Kydd(9)

The repulsive food restored his energy, and Kydd’s spirits rose. He finished his meal and looked up, aware that he had been too hungry to pay attention to his duties as a guest at table. “Er, where are we going, d’ y’ reckon?” he asked. It was still a matter of amazement to him that their busy world was traveling along while they sat down to table.

“Give it no mind, lad, it’s not our job to know the answer t’ that.” Phelps sniffed and leaned over to the grog tub. He waved his pot at the old man. “Light along a can for my frien’ here, Crooky.”

Kydd gingerly took a pull at his tankard. It was small beer, somewhat rank with an elusive herb-like bitterness, but he nearly drained it in one.

“I thought sailors only had rum,” he said, without thinking.

Phelps grinned. “We does, but only when the swipes runs out.” He pursed his lips. “You sayin’ as you want to try some?” he said, in mock innocence.

Kydd looked around, but the others did not seem to notice; they were all comfortably in conversation. “Are you offering?” he said.

“Wait there,” said Phelps, and lurched heavily to his feet. He went forward out of sight and returned with his jacket clutched tight around him as though against the cold. He resumed his seat. “Give us yer pot, mate,” he instructed. Kydd did as he was told and caught the flash of a black bottle under the table. Then his tankard was returned.

He waited casually, then lifted it. It caught him by surprise. In the dull pewter of his tankard was a deep, almost opaque mahogany-brown liquor. Its pungent fumes wafted up with a lazy potency, which dared him to go further.

The buzz of conversation swirled around him. He took a swallow. This was not issue three-water grog, but neat spirit, and its burning progress to his stomach took his breath away. He surfaced with a grin. “A right true drop!”

Phelps’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ll not get that sorta stingo usually, cully, but if yer play your cards right with Dan Phelps” — he tapped the side of his nose — “yer mebbe could see more of it.”

Kydd raised his pot again. This time he was prepared for the spreading fire, and gloried in the flood of satisfaction it released. His whirling anxieties subsided and his natural cheerfulness began to reassert itself. He finished the last of the rum with regret.

The piercing squeal of the boatswain’s call abruptly cut through the din. “Be damned. Starbowlines — that’s us. Fust dog-watch.” Phelps lurched to his feet and disappeared into the throng.

The mess traps were cleared away rapidly and Kydd found himself the only one still seated. “Move yer arse, mate,” he was told, and once more found himself alone in the midst of many.

Instinctively he turned to follow Phelps, who, he remembered, his head swimming, had left with the others up the main hatch ladder. It led to an almost identical gundeck from the one he had left, so he continued on up the next ladderway, muscles alive with discomfort, emerging into darkness. The night had already fallen.

Overhead, past the hulking shadows of the boats on their skids above him, he saw the paleness of huge sails in regular towers, each at the same angle and each taut and trim. Nearby, but invisible, he could hear the regular plash and sibilance of the sea, and as he stood he became aware of a background of sounds meshing together. It was a continuous and oddly comforting interplay of creaks, dings, slattings and all manner of unfamiliar mutterings.

Out into the starless night on either hand the darkness was broken only occasionally by the flash of a white wave. He felt rather than saw that they were traveling steadily through the water, a hypnotizing, unchanging sliding which gave no impression of headlong speed, and he marveled once again.

He was still comfortably warm from the rum, and ambled along, wondering at the vast mystery of the ship with all its unfathomable shapes, sounds and implied dangers. The sights above disappeared abruptly as he passed under a deck, the unmistakable outline of a bell in its belfry silhouetted briefly against the pallid fore course.

Loath to return between decks, he noticed a short ladder leading upward. He mounted, and found himself directly under the sails, the downdraft from them buffeting him with a deluge of cold air. He looked about quickly. Forward there was nothing but darkness, but aft he could make out men standing together, eerily illuminated by lights coming up from a low angle.

He moved toward them along the gangway next to the boats.

“Where you off to, matey?” A sailor had him by the arm. It was too dark even to make out his face.

“Lay aft, that man!” Garrett’s high-pitched voice came from among the cluster around the lights.