Kydd kept his face blank. This might be the first step on the way to a court-martial for mutiny.
'As I said, you're my quartermaster, an' directly responsible t' me.'
This looked grave: was Jarman trying to secure loyalty to himself?
'Consider, if y’ please. The Cap'n an' me are the only ones aboard that c'n figure our position, th' bo'sun never learned. Now, I could say as how I'm a mort disturbed about we bein' carried off b' the fever, but I'd be lying. See, this is m' first ship as master, an' anything goes awry, then it'll be me t' blame — I don't see as how I should give best if it comes t' an argyment over the workings.'
Farrell, as captain, had a duty to seek the sailing master's advice only, and could entirely overrule him. Jarman wanted a witness — but what possible use was Kydd?
'So, I'd take it kindly if ye could jus' think about if you'd like to learn how to do the figurin' y'rself.'
Kydd sat back in disbelief. But he quickly responded: it was a great opportunity, not the slightest use in his position, but ... 'I'd like it main well, Mr Jarman,' he said, 'but how will I learn?'
Jarman eased into a smile. 'Don't ye worry — in the merchant service we has no truck wi' pie-arse-squared an' all that, no time!' He tapped the book of tables. 'It's all there — ye just takes y'r sights an' looks it up. I learned it all in a short whiles only.'
Farrell nodded approval when Jarman brought it up at seven bells. 'If you think it proper, Mr Jarman.' Therefore at noon, on the quarterdeck of Seaflower could be seen the amazing sight of the Captain, the master, the midshipman and Kydd preparing to take the noon altitude. Midshipman Cole as usual borrowed Farrell’s gleaming black and brass sextant, while Kydd gingerly took the worn octant wielded respectfully by Jarman.
Afterwards, the master, as was his duty, took Cole aside to examine his reckoning and drill him in the essentials. Kydd hovered to listen. 'Now, every point of half th' surface of the earth is projected fr'm the centre on to a tangent plane at some point, call'd its point o' contact — but th' plane o' the equator when projected fr'm the centre on to a tangent plane itself becomes a straight line . ..'
While the worried Cole tried to commit the words, Jarman turned to Kydd. 'Now, what we have there is a great circle. Nobody sails a great circle - we only steer straight or th' quartermaster-o'-the-watch would be vexed. What we really does is alter course a mort the same way once in a watch or so, an' that way we c'n approximate y'r circle.'
There was more, and unavoidably it needed books: Renzi took an immediate interest. 'To snatch meaning from the celestial orb — to gather intelligence of our mortal striving from heavenly bodies of unimaginable distance and splendour. Now that is in pursuit of a philosophy so sublime . . .'
With Hispaniola to larboard, they took a south-easterly slant across the width of the Caribbean, the trade winds comfortably abeam and, in accordance with Kydd's shaky workings shadowing the real ones, raised the island of St Lucia and its passage through to the open
Atlantic ocean. The Windward Island of Barbados lay beyond.
Kydd's shipmates accepted his privileged treatment with respect. He was one of their own, daring to reach for the one thing that set officers apart from seamen. It was a rare but not unknown thing for a foremast hand to take part in the noon reckoning, although in the usual way all officers' results were brought together for consensus while those of lesser beings were ignored.
The rule-of-thumb principles used in the real world, informed by Jarman's utilitarian merchant service experience, Kydd absorbed readily enough — it was really only the looking up of tables. What was more difficult was the bodily technique of using the heavy old octant to shoot the sun against the exuberance of Sea/lower's sea motion. A combination of tucking in the left elbow, lowering the body to make the legs a pair of damping springs and leaning into it, and Kydd soon had the sun neatly brought down to the horizon with a sure swing of the arm.
The underpinning of mathematics was beyond him, though. Renzi had the sense to refrain from pressing the issue. There would be time and more in the lazy dog-watches to make intellectual discoveries, and Kydd would benefit by the more relaxed explorations. Besides which, it was only the hapless Cole who was under pressure: he would take his qualifying examination for lieutenant within the year.
Off Cape Moule to the south of the island the boatswain shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun on the calm blue seas — the wind had dropped to a fluky zephyr. 'Have ye news of St Lucia, sir?' he asked.
The island changed hands with the regularity of a clock, and the green and brown slopes could now be hostile territory, around the point an enemy cruiser lurking.
Farrell grunted, swinging his glass in a wide sweep over the hummocky island, across the glittering sea of the passage to the massive dark grey island of St Vincent just fifteen miles to the south. 'I don't think it signifies,' he said finally. 'We will be past and gone shortly.'
In the light airs, Seaflower rippled ahead towards an offshore island and then the open sea. Kydd watched the course carefully: the tiny breeze was dropping and their progress slowed. The big foresail shivered and flapped, and the bow began to fall away. 'Watch y' head!' he growled to the man at the tiller.
'Can't 'old 'er,' the pigtailed seaman grunted, his thigh stolidly pressuring the tiller hard over.
'We lost steerage way, sir,' Kydd told Farrell. With the wind so light the heat clamped in, a clammy, all-pervasive breathlessness. Seaflower's sails hung lifeless, idle movements in the odd cat's-paw of breeze. Blocks clacked against the mast aimlessly and running rigging sagged. Kydd looked over the side. Without a wake the sea was glassy clear, and he could see deep down into the blue-green immensity, sunlight shafting down in cathedral-like coruscations.
Jarman broke the dull silence. 'We have a contrary current hereabouts, sir,' he said heavily. Seaflower lay motionless in the calm — but the whole body of water was pressing inexorably into the Caribbean, carrying the vessel slowly but surely back whence she came. "T would be one 'n' a half, two knots.' That was the speed of a man walking, and even within the short time they had lain becalmed they had slid back significantly against the land. A bare hour later they were back at the point where they had begun their passage.
A few welcome puffs shook out the sails, died, then picked up again. A tiny chuckle of water at her forefoot and Seaflower resumed her course, heading once more for the offshore islet. Once more the fluky wind betrayed them, and they were carried back again. 'T' the south?' asked the boatswain.
'No,' said Jarman, moodily watching the coast slip back. 'Can't beat to weather in this, an' if we goes south we have t' claw back t' Barbados after.' Unspoken was the knowledge that a French lookout post might be telegraphing their presence even now to Port Castries and any man-o'-war that lay there; any improvement in the wind later could bring a voracious enemy with it.
A darkling shadow moving on the sea's surface reached Seaflower, and the welcome coolness of a breeze touched Kydd's face - and stayed constant. Again, the cutter moved into the passage but this time the land slipped by until they had made the open ocean and were set to pass the little islet. 'I believe we may now bear away for Barbados,' Farrell said, with satisfaction, but his words were overlaid by an urgent shout from the crosstrees.