Quarterdeck(57)
‘Er, can we help?’ Lieutenant Best, accompanied by half a dozen marines, stood uncomprehending and hesitating at the hatchway.
‘No! Get ’em away.’ Kydd appreciated his courage but a crowd was not needed – only a handful of daring, active seamen. He glanced behind him: Chamberlain, the midshipman, with the agility of youth, Lamb, a spry topman, Thorn, steady and quick – he had enough.
‘Each a mick, an’ follow me – rest, wait until we has it cornered, then move in fast.’ He seized a trussed hammock for himself and moved forward, feeling the eyes of Bryant’s crew on him.
Tenacious’s bows rose to a comber. The deck canted up and the cannon suddenly rolled – towards him. Kydd threw the hammock before it and flung himself to one side. It thrust by, skidding on the hammock and fetched up against the mainmast with a splintering crash.
‘Chamberlain – here! Lamb ’n’ Thorn, get in behind it!’ He spotted Best, still hovering. ‘Get out of it,’ he snarled, and pushed the crestfallen officer away.
They must close in at whatever risk: Bryant’s crew could do nothing until the beast was stopped and then they had seconds only. The next few minutes would see heroes – or death. Warily he approached the cannon, trying to gauge the seas outside.
The bows began to rise again and he tensed, but the downward motion of the cannon abruptly changed course as the wave angled under her keel, and it rumbled headlong towards the ship’s side and where Best stood, paralysed with horror.
It happened very quickly: a fatal wavering and the two-ton monster caught him, snatched him along, and slammed against another – a choking squeal and a brief image of spurting blood, limbs and white bone. Best’s body was flung to the deck.
Yet his sacrifice was the saving of the ship. Caught in the gun’s small wheels his body caused the cannon to slew and stop. Kydd hurled his hammock in its path. Others threw themselves at it, Bryant’s crew with handspikes levering furiously, frantically.
They had won.
Shaken, Kydd needed the open decks. Lord Woolmer lay to a mile or so away, taking seas on her bows in explosions of white, pitching and rolling under her scraps of sail.
Hambly was standing by the main shrouds, looking up at the racing dark clouds and the torn seascape. On seeing Kydd, he shouted, ‘We’re takin’ it more from the west, I fear.’ The rest of his words were snatched away by the wind’s blast.
‘And this means?’ Kydd had not heard Houghton approach behind them. Hambly wheeled round, then respectfully accompanied them to the shelter of the half-deck.
‘Sir, it means the centre o’ the storm is placin’ itself right in our path. We’ll be down t’ bare poles at this rate – we should really bear away an’ scud instead of lyin’ to. There’s no hope this storm is goin’ to blow itself out, sir.’
Kydd wondered whether the real reason Woolmer was hanging on was the reluctance of her captain to deny his passengers hope of a harbour and surcease. To scud was to abandon all attempts even to hold a position and simply fly before the violence, but this was to turn about and be blown back over the miles they had won at such cost.
‘I understand, Mr Hambly, but we stay with them.’
Conditions were deteriorating and it was hard to keep them in sight: the air was filled with stinging spray, the motion of the ship becoming a shuddering heave as the seas grew more confused.
The hours wore on. Kydd imagined what it must be like for the people of Woolmer: an indescribable nightmare, endlessly protracted.
After midday Woolmer finally submitted to fate and made the decision to scud. It would be touch and go: the swells issuing from the storm centre were now more than forty feet high, higher even than the lower yards, and clawed into white streaks by the pitiless wind. They had left it perilously late. To fall off the wind, then run before it they must first pass through the most dangerous time of all – broadside to the powerful seas.
Tenacious stood by while Woolmer began to turn, all aboard holding their breath. Her captain had clearly planned his turn away from the wind, for the small sail left on main and mizzen vanished at exactly the same time as her headsails mounted. The leverage told, and the ship, plunging and rocking like a fractious horse, began putting her bow downwind, faster and faster. A rampaging comber burst on her side, checking her movement, but with the appearance of square sail on her fore – loosed by some heroic topmen aloft – Woolmer completed her turn. Rolling drunkenly at first she settled to her new track.
‘A princely piece of seamanship as ever I’ve seen, and with an injured mast!’ exclaimed Houghton. Kydd quietly agreed: it had been well done indeed.