Kydd allowed his eyes to slit open. Inches before his eyes was one of the shrouds, ordinary enough in itself, a stout rope several inches thick. It was tarred but this close he could see every microscopic detail of where it had been whitened by the weather. On impulse, he pressed his face to it, feeling its sturdy roughness against his skin and smelling the rich odor of tar and sea salt.
“’N’ up there, you gets a good view of the catharpins. You c’n see there, Tom, how we use ’em to bowse in the shrouds — keeps the lee rigging well in when yer ship rolls.”
Taking no chances, Kydd moved his gaze slowly upward, following the line of shrouds to where they disappeared into a large hole in the black underneath of the top.
“Get a move on, you heavy-arsed dogs!” Elkins’s impatient bawl carried up clearly. It only served to make Kydd hold on tighter.
“Shall we go a bit farther, matey?” Bowyer said, inching a little higher.
Kydd willed the movement, but it stalled in a backwash of fear.
At that moment into his consciousness seeped an awareness of angels. It was a pure sound that enveloped his soul. He listened, enraptured. It was a light tenor, and it soared so sweetly that he could swear it belonged to the upper celestial regions.
Life is chequr’d-toil and pleasure
Fill one up the various measure;
Hark! the crew with sunburnt faces
Chanting Black-eyed Susan’s graces …
Bowyer chuckled. “That’ll be Ned Doud. Quite th’ songbird is our Ned. Let’s go visit, Tom.”
The spell had been broken. With his heart in his mouth, Kydd followed Bowyer up.
They passed under the shadow of the great fighting top, then up through the large aperture next to the mast and its complexity of massive jeer blocks and heavy rope seizings, to emerge onto the platform of the top itself.
“Well, Joe,” said Doud happily, “never thought to see you come up by the lubber’s hole.” He was sitting cross-legged, making a plaited bunt gasket using his own fox yarns.
“Came up to see what the noise was, did we not, shipmate?” Bowyer said, but Kydd had taken a deep breath and was looking about him in giddy exhilaration.
The maintop was impressive — it could take twenty men comfortably on its decked surface, and was bounded at the after end by a rail and nettings, and on both sides by the next stage of shrouds stretching up to the topmast.
Cautiously Kydd got to his feet and went to the edge. Although it was only some seventy feet above the deck, it felt like a separate world, one of peace and solitude. Farther out there were more ships at anchor, and beyond a noticeable increase in the depth of the countryside.
“Bear a fist, will you, Ned, reevin’ the clewgarnet,” Bowyer asked.
He slipped out of sight over the side. Kydd went over to see him pass from a downward hanging position on the futtock shrouds to drop to the main yard, with the dull white canvas of the course carefully furled in a fine harbor stow above it. Bowyer lay over the yard before swinging down, his feet finding the footrope, and moved outward to where the clewgarnet blocks hung below the yard.
“Watch yer back, sailor!” Doud said, pushing past Kydd. He was watching the clewgarnet rise from below, suspended on a fly block next to the mainmast as it was hauled up by the laborers on deck. Feeling like a yokel on his first trip to town, Kydd admired the skill and cool assurance of the two as they worked, thoroughly at home in this unfathomable complication of spars and cordage.
At one point when Doud and Bowyer were both out on the yard they asked him to pass the clewgarnet down to its second stoppering on the hauling line, out to the blocks. This involved the team sharing the task of passing it along, right out to the end of the yard where the clew of the furled course now was, and bringing it back again to where it was clinched to the mainyard.
Kydd’s part was not onerous, but he had to move about the top and give his full attention to the whole picture. He sensed that this was no special task, but when they finally stepped down from the shrouds to the deck at last, he was elated. Nothing could have stopped his foolish laugh and the casual swagger.
Elkins was waiting. “So you knows a bit o’ sailorin’, then, Kydd — get below, my respects t’ the boatswain, and we needs a sky hook to sway up the kelson.”
Concentrating on the message, Kydd turned to go. “Where —?”
“Forrard on the orlop, you grass-combin’ bugger. Get goin’, sharpish like, we got work to do.”
The boatswain pursed his lips. “The sky hook, eh? Well, lad, that’s going to be difficult.” His hand rasped on his dark-shadowed chin. “I gave it out, as I recollects, to Mr. Walker for to raise a mousing. If you finds Matthew Walker, you’ll find your sky hook, lad.”