Command

by Julian Stockwin

  The ceaseless southerly now beat in; soaked by rain and spray from romping grey seas thumping and bursting on the larboard side, Kydd slitted his eyes and tried to make out their course ahead. He had allowed two points of the helm a-weather for leeway in the run down to Cape Pillar and prayed it would be enough—the note on the chart had promised an iron-bound coast and if they were to be embayed between two capes . . .

  Then slightly off the bow to starboard a vision slowly appeared from out of the misty, drifting curtains of rain squalls. High and majestic, a mighty rampart of basalt, an uncountable number of vertical columns like devilish organ pipes nearly eight hundred feet high. It could only be Cape Raoul.

  Thankful beyond measure, Kydd waited until they were past. Now all they had to do was turn north-west, enter Storm Bay and the Derwent. Suffolk made fine sailing, her schooner rig well suited to the close coastal task of a maid-of-all-work around the colony, but as they sailed on in the gathering murk of evening they were faced with a new danger. According to the chart Storm Bay forked into two inner leads, both to the north-west. One led to the sheltered calm of the Derwent, the other to the ever-shallowing snare of Frederick Henry Bay. But if in the gloom he erred too far to the westward he would come up against the other shore of Storm Bay.

  He set a strict compass course according to the chart and stood by it as they plunged on, his uneasiness increasing as the stern coastlines faded into the twilight. “Another light!” he snapped— he could barely see the binnacle—but before the lanthorn arrived he saw something that touched his being with the eerie chill of the supernatural. Attuned to the angle of the waves and the steady pressure of wind on his cheek, his seaman’s senses told him that they were on the same course but the compass was calmly stepping away to the west. Five, ten, fifteen degrees away: should he put up the helm to counteract? Or hold whatever course the compass told?

  “Ease t’ starboard,” Kydd muttered at last. It ruined his dead reckoning but he had to compromise between the two. The white of the helmsman’s eyes flashed in the dimness as he looked anxiously between the compass and Kydd.

  Unbelievably, it happened again—this time in the opposite direction. Five, ten degrees and more; frantic, Kydd tried mentally to compensate but, with a seaman’s sixth sense, he knew that land was looming near. To shorten sail would be to lose the ability to react quickly, but to keep on a press of sail could end in shipwreck.

  “Send a hand wi’ a lead line forrard,” he threw at Boyd.

  A man stumbled to the bow and began the swing. He had just sung out the first sounding—eleven fathoms—when he stood rigid, his voice rising to a falsetto. “Breakers, f’r Chrissakes!” He pointed to larboard and a roiling white in the sea that, in the heightened atmosphere of the half-light, was cold with menace.

  They could no longer bear for the Derwent. Kydd’s thoughts skipped chaotically in his tiredness, clinging to scraps of reality. He became aware of a long dark mass in the night, precipitous and bold, lying parallel to their course. Flogging his memory to bring the outline of the chart to mind, he could have sworn there was no headland facing them—an island? They were close enough to hear the sullen roar and thud of the seas that ended their onrush at its rocky foot. If an island, there had to be a lee at the end, before the coastline proper.

  “Get that swab forrard t’ work,” he roared, in his anxiety, and to Boyd he snarled, “Stand by t’ anchor—yes, to anchor, damn you!”

  He glanced at the helm. “Steady, lad,” he said to the frightened youngster. The island seemed to go on for ever until, quite suddenly, the dark bulk fell away. “Down y’r helm, now!” he barked, and cupped his hand to bawl, “Stan’ by, forrard!”

  As he had suspected the wind fell away to a confused gusting and the seas quieted. “Let go, forrard!” he shouted, and felt rather than heard the rush of cable over the deck. “Douse y’r fore ’n’ main,” he ordered the men at the brails, then sensed the schooner feel her anchor. He stared into the darkness for any clue as to where they were but saw nothing and simply thanked Providence that they were now snugly at anchor where but for a few yards they could have been yet another wreck on this desolate shore.

  In the wan light of morning Kydd strained to see where they were. Suffolk was snubbing contentedly to her anchor on the northern end of a steep island, but not half a mile distant was a long, low beach that extended for miles in both directions. If they had continued past the island in the night they would have ended shattered and broken on a sandy shore.

  The chart told the rest of the story. He had been right: apart from a small wedge-shaped island past Cape Raoul there was no other in Storm Bay. Therefore this had to be Betsey’s Island, just at the mid-point between the two leads of Frederick Henry Bay and the Derwent.

  “Let’s be having ye,” Kydd briskly told Boyd. “Hands t’ unmoor ship.”

  It was a matter of less than an hour to win the three miles to the west, which placed them past the sloping face of Cape Direction and squarely in the spacious channel of the Derwent for the final leg. As with Port Dalrymple, Flinders had named a peak Mount Direction. Now ahead, it would show the eventual navigable head of the river, but what dominated all was the flat-topped bulk of a four-thousand-feet-high mountain: Mount Table, the chart said.

  If there was to be a settlement then, sensibly, it would be at the foot of the great mountain. But the open bay before it was hidden from view round a point. They sailed on in trepidation: what would be the form of the French occupation? Huts, the streets laid out already, a tricolore floating out above soldiers drilling on a square?

  There were no boats crisscrossing the calm waters but the ships had probably left some time before. They passed a smaller mountain, every man of Suffolk’s crew on deck, staring forward. Then, suddenly, they were beyond the point and into the wide final bay beyond.

  For a split second Kydd’s mind was filled with dread in anticipation of what he would see but a hasty swing about by eye showed nothing to interrupt the smooth carpet of dark green vegetation spread out in every direction. His telescope went up rapidly to inspect every part of the shoreline.

  And then it hit him. The French were not there! He had been to the two finest locations for a settlement in Van Diemen’s Land and found them both unoccupied. It was beyond belief that any Frenchman in possession of the same geographic knowledge as himself would pass up the chance to plant his colony in the best setting available in favour of a lesser. The only reasonable conclusion was that they had made it in time. King’s plan to forestall the French with a sub-colony could proceed. This new land would speak English and be a little piece of England at the far end of the earth, and generations to come would mark this year as the birth of their land.

  Filled with awe and wonder at the implications, Kydd ordered Suffolk to the head of the cove where the Derwent entered, but it was not really necessary: the river narrowed quickly and could no longer take deep-sea vessels. Any settlement would be nestled under the great mountain. Their business in the south was now concluded and they could return to the civilisation of Port Jackson.

  The voyage of return would be five hundred miles and more— it would be prudent to water before they set out. The nearest watering, however, was a complete unknown in this wilderness, but then Kydd remembered Adventure Bay at the far end of Van Diemen’s Land. There, Captain Cook himself had stopped to water, as had Bligh and others.

  Suffolk went about and left the fertile green coves of the Derwent astern, making her southing in several broad reaches. As they dropped down the river Renzi appeared from below and sat on the foredeck staring into nothing, a bent and lonely figure.

  Storm Bay opened up; away over on the larboard bow would be Cape Raoul and the open sea but they kept in with the land to starboard until they reached the long island that had so figured in the logs and journals of famous explorers. Half-way along, a demilune bay all of seven miles across opened up—Adventure Bay.

  Kydd could have reached for his chart
and seen precisely where both Cook and Furneaux had watered, but he had no need: the position was clear in his mind. Bligh was then serving as master under Cook and had remembered the location when he needed to water Bounty on his way to Tahiti. He had last cast anchor in this pretty bay as recently as 1792. The French were known to have followed Bligh, and Flinders had called here on his epic circumnavigation.

  Kydd gazed at the sweep of land, then out to sea: at this point they were at the furthest extremity of Terra Australis. Any further would lead directly into the Great Southern Ocean; the long, heaving waves he saw now had last met land at Cape Horn and, touching New Zealand on the way, were bound there once again. In truth, this place was the uttermost finality of the world.

  If he stepped ashore now, he would be the only civilised being alive in the whole of the remote wilderness of Van Diemen’s Land. The thought grew sharper but instead of wonder it led to an overwhelming sense of loneliness, of a degree of isolation from humanity that beat in on his senses and made urgent the need to set course back to the world of men.

  Kydd gave an involuntary shiver and then became aware of Renzi. The man was visibly near breaking. “T-Thomas,” he said, in a hollow voice, “if you would, might we—walk together?”

  There was no need to explain: Renzi was asking for privacy to talk to his friend at last. “O’ course, Nicholas,” Kydd replied, with as much warmth as he could, and set the schooner to anchor as Captain Cook had, in the shelter of Fluted Cape, where a placid freshwater creek could be seen issuing down to the beach.

  “Clear away th’ boat,” Kydd told Boyd, and they were rowed to the broad beach. “Carry on wi’ the watering, if y’ please,” Kydd said, and he and Renzi were left alone to trudge along the beach. Nothing was said. As they paced, Renzi kept his eyes fixed on the hard-packed, discoloured sand, the hissing of their footsteps and harsh cries of unknown birds the only sounds. The dense, dark-green forest came right down to the water’s edge but a broad clearing began to open up, the result of some long-ago wild-fire.

  “Shall we . . . ?” Sensing Renzi’s unspoken need to be out of sight of the others Kydd steered them off the beach and into the desolate place.

  Away from the sea a sighing silence settled about them, the occasional snapping of undergrowth and their laboured breathing seeming curiously overloud. The terrain was coarse and undulating with blackened and fallen tree boles and they were soon out of sight of the ship; then, over a small rise, the woodland began again, even more densely than before.

  Renzi came to a stop. His face had the pallor of death and his eyes were wells of misery. Kydd waited apprehensively. “Dear fellow,” Renzi began, in a dreadful caricature of his usual way of opening a philosophical discussion, “you—will know I am a man of reason,” he coughed twice and continued hoarsely, “and I have to tell you now, my friend, that I am—betrayed by my own logic.” His voice broke on the last words, tears brimming.

  “Why? How c’n this be?” Kydd said softly. Renzi looked directly at him and Kydd was appalled by what he saw in his face.

  “As I lay on my fever bed things were made plain to me. I shall not bore you with details—but I became aware that, for all the advantages of birth and intellect, my life is a waste. I can point to not a single achievement. Not one! Nothing!”

  He covered his face and his shoulders began shaking. Kydd was shocked: this was worse than he had supposed and made little sense. “Why, Nicholas, t’ win the quarterdeck is an achievement that any might think—”

  “No! There are coxcombs strutting the deck who owe it all to the accident of good breeding. This is no matter for pride. But you are a naval officer so above your station in life by right of striving and courage. You are now the captain of a ship! That is what any might call an achievement.”

  Renzi’s chest heaved with emotion. “We will be at war with the French in months—with their arrogant posturing, there is nothing surer. You will be given a King’s ship and go on to win renown and honour. That is equally sure.” Irritably he waved aside Kydd’s protestations. “This is your nature and your achieving, and you must glory in it. But I—I do not have the fire in my blood that you have. I am contemplative and take my joy in the fruits of the intellect, in the purity of creation, in—in—” He broke off with muffled sobs. Then, with an effort, he rallied. “It seemed the logical course, to leave the old world and enter the new where I might wrest from nature—ab initio—a kingdom of the soil, a fine achievement to—to . . .”

  “To what, Nicholas?” Kydd asked quietly.

  “To lay before Cecilia.”

  Defiantly Renzi looked up at Kydd, his hands working. “Cecilia . . . who, I own before you this day, is dearer to me than I can possibly say to you. One whom I would dishonour were I to press my suit without I have achieved something worthy of her attention. And—and—I have failed! I have failed her.” His face distorted into a paroxysm of grief. He dropped hopelessly to his knees and broke into choking, tearing sobbing.

  It was as if the world had turned upside down for Kydd to see Renzi, who had been so calm and staunch by his side through perils and adventures beyond counting, brought so low. Kydd’s heart went out to the tortured soul who was his friend but what could he do? Tentatively, his hand reached out—then his arm went to the shoulder until he was holding Renzi’s shaking body as the racking sobs took him. Renzi did not resist and Kydd held him until the storm had passed.

  “All—all is t-to hell and ruin in Marayong, and so I w-wanted to see if the sealing industry would answer instead, b-but when I saw the slaughter I thought that if Cecilia knew of it how she would d-despise any fortune won from the blood and lives of i-innocent animals and—and therefore I have n-nothing left to me!”

  Cruel sobs shook his gaunt frame again and Kydd knew that the last months must have been a living hell for his friend. What Renzi needed now was the will to live, a future, hope that things could be different.

  “Then you are free, brother,” Kydd tried brightly.

  Renzi raised his head. “Wh-what did you say?”

  “Forgive me talkin’ wry, I was never a taut hand wi’ words, but do ye not think that fate is a-calling you t’ tack about, make an offing fr’m what was?”

  “Thomas, p-please—”

  “Nicholas, you’ve tasted life t’ the full, been t’ places others c’n only dream on. You have a rare enough headpiece as can tangle with any—is it not th’ time to give a steer to the rest of us? Can ye not bring order t’ the cosmos and tell we mortals how it will be with us?”

  He lowered his voice. “Dear friend, can ye not remember those night watches? I can, an’ now I admit before ye that those yarns on the fo’c’sle I hold precious in m’ memory. Your destiny is never to be a slave o’ the soil—can ye not see it in you that a pen suits afore a plough?”

  Renzi held still.

  “I put it t’ ye, if you set to it heart and hand, you’d make a better fist of explaining this ragabash existence than all th’ philosophic gentlemen who’ve never passed beyond their own front door. Nicholas, this is y’r future. You shall write a book o’ sorts that settles it f’r good an’ all. This, dear chap,” Kydd brought out all the feeling he could muster, “is an achievement as no one of the ordinary sort can lay claim to, and therefore must be worthy o’ Cecilia’s notice.”

  As with any brother, it was hard to conceive that his sister might be the one to evoke passion and turmoil in an otherwise admirable character but it had to be accepted. He waited apprehensively for a response.

  Renzi drew himself up with a long, shuddering sigh. “Just so.” He pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and trumpeted into it. “But it would be more apposite—in view of my fortune in the matter of travel—to consider, perhaps, a more ethnical approach. Possibly a study of sorts, a comparing of the human experience— of a response if you will, of the multitude of the tribes of man to the onrush of civilisation, a Rousseau of our time if I were to be so bold. It would have to be in volumes and—”<
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  “As I thought as well,” Kydd said, in huge relief. “A great work. Worthy of a great mind.” Then, as furtive as a thief in the night, an idea sprang into being, a wonderful, incredible idea. “Nicholas,” he began innocently, “o’ course you shall have passage back t’ England in the Castle but what happens then? Shall ye not have y’r voyages an’ adventures that will give you grist for y’r mill? It does cross m’ mind—that is, if’n you’re right about Gen’ral Buonaparte—that I’ll get m’ ship.” He paused significantly. “Now, if that happens as ye say, then there’ll be a need f’r the captain t’ have one by him whom he might confide in, one as knows how th’ world turns, c’n tell me why things are—an’ can be a true friend.”

  Kydd hesitated, then went on, “So I’m offering—that whatever ship I’m in the post of captain’s secretary will always be there for y’r convenience, y’r guarantee that you’ll be able t’ hoist in y’r ethnical experiences wherever we might cast anchor th’ world over. Just a convenience, o’ course, y’r right t’ be aboard, we say.”

  The words tailed off. Renzi looked seaward, then slowly turned to Kydd with a half-smile. “It does seem that the conceit has some degree of merit. I’ll think on it.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In many ways Command is a watershed book in the Thomas Kydd series. My hero has actually achieved the majesty of his own quarterdeck, and his life will never be the same again. It may seem an improbable transformation of a young perruquier of Guildford, press-ganged into His Majesty’s Navy less than ten years before, but the historical record tells us that there were Thomas Kydds, not many admittedly, but enough to be tantalising to a writer’s imagination. Yet we have so few records of their odysseys—how they must have felt, what impelled them to the top.

  What actually triggered this series were some statistics that I came across. It seems that in the bitter French wars at the end of the eighteenth century, there were, out of the hundreds of thousands of seamen in the Navy over that time, 120, who by their own courage, resolution and brute tenacity made the awe-inspiring journey from common seaman at the fo’c’sle to King’s officer on the quarterdeck. And of those 120, a total of 22 became captains of their own ship—and a miraculous 3, possibly 5, became admirals!