The Privateer's Revenge

by Julian Stockwin

  “Bit hard, like,” the man drawled. “They been on th’ turps—we lets ’em sleep it off.” He made no move to rise.

  Kydd saw red. “Out ’n’ down—now!” he roared. “If I don’t see ye on deck this instant, so help me I’ll have ye turned afore the mast!”

  Tranter rolled an eye towards him. “Y’ can’t do that,” he said, in an aggrieved tone. “This ain’t a King’s ship. We got articles as say I’m a prize-captain.” He contemplated Kydd for a moment more, then slipped down slowly and reached for his watch-coat.

  Stumping up the companionway Kydd clamped down his anger. If he was going to have a well-trained crew, instead of a cutlass-waving bunch of pirates, he had his work cut out.

  The men came on deck reluctantly, some helped by their shipmates; there were by count but fifty-one, all told. The chill wind whipping in set the unprepared shivering, but Kydd was in no mood for sympathy. He waited until they were still. “Ye’re crew o’ the Bien Heureuse privateer,” he rasped. “Ye’ve signed articles, an’ now ye’re takin’ my orders.”

  Apart from some sullen shuffling there seemed to be stolid acceptance; he would show them he knew the customs of the merchant service well enough. “Mr Rowan, Mr Tranter,” he called importantly. Rowan stepped forward and, pursing his lips, pointed to a level-eyed seaman with his arms folded across his chest. “Raynor,” he grunted.

  The man obediently crossed the deck and stood by him. With a grimace, Tranter moved forward and surveyed the group. He called out a thickset seaman from the back, who shuffled across to him through the others.

  It went on: the best men fairly distributed, the unknowns parcelled out. When it reached the boys Kydd intervened. “I’ll take him t’ be m’ peggy,” he said, pointing to the tallest. He wanted a cabin boy who could stand up for himself.

  When the process was complete, Kydd set Calloway to taking down the details. “I’ll have a full watch o’ the hands b’ morning,” he ordered both lieutenants. It was now up to them to assign their own men to best advantage in the watch that they themselves would lead.

  He left them to it and headed for his cabin, relieved that the first steps had been taken in bringing order to the world. No sooner had he sat down than there was a tap at the door. “Come!” he called.

  It was the young lad he had chosen as his cabin boy. “Well, now, an’ ye’ve nothing t’ fear if y’ do y’r duty, younker,” Kydd said genially. Was there not something familiar about the youngster?

  “Yes, sir,” he replied, not meeting Kydd’s eyes.

  “I’m sure I’ve seen ye somewhere about—what do they call ye?”

  “L-Leon, s’ please ye, sir,” the boy said, shrinking back.

  Realisation dawned. “Be damned, an’ Leon it’s not! Pookie more like!” Kydd spluttered. “What th’ devil—what d’ ye think y’r playin’ at, y’ chuckle-headed loon?” A twelve-year-old waif of a girl in a privateer, however big for her age?

  “I—I want t’ be a pirate,” she said stiffly, “an’ sail the seven seas—”

  “Pirate?” Kydd choked.

  “—t’ seize an’ plunder, an’ then I’ll give it to m’ ma.”

  It was rank lunacy. “How—”

  “I heard as how you was goin’ t’ be captain o’ the good ship Ben Herses , an’ cruise the seas for—”

  “Enough o’ th’ catblash! You’re goin’ back t’ y’r ma.”

  The child’s eyes filled. “Please, Mr Kydd! I want t’ be a sailor, see aroun’ the world like you do—an’ ye did promise us when we signed as we’d be able seamen afore we knew it. That’s what y’ said.”

  Kydd’s first reaction was to summon the boatswain and have the girl taken off his hands, but then he sat back heavily. The ship was halfway between Guernsey and the French coast with night coming on: he was not risking those rocky outliers to return in the darkness with a fluky wind. She would have to stay on board for the night.

  To return in the morning would be to waste their hard-won westing and result in an ignominious arrival in port to explain that one of the hands he had personally signed up was female. Not to speak of the expense, which would be mounting hourly. And he couldn’t land the rascal somewhere to pick up later: there was no friendly territory anywhere to the west of Guernsey. Kydd sighed. “What can y’r mother be feeling now, y’ scamp?”

  “Ma?” she said scornfully. “She’s so plagued b’ the little ’uns, she’d be main pleased t’ see th’ last o’ me. I been away before, y’ know,” she added, with self-possession beyond her years.

  “Y’ can’t stay aboard. What if they finds ye a—a female? Does anyone know?”

  “No, they doesn’t, Mr Kydd,” she said stoutly. “Look, I’ll be th’ same as the others—honest! I’ll pull on y’r ropes an’ such, just like a man. Don’t make me go back.”

  Kydd had to admit that she was indistinguishable from a boy in her breeches and plain homespun, and her hair, while long, was in keeping with that of the other ship’s boys. Her impish features suggested anything but a demure damsel. Despite himself he warmed to her need to escape dreary poverty for the freedoms of the sea. He made up his mind. “Be just th’ same as the other lads? Take orders wi’out a cackle? Stand up f’r y’self?”

  “I will, Mr Kydd,” she said, with fervour.

  “Then I’ll make ye a deal.”

  “Mr Kydd?”

  “I don’t know ye’re a female. Nobody told me. Now, if any aboard find out, ye’re taken straight t’ this cabin th’ same instant an’ locked in until we make port again. Y’ scavey?”

  “Aye, Mr Kydd,” she whispered, eyes shining.

  “An’ none o’ y’r snafflin’ tricks either—sailors has a short way wi’ thieves.”

  “Never, sir. I only did it t’ give Ma.”

  “Remember—if just a one sees ye’re female . . .”

  “They won’t, Mr Kydd.”

  He looked at her very directly, “And if’n any shows ye any mischief at all, you’re t’ come t’ me directly. I’ll not stand f’r it, d’ ye hear?”

  “Yes, Mr Kydd.”

  “Right. Well, Mr Turner, let me tell ye of y’r duties.”

  Morning found them under small sail tossing uneasily in a long swell from the west. Bleary-eyed men were roused from below to meet the dawn. This would be the last time Kydd allowed the ship not to be ready at quarters—or whatever passed for battle readiness in a privateer.

  “Mr Rowan!” he hailed. “I’ll give both watches one bell f’r their breakfast an’ then we’ll turn to f’r some real sailorin’.” It was near impossible to work up a ship’s company to effectiveness as a fighting unit in such a short time—but it would be their captain they blamed if they failed to take a prize or, worse, were overcome themselves.

  The men left the deck, muttering, and Kydd remembered the cook. Going forward he found the forehatch but, praise be, immediately below it Purvis was at work with his pots and pans on the small portable stove. He looked up cheerily. “Ho there, Cap’n!” he breezed.

  “Everything in hand?” Kydd called down. The stove was rigged over a bed of bricks under the open hatch but how it was possible to bring in meals for scores of men in such conditions was a mystery to him.

  “Aye—all’s a-taunto, sir.”

  Kydd left him to it and returned to his cabin. Inside, an apprehensive cabin boy waited with a steaming dish and plates on a tray under a neat canvas spray-cover. “Why, thank ’ee, er, Turner.” Clearly the cook had been consulted and together they had managed a hot breakfast fit for a captain. It was a hearty burgoo and toast thick with Jersey butter—Kydd had not been able to afford his usual private cabin stores and knew he was sharing with his men.

  “Mr Purvis says as if ye has y’r particular taste he will oblige, Mr Kydd.”

  “That’s kind in him,” Kydd said. “Now, you duck below an’ crowd some victuals inboard. I’ve got work f’r all hands this forenoon as’ll have ’em all in a sweat.” He chuckled. The smell o
f hot food was irresistible and he realised he was very hungry.

  Later, restored after his meal Kydd went on deck. He had given it some thought: there was no use trying to bring things along by setting masts to compete or appealing to some sense of nautical excellence. These merchant seamen were used to a sea life very different from the Navy, often with parsimonious owners providing tiny crews barely adequate to do the job, leaving little time or energy for non-essentials.

  No, it would be necessary to go about it in other ways. The first was to trust the mates, that they would see to it their men would not let them down.

  “Mr Rowan! I desire ye t’ exercise y’r men under sail. What do y’ have in mind?”

  At first it was a shambles, but that was to be expected. Order out of chaos, seamen out of men, the time-honoured sequence when each had to learn the ropes on an unfamiliar ship that did things in its own particular way. “Different ships, different long-splices” was the old saw. But Rowan proved experienced and wise, and well before midday each point of sailing, every manoeuvring task, any major event to be expected in a chase had been completed to satisfaction.

  With a core of competence at the heart of the watch it would now be possible to build on it and start the task of bringing along the ordinary seamen, landmen and boys to their rightful standing and respect as full able-bodied seamen.

  After a hearty noon meal of beef stew, it was time to attend the guns. Kevern assembled a crew and they set to on their main armament.

  It quickly became obvious that they were paradoxically both over- and undergunned. A vessel of their tonnage could be expected to mount at least four carriage guns a side. In his desire for the authoritative heavy crash of a sizeable gun Kydd had acquired a pair of nine-pounders. It had been a mistake: they were too long, unwieldy, and their full recoil would send them right across the deck; if they had to reduce charges out of respect to Bien Heureuse’s light timbers the weapons would be of no more use than smaller ones.

  Kydd realised he should have stayed with more but lighter guns and felt resentful that Kevern had let him go to sea so encumbered. He consoled himself, however, with the thought that a pitched gun-battle was the last thing he wanted. A quick chase and rapid boarding: that was the way to get an unspoiled prize.

  They were making headway: the restraining of his Navy instincts and understanding of his men’s ways had gone a long way to winning their grudging respect. It was left to see how they would behave in a boarding. Should he begin to exercise with cutlass and pistols?

  Along the horizon on the larboard bow Kydd saw, just starting to lift, the low untidy jumble of dark granite islets that was the north of France. There was little time left now to prepare. He took a deep breath. So much depended on—

  “Saaail hoooo!” An excited whoop from forward shattered his thoughts.

  “Where awaaay?” he bellowed. The lookout obliged with a pointing finger. There were no tops and ratlines up the shrouds with the lug-rig so he was at essentially the same level.

  An excited roar went up and Kydd fumbled for his pocket telescope. This close to the coast, the odds were in favour of it being French and a prize—so soon! His heart thudded as he tried to focus.

  They had surprised the ship as it had come round the cliffy headland into full view. No more than three or four miles away it was sailing along the shore on a course past them.

  “Steady as she goes!” Kydd called urgently, and rounded on Rowan. “I want these men out o’ sight below—now!” They would play the harmless coastal trader for as long as possible. Nothing would be more calculated to alarm their prey than a sudden alteration towards them with crowded decks.

  He lifted the telescope again, gripped by rising excitement. So far the vessel was holding its course, and they would hold theirs, imperceptibly inclining towards their victim until they could make a lunge. His mind clamped in concentration on their relative positions and speeds. They were close-hauled westward in brisk seas while the stranger was driving before the wind, a dramatic contrast of pale sail against a backdrop of the sullen, dark-grey squall front spreading behind it. Flickering white wave crests showed in the darkening water nearer.

  Kydd’s eyes watered as he stared through the glass. It was a brigantine of sorts, so not a warship, and showed no colours. It shaped course closer to the coastline, opening the distance they would have to cover to intercept.

  Offshore there was another of the innumerable uninhabited islets. A white mist was lifting on its far side, a token of mighty seas from the Atlantic ceasing their thousands of miles’ travel in the concussive finality of iron-hard granite.

  Under the looming dark heights of the squall, the headland merged into misty white curtains of rain. Trying to control his impatience, Kydd judged that their encounter with the brigantine would occur before the rain reached them. Nothing could be better calculated to pull his ship together as a fighting band than a successful prize-taking.

  At the forehatch men unable to contain themselves snatched a look. “Keep th’ heads down, y’ blaggards!” he bellowed. The stranger would be wielding telescopes, too.

  The offshore island disappeared into the advancing rain curtain and Kydd’s gaze turned to the vessel. As he tried to make out more detail its perspective altered, curving ponderously round to take up on a course away, back where it had come. They had been discovered.

  “Sheet away, y’ lubbers!” he shouted, at the men boiling up from below. The stranger—now the chase—was hard by the wind, clawing as desperately as it could to windward but it had lost much ground and now lay barely a mile ahead. A lazy smile came to Kydd’s face: in their panic they had put the helm to the wrong side and now found themselves on the other tack to Bien Heureuse . They could not possibly weather the headland.

  “We have him now.” Kydd laughed. “He’ll be ours afore sundown.” They would keep to seaward and wait for the chase to come out to them.

  Bien Heureuse was lined with eager privateersmen, each hungrily making the same calculation. A sizeable merchantman with a small crew, judging by their tardiness in putting about and taking up close-hauled. Her cargo? Probably returning from Biscay with wine and brandy, risking a quick dash across Baie de Saint Brieuc—a pity for him that a Guernsey privateer just happened to be round the point.

  There was no hope for the Frenchman and Kydd wondered why he held on so doggedly. Then the first squall arrived. In a wash of cold down-draught Bien Heureuse entered a wall of rain, passing into a hissing roar of water that stippled the sea white in a drenching deluge. It stunned the wind momentarily and the sails hung limp and wet.

  They emerged damp and chill but the chase was still ahead and closer. Then another wall of rain closed round them, and the sails, now deprived of a steady wind, flapped and banged. Visibility was reduced to yards, and the seas lost their liveliness as they were beaten to rounded hillocks in the swell.

  Kydd squinted into the chaos, which seemed to go on and on. Where was everything in this never-ending rain world? Uneasily aware of the treacherous currents surging over unforgiving ground he gave the order to veer sheets and Bien Heureuse slowed to a crawl.

  The rain volleyed in a loud drumming on their deck, gurgling down the lee scuppers; when it finally stopped, the chase had disappeared. The headland was much closer but there was no sign of the brigantine. Had he successfully weathered the headland? If so, he was away up the coast and could be anywhere.

  Then Kydd saw the offshore island again—it was well within reach and would make a perfect place for the Frenchman to lurk out of sight while Kydd went chasing past, then take up on his old course, his voyage delayed only by a few hours.

  “Lay us t’ wind’ard o’ that island!” Kydd snapped. The breeze had picked up and pierced like a knife through his sodden clothes. He shuddered.

  “The island?” Rowan said uncertainly. “Are ye sure?”

  “He thinks t’ wait out o’ sight—he’s too lubbardly t’ have weathered th’ point,” Kydd said.
>
  Tranter cut in: “I don’t reckon he’s there at all. We’re wastin’ time—”

  “Get y’ men ready f’r a boardin’, Mr Tranter, an’ you stop y’ pratin’!” Kydd answered, with sudden anger.

  His heart fell at the sight of the rabble in the waist. They were as unlike a naval boarding party as it was possible to be, jabbering, excited men with drawn cutlasses and lurid headgear. Where was the lethal discipline of a sectioned assault? Where the calm weighing of opportunity and deadly resolve?

  “Hold ’em there, Mr Tranter,” Kydd called, with an edge of sarcasm. They were up against terrified merchant sailors and the likelihood was that any fight would be minimal.

  A nine-pounder was cleared away and Kydd sent Calloway to the forward crew to stiffen them. They were as ready as they could be.

  Drawing near, the island seemed the ideal bolt-hole, and at a respectful distance they took time to round the white-fringed weather shore. Kydd kept his telescope up, straining for sight of a naked mast above the irregular lumpiness of the bare rock.

  They circled the island in silence, ready for a panic-stricken dash. Nothing. At a loss Kydd carefully quartered the sea. The brigantine had to be somewhere, a little cove perhaps, a hidden river mouth

  . . . The prey had escaped.

  Tranter snorted and stormed below. The men followed in ones and twos, with scornful looks aft.

  Kydd caught Rowan’s eye. “Where did he go, d’ ye think?”

  “I don’t think y’ give th’ Frenchy credit, Mr Kydd. He’s one cool hand, waits f’r the main squall, then slashes about t’ stay inside it an’ passes us close in th’ murk an’ away off t’ Paimpol, cool as y’ please.”

  It was galling. It seemed these French matelots in their home waters were every bit as bold and seamanlike as the English, certainly far from being frightened sheep about to be snapped up by a passing wolf. “We press on,” Kydd grunted. “There’ll be more—an’ I know where . . .”

  The Sept Îles resolved out of the grey murkiness as he remembered them from the deck of Teazer . The only question now was whether to pass to seaward or take the inner channel. He decided quickly. “South about, lad,” he told the helmsman. There was no point in crisp naval orders to an officer-of-the-watch in this vessel.