By midday there was low racing scud above them, with an ominous thickening of the horizon to the east, an ugly darkness tinged with green edging that was the nightmare of a hurricane astern of them.
They were now down to close-reefed topsails on fore and main but with the mizzen staysail and storm mizzen in place of a topsail on the after mast, and still she laboured. Worry set in. Time was fast running out and with it their options.
It was crazy, but it was war. Through angry, foam-streaked seas in a hardening gale, four ships still clung to their duty, heaving and bucketing along in a chase to the death.
Kydd looked up for the thousandth time to the straining canvas and frantically thrumming lines and knew a decision could not long be delayed. He snatched a glance astern, then at the angle of the wind on their bow and finally at the tableau of fleeting ships – and made up his mind. The first ship to break away would be L’Aurore.
It was a giddy relief, and he could see the same in Kendall’s face when he told him.
‘We’s going to have a hard time of it, I’m thinking,’ he shouted, in Kydd’s ear. ‘Can’t turn aside to the nor’ard – land’s too close.’ Kydd was only too aware that the standard method of escaping the clutches of the dangerous semicircle, by taking the worst of the weather on the starboard bow and clawing out, was not possible.
The alternative was shocking. It required that they fall in with the wind and let it drive them across the very maw of the hurricane as fast as they dared in a bid to make the opposite side before they were overtaken by the ravening storm.
If that were not dangerous enough, there would be the fearful risk that conditions close in would be too much for their fine-lined ship and they would be forced to take in all canvas and lie a-try. When still within the dangerous semicircle, the end would be inevitable – with no ability to fight her way free, L’Aurore would be drawn unresisting into the very centre of the madness to her certain annihilation.
Kydd looked ahead for the final time, taking in the sight of Anson, the heavy frigate still smashing her way powerfully onwards after the distant pair, just visible huddling together in the rack of flying spray and mist, then ordered, ‘Up helm!’
Like a nervous colt, L’Aurore slewed around until the winds came in from astern and then began her mad run downwind across the path of the hurricane. Never at her best dead before the wind, she began an edgy, screwing roll that made moving about the bucking deck a trial, but she picked up speed like the thoroughbred she was. He knew that Lydiard would see them departing but he would understand what was going on. He comforted himself with the thought that, as the lightest of them all, it stood to reason that his ship would be first to break out.
The last he saw of Anson, she was still pressing on into the wind-torn seas after her now invisible foe until all were swallowed up in the ferocious weather.
Now it was a fight for survival, all thoughts of the chase gone. Inescapably every mile made took them closer to the heart of the storm but at the same time urged them nearer to the other side.
This was, quite simply, a race, and one determined by the skill and nerve of the captain in keeping sail on to the last moment to avoid the dreaded lying to. And hanging over it all was the unthinkable catastrophe of but a single spar carried away under the strain, in turn throwing intolerable stress on others until L’Aurore was nothing more than a drifting wreck, to be fallen upon by the triumphant hurricane.
The scene was grand – breathtaking and awful at the same time. Seas were lashed into a fury, their seething crests smoking white and leaving long, tiger-clawed lines of foam as they raggedly advanced in a heaving surge, seeming oddly bright under the dark, hellish sky. The heart of the hurricane was somewhere to larboard in the worst of the contrasting darkness and stinging white – it held a quality of supernatural dread, a terrible beast drumming towards them, its banshee howl making conversation impossible.
Calmly, the master was at the compass with a slate, squinting into the wind and taking regular bearings. It was a vital task, for after plotting they would know the path the hurricane was taking. When the bearing of the centre passed across the estimated track they would know they had at last passed out of the dangerous semicircle. Until then they could do nothing but run before the blast while rolling in mad, jerking swoops.
Then, without warning, catastrophe struck.
Above the quarterdeck a tremendous crack sounded clear over the storm’s roar. Before anyone could react, a heavy spar swept down, with a terrifying rip and bang of straining canvas instantaneously giving way, with the tortured twanging of ropes tried beyond endurance. Skewed by the merciless blast on the ragged remnants of canvas, it crashed to the bulwark, pulping one man and sending two into the boiling sea.