Artemis - Kydd 02

by Julian Stockwin

  Kydd called across a party of men to carry the instruments to the boats; Fairfax had his men embarked and pulled back to Artemis in good order. The savages became more bold, covering half the distance to the stockade now to perform their displays. Muskets banged away despite Powlett's orders to conserve fire for a rush, and more and more bodies lay still in the grass.

  The boats returned. 'Sir, the Captain . . .' Kydd tried to say.

  'Yes, yes — my last reading, he will not grudge me that?'

  Evelyn replied testily. The sound of the war-cries filled with bloody-minded hatred tore at Kydd's courage.

  'Sir, my authority. . .'he said earnestly, but was interrupted by a disturbance. A group of warriors had run along the length of the stockade outside and, shielded by its timbers, had gathered sufficient numbers for an assault. They massed around one or two of the posts and heaved and pulled until they had loosened and fallen away. They had breached the stockade.

  'Fall back to the boats!' roared Powlett, as the savages poured through. There would be no second chance, and the defenders made haste towards the shore.

  Kydd swung to the ground, and looked back to Evelyn, to see him take a spear in his side. The astronomer slumped back in his canvas chair. 'Damn,' he said faintly, plucking at the vicious barbed weapon. Kydd grabbed a musket and fired at the thrower. The musket missed fire with a fizz of priming. The warrior grinned and swung a bone club. Kydd swung the musket up with two hands; the club splintered against it. The musket bent uselessly, but with it Kydd crushed the warrior's skull.

  In their lust to stop the ship from escaping, the savages streamed past each side of the platform, leaving the two men untouched. Kydd bent to Evelyn who was now white with shock. 'Th' - the obs-erva-tions,' he whispered in shallow gasps, clutching the chair in great pain. Kydd looked down and saw the polished box, open, papers neatly inside. He grabbed it and slammed the lid, and looked up to meet Evelyn's wild stare. 'Leave!' Kydd hesitated in an agony of indecision. 'Leave! Go! That is worth more than any man's life. Go, damn you!' Kydd nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and fled, the box under his arm.

  The last men were throwing themselves into the boats, and Kydd tossed the box into the pinnace. He looked back, but Evelyn had disappeared under a swarm of enraged savages, like ants over prey. Their barbarous weapons rose and fell, hacking and chopping. At last the bow swivel gun mounted in the cutter had a clear field of fire. It blasted out, and a storm of canister swept the scene, changing the full-throated war-cries to screams.

  One by one the boats from Artemis retired in good order, and headed back to their rightful place.

  Chapter 13

  Kydd's nose wrinkled. The hog's lard was giving out, and on the foreshroud deadeyes he was having to work with a nauseating mixture of fat and rancid butter. It was essential activity, for any slackness in the rigging would result in the destruction of a spar as it worked to and fro. Each separate shroud ended in a deadeye, with lanniards running down to the channel outboard to give tension adjustment, but Kydd and his party found that such was the stretched state of the rope that now, in addition, they had to take up the racking on the shrouds themselves. Finally, with gear well taut, Kydd was satisfied and allowed his three men to secure from work.

  Left alone, he gave a final tug at the lines, and became aware that he was no longer on his own. He looked up and saw Renzi standing with a set face, looking out over the tumble of blue-grey seas.

  Kydd hesitated. His sociable advances before had been repelled with a cold intensity and he was not sure how he would be received now. He fiddled with the loose end of a downhaul and waited. His decisive action on the island

  had not been forgiven by Renzi, who had retreated into himself, but ironically, in the week or so since, this had been generously misinterpreted by his shipmates who were convinced that he was recovering from a mind-scarring experience. They gave him every possible sympathy.

  Kydd watched Renzi covertly, the face in profile appearing even more solitary and inaccessible. A larger sea surged from astern, faster than they could sail. It overtook them with a swelling and falling accompanied by a marked lurch that sent them both staggering and reaching for a steadying rope. This simple human impulse seemed to bring a fluidity to the situation: Kydd caught a flicker in Renzi's eye. He wandered over beside him.

  'Hearty sailin' weather,' Kydd said. He tested the tautness of the nearest rope. Renzi did not move away. He still faced outwards, his expression set — but his lips moved slightly as though speaking to himself. Encouraged, Kydd looked at him directly. 'Mullion says as how we'll be stayin' on this same tack f'r all of three thousan' miles.'

  'That would be a logical assumption,' Renzi replied coolly, his gaze still on the heaving seascape.

  'Our gear had better be sound, I believe,' Kydd added, anxious to keep momentum in the conversation.

  Renzi looked sideways. 'If it is not then no one will ever know — but us,' he said, and Kydd could swear a smile hovered.

  'A hard end t' our island adventure,' he dared.

  There was just a moment's hesitancy, then, 'I have been considering the whole experience.' Kydd waited. 'It would appear that my expectations were over-sanguine in the matter of Man and Nature. The essence of Rousseau's thesis remains unaltered; timeless in its perception, sublime in its penetration - but it is subverted. We are too late.'

  Clearing his throat Kydd began, 'But why . . .'

  'It is now very clear. If even in so distant an island as this "civilisation" has come, then it must have spread its canker over the entire inhabited globe. Is there anywhere left at all on this terraqueous sphere that a true self may go to attain perfectibility? I think not/ A pensive expression replaced his forbidding look. 'Perhaps Rousseau would have achieved a higher immortality were he to have demonstrated a modus of perfectibility within the mundus vulgaris. In short, my friend, I accept that there is no longer any possibility for me to achieve a state of natural grace, and thus I bow to the ineluctability of my fate.'

  The smile surfaced, and Kydd responded, barely able to restrain himself from clapping Renzi on the back. 'Never fear, we have a long haul ahead before we reach our own civilisation, an' that at war,' he said.

  Renzi's face cleared. The blue Pacific rollers were now behind them, the grey of the Southern Ocean was the predominant theme, and he gazed intensely at the clouds obscuring the wan sun.

  'Fierce and more fierce the gathering tempest grew, South, and by West, the threatening demon blew; Auster's resistless force all air invades, And every rolling wave more ample spreads.'

  'Y'r Wordsworth, then?' Kydd guessed. He would have been just as happy at the fine words if it had been the village blacksmith.

  'I believe it might have been the peerless Falconer, talking about the mighty ocean in his Shipwreck, but I may be mistaken.'

  Kydd smiled broadly - all was right with the world.

  'Yair, second time fer me, mates,' said Crow, his face animated at the memory, 'an' that's twice too many fer me.' He pushed his pot forward. 'Worst place in th' whole god-blasted world fer a sailor, an' that's no error.' The faces of his audience grew serious.

  'We gets westerlies all th' way, should be quick,' Mullion said.

  'Aye, but we're only at forty south now an' it's comin' on ter blow — we need ter get to fifty-six south fer Cape Horn, an' there it's a reg'lar built hell.' Nobody spoke. 'Black squalls hit yer out o' nowhere, grievous cold, seas the size o' which make yer blood freeze ter see 'em — no galley fire on account o' the lunatic movin' o' the barky, it's no place ter be. But there's some days it's as charmin' as ever you'd want, mates, seas calm an' sun out a-shinin' on them great black rocks — but yer knows that next it's goin' ter turn on yer, like an animal, screamin' 'n' shriekin' an' out ter tear the hooker t' bits . . .'

  Artemis swooped and lifted, her hull creaking and working energetically. It was easy to imagine the result of a harsher climate, and Kydd looked about at the swaying lanthorn and slight moveme
nt of the canvas screen, and felt a quickening of his senses.

  He was still affected by Renzi's labyrinthine musing on the nature of man. 'D'ye know if there's any savages livin' ashore there, Isaac?' he asked, interested to see if Renzi's thesis would work at the opposite pole to paradise.

  'Aye,' said Crow, 'that there are. Saw 'em once, an' they must be the lowest kind o' hooman yer can get. Scraggy, hair all a-hoo, mud all over, 'n' sulky with it. Don't trust 'em, any of 'em.' He thought for a moment and added, 'An' their women are as rough as they is - catch fish naked with a dog, they does.'

  Despite Crow's direful forecast, Kydd couldn't help but feel thrilled by the heightened sensations of speed and danger as they drove south. Entering the domain of the Southern Ocean proper everything was on the grand scale. Seas swelled to mountains, a quarter of a mile between peaks and higher even than the maintop in the troughs. As the following seas came on, Artemis would lift at the stern, going higher and steeper, until her angle down seemed a giddy impossibility, and surfing down the face of the wave in an accelerating rush before the massive swell overtook and passed down her length with a consequent sudden deceleration. Her decks filled with a foaming, hissing cataract. Then the process would begin again, a regular three times a minute.

  It was dangerous on deck and lifelines were rigged the length of the vessel. If the unwary could not leap to the rigging in time, only a desperate clamping on to this stout line would give a chance while the rampaging seas invaded the deck. Every man aboard knew that with the boats griped and lashed so securely, there would be no lowering of them to rescue a man overboard - even supposing the hurtling progress of the vessel could be stopped. It would be a cold, lonely and certain death.

  On the helm it was doubly dangerous. One of the massive seas coming in astern and catching the rudder at an angle unawares could slam it aside; this would transmit backwards up through the tiller ropes and to the helm, resulting in the weather helmsman being hurled through the air over the wheel while the lee man was smashed to the deck. It called for ferocious concentration on the subtle motions of the sea, and Kydd learnt much as he and others fought Artemis along.

  If the crest of one of the gigantic waves broke it was a terrifying experience. Struggling at the wheel, the first that the helmsman looking forward would know of its approach would be a sullen rumble, rising to a rushing roar. If he made the mistake of looking over his shoulder, he would see a gigantic mass of foam-streaked sea about to fall on the vessel like an unstoppable avalanche. The spectacle was of such primeval power that it was said to be not uncommon for a helmsman to flee the wheel.

  Days turning to weeks, they sailed on; the same course, the same wind from astern, each day the same wearing down of the spirit in a ceaseless fight against the danger, the motion, the discomfort. Forty degrees south turned to forty-five, then fifty and finally fifty-five south as they shaped course for Cape Horn itself.

  At these latitudes discomfort turned to pain, exhilaration to dread. Skies ragged with racing scud, squalls hammering in from nowhere shrieking like a banshee in the fraying rigging, sails ripped to shreds in an instant, it was a hellish world.

  At noon each day a group of officers assembled, staggering and lurching on the quarterdeck. Like the seamen they dressed in any ragged garment that could offer some proof against the weather. And almost always they dispersed afterwards without the one thing they yearned for — a sight of the sun. Without a sighting, their latitude was so much guesswork, and if this was mistaken, then Artemis would leave her bones on the iron-bound coast of Patagonia.

  Squalls now brought a new misery. Taking in yet another reef in the foretopsail, Kydd closed his eyes to reduce the soreness of salt-reddened eyeballs as he worked at the stiff, sodden canvas. He sensed the cold feathery touch of snow. When he opened his eyes he found himself isolated in a world of white flakes, tossing and whirling around him, wedy settling on spars and cordage before being whipped away. It turned to a penetrating sleet, and in the raw, wet cold Kydd climbed back on deck in the most acute bodily misery. Even so, he could not escape. The spray bursting aboard was now half frozen; as it savagely sleeted across the deck it drew blood where frozen particles sand-blasted his skin.

  Always it was a deep relief to go below and stagger along to his mess, moving from hand to hand in the wild motion, to the blessed benison of rum, age-toughened cheese and hard-tack - and temporary surcease. Men sat, silent and staring, dealing with the conditions in their own way, but never complaining. That would have been the most futile thing they could do.

  Sometimes the weather played tricks. The cloudbase would drop to masthead height, the jagged cloud streaming past, and heavy curtains of snow would advance rapidly to bring visibility down to feet. Then, within minutes it would pass and cloudless skies would emerge as innocent of malice as a newborn, but always accompanied by a freezing cold.

  It was on one of these occasions, when the biting sleet had moved away and the crystal dome of the sky had cleared ahead, that there appeared across an infinite distance of tossing waters the distant sight of snow-capped mountains - the far southern tip of the continent of South America. The disbelieving yell of the lookout in the foretop hailed, 'Laand hoooo!’

  Men tumbled up from below, crowding the decks. Powlett appeared and stomped up to the Master, who stood with a look of wonderment on his seamed face. 'God bless m' soul! My reckonin' is that those peaks are not less'n eighty, one hundred miles off, so they are.' Murmurs of amazement greeted this - the horizon for a frigate was never more than twelve to fifteen miles away, and the royals of a ship-of-the-line could be seen at twenty — but this!

  'Well done, Mr Prewse! Voyage of half ten thousand miles and we're right on the nose.' Powlett's satisfaction spread out like a ripple, and smiles were to be seen for the first time for weeks.

  'Aye, sir, but the hard part is a-coming, never fear,' Prewse said stolidly.

  Brutally tired, the ship's company of Artemis faced the final approach to Cape Horn. The stark rock-bound land stretched across their course and was downwind to the fiercest blasts to be experienced anywhere on earth. If they found themselves in the wrong position there was little chance they could claw off back out to sea again.

  At eight bells the watch changed. The short day had turned to a fearful darkness out of which came the hammering blasts with just the same ferocity as in daytime. The same dangers lurked, the same treachery, but these came invisibly and suddenly at night.

  Kydd nodded to his replacement, who loomed up from the dismal gloom. His trick at the wheel always left him aching, bruised and punch-drunk with the merciless buffeting of the wind, and he felt for his lashings with relief. It was a critical time, the handover. The sea was always looking to take advantage of sleep-weary men not fully aroused to their task.

  Hallison took the weather helm himself and was in the process of surrendering the wheel, while Kydd remained for a few more minutes until the new man was sure of himself. Others manning the after wheel were similarly engaged.

  Some instinct pricked at Kydd at that precise moment and he snatched a glance back over his shoulder. The size of seas coming in astern could be sensed by the amount of dark shadow they blocked against the stormy but slightly less gloomy sky; rearing up was a truly huge, immense black hill of sea, which was just beginning to break. An awful, soul-chilling threat.

  Kydd bawled a warning, but it happened too fast for the weary seamen. The ship lifted sharply to the watery mountain, higher than it ever had before, and as the comber broke it did so directly under her stern, sending her skidding forwards at a disastrous angle. At the same time the merciless wind pressed on her topsails and heeled her over even further. The two forces combined could have only one ending, broaching to, the ship forced around broadside to the waves, inertia rolling her over like a child's toy - to destruction.

  In an impulse of pure seamanship Kydd strained to put on opposite turns at the wheel even before the slewing started, but as the vessel lay over f
irst Hallison, then others who had released their lashing slid and then fell to the side of the deck before disappearing under the torrent of white sea that came over the bulwarks. Audible even above the furious hissing roar of wind and sea was a heavy clatter and ominous rumble from deep within Artemis. Her yards now nearly touched the sea with the heel. Kydd and the two who remained with him fought the helm for their very lives.

  It was Kydd's instinctive early action that saved Artemis. It was sufficient to tip the balance of forces in favour of sails and helm, the greater angle of rudder working with the remaining thrust from rags of sails to give sufficient way through the water to counter the broadside slewing. Agonising minutes later the ship slowly came back erect and before the wind again.

  Trembling with fatigue and emotion Kydd was finally relieved, going below to a desolation of broken gear all adrift, the surge of water swilling over the deck, and men stumbling about, utterly exhausted after their battle for the life of their ship.

  A day later, a little after mid-morning, the weather moderated to racing low cloud against clearing curtains of heavy rain, but the ship had been heavily battered by squalls of extreme intensity. Powlett and the Master had never left the deck, for as Prewse quietly pointed out, these squalls were born high up on the ice-clad slopes of a mountain range somewhere close by, air super-cooled and made so heavy it hurtled down the valleys and to the sea. This was proof positive that the bleak dread of Cape Horn was close at hand.

  At a brief clearing of the atrocious conditions, there it was, a bare five miles away. The very tip of the continent. A low, black, straggling coast, streaked with snow, barren to the prevailing winds but darkly wooded elsewhere - a picture of desolation.

  'Two points to larboard,' snapped Powlett, hardly recognisable in his thick grego and woollen head covering. 'We keep in with the land while we can. How far to the Horn itself, Mr Prewse?'