“There goes our run!” said Corrie, one of the watch. He pulled viciously at a line. “Couldn’t have stayed in the north for just another day, oh, no! Now we’ll be floggin’ about all over the oggin, lookin’ for a slant.”
It was clear that Duke William was unable to keep as close to the wind as the other two vessels. She sailed as near as possible but she sagged sadly away to leeward of the newer ships, the line of three becoming a gaggle.
From the main top of the Royal Albion ahead a solitary flicker of light appeared. Kydd glanced up: their own maintop lanthorn produced its fitful beam for Tiberius astern.
He gazed at the three-decker ahead, working her way through the seas in a welter of foam, rising and falling in a foreshortened bobbing, clawing at the wind. As he watched, the vessel altered her perspective, changing tack to conform to Duke William’s labored course, the line now whole again.
“That’ll please the buggers. Now nobody’s goin’ to fetch Start Point on this tack,” Corrie said. A cluster of signal flags made its way in jerks up Royal Albion’s rigging, the bunting stiff to the wind. “That’ll be night orders, ’n’ welcome to it,” he added, with a sniff. “Like as not, it’ll come on a real muzzler tonight, an’ then what’s the use o’ orders?”
The rain had stopped, but the wind steadily increased. Inside his new tarpaulins Kydd shivered, the slapping of the cape-like folds feeling awkward and uncomfortable. The odor of tarred canvas was strong and penetrating.
A bulky figure in old, rain-slick foul weather gear stumped along the deck in the gathering darkness. It was the boatswain, accompanied by his mates, going about on a last checking of gear before it was too dark to do so. He passed Kydd without recognition, then stopped and came back. “Gettin’ your sea legs, then?” he rumbled. “One thing about foul weather, soon sorts out th’ sailors from the lubbers.”
Then there was the familiar round of trimming — the tightening, easing, bracing and other motions deemed necessary by the officer on watch on assuming the deck, after which the men huddled beneath the weather bulwarks. The binnacle lamp was lit, and extra men sent to the wheel. The small group on the quarterdeck paced abjectly in the dirty weather, wet streaming from their foul weather gear. The night drew in.
Kydd pulled his tarpaulins close, imitating the others who, sitting with their backs to the bulwark, had wrapped a weird assortment of gear around them.
“O’ course, it could all end for us in an hour, yer know,” said Corrie.
“How so?”
“Jus’ think, here we is, thrashin’ along with the wind shiftin’ all the time, who’s to say where we’ll be at the end of the watch in the dark?” There was no answer, so he went on, “Frenchy coast only thirty mile or so off hereabouts, ’n’ it’s sure enough iron-bound — worst part o’ the whole coast, is that. What if we gets to tack south when the wind heads us? We’ll be piled up afore we know it.”
Bowyer grunted, “Leave him be, Scrufty. You knows they keeps a proper reckonin’ on the quarterdeck. An’ we must have passed this way no more’n half a hundred times.”
“Ah, yes, but we’re talkin’ about a bit of a blow, at night, tide set ’n’ all, and a cap’n who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow about shiphandlin’.
“Don’t forget, we gotta weather the Shambles first — ever seen ’em under a tide-fall? Nasty, black, ’n’ ready to tear the heart outa a good ship afore yer knows it,” he said.
“But —” began Kydd.
“An’ by me calc’lation they’re just about here. Could be right in our course, mates, only a half a mile ahead ’n’ jus’ waitin’.”
Kydd couldn’t help it. He stuck his head above the bulwark and peered into the dark sea fret ahead, the Royal Albion’s lanthorn light long since disappeared into the thick murk. In his imagination he could see only too vividly the black rocks rearing up to smash and splinter their way into their vessel, the victorious sea close behind.
At the end of the watch they wearily slung their hammocks.
“I’d keep me gear handy if I was you, mate! Somethin’ ’appens, an’ it’s ‘Turn up the hands,’ ” came a voice from the darkness. Kydd peeled off his clothes, still damp from before, and wearily swung himself in. The ship was moving more — less of a roll, more of an uncomfortable jerky pitching which the hammock, slung fore and aft, could not easily absorb.
He drifted off to sleep, and a disjointed dream arose, troubling and frightening, of himself borne away unwilling on the back of a huge wild bull, thundering unstoppably toward a great precipice that somehow he knew lay ahead.