“You see, we have surprise on our side. While attention is on the enemy frigate none will suspect us. All men will be at their guns-you’ll know how grievous short-handed we are. At my signal-well, I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.”
There was more to it than that, obviously, but the essence was there. On the next day Tyger would be carried over to the French. This was now a foregone conclusion. The question was, where did he stand?
“What assurance have we of our reward?” Nowell found himself saying.
“If the word of a gentleman is insufficient for you,” the master said reproachfully, “then might I ask you to conceive of the gratitude to be expected by a government presented with the gift of a most valuable ship of a thousand tons? You can be sure it may be measured in gold.”
From behind him there was a fruity chuckle from Smyth.
“And may I point out to you that this whole proceeding is ordered, with decorum and completely bloodless. What more can you ask of me?”
Nowell realised that in less than twenty-four hours he could be on his way to a new life, an end to this nightmare. “What do you want me to do?”
“Merely to assist me in making the affair bloodless. When my order goes out it will be with moves that are intended to prevent retaliation. Our gallant captain will be taken by surprise but will order the crew to resist. Your job is to countermand his orders and advise the men to stand down and accept the situation. At best they will do so, you being an officer and one they are accustomed to obey. At worst there will be confusion, which will enable us to consolidate our position. You understand me?”
It made sense and Nowell would seem to be trying to pacify a dangerous situation. With this one act he would secure his golden future!
“And this is all I’m called upon to do?”
“Only this. A small enough thing, I would have thought.”
His mind blazed with feeling. To have sweet revenge on Paddon, Hollis and all those who’d made his life a wretched misery! To be quit of this existence for ever and-“I’ll do it.”
“Good. It’s no discredit in any man to bow before the inevitable. Go to your rest now, Mr Nowell, and we’ll speak more of this tomorrow.”
Was that all?
“Yes. Well, good night, Master.” He left.
Le Breton motioned briefly. Two men immediately detached from the several waiting outside and followed noiselessly.
Nowell lay in his cot, his mind racing with possibilities and fears. When next he slept, it would be in a very different world, one that until an hour ago he could never have dreamed of.
Could he find it in him to shout down Captain Kydd when he roared out at the seamen to stand by him? He quailed at the thought, then realised that this wasn’t what he was meant to do. His would be the voice of reason, of sorrow to have to bow to the twist of fortune that saw them all at the mercy of a higher force, to which it would be no dishonour to yield.
Yet Kydd had been the only one who’d been good to him, walking the deck and hearing his anxieties with sympathy and understanding. He wasn’t like the others. And he was a hero, a real one, and had bothered to speak to him kindly when he must have been distracted beyond imagining by the condition of his ship.
It troubled him. This man had accepted the mission to go to Tyger and make her whole, and it was not his fault that he was being invisibly thwarted from within.
What would happen to him? Like all those who remained steadfast and true, he would be condemned to rot his life away in a bleak fastness somewhere. The seamen would be taken to a wretched prison or put to hard labour in some ancient port. None would have any chance of release or exchange-Bonaparte knew that British sailors were preventing him achieving his destiny and would never let them go.
All the while he himself would be taking his ease in a far country on the proceeds of his …
A surge of shame burned inside him.
He couldn’t do it. Not to Captain Kydd-and the true-hearted seamen who stood by their ship.
In a rush of determination he threw off the covers and found his watch-coat, drawing it on over his nightshirt. Inching open the door of his cabin he peeped out into the gun-room. It was steeped in the darkness of the silent hours and he tiptoed out.
He was ready with his excuse to the marine sentry at the gun-room door but the man was standing glassily upright and didn’t even blink as he passed.
It was only three steps to the aft companion up, carefully avoiding the rows of hammocks stretching away in the gloom, swaying gently together with the easy heave of the ship. As his head rose above the level of the hatchway he paused. This was now the gun-deck, open to the sky forward, and close by, under the quarterdeck above, the captain’s cabin spaces.
Nothing moved.
Reassured, he stepped out on to the deck and went quickly to the door of the cabin where a marine sentry stood.
“To see the captain,” he said in a low voice.
The sentinel hesitated, then stood aside.
Nowell made to open the door-it wouldn’t open. He tried again. It was locked!
“Why-”
He never finished the question. The smack of the musket across his skull, in a blinding flash, ended his purpose there and then.
“Look again. He must be somewhere, damn it!”
Even as he spoke Kydd was caught in the chill of a premonition. Nowell was cruelly dejected and it was not unknown for men to suicide by throwing themselves overside during the night watches-or might there be the more sinister explanation that he had had wind of a plot and been silenced?
Either way a ferocious tension now gripped Tyger. Hardly a word was spoken as men padded about with animal wariness, some deliberately keeping their gaze turned away forward, others stopping to stare back at the quarterdeck as if to be the one to witness a descending catastrophe.
Whatever cataclysm was threatening would not be long in breaking.
Turning out the marines was useless. They could not stand to indefinitely, and in their pitiful numbers were a pathetic deterrent even if they could be fully relied on.
There was only one way to deal with it: to stand fast and confront whatever evil finally burst out.
The shadowy organising genius must show himself, and then at least he’d know who his adversary was and what he was up against. An end to the ominous stormcloud of dread and foreboding. No more-
“Deck hoooo! Dead astern-a frigate!”
Nobody moved. It was already topsails up from the quarter-deck. For some reason the main-top lookout had not sighted it until almost too late. One thing was sure: it could not have come at a worse time.
Tyger went to quarters in an agonisingly long time-but there were men at the guns, others at their station. Kydd vowed that if it was an enemy they’d make a fight of it.
The sailing master appeared beside him.
“Ah, Mr Le Breton,” he said, with as much spirit as he could muster. “There-a frigate. An enemy, do you think?”
Calmly the master shielded his eyes to look. “A Frenchman you may believe, sir.”
Its profile lengthened as it altered course to come up on them from seaward. It was now possible to make out the tricolour-it was the enemy right enough, a heavy frigate with many more men than Tyger if it came to boarding, which, of course, was the last thing he intended.
Kydd smiled grimly. If it was thinking to cut off their escape to seaward then it wasn’t the first to misread a British opening manoeuvre.
He considered his tactics. The Frenchman had the weather gage and was positioning to cut across any move by him to reach the open sea. The land was under his lee to starboard and the winds going large. Unless he wanted a prolonged chase, with his ship as the prey, there was only one alternative. “Helm up, hard a-larb’d!” he ordered crisply.