Artemis(38)

The frigate cast effortlessly to starboard, quickly gathering way. The fo'c'sle guns banged out the salute, eddying puffs of a reduced charge from the six-pounders reaching him with its memory of battle.

On deck again, Kydd heaved a deep sigh, gripping a shroud and looking back on the still detailed shoreline. He thought of the small schoolhouse that perhaps he would never see again. A tremor passed over him, a premonition perhaps. Had this all been a mistake?

The yards trimmed, the anchor at last catted and fished, Artemis settled down for the run out to sea. Kydd busied himself at the forebitts, anxious for some reason to keep the land in sight for as long as possible. Details of the shore diminished and blurred into insignificance as it slipped away astern, and the land began to take on an anonymous uniformity.

As they passed beyond the seamark of Worsley's Obelisk, Artemis duly performed her curtsy to Neptune, the first deep sea swell raising her bow majestically and passing down her length until at midpoint she fell again in a smash of spray. The motion made him stagger at first, but the live deck once more under his feet was glorious. Glancing aloft he drank in the curving of the leeches of the sails, one above the other in exactly the right blend of curves and graces, the bar-taut new rigging in its familiar complexity as an elegant counterpoint.

With no raised poop the deck edge was a sweet line from where he stood right aft, and he marvelled anew at the natural beauty of a ship: no straight lines, no blocky walls, she was much closer to a sculpture than a building.

He looked back to the land. Within the span of a deck watch it had transformed from the solid earth from where before he had his being to the greying band now about to leave his sight and consciousness. In a short time they would be alone, quite alone in the trackless immensity of the ocean.

Chapter 5

Staring at the empty horizon where England had been, he didn't hear the footsteps behind. A hand clapped on Kydd's shoulder, snapping him out of his reverie. 'No vitties fer you, then, lad?'

He followed Petit to the fore-hatch, and joined the others with mixed emotions at dinner. The lines beside Renzi's mouth seemed deeper, his expression more set than Kydd could remember having seen it before. He realised that Renzi must feel the same way as he, but with the added force of an intelligence that had no control over its destiny, no chance to affect its onward rush into whatever lay ahead. It was a sombre thought.

'So it's farewell t' Old England!' Kydd tried to be breezy, but it fell flat. The table lapsed into silence; no one wished to catch an eye. It might be years before they saw home again, and with the certainty that some would not make the happy return.

Cundall slammed down his pot. 'An' not too soon, mates — me dear ole uncle just got scragged at Newgate fer

twitchin' a bit o' silver, me aunt needin' the rhino 'n' all.'

There was murmuring; justice shoreside was far worse than at sea. Kydd sat for a while, letting the conversation ebb and flow about him, listening to the regular shipboard creaks and swishes of a ship in a seaway, and felt better.

'Why we goin' to India, Mr Petit?' Luke's treble voice sounded above the talk.

Petit shoved away his plate, and thought for a while. 'Why, can't say as 'ow I has an answer fer that, Luke. We threw out the Frogs fer good not so long ago . . .'

'Nicholas?' Kydd prompted.

Staring at the timbers of the ship's side, Renzi didn't speak. At first Kydd thought he had not heard, then he said quietly, 'I cannot say. True, the French have been ejected, but there are native rajahs who see their best interest in stirring discord among the Europeans, and are probably in communication with the French - but this is small stuff.' He settled back and continued, 'I can't think what there is in Calcutta that would justify our presence, especially a crack frigate of our reputation.'

That was the sticking point: Artemis was not just any frigate but at the moment the most famous in the Navy. Loosed like a wolf on the French sea lanes she was a proven predator, and if a frigate was wanted in those seas then others could be spared.

'Coulda got wind of a Frog ship come ter ruffle feathers like, those parts.' Doud had drawn up a tub to join the group. He always respected Renzi's pronouncements for their profundity.

Renzi shook his head. 'No, wouldn't be that, Ned. Bombay

Marine will settle their account. Seems we have a mystery, shipmates.'

Artemis made a fast passage south, through Biscay and on into sunnier seas. At one point they were reined in by an irascible captain of a passing seventy-four-gun ship-of-the-line, but under Admiralty orders they could not be touched, and once more spread canvas for their far destination.

Kydd was surprised at how the immediacy and movement of his life on land froze so quickly, was packaged into a series of static images, then slipped away into the past, to become a collection of memory fossils. His immediacy was now the rhythm of sea life - the regular watch on deck, an occasional fluster of an 'all hands' to take in sail for a squall, and the continual ebb and flow of daily events, each as predictable as the rising sun, but in sum a comforting background against which Kydd grew and matured as a seaman.