Artemis(37)

He tested the sharpness of the quill nib with his thumb, and settled his paper and ink once again. The noise of the mess deck around him was unsettling, the building excitement making it difficult to concentrate — and, of course, he was no taut hand with words, it was quite outside his character.

'Artemis, at anchor, Spithead,' he began.

He sucked at the tip of the quill until it began to look bedraggled and sorry, and he glanced around despairingly. The lanthorn set on the table next to him guttered and radiated a hot candle smell.

'The 15th day of August, 1793. Weather: Cool westerlies, slight chop.' This was better, it was beginning to flow.

'Dear Sister' — or should that be 'Cecilia'? He had never written to her before in his life.

'I trust I leave you, as our mother and father, in good health.' Clever one that - women always set great store by such things.

'We sail for India now. Nicholas says it will be 13,000 miles. We have been taking in stores. It is hard work, and you would stare at the strange kinds.'

His mind reviewed the last sentence. Some were passing strange — a mysterious canvas mailbag with a heavy padlock through the cringles at its mouth and guarded by sour-faced redcoats; the heavy rectangular bundles requiring special dry storage that turned out to be scores of newspapers; the chickens and goats that would be looked after at sea by the peculiar Jemmy Ducks and slaughtered in turn - she obviously wouldn't be interested in these arid details.

'We will be at sea for many months or a year, or more than a year. Today is dry and cool. Elias Petit says that around the Cape will set us at hazard this time of the year. Daemon frigate was there lost with all hands in the year '86.' It was difficult to think of anything else that might interest her, and when Renzi arrived, he looked up with relief. 'Nicholas! What should I write to my sister? Here is my paper, and it's not yet half written.'

Renzi looked over his shoulder, then sat opposite, quite blank-faced. 'Do you understand, Thomas, that the ladies are on quite another tack to us in the matter of communications?' he explained. 'They are illogical, flighty and strangely interested in the merest details, you know.'

Kydd had never considered the matter before.

Renzi waited, and thought of Cecilia, the intelligent, darting dark eyes, the sturdy practicality giving backbone to the appealing childish warmth of her femininity. Unaccountably he felt a pang. 'Would you be offended were I to offer my suggestions?' he found himself saying.

'O' course not, Nicholas! Give us a broadside of 'em, I beg.'

'Very well.' Cecilia was practical, but she would want to know personal details. 'Are you ready?'

'"It is the eve of great adventures - to the fabled court of the Great Moghul, the sacred groves of Calicut - yet must I look to the needs of the voyage! Therefore, dear sister, I have . . ."' Those eyes, softening under his gaze. She would want to know of feelings; fears, hopes . . . '"At the signal on the morrow we spread our sails and disappear from mortal ken into the Great Unknown, the vasty deep. I cannot but feel a quickening of the spirit as I contemplate the asininity of man's claims to dominion, when he but rides above the . . ."'

'Wait! This pen is scratchy. Do ye think she'll suspect that it's not me, I mean, writin' like this?'

'Of course she will not, brother. ". . . if you give thought to me, dear Cecilia, be certain that my image is foremost in your mind when . . ."' It would be months before there would be chance of a mail passage back to England in one of the stately East Indiamans; this letter would have to last.

'Haaaands to unmoor ship!'

The anchorage was the same, the view of the low, dark green coast and white slashed Downs was the same, but the feeling was definitely different.

Kydd waited in the foretop to go up to lay out and loose the foretopsail; he had possibly the best view in the ship. Impulsively he reached for one of the brand new lines from aloft, and took a long sniff. The deep, heady odour of the tar was a clean sea smell, and it seemed to Kydd to symbolise his break with the land.

His heart beat with excitement at the thought of the epic voyage ahead, to lands strange and far. What singular sights would he see, what adventures would he undergo, before he would be back here again? He gulped but his eyes shone. Deep-sea voyaging was never anything but a hard, chancy affair. Death from a dozen causes lay in wait — a helpless fall from aloft into the vastness of the sea, malice of the enemy, shipwreck, disease. His eyes might at this moment be making their last mortal sighting of the land that had given him birth.

On deck below, officers paced impatiently as the cable slowly came in at the hawse, and Kydd blessed his fortune once again at being a topman and therefore spared cruel labour at the capstan.

'Lay out and loose!' The voice blared up from Parry's speaking trumpet. It was common knowledge that he had been mortified when Fairfax had been brought in as first lieutenant against his expectations. It was usual for wholesale promotions to follow a successful bloody action. Some officers might take their disappointment out on the men; time would tell.