Kydd(103)

“Th’ colonies?” said Kydd, looking up with troubled eyes.

“A possibility.” Renzi’s half-brother was in Canada and after his infrequent return visits Renzi had no illusions about the raw, half-civilized frontier life of the new continent.

“A foreign land, then?”

Renzi hid a smile. He knew that Kydd, like others of his kind, had only the haziest notion of the outside world. “Again, a possibility,” he answered. “We must consider carefully, of course.” With half the world at war and revolutionary disaffection rampant in the other, it would be a deadly gamble to find which of them, old world or new, would prove a reliable hiding place.

He returned to his palm and needle. They had but a few more days to make a decision before landfall in England, and then it would have to be final. For the first time Renzi felt that events were slipping out of his control and his options were being extinguished, one by one.





CHAPTER 12

Well, me boyos, early tomorrer you sees old England agen — ain’t it prime?” Finchett’s announcement did not seem to cheer Kydd and Renzi and, perplexed, he left them to it. The pair moodily sat on the canvas-covered main hatch; there seemed no point in conversation.

Interrupting their introspection, from the masthead there was a sudden hail. “Sail hooo!”

A single vessel within hours of the English coast — there could be little doubt about its origins. The entire maritime trade of England passed up Channel this way, as did the ships of the Navy going about their business of war.

“Youse had better be ready to stow yerselves below agen.”

This was eminent good sense. One of the darker acts of a King’s ship was the stripping of seamen from homeward-bound merchant packets, a hard thing after a voyage to the Indies of a year or more.

“Deck hooo! She’s a cutter under flyin’ jib — ’n’ English colors!” Now there was no doubt: one of the many small warships on patrol. And her deep, narrow hull and that huge bowsprit meant speed. There was no way they could think of outrunning her.

The crew of the Judith had a protection from the press as a Fleet auxiliary, but these were personal to the bearer. There was no help for it: they would have to return to their black hole.

A last reluctant glimpse of the balmy day, and the cutter smartly tacking toward, and they returned below. It was uncomfortable and boring in their close black lair, waiting for the boarding to be over with, but it was infinitely better than the alternative.

The steady swooping movement was replaced by an uneasy bobbing — they had heaved to; a discordant bumping told them that the cutter was alongside. They resigned themselves to it: this might be the first of many such.

Faint shouts — probably Finchett expressing his views on the propriety of the Royal Navy interfering with the merchant service, and after an interminable time they felt the lurch and smooth take-up of sail once more. They waited for the signal, and before long they heard scrabbling at the toggle and the strop falling away. But there was no signal. Perhaps naval seamen were still aboard.

“Wait!” Renzi whispered. “We must be sure.”

The air grew stale, then close. They started to pant and felt giddy.

“We have to get out,” Renzi said. He tried to lift the barrel lid. It didn’t budge. He heaved at it, with no result. Putting his back under the lid, he uncoiled his full weight against it. It gave a little, then slammed down again. “There’s something on it,” he whispered. “Give me a hand.”

He guided Kydd in the blackness to put his back next to his own in the cramped space, and together they thrust upward.

Suddenly it gave and flew open. The hold was in darkness, of course, but on the next barrel a lanthorn stood, casting a dim yellow light.

They climbed out cautiously, but Kydd tripped on a dark shape on the deck next to the barrel. He bent to see what it was — and jerked up in horror.

It was a body. He bent again to roll it over — and his hand came away wet and sticky. “It’s Finchett.”

Renzi knelt and examined the corpse. “There’s a wound in his back,” he said. It didn’t make any sense. Maybe Finchett had been wounded on deck and had tried to reach them, expiring after releasing the strop. Renzi realized their reconnaissance would have to be cautious-something was terribly awry.

Kydd remembered that there was a small hatch forward; it allowed entry into the hold without needing the big main hatch to be opened. They scrambled across the remaining powder barrels and reached the hatchway ladder at the fore part of the hold.

“Careful,” whispered Renzi.

Kydd eased back the sliding hatch an inch. Sunlight flooded in, as did familiar sea sounds. The clean salt air was invigorating.