There was a hissing of indrawn breath. The dog-watch was well under way, the off-duty watchmen taking a pipe of baccy on the fo’c’sle in the gentle glow of the lanthorns, others with their grog cans.
“Hey now, Pedro! Yon Kydd – his pot has the mark of Moll Thompson upon it!”
The Iberian started, then grimaced. “For a story li’ that, I give,” he said, filling Kydd’s empty tankard from a small beer tub.
“Where is Renzi?” Claggett asked.
Kydd looked at him levelly and said, “He’s got his reasons right enough, Samuel. We just leave him alone, should he want it that way.”
“Didn’t mean ter be nosy, Tom, but yer must admit, he’s a queer fish, is Renzi.” Kydd said nothing, drinking his beer and still regarding Claggett steadily. “Yair, well, ’e’s yer friend an’ all,” Claggett said.
“I were taken once, but it weren’t the Johnny Crapauds!” Doggo’s roughened voice cut into the silence, his features animated.
“Well, ’oo was it, then?” said Jewkes.
Doggo looked at him. “Why, it were in… let me see, year ’eighty-six, it were.” He scratched at his side. “I were waister in the Dainty sloop, ’n’ we took the ground one night on the Barbary coast. Not th’ best place ter be, yer’ll admit. Well, seas get up ’n’ next thing she’s a-poundin’ something cruel. Starts ter break up, so’s we gets thrown in the oggin all standin’. O’ course, we nearly all drowns. In fac’, it were just me left to tell yez the tale. Well, I gets dashed ashore ’n’ just manages ter crawl up the strand, when all these A-rabs on ’orses comes ridin’ up. I ’eard o’ these Bedoos before, see, they’re bad cess, but I can’t do anythin’ like I am. They ties me up ’n’ rides off with me ter their camp.”
His ugly face grew solemn. “There, mates, it were right roaratorious, what wi’ me bein’ a white man ’n’ all. See, they wants me as their slave. ’N’ that’s what I was, sure enough – has to bow ’n’ scrape, all togged up in saucy gear wi’ turban ’n’ all – you’d ’ave ’ad a good laff should you’ve seen me! Yeah, seemed I were there ferever.”
“Did yer get away, Doggo?” Jewkes asked, bringing on a general laugh at his question.
There was a play at discovering his pot was empty. After it was filled again, Doggo continued. “Well, mates, seems an A-rab princess falls in love wi’ me, takes me fer her own. Sees me un’appy like, it breaks ’er heart. So she decides to put love before dooty ’n’ after a night o’ passion sees me off afore dawn on a fast horse, ’n’ here I is!”
The whole fo’c’sle fell about in laughter.
With the spreading warmth of the drink inside, the soft dusk and his shipmates about him, Kydd lay back happily, staring up at the stars just beginning to wink into existence in an ultramarine sky, and pondered at the extremes of experience that life could bring.
It was sheer luck that Duke William and her escorting frigates had been passing at that particular time. She had been on passage back to her station after landing her evacuees in Plymouth, and at no time would ever have contemplated a blockade of their part of the coast. In the sick bay men writhed in pain, wretches who would have reason to curse the experience if they survived, but Kydd had – and without a scratch. And the old fisherman had been set free with his boat, but had fiercely scorned the couple of guineas offered him by the frigate captain and sailed off making obscene gestures.
And, of course, the proud moment of being received in the great cabin by his captain to tell his story. “Remarkable!” Caldwell had said, making free with his scented handkerchief at certain points in the tale. Besides ordering a gratis issue of slops to replace their tattered and smelly clothes, he had courteously enquired if there was anything further he could do for Kydd.
“To be rated seaman!” Kydd had replied immediately.
Raising his eyebrows, the Captain had glanced at his clerk. “Should you satisfy the boatswain, by all means.”
The tough old boatswain had been plain. It would not be easy. “Hand, reef and steer, that’s only the start of it, lad. Good seaman knows a mort more. But I’ll see as how you gets a proper chance to get it all under yer belt.”
He was as good as his word. Paired off with Doud, Kydd found himself in every conceivable element of seamanship. From the tip of the jibboom to the royal yardarms, the cro’jack to the fore topsail stuns’l boom, sometimes frightened, always determined, he steadily made their personal acquaintance. Doud was a prime seaman, having been to sea since a boy; he was also an excellent choice as mentor. He challenged and cajoled Kydd unmercifully, but was always ready with a hand or an explanation.
“We’ll take in a first reef in the topsails, I believe,” said Lieutenant Lockwood. His serious young face studied the gray scud overhead.
“Way aloft, topmen – man topsail clewlines and buntlines! Weather topsail braces!”
The watch on deck was mustered: some began their skyward climb to the tops while others at the braces heaved laboriously around the yards to lay them square to their marks. The sails, no longer taut and working, flapped noisily.
It was Kydd’s first experience at laying out on the yardarm. It was one thing moving out on a steadily pulling set and drawing sail, as he had already done with Doud, and another to achieve something on a loose cloud of flogging canvas.
The captain of the top was unsympathetic. “Weather yardarm, cully,” he ordered.
“Where the sport is!” said Doud cheerfully – he would pass the weather earring, the most skilled job of all. Kydd just looked at him.
A heavy creaking of sheaves, and the topsail yard began to lower. The spacious maintop seemed crowded with men, and Kydd took a sharp blow in the side from the men working the reef tackles, which, pulling up on the appropriate reef cringle, had to take the deadweight of the sail.Doud grinned at Kydd as they waited. “Be ready, mate,” he warned.
“Trice up and lay out!”
“Go!” Doud yelled, and swung onto the yard. The inboard iron of the stuns’l boom was disengaged and the boom tricer hoisted it clear. Doud moved out quickly to the farthest extremity of the yardarm and turned to straddle it facing inwards.
With his heart in his mouth Kydd followed. As he had learned, he leaned his weight over the thick yard until his feet were firmly in the footrope, pushing down and back, and arms clinging to the yard inched his way outward. It was worse than he had expected. The increasing beam seas were causing a roll, which was magnified by height – over to one side, a sudden stop, then an acceleration back to the other in a dizzying arc. In front and beneath him, the hundred-foot width of topsail boisterously flapped and tugged, and he knew he was being watched from below.
“Get movin’, you maudling old women!” the captain of the top shouted.
Sailors were being held up by his slow movements, but he couldn’t help it. It was heart-stopping to be up there, with nothing but a thin footrope and the yard – and empty space beneath his feet to the deck far below. He knew that soon he would not even have the yard to cling to – both his hands would be needed for work.
He looked down at the deck and the sea sliding past below, so foreshortened at the height of a church steeple.
This was how Bowyer had met his death.
“Haul out to windward!”
The men inclined to leeward and leaned over the yard, bracing against the footrope. Seizing one of the reef points, they heaved the sail bodily over toward Doud at the end. Kydd had no option but to follow suit. It needed all his courage to let go his hold on the yard and balance precariously forward, elbows clamping, and grab one of the points.
“Heave, yer buggers – let’s see some tiger!”