Artemis(106)
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 first 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.