Stanhope turned, but did not speak.
'That is, we face a blow of sorts across our path, which could be .. .'
'You will make the right decision, of course, Captain — bearing in mind the urgency of my mission, which I now feel obliged to point out is of the utmost moment for the safety of England.' As if to underline the point, he drew out his fine watch and consulted it.
'I understand, my lord.' Kernon's grey features set in worry, and he trudged off along the deck.
Within the hour the horizon across their path subtly changed in character. To the low band of silver and dark grey of the familiar rain curtains there was now added a trace of menace - a tingeing of the clouds with tiny, subliminal amounts of copper verdigris. Kydd had seen this before, and reacted at a primal level.
'Sir! We must return t' Port Royal!' Jarman's forceful plea beat at Kernon's resolve while Seaflower plunged on gaily with her sails flat, the taut rigging harping musically. 'We must put about now, sir!'
Anxious looks were now being directed aft by seamen who knew of the animal savagery of sea scourged by giant winds. Kydd stole a look at the helmsman, and was comforted by his stolid performing of duty.
'We put back to Port Royal,' Kemon announced. It was a measure of his worry that he omitted first to consult Stanhope. 'Ease sheets, and we take in the topsail — bear off t' leeward and set course, um, nor' nor' west.' He seemed easier, having made a decision.
Seaflower's speed fell off and the ladies looked aft curiously. 'If you please, ladies,' Kernon called. He explained to the group what had to be done. Lord Stanhope frowned but said nothing, and Cecilia darted a quick look at her brother.
Kydd spoke quietly to Jarman: 'In Trajan we could never outrun a revolvin' storm. We worked out its position, an' then it was tear away in the safest direction f'r us.'
Jarman nodded. 'Aye, but in such a cockleshell we needs to go further. These tropic storms are monsters an' go at such a gallopin' pace — it's not only th' centre we needs to worry about, it's where they're headed. We plots the centre every hour, an' works out a path where it's going, an' hope t' God to outwit the infernal beast.'
The ugly skies loomed frighteningly quickly. The ladies stopped their marvelling and stared soberly at the massing hideousness astern. Fear struck at the sight of what nature was bringing out from its sack of terrors.
On deck seamen secured as best they could. The cutter was dead before the wind and slashed ahead at an insane rate, like a hunted animal trying to flee a carnivore. But the bearing shifted, slowly but surely, about the starboard quarter. A rain-spot spattered the folded chart that Jarman had brought from below. The tiny dots inside circles were their plot of the path of the storm marching across from the east - and curving north. "This is th' worst f'r us,' Jarman murmured. His face had a strange, detached calm that struck a shaft of icy fear through Kydd. "That devil will go between us an' Port Royal. There's no returning there now.'
They struck south, every sail drawing, then south-west into the vague direction of the reef-strewn interior of the western Caribbean, anything to keep from the path of the rampaging monster. By the dog-watches the vast dark roiling masses of cloud had reached overhead and the wind had turned edgy and fitful.
A presentiment forced itself on Kydd's mind, born of his sea knowledge, his increasing empathy with the deep. This was going to be the time when it would claim its price for that understanding, a hard price that he knew might be his life — and then he thought of Cecilia, and felt a hot misery.
'Sir, if you could go below it would ease our worries at this time,' Kernon said, distracted. Lord Stanhope looked about to demur, but Lady Stanhope took him by the arm. 'We are together, Frederick, never forget that. We will see this through with each other, my love.' She kissed him. 'Come! You shall read to me. Captain, any news . . .'
'Of course, my lady.'
They turned away, arm in arm. Cecilia paused for a moment, looking into Kydd's eyes. He felt helpless in the face of emotions that women seemed to meet with such nobility. Her eyes dropped and she went to him, clinging soundlessly for a long time. 'Tell me ... when ...' she said, in a muffled voice. The lump in his throat prevented Kydd answering, but he squeezed her hard. The cutter lurched under a spiteful gust.
'Haaands to shorten sail!' They could not run any more.
'Cec—' He could think of nothing to say, and she pulled herself away and staggered over the deck to the after hatchway; one last long look, and she disappeared below to face whatever unseen madness was in store.
Lifelines rigged fore and aft, square sails struck, lines prepared for trapping, pumps checked — there was not much they could achieve in their little ship. Kydd remembered the violence of a hurricane from the decks of a ship ten times the size. In this they would not survive, but they could meet their fate with courage and dignity.
They lost dead reckoning when the horizon closed about them in a welter of white: from now on they might be anywhere, flying endlessly from nowhere into nothing in the cruel and uncaring storm.
Kydd remembered a true storm being painted by his first sea friend, so long ago: it was seared on his memory. 'Comes a time when yer knows that there's a chance yer might not live — sea jus' tears at the barky like it was an animal, no mercy a-tall.' Bowyer's iron-grey deep-sea mariner's appearance had reassured him then, but now .. .
The moaning wind turned to a banshee ululation, driving spray into Kydd's face with a stinging spite that made it almost impossible to see. Merrick levered himself aft, shouting in the ear of every seaman he could find.
In turn he came to Kydd. It was the closing act. The last remaining scraps of sail would shortly be torn away and with it any control over their fate. Seaflower was going to stream a sea-anchor, this was a drag on a line over the bows that would bring them around, bows to the sheeting chaos, the final move. Kydd's part would be to bring them up into the wind at the right moment, after which his role as quartermaster of Seaflower would no longer have any meaning.
The tiller had relieving tackles seized to its end: Kydd could dimly perceive, crouched on the deck, the hunched bodies of the seamen who must haul on these. Through salt-sore eyes in the screaming wind, he made out the jerking figures of those working in the bows. Seas smashed in, burying them under white torrents.
A hand waved: Kydd sensed the seas then flung his arm at the larboard men. They hauled and fell, staggering and fighting at the tackle, but the bows came round into the blast. The scrap of canvas met the wind end-on and flogged itself to death in an instant, but Seaflower's bow remained headed faithfully into the tempest.
It could not last. At the point when sky and sea were unrecognisable apart, the sea-anchor gave way. Seaflower's bows rose like a frightened horse, then fell away in a sickening wallow, the vessel now free of any constraint.
Kydd was aware that, beside him, Merrick was fumbling: he was casting loose his lashing, his life-line. The boatswain clawed his way forward, a hopeless, heroic thing, for Seaflower, it seemed, was now more under water than above. Nearly to the fo'c'sle he was taken by a wave. Clinging to the side he was mercilessly battered by the waterfall until his grip was broken and he was dragged into the rage of sea. Kydd caught sight of him only once as he sped past, the boatswain's face a frozen rictus of puzzlement as he went to his death.
A numb, unreal feeling crept over Kydd, paradoxically insulating him from the insanity. Intellectually he knew that once the blast caught Seaflower broadside on, she would roll over, perhaps once, twice, then all life in her would be extinguished, all the struggling, all the care, the pity — all would be over. Then a dark lump intruded itself into his vision, clawing across the deck to him. In these last moments left to them he pulled Cecilia to him, her lovely dark hair now plastered across her skull, the dress a torn and useless rag. He felt her trembling violently as he passed his life-line around them both and gulped at the sheer unfairness of it, that such an innocent should suffer a sailor's lonely end.