Under the looming dark heights of the squall, the headland merged into misty white curtains of rain. Trying to control his impatience, Kydd judged that their encounter with the brigantine would occur before the rain reached them. Nothing could be better calculated to pull his ship together as a fighting band than a successful prize-taking.
At the forehatch men unable to contain themselves snatched a look. "Keep th' heads down, y' blaggards!" he bellowed. The stranger would be wielding telescopes, too.
The offshore island disappeared into the advancing rain curtain and Kydd's gaze turned to the vessel. As he tried to make out more detail its perspective altered, curving ponderously round to take up on a course away, back where it had come. They had been discovered.
"Sheet away, y' lubbers!" he shouted, at the men boiling up from below. The stranger—now the chase—was hard by the wind, clawing as desperately as it could to windward but it had lost much ground and now lay barely a mile ahead. A lazy smile came to Kydd's face: in their panic they had put the helm to the wrong side and now found themselves on the other tack to Bien Heureuse. They could not possibly weather the headland.
"We have him now." Kydd laughed. "He'll be ours afore sundown." They would keep to seaward and wait for the chase to come out to them.
Bien Heureuse was lined with eager privateersmen, each hungrily making the same calculation. A sizeable merchantman with a small crew, judging by their tardiness in putting about and taking up close-hauled. Her cargo? Probably returning from Biscay with wine and brandy, risking a quick dash across Baie de Saint Brieuc—a pity for him that a Guernsey privateer just happened to be round the point.
There was no hope for the Frenchman and Kydd wondered why he held on so doggedly. Then the first squall arrived. In a wash of cold down-draught Bien Heureuse entered a wall of rain, passing into a hissing roar of water that stippled the sea white in a drenching deluge. It stunned the wind momentarily and the sails hung limp and wet.
They emerged damp and chill but the chase was still ahead and closer. Then another wall of rain closed round them, and the sails, now deprived of a steady wind, flapped and banged. Visibility was reduced to yards, and the seas lost their liveliness as they were beaten to rounded hillocks in the swell.
Kydd squinted into the chaos, which seemed to go on and on. Where was everything in this never-ending rain world? Uneasily aware of the treacherous currents surging over unforgiving ground he gave the order to veer sheets and Bien Heureuse slowed to a crawl.
The rain volleyed in a loud drumming on their deck, gurgling down the lee scuppers; when it finally stopped, the chase had disappeared. The headland was much closer but there was no sign of the brigantine. Had he successfully weathered the headland? If so, he was away up the coast and could be anywhere.
Then Kydd saw the offshore island again—it was well within reach and would make a perfect place for the Frenchman to lurk out of sight while Kydd went chasing past, then take up on his old course, his voyage delayed only by a few hours.
"Lay us t' wind'ard o' that island!" Kydd snapped. The breeze had picked up and pierced like a knife through his sodden clothes. He shuddered.
"The island?" Rowan said uncertainly. "Are ye sure?"
"He thinks t' wait out o' sight—he's too lubbardly t' have weathered th' point," Kydd said.
Tranter cut in: "I don't reckon he's there at all. We're wastin' time—"
"Get y' men ready f'r a boardin', Mr Tranter, an' you stop y' pratin'!" Kydd answered, with sudden anger.
His heart fell at the sight of the rabble in the waist. They were as unlike a naval boarding party as it was possible to be, jabbering, excited men with drawn cutlasses and lurid headgear. Where was the lethal discipline of a sectioned assault? Where the calm weighing of opportunity and deadly resolve?
"Hold 'em there, Mr Tranter," Kydd called, with an edge of sarcasm. They were up against terrified merchant sailors and the likelihood was that any fight would be minimal.
A nine-pounder was cleared away and Kydd sent Calloway to the forward crew to stiffen them. They were as ready as they could be.
Drawing near, the island seemed the ideal bolt-hole, and at a respectful distance they took time to round the white-fringed weather shore. Kydd kept his telescope up, straining for sight of a naked mast above the irregular lumpiness of the bare rock.
They circled the island in silence, ready for a panic-stricken dash. Nothing. At a loss Kydd carefully quartered the sea. The brigantine had to be somewhere, a little cove perhaps, a hidden river mouth . . . The prey had escaped.
Tranter snorted and stormed below. The men followed in ones and twos, with scornful looks aft.