Kydd(86)

There was not much science in Kydd’s efforts, but at least he did not let his reef escape. It was with real satisfaction that, holding it in place with the forward reef point, he brought the other up and secured it with an eponymous reef knot.

“Lay in, you lazy swabs!”

He joined the others on the maintop, and met Doud with a grin that could only be described as smug.

The carpenter pursed his lips. It wasn’t a bad leak as far as it went, but it was in an awkward place. They were standing in the carpenter’s walk, a cramped tunnel of sorts that went round the sides of the orlop, giving access to the area between wind and water in times of battle. It was an eerie sensation, to feel rather than hear the underwater gurgling rush on the outside of the hull. Kydd struggled along behind the carpenter’s mate, with a bag of heavy shipwright’s tools.

The carpenter bent to take a closer look. His mate obligingly held the lanthorn lower, into the black recesses behind a hanging knee. Water glistened against the blackened timbers of the ship’s side.

“Maul,” the carpenter said, after a moment. Kydd handed him the weighty tool. A couple of sharp blows at an ancient bolt started it from its seating. Kneeling down, the carpenter gave it a vigorous twist.

A furious half-inch-thick jet of water spurted in, catching Kydd squarely.

“Devil bolt!” the carpenter said. The bolt might have looked sound from the outside, but inside, there was nothing but falsework, crafty peculators at the dockyard having made off with the interior of the long copper bolt. “You’d better get down to the hold and take a squint, Nathan. This won’t be the only beggar,” he told his mate.

The deck grating was lifted clear, and the man dropped down into the blackness of the hold. The lanthorn was passed down to him.

They could hear him moving about, but then there was silence.

“See anything?” the carpenter called. He was driving an octagonal oak treenail into the gushing bolt hole with accurate smashing hits, the water cutting off to a trickle, then nothing.

There was no reply. “Nathan?” he called again, kneeling down to look into the hold. He was pushed out of the way abruptly by the carpenter’s mate. His eyes were staring, his face was white, and he was trembling.

“What’s to do, mate?” the carpenter asked softly.

The man gulped and turned to face him. “I s-seen a g-ghost! Somethin’ down there — it’s ’orrible. I gotta get out’ve it!”

The carpenter clicked his tongue. “Well, here’s a to-do.” He hesitated for a moment and said, weakly, “Now, Kydd lad, you go below and sort it out for us, my boy.”

Kydd sensed the man’s fear and felt an answering apprehension. There was nothing wrong with being afraid of ghosts, it stood to reason. He looked at the hole where the grating had been, then back at the carpenter.

“Go on, I’ll come if you hails!” the carpenter mumbled.

With the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, Kydd cautiously dropped down on top of the casks. He looked around fearfully.

There was nothing. He accepted the lanthorn, but its light was lost in the pervasive blackness and he could see little. The stench was unspeakable.

Nervously he moved away from the access hole and crept toward the edge of the casks. Before he reached them he became aware of a sudden discontinuity in the blackness on his left.

It took all his willpower to turn and confront it. It was a dim but defi nite ghostly blue-green glow, there at the edge of his vision, shapeless, direful. He froze. The light seemed to flicker in the dark of the farthest reaches of the hold but it didn’t come closer. His eyes strained. The light strengthened, still wavering and indistinct. Something made him move forward. He reached the edge of the casks.

“Is all well, lad?” came an anxious call from the grating.

A muffled acknowledgment was all Kydd could manage.

The glow was still far off, down there in the shingle. There was no alternative. He slid over the edge and landed with a crash of stones. He looked up. The light was at a different angle now and seemed to be hovering, uncertain.

Heart hammering, Kydd crunched cautiously toward it. The source of the light lengthened and grew in definition, nearer, and the light of the lanthorn reached it, swamped it. The sickly sweet stench was overpowering, and he gasped with horror. The ghost was a dead body, what was left of Eakin, the cooper’s mate, his putrefying remains luminescing in the blackness.

With Tiberius a speck on the horizon, a soldier’s wind and Mr. Tewsley having the deck, it was time to take the wheel.

“Kydd on the wheel, sir?” said Doud, whose trick at the helm it was.

“Certainly,” Tewsley said, and nodded at the quartermaster, the petty officer in direct charge of the wheel. The man looked dubious, but stood back.