Caribbee(18)

He was a black man, his body burnt and bloody. As he was laid on deck there was movement, weak and spasmodic. Eyes half open, he rolled to his side to retch before flopping back with an agonised groan.

‘What ship?’ Kydd demanded bending over him. Then, when there was no response: ‘Quel navire?’

Someone brought a roll of canvas and packed it under his head. The surgeon arrived and inspected the man.

‘Are we going to get anything from him, do you think?’ Kydd asked.

Before the answer came, the man moaned hoarsely, then spoke inaudibly and closed his eyes in pain.

‘Er, what was that?’

‘Man, Kick ’em Jenny!’ the man croaked with effort.

Kydd looked up, baffled.

‘Sounded like, “Kickum cherry”,’ Gilbey offered.

A startled cry from forward took their attention. A seaman was urgently gesturing to a sight that clutched at every shellback’s heart, out off the bow. From the Stygian gloom of the deep, an intense, spreading luminescence was rising, moving slowly, with infinite menace. Was a sea-monster of unimaginable size about to appear and devour them?

Petrified seamen watched as it took shape, rising, growing. With it came a foul smell that …

Renzi turned on Kydd in sudden understanding. ‘Naples!’

Kydd reacted instantly. ‘Hard down y’r helm! Get us away, for God’s sake!’

L’Aurore heeled and ran from the hideous apparition but when they were not one mile off, with a cataclysmic spasm, an underwater volcano vented. Bursting skyward with a deafening blast, a towering plume of grey, shot with flame and lazily arcing black fragments, climbed and then subsided into lesser paroxysms, a fearful and stupefying drama of nature.

When the heavy rumbling had died away the man opened his eyes again and whispered, ‘Dere – she wake up. Dat Kick ’em Jenny!’

An invitation arrived from the commander-in-chief, Leeward Islands station to a formal dinner marking the first anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar and the loss of Lord Nelson. It was extended to every naval officer in Cochrane’s command, and the guest of honour was to be the only one of Nelson’s captains on that dread day who was serving on the station: Thomas Kydd.

The very highest in civil society would be invited to attend too, and in view of the unprecedented numbers, the governor had graciously extended the use of the state banqueting hall, the Long Room.

It would be, without question, the occasion of the year.

Kydd felt both humbled and elated. Guest of honour – that meant not only a faultless appearance but a speech, delivered before several hundred sea officers and important guests.

Renzi could be relied on to confect a splendid talk, replete with apt quotations from the classics and full of elegant, rolling phrases that would be commented on for months – but this time Kydd knew he had to make it his own: set down what it had been to be part of the exalted realm of Nelson’s band of brothers; open to his listeners just what the brutal pressures had been on the little admiral, how he’d triumphed over every one to lead his devoted men to victory in the greatest sea battle of all time.

And perhaps share something of the humanity and warmth in the man, those details of administration and concern for the fleet, which showed he understood that the men in the ships won his battles for him and …

He reached for a pen and began to write.

The evening passed in a haze of exhilaration, splendour and moment. The glitter and array of so much gold lace on dark blue, medals, honours – and the sea of faces looking politely up at him when he got to his feet for the crowning occasion of his speech.

The room settled into a respectful silence while Kydd composed himself.

‘Your Excellency, Sir Alexander, distinguished guests, fellow officers …’

The governor and Cochrane were seated to either side of him at the high table but he could see L’Aurore’s officers together on the right and, close by, Tyrell. Renzi was well down the room; as a retired naval officer he had been accorded the honour of attending.

‘It’s difficult for me to conceive that it’s been but a single year since that day off Cape Trafalgar when …’

He told the tale simply but powerfully, giving fervent credit to the man who had himself raised Kydd to the eminence of post-captain. He tried to give a feeling for the events his audience had only read about in the newspapers and chronicles, a sense of the unbearable tension of the great chase and its resolution in the final cataclysm of the coming together of two vast fleets.

He paused. The room was in utter stillness. ‘Gentlemen, before we toast the immortal memory of Lord Horatio Nelson, let me read to you words he wrote that, to me, are at the heart of his humanity and greatness as a leader.’