Quarterdeck(59)

His eyes met Hambly’s: there was understanding but no compassion. Without a word Kydd turned and made his way down to the main deck where the watch on deck shivered, hunkered down in the lee of the weather bulwarks.

They looked up as he descended, their faces dull, fatigued, and pinched with cold. He paused. How could he order them to go aloft into a howling icy hell? Perhaps some rousing speech to the effect that the ship, they themselves even, depended on them taking their lives into their hands and going aloft? No. Kydd had been in their place and knew what was needed.

His face hardened. ‘Off y’r rumps, y’ lazy swabs. I want th’ main tops’l handed, now.’ They pulled themselves slowly to their feet. Their weary, stooped figures and bloodshot eyes wrung his heart.

‘Lay aloft!’ he roared. Every man obeyed. Kydd allowed a grim smile to surface. ‘An’ there’ll be a stiff tot f’r every man jack waiting for ye when you get back. Get moving!’

For two hours, ninety feet above Kydd’s head, the men fisted the stiff sail in a violently moving, lethal world. Fingernails split and canvas was stained with blood, tired muscles slipped on icy wood and scrabbled for a hold, minds retreating into a state of numbed endurance.

And for two hours, Kydd stood beneath, his fists balled in his pockets, willing them on, feeling for them, agonising. That day he discovered that there was only one thing of more heroism than going aloft in such a hell: the moral courage to order others to do it.

For two more days Tenacious fought her way clear of the storm, which eventually headed north, increasing in malevolence as it went. On the third day the Sambro light was raised – and, after a night of standing off and on, HMS Tenacious entered harbour.





Chapter 7



‘Damn! That cursed tailor will hound me to my grave,’ groaned Pringle. The mail-boat had arrived back from the dockyard and the wardroom sat about the table opening letters and savouring news from home.

Adams, clutching six, retired to his cabin but Bampton slipped his into a pocket and sipped his brandy, balefully watching the animation of the others.

Kydd was trying to make sense of his borrowed Essays on Politesse Among Nations, despairing of the turgid phraseology; his restraint in matters social, and sudden access of interest in literature, was generally held to be owing to some obscure improving impulse, and he was mostly left to it.

‘You don’t care for letters, Mr Kydd,’ Pybus said, with acerbity. He had received none himself, but was still scratching away lazily with his quill.

Kydd looked up and saw that there was indeed one letter left on the table. ‘For me?’ He picked it up. ‘From m’ sister, Doctor,’ he said. She wrote closely, and as usual had turned the page and written again at right-angles through the first to be frugal in the postage.

‘Well?’ demanded Pybus.

But Kydd was not listening.

Dear Thomas – or should I say Nicholas as well? I do hope you are keeping well, my dears, and wrapping up warm. The willows are budding early along the Wey here in Guildford and . . .

The words rushed on, and Kydd smiled to picture Cecilia at her task. Her evident concern for them both warmed him but her admiration for him as an officer in the King’s Navy sparked melancholy.

A hurried paragraph concluded the letter:

. . . and Father says that it would be of service to him should you enquire after his brother Matthew. You remember they came to some sort of a misunderstanding an age ago, and his brother sailed to Philadelphia? Papa says that was in 1763. Since then we have heard nothing of him, except that in the War for Independence he was a loyalist and went north with the others to Halifax in about 1782. Thomas, it would so please Papa to know that he is alive and well – do see if you can find him!

Of course, his uncle: an adventurer in this wilderness land, carving a future for himself – or perhaps he was a successful trader, even a shipowner in the profitable Atlantic trade routes.

‘News?’ Pybus said drily.

‘Oh, aye. Seems it could be m’ uncle is here, Doctor, in Halifax. Who would credit it?’ A Kydd ashore, possibly one who had achieved eminence in society and was highly thought of in the community. For the first time in a long while he felt a rush of excitement. ‘I do believe I’m t’ visit him today.’

‘Kydd – Mr Matthew Kydd.’ It was strange uttering the words. There were not so many Kydds in the world that it felt anything other than his own name.

The man he had stopped considered for a moment. ‘Can’t say as I’ve heard of the gentleman, sir,’ he said finally. ‘You may wish to try Linnard’s the tailors. You’ll understand they know all the gentry hereabouts.’ But Kydd was tiring of the chase. It was becoming clear that his uncle was far from being a notable in Halifax. It had been foolish of him to imagine that one of modest origins could have pretences at high office – but this did not mean that he had not secured a lesser, well-respected place in society.