Seaflower: A Kydd Novel

by Julian Stockwin

  Arrangements concluded, stout hands were applied to the gunwales and the boat entered the still white-dashed waters, rearing and bobbing. Cecilia was handed aboard, Doud heaved himself into the bows and Kydd and Renzi took their places aft.

  A signal to Doud had the foresail soaring up the stay and while Kydd settled in the sternsheets with the tiller, Renzi cautiously showed main canvas to the brisk wind. A lurch to leeward and the boat started seaward, a bumpy, swooping scurry until they crossed the outer breakers, then the sea winds took hold and they lay to the blow, heading for the open sea.

  Kydd thought only then to look astern, to see the dots of people lining the diminishing shore, the scattered waving, the forlorn bulk of Seaflower in the midst of the battered palms. He held up his hand in farewell and saw a flutter of kerchiefs in return, then turned forward, his face hardening in resolution.

  Cecilia was doing something for Lord Stanhope, and Renzi was busy tying off on the lines. Doud stepped carefully around them. At his approach Kydd steeled himself for bad news, but Doud grinned down at him from a midship thwart, hanging on to one of the shrouds. He gave an exulting whoop, and began singing,

  ‘Farewell and adieu, to you, Spanish ladies!

  Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain;

  For we’ve orders for England, you bold-eyed and lovely

  But we know in a short time we’ll see you again!’

  To Cecilia’s evident delight all the sailors took up the refrain:

  ‘We’ll rant and we’ll roar like true British sailors;

  We’ll rant and we’ll roar all on the salt seas;

  Until we strike soundings in the Channel of England,

  From Ushant to Scilly ’tis thirty-five leagues.’

  At noon Cecilia, by unspoken concession, took charge of provisions, and each in the boat received a ship’s biscuit surmounted by cold tongue and a pickle. The wine was recorked after a splash of Bordeaux flavoured the water ration agreeably, and a morsel of seed-cake completed their noon meal.

  An overcast sky still prevented a noon sighting, but a steady south-easterly course was not hard to sustain, and with the winds coming more abeam they made good speed. Towards evening the sea had moderated, the sun finally emerged and the wearisome jerking motion settled to a regular swelling surge.

  Cecilia made Lord Stanhope as comfortable as was possible and the boat sailed on into the night. The seamen aboard, used to regular watches, had no difficulty in falling in with the rhythm, but a pale dawn revealed a hollow-eyed, plank-sore Cecilia.

  Without a word, Renzi reached for the awning. He loosened its end, lifted it up and secured each corner to an opposite shroud. ‘Milady’s toilette,’ he murmured, and clambered aft followed by a suddenly understanding Doud.

  ‘Sir, you are too kind,’ Cecilia croaked and, without meeting anyone’s eye, vanished behind the improvised screen; the plash of water showed that she was making good use of her privacy.

  Later in the morning a cultured cough from amidships drew Cecilia to Lord Stanhope. ‘Should you be so good as to tighten these bandages? I am certain I may sit, which would give me the greatest satisfaction since it has always been my practice to look the world in the eye.’

  At noon, to Kydd’s gratification, the sun was bright and beneficent. He took a sighting carefully and, after due consultation with the tables, he turned to the chart with Renzi. ‘Here, somewhere along this line o’ latitude, that’s where we are of a surety, Nicholas.’

  Cecilia could not contain her curiosity. She crowded into the sternsheets with them, her eyes searching eagerly for meaning in the chart. ‘Pray where are we, Tom? You are so clever, it looks a perfect conundrum to me.’

  ‘Well, sis, we are somewhere here,’ he said, with a sweep of his hand across the chart along the known line of latitude.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  Kydd added, ‘If only we’d a longitude, we c’d tell exactly where we was.’

  ‘Yes we must not be accounted lost,’ added Renzi. ‘We have but to extend our south-easterly heading and we shall be quite certain to end our voyage on the coast of South America.’

  Cecilia looked at him with round eyes. ‘Are the natives fierce there?’ she asked fearfully.

  ‘I rather think they have been tamed by the Spaniards by now, dear lady,’ Renzi replied.

  The low, rambling coastline of the continent emerged out of the haze of noon the next day, sending the seamen feverishly to their chart, but it would be no easy fix, and they closed the coastline with some trepidation.

  ‘My lord, you see that we have made landfall at an unknown point,’ Renzi explained, ‘and, should we be too far east, we will encounter the Dutch . . .’

  ‘Wi’out our longitude, sir, we cannot know,’ Kydd added.

  Cecilia was in no doubt. ‘Yes, you can, and very easily!’

  The men looked at her incredulously.

  ‘So simple. You go and ask where we are – from one of your natives.’

  It was simple. The boat kissed the sand of the unknown land on a small rock-strewn beach, raw red cliffs leading up to a profusion of greenery alive with the noise of animals and birds. Cecilia and Lord Stanhope were helped out, staggering around at the change of sensation.

  ‘And where, then, will we find an accommodating native of these parts?’

  Renzi’s answer came from further up the beach, in the form of a barking dog belonging to a figure standing watching them.

  ‘I shall speak with him,’ said Lord Stanhope.

  Kydd waved and hailed with a foretopsail-yard-ahoy bellow. ‘Hoay – ahooooy there!’ The man approached. As he moved a small boy hiding behind him became apparent, dressed almost as a miniature of himself, with a wide straw hat and a gaily coloured poncho.

  Cecilia was entranced. ‘I do believe he has never seen the English before.’ His dark brown weathered features were a mask of uncertainty. The man’s black eyes flicked from the boat to the two well-built seamen and then to Cecilia, the little boy clinging fearfully to his cloak.

  ‘Buenos días, señor.’ The eyes swivelled to Lord Stan-hope. ‘¿Por favor puede informarnos dónde nos encontramos . . .’ The others waited impatiently while the exchange continued, at one point the man pointing along the line of foreshore to the right.

  ‘Ah, that settles it,’ said Stanhope. ‘We are within Spanish territory, and Cuerda Grande lies just four milliaria beyond . . .’

  The two sailors dived for the chart. ‘There!’ exclaimed Kydd, his finger jabbing victoriously at the spot. The others came over, agog to hear the news. ‘Hmm, quite a way further east than I thought,’ said Kydd. ‘See, this is Barranquilla, an’ here we have your Hollanders,’ he added, indicating islands not so very far away.

  ‘Perhaps this man can say if war is declared,’ Cecilia asked.

  ‘He has no knowledge of any war,’ Stanhope replied, ‘but, then, I doubt he knows of much beyond his village – I cannot take the risk. We must confer, gentlemen.’

  The men clustered around the chart; Cecilia sat down on a rock and luxuriously splashed her feet in the clear sea.

  ‘Kindly show me the essentials of our position, if you please.’

  ‘Aye, m’ lord. Here we are, near half-way along th’ Caribbean coast o’ South America. Port Royal is here,’ he indicated to the north-west of the chart, ‘an’ Barbados here to the east.’

  ‘And how far to return to Port Royal?’

  ‘In the longboat, m’ lord?’

  ‘If necessary.’

  ‘Hmmm, this is not less’n five hundred miles, but with the nor’east trades a-beam . . . about three, four days.’

  Stanhope was thoughtful. Renzi looked up with an apologetic smile. ‘I will earn Cecilia’s eternal loathing, but duty obliges me to point out that we are perhaps six days from Barbados if we continue, but if we return to Port Royal the vessel we take there must necessarily retrace our course, meaning a total time of around twelve days, even a fortnight. This––’


  ‘We press on, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, my lord. Might I suggest her brother be the one to inform Cecilia . . .?’

  A jabbering from the little boy to his warily curious father brought attention back to the man. ‘If we have coins, perhaps we can persuade him of some fruits,’ Renzi suggested.

  Cecilia was delighted with what was brought – not only fruits but corn bread, dried strips of meat and four eggs. ‘We shall dine right royally before we face that odious sea again,’ she vowed, and set Renzi to building a fire, claiming the boat baler as her cooking pot.

  Kydd saw braiding in the sand along the beach and knew at that spot there would be water – the two barricoes would be full when they left, more than enough for a six-day voyage. As Cecilia’s soup laid its irresistible fragrance on the air, he bent his mind to the job in hand. ‘Nicholas, we need t’ clear the Dutch islands, an’ as well keep away fr’m the coast shipping. Do ye think we should run down the 14-degrees line o’ latitude to the Wind’ard Islands?’

  ‘I do, dear fellow, but I worry that we are sadly at risk if we cannot fix our longitude for the Barbadoes after passing through the islands. Should we ignorantly sail past, into the empty Atlantic . . .’

  ‘Aye, you’re in the right of it, m’ friend, but I have an idea.’ Kydd assembled his thoughts carefully. ‘Do we not now have, at this moment, complete and certain knowledge of our position – our longitude, in fine?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And when we sail, this is lost. But what if we conjure our own chronometer? Do y’ ask Lord Stanhope if we c’n borrow his fine watch. I take m’ noon sighting right here in th’ usual way, when the sun tells us it’s exactly midday.’ Kydd paused significantly. ‘This is then our noon at this longitude, which we do know. An’ if I am not mistaken in m’ reasoning – I pray humbly I am not – then we know fr’m this the exac’ time we are here ahead o’ Greenwich noon.’

  ‘At the rate of one hour for every fifteen degrees – you are, of course, completely right.’

  ‘So we subtract this time an’ set th’ watch to our Greenwich noon, and by this we have a chronometer – an’ fr’m now on, the difference between our local noon and this watch gives out y’r exac’ longitude.’

  Renzi, who had seen it coming, nevertheless joined in the general applause. ‘You are indeed in the character of a magician, right enough.’ No matter that the watch was a poor substitute for the precision of a real chronometer, it would nevertheless put them well within sighting distance of their goal – and if it did that, then it was all they could desire.

  Apart from some far-distant flecks of white there was no indication that they were crossing a major sea highway. In a world with privateers and pirates no ship would be inclined to indulge their curiosity and they sailed on unmolested into the empty seas of the central Caribbean.

  Routine set in – the scrupulously doled-out rations, the morning square-away that Kydd insisted on, Doud’s never-failing evening songs. And, most crucial, the noon sight. It seemed a fragile thing indeed to entrust their lives to a ticking watch. A frail artefact of man in the midst of effortless domination by nature, yet in itself a token of the precious intelligence that could make man the master of nature. It was the first thing to be stowed safely beneath the thwarts when the rain came down.

  Thick, hammering, tropical rain. Tied to the tiller for hours at a time, unable to go to shelter, Kydd endured. The rain teemed down on his bowed head, his body, his entire being. The incessant heavy drops became a bruising torture after a while, and it took real courage to keep to his post. The others crouched together under the slacked-off awning, just the regular appearance of a hand sending a bright sheet of water from the baler over the side from under the lumpy canvas.

  It was trying afterwards as well: from being comprehensively soaked to a brazen sun warming rapidly. The result was a clammy stickiness that had clothing tugging at the skin in a maddening clinging heaviness. Cecilia’s appearance from under the old sail showed that she had not escaped. Patches of damp had her distracted, plucking at her sun-faded dress and trying to smooth her draggled hair; she was in no mood for conversation with the men.

  Mile succeeded mile in a near-invisible wake that was a perfect straight line astern. The dying swell of the storm petered out into a flat royal-blue immensity of water, prettily textured by myriad dark ripples from the warm and pleasant breeze. Then the sun asserted itself – there was real bite in the endless sunshine now, a heat that was impossible to escape.

  But on the fourth day a milestone was reached: the meridian of 65° west. It was time to leave their eternal easterly progression and shape their course to pass through the Windward Islands chain and direct to Barbados. The empty sea looked exactly the same, but the filigreed hands of the watch mysteriously said that not only had they passed the Dutch islands safely astern but that the several island passages that were the entrance to the Caribbean Sea were now only a couple of hundred miles ahead, say no more than a day of sailing.

  ‘Huzzah!’ cried Cecilia, and Doud stood tall on a thwart and sang of England and sweethearts to the uncaring sea and sky. They had adequate water; the food was now a monotonous hard tack soaked in water tinged with wine, cheese of an heroic hardness and a precious hoard of treats – dried meat strips cut into infinitely small pieces to suck for minutes a time, dainty cubes of seed-cake and, for really special occasions, one preserved fig between two, with a whole one for the helmsman of the watch.

  The boat lapsed into a silence; rapt expressions betrayed minds leaping ahead to another, more congenial plane of existence. The clean fragrance of fresh linen in a real bed. Surcease for body and spirit. What would be the first thing to do after stepping ashore?

  And then the wind fell. From a breeze to a zephyr, from that to a playful soft wafting around the compass, and then nothing. The longboat ceased any kind of motion. The sails hung lifeless with only an occasional dying twitch, and the heat closed in, blasting up from the limitless watery plain, a hard, blinding force that could be felt behind closed eyes. The awning seemed to trap a suffocating humidity beneath it, but the alternative was to suffer both the unremitting glare reflected from the pond-like sea, and the ferocious heat from a near-vertical sun.

  Time slowed to an insupportable tedium. Rooted to their places on hard wood for an infinity of time, the slap and trickle of water the only sound, the choking heat their only reality, it was a trial of sanity. Doud lay in the V of the bow, staring fixedly ahead. Stanhope sat under the awning against the mast, with Renzi opposite. Cecilia lay in the curve of the lower part of the boat, and Kydd still sat at the motionless tiller, his mind replaying a quite different nightmare – the shrieking darkness of Cape Horn.

  The baler was passed from hand to hand, a scoop of seawater poured over the head gave momentary relief, but the sticky salt remaining only added to the misery. Water, precious water, it was no longer a given thing. Life – or death – was in the two hot wooden casks in the bottom of the boat, and when they were broached, eyes followed every move of the person drinking their tiny ration of tepid, rank fluid.

  ‘I fear we have a contrary current,’ Kydd croaked, after the painful duty of the noon sight. ‘Only a half-knot or one, but . . .’ Nobody spoke, the idea of being carried back into the Caribbean a thought too cruel to face.

  As the afternoon wore on, water in its every guise crept into the brain, tricked itself into every thought, tantalised and tempted in a way that could only call for wonder at the creativity of a tortured mind. Still the implacable sun glared down on them, sending thoughts fluttering at the prison bars of reality, desperate for any escape from the torment. Time ground on, then astonishingly the sun was on the wane – a languorous sunset began, full of pink-tinted golds and ultramarine sea. And still no wind.

  Renzi crawled over to a thwart and drew out of his package a small book. ‘My friends,’ he began, but his voice was hoarse and unnatural, and he had to clear his throat. ‘We are at some hazard, I’ll
grant, but . . . these words may put you in mind of another place, another time, what we may yet . . .

  ‘“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

  The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,

  The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

  And leaves the world to darkness and to me

  Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

  And all the air a solemn stillness holds . . .”’

  ‘Oh, Nicholas, Nicholas!’ Cecilia wept. She moved to Renzi, and hugged his arm while the measured, burnished phrases went on until Renzi could no longer see the text.

  Night fell. They lolled back and gazed at the vast starry heavens as they drifted in perfect calm beneath. But bodies were now a mass of suffering from the aches of unyielding hardness everywhere and the sight for them held no beauty.

  The night progressed, the moon travelled half the sky and still no wind. Then in the early hours an inconsequential puff from nowhere had the sails slatting busily. Kydd heaved himself up from the bottom of the boat where he had been lying and looked across the ebony black sea, glittering with moonlight. A roughening of texture in the glassy sea away in the distance had his heart hammering. It approached, flaws and ripples in a darting flurry that came nearer and nearer. Kydd held the tiller in a death grip, fearful with anticipation, and suddenly they were enveloped in a brisk breeze that sent the longboat heeling, then in a joyful chuckling of water they were under way again.

  Croaking cheers broke out – but the breeze dropped, their speed fell away . . . and then the wind picked up even stronger than before in a glorious thrusting urge. The winds held into the morning; with a steady breeze from the north-east, the heat was under control. Eagerly, the midday ceremony with octant and watch was anticipated with little patience, for Kydd took the utmost pains to ensure his workings were unassailable.