Kydd(12)

The bird-like purser’s assistant held up a blue and white striped opennecked shirt. “Here’s a fine rig for a sailor,” he said. With it were some white duck trousers and a wide black leather belt.

Kydd took them. The material was strong but coarse; it would never do in Guildford, but he could see that here its robustness would serve its purpose. He couldn’t help noticing how soft and pale his fingers were, and he wondered how long they would take to become brown and tough like a sailor’s. There was no escaping it — soon he would be a very different person from the one he was now.

The assistant rummaged about and produced a short dark blue jacket adorned with plain anchor buttons and with it a glossy black tarpaulin hat and other seaman-like gear, and added them to the small pile. “Try them on.”

It felt like dressing up, but it was plain that the short jacket and loose-bottomed trousers gave a great deal of freedom for movement. There was need, perhaps, for a bit of work with needle and thread to smarten them up, but they would do.

Trousers — these free-swinging garments were peculiar to the sea profession, and they felt loose and strange. Kydd had been in “kicks” — tight knee breeches — all his life, and so had everyone else of his acquaintance, high and low. He put on his glossy tarpaulin hat at a rakish angle and chuckled grimly at the sheer incongruity of it all.

“So you’ll not be wanting these again,” the assistant said, disdainfully holding up Kydd’s sorry-looking country clothes. Without waiting for a reply he stuffed them into a sack.

A ship’s boy led the way up the ladder for several of the group who had mess numbers on the lower gundeck. It was deserted, and at a point where the bows began their curve in, forward on the starboard side, Kydd took a long hard look at the place that would be his home in his new life.

It was the space between two monster long guns, now with their fat muzzles lashed upward against the ship’s side. As he had seen the previous night, there was a table that could be lowered, revealing neat racks for the mess traps — wooden plates, pewter cutlery and bowls. Self-consciously Kydd added his new canvas ditty bag to the others hanging up along the ship’s side. Each bag had an access hole halfway up the side, which was a practical means of keeping clothing and personal effects ready for use. Even in the dimness the impression he had was of extreme neatness and order, a Spartan blend of lived-in domesticity and uncompromising dedication to war. The whole purpose of the ship’s existence was as an engine of destruction to be aimed at the mortal enemies of his country.

He emerged warily on deck to slate-colored skies and fretful seas. The sails were braced round at an angle to the northerly, and there away to starboard, from where the wind blew, was a mottled coastline, all in greens and nondescript browns. There was no way of telling where this was. To Kydd it might be England or a hostile foreign shore. It was entirely different from what he could remember of the rolling greensward of the North Downs.

“Damn you, sir! Do you think this is a cruise, that you are a passenger on my fo’c’sle?”

Kydd had not noticed the officer standing among the men at the foot of the foremast. In confusion he faced him and attempted to address him.

“Respects to the officer when you speaks to him, lad,” a petty officer said testily.

Kydd hesitated.

Exasperated, the petty officer said more forcefully, “You salutes him, you lubber.” Seeing Kydd’s continued puzzlement, he knuckled his forehead in an exaggerated way. “Like this, see.”

Kydd complied — it was no different from when he had to address the squire at home. “Kydd, sir, first part of starboard watch.”

“Never mind your watch, what part-of-ship are you?” the officer asked tartly.

The question left Kydd at a loss. He saw the great bowsprit with its rearing headsails soaring out over the sea ahead. “Th’ front part, sir?”

The men broke into open laughter and the officer’s eyes glittered dangerously. Kydd’s face burned.

A petty officer took his paper. “Ah, he’s afterguard, sir, new joined.”

“Then he’d better explain to Mr. Tewsley at the forebrace bitts why he is absent when parts-of-ship for exercise has been piped!” The officer turned his back and inspected the clouds of sail above.

“Get cracking, son!” the petty officer snapped. “You’ll find ’em just abaft the mainmast — that’s the big stick in the middle.”

Kydd balled his fists as he set off in the direction indicated. He had not been treated like this since he was a child.

Around the mainmast there were scores of men, each in defined groups. They were all still, and tension hung in the air. A group of officers stood together in the center, so he approached the most ornate and saluted. “Kydd, first part of starboard watch, and afterguard,” he reported.