path the hurricane was taking. When the bearing of the centre passed across the estimated track they would know they had at last passed out of the dangerous semicircle. Until then they could do nothing but run before the blast while rolling in mad, jerking swoops.
Then, without warning, catastrophe struck.
Above the quarterdeck a tremendous crack sounded clear over the storm’s roar. Before anyone could react, a heavy spar swept down, with a terrifying rip and bang of straining canvas instantaneously giving way, with the tortured twanging of ropes tried beyond endurance. Skewed by the merciless blast on the ragged remnants of canvas, it crashed to the bulwark, pulping one man and sending two into the boiling sea.
Kydd, knocked to his knees, was disoriented at first but saw the quartermaster leap to the fire-axe on the mizzen-mast and begin a frenzied hacking at the tangled mass of rope and torn canvas. Coming to his senses, he threw a glance up. The driver gaff had given way at the jaws, the hinging point of the long spar that ran out from the mizzen-mast along the top of the big fore-and-aft sail, then had tumbled down, rending the sail and leaving severed lines streaming out to leeward.
Crushing from his mind the knowledge of the men in the sea gasping out the last of their lives, he tried to think.
The ship was now unbalanced, beginning a fishtail slewing with canvas on fore and main only – Gilbey at the main-mast and Curzon forward would know to douse sail instantly, but where did that leave them? As near as, damn it, helpless. As if to underscore his thoughts, L’Aurore sheered to take the wind broadside; she rolled deeply and uncontrollably for she had no canvas to steady her, locked now in a drifting curve that would end in her drawn to destruction in the hurricane’s heart – the penalty for not yet having won clear of the dangerous semicircle.