Kydd returned before the end of Renzi's duty watch. The warm dusk had also seen Achilles put back into Gibraltar. 'Nicholas, do ye have time?'
Renzi's relief was already on deck so they went to the main-shrouds, out of earshot of the one or two on deck aft. Renzi looked keenly at Kydd.
'It was th' damnedest thing, Nicholas,' Kydd said, in a low voice. He looked around suspiciously, but no one was anywhere near. 'M' letter - y' remember? Well, seems that Consuela - that's Mrs Mulvany's maid I gave m' letter to — she gets it all wrong 'n' thinks it's her the letter's for, there bein' no names in it a-tall, an' there she is, waitin' for me when I gets ashore.'
'So you've been spared the whip?' Renzi said drily.
Kydd coloured. 'I have - but it's to cost me five silver dollars to buy the letter back,' he said, 'and when I went t' Emily's house, her husband was in, invited me t' dinner, even.' His face fell. 'But when I wanted t' see Emily - say my farewells afore we return to England — seems she was unwell an' couldn't see me.'
'Unfortunate,' murmured Renzi. Then he straightened. 'You're sailing tonight.'
'F'r England,' Kydd replied, but there was no happiness in his voice.
'Bacchante goes to Lisbon where I rejoin my ship,' Renzi said. 'I — I'm not sanguine that we shall meet again soon, my dear friend.' It were best the parting were not prolonged.
'Ye could be sent back t' Portsmouth f'r a docking,' Kydd said forlornly.
'Yes, that's true,' Renzi replied sofdy. "Thomas, be true to yourself always, brother, and we shall see each other — some time.'
'An' you as well, Nicholas. So it's goodbye, m' friend.' The handshake lingered, then Kydd turned and went.
Achilles stood out into the broad Atlantic, questing for the trade westerlies, the reliable streams of air that blew ceaselessly across thousands of miles of ocean to provide a royal highway straight to England.
She soon found them, and shaped course northward. The winds so favourable on her larboard quarter also formed a swell that came in, deep and regular, under her old-fashioned high stern. Up and up it rose, angling the rest of the ship over to starboard and steeply down into the trough ahead. Then, when the swell reached the mid-point of the vessel, her bow rose, bowsprit clawing the sky, and her stern fell precipitously away while, with a sudden jerk, she rolled back to larboard.
To a seaman it was instinctive: the fine sailing in these regular seas was easy, the motion predictable. The only concern was that the winds might die away to a tedious flat amble.
These spirited seas saw Achilles at her best, an energetic, seething wake stretching away astern, flecks of foam driven up by her bluff bows flying aft to wet the lips of the watch-on-deck with salt, the bright sun casting complex hypnotically moving shadows of sails and rigging on the decks.
But there were those aboard who did not appreciate the Atlantic Ocean in springtime. Huddled over the bulwarks in the waist, sprawling on the foredeck in seasick misery, were the quota men who had exchanged the debtor's jail for a life at sea and others who had never had a say in their fate.
The run north was a time of trial and terror for these land creatures. Forced to overcome their sea-sickness they learned an eternal lesson of the sea: no matter the bodily misery, the task is always seen through to its right true end, then belayed and squared away. There were some who prevailed over their soft origins and won through to become likely sailors, but there were more who would be condemned for ever to be no more than brute labourers of the sea.
By contrast the mariners had their sea ways: the carefully fashioned lids over their oaken grog tankards against slop from the surging movement, the lithe motion as they got up from the mess tables and swayed sinuously along in unconscious harmony with the sea's liveliness, chin-stays down on their tarpaulin hats while aloft. There were an uncountable number of tiny details, the sum of which set on one side those who were true sea-dwellers, who knew the sea as a home and not as a frightening and unnatural perversion of human existence.
In the several days it took to pass northward along the Portuguese and Spanish coasts and make landfall on Finisterre, Achilles tried hard to return to her character as a true man-o'-war after a long and corrosive confinement in port.
'God rot 'em, but they're a pawky lot o' lobcocks!' Poynter, quarter-gunner, glared at the gun's crew standing sweaty and weary after unaccustomed work at training and side tackle on the cold iron.
Kydd could only agree. As master's mate he was essentially deputy to the lieutenant of the gundeck and had a definite interest in excellence at their gunnery. 'Keep 'em at it, Poynter, the only way.'
Hands were stood down from their exercise only when at seven bells the pipe for Tiands to witness punishment' was made. The familiar ritual brought men up into the sunlight to congregate in a sullen mass at the forward end of the quarterdeck. Officers stood on the poop while the gratings were rigged below, in front of the men. Kydd stood between, and to the side.