Caribbee(35)

‘Get up there, Mr Buckle,’ Kydd said, handing over his own pocket telescope. ‘I want you to report from the masthead any vessels – at anchor or under way. If they flee, don’t you dare lose ’em – keep them under eye. Clear?’

‘Right, sir!’ The enthusiasm of the reply brought a smothered cheer from nearby seamen but the third lieutenant had already swung nimbly into the shrouds.

A morning haze, however, lay along the coast and in its delicate pearl mistiness it was impossible to make out detail, but as they neared it began to lift.

Almost immediately there was a cry from the masthead. Buckle was peering with fierce concentration towards the firming sight of an offshore island, the mainland still lost in mist.

‘What is it?’ Kydd called up, in an impatient bellow.

‘Er, sail, I think, sir. No – I’m sure!’

‘Explain yourself, damn it!’

‘Well, I saw him at first but I can’t now.’ He craned forward, searching frantically in all directions with the telescope.

With a splutter of rage, Kydd hauled himself into the shrouds and mounted up to join him with a speed that had even the topmen looking thoughtful. ‘Now, Mr Buckle, what the devil are you trying to say?’

‘Over there, sir. Next to the big island – he’s gone now.’

Kydd snatched the glass and scanned the coast carefully.

The emerging headland itself was unimpressive, leading down in a tame finish for a forty-odd-mile cape to end in flat, pinkish rocks. Offshore there were two islands. The nearest to the cape, Isla Beata, was a five-mile triangle and was separated from it by a channel. The other, much smaller, was further out still, a single island less than a mile across.

And not a sail in sight.

‘You’re sure you saw something, Mr Buckle?’

‘I did, sir!’

‘Did you?’ Kydd snapped at the posted lookout.

‘No, sir, can’t say as I did.’

Kydd twisted about and shouted to the other mast, ‘Main top lookout, ahoy! Did you sight sail?’

‘None!’

Kydd swung out and down the shrouds. Before he made the deck, his mood had calmed: given the conditions, any sail could well have vanished into the mists closer inshore. ‘He’s between the large island and the cape. Take us in, Mr Kendall.’

They came more by the wind as they changed course and began to open up the channel between. The master pursed his lips – the tell-tale white of sub-sea reefs was becoming visible in the two-mile gap. ‘It’s shoal water in there, an’ a strong current hereabouts, Mr Kydd. I don’t reckon—’

‘I’ve seen enough. Take us south-about then.’ He’d had an unobstructed view of the channel and there was nothing in it. They’d pass by the island to its other side, and if it was innocent of vessels, he’d have to admit he’d been wrong in his intuition.

Renzi stood by him silently as L’Aurore quickly passed the tip of the island.

‘Nothing but empty sea,’ Kydd said woodenly.

‘Still one place you haven’t looked, dear fellow.’

‘Oh?’

‘The outer island. Small, but enough to conceal. Should we put up our helm now we might profitably circle the island by wearing about it.’

‘We’ve seen three sides of it, no sign of anything.’ Alto Velo was only seven or eight hundred yards long, with a lofty conical peak.

‘What have we to lose?’

‘Very well, Nicholas. To please you. Mr Kendall, we wear about Alto Velo.’

They fell off downwind but the fourth side was as bare as all else.

‘Resume course, Mr Kendall.’

‘To?’

‘It’s the Mona Passage for us, I’m sorry to say.’

The frigate paid off to return on its eastward course, the expectant groups of men breaking up and going crestfallen about their business.

‘Um, I could swear …’

‘What’s that, Nicholas?’

‘Nothing, really. Just that I thought I saw a fleck of white and now it’s red, is all.’

‘On the island?’

‘Well, at the end, near the waterline, as it were.’

‘Now, don’t you start seeing things – I’ve enough with Mr Buckle.’

But a thought, a long-ago memory, gradually took form and coalesced into a single idea. A sailor’s yarn during some long-forgotten watch in the Pacific. Something about …

‘Heave to! This instant, if you please.’ The differing motion on the ship brought the curious back on deck.

‘Get a boat in the water, Mr Curzon – and from the opposite ship’s side to the island.’

Curiosity turned to astonishment.

‘Er, and hail aft Mr Saxton.’