The Privateer's Revenge(97)

North-west? Be damned to it! He slipped out of his bunk, grabbed his grego and made the upper deck. "Mr Cheslyn? What's th' meaning of—"

"I've taken in reefs an' we're headin' f'r shelter in Falmouth," he said truculently, against the bluster of the wind.

"Ye've abandoned course!" Kydd burst out in amazement. "An' without s' much as a by-y'-leave?" It was a near treasonable offence in the Navy.

"Take a look f'r y'self!" Cheslyn said, heated, pointing at the layer of darkness near the horizon ahead.

Kydd caught his anger. "An' what's the barometer say?" he asked dangerously.

"A bare twenty-nine—an' losin' fast."

Without a word Kydd crossed to the hatchway, then to the saloon where a neat Fortin barometer hung on gimbals. He looked closely: as he suspected the fiducial point had not been set—the vernier would not read reliably without a true datum. He tapped the mercury column carefully and adjusted the levelling screw, then saw the reading was closer to twenty-nine and a quarter inches, a figure not out of place in a southern English autumn.

Snorting with contempt, he resumed the deck. Behind Cheslyn the stocky figure of Le Cocq was flanked by Gostling and the boatswain, Rosco, hovered uncomfortably. No one spoke.

"Who has th' deck?" Kydd said loudly, knowing full well who it was.

"Me," snapped Cheslyn.

"Get back on course west b' north," Kydd said coldly, "an' we'll douse th' fore staysail I think."

"We reckon it's goin' t' be evil doin's afore long, an' we—"

"We?"

"As every sailor knows, a westerly in th' fall ain't t' be trusted. An' with th' barometer—"

"At twenty-nine and a quarter? What lubber can't do a correction?" Kydd said scornfully. "I've crossed th' Western Ocean enough times an' I know what I see—what ye have ahead is a parcel o' black squalls only, nothing t' fret upon."

It was worrying that Cheslyn, a reputed North Atlantic mariner, was having trouble with this weather—until Kydd realised he might have other more mercenary reasons for a quick visit to Falmouth. "Bear up, there," he commanded the helmsman. "Course, west b' north."

The others flicked anxious glances at Cheslyn, and Kydd wondered darkly what tales of sea-woe he had been spinning to them. "This I'll do," he said. "Should th' glass fall below twenty-nine before dark I'll put about f'r Falmouth."

It was not much of a concession—if it fell so quickly he would flee in any event—but he was confident in his reading of the sea and felt it unlikely. But he missed having a sailing-master to fall back on for advice and the comfort of such wisdom at his side. He was on his own and would have to stand by his decisions.



Just as dusk was closing in, the first line-squalls arrived. As he suspected, they were short-lived but with disconcerting venom, short periods of screaming and droning in the rigging, and bucking in the canvas. Kydd knew that, behind, a series of black squalls was marching in from windward with an abrupt drop in temperature and the wind veering sharply in their wake.

He was determined to press on. The Witch of Sarnia was well found, nearly new, and her gear could be trusted. It would be uncomfortable and daunting to some but they would do it. But once deep into the ocean, what if a real Atlantic howler coming out of the unknown fell upon them?

A black squall, heavy with stinging rain, blustered over them; the keening winds that followed brought a shock of raw cold as they bullied at watch-coats and oilskins. Kydd sent below those he could, but realised this might not have been a mercy to any still finding their sea-legs; in the fitful conditions the schooner was skittish and unpredictable in her movements.

The seas, however, were constant from the west, long combers, white-streaked down their backs and as powerful as bulls, coming at them ceaselessly. Kydd ticked off the seconds between cresting: if the time had increased, the swell was lengthening, a sure sign of weather to windward.

Another squall; in square rig, with these backing and veering winds, there would be heavy work in the bracing of yards and at the tacks of so many more sails, but in the Witch, with but two main sails, it was so much less.

Some time into the dark hours the wind shifted northerly and at the same time the barometer sank below twenty-nine inches. "Time t' turn an' run," Cheslyn said pugnaciously to Kydd.

"In this dark? What codshead would go a-beam in these seas without he knows what's a-comin' at him fr'm windward? We're safe as we go, an' we stay this way."

The next day dawned on a cold, grey waste of heaving, white-streaked seas and sullen cloudbanks, but no sign of the broken and racing scud of a coming storm. "It'll blow itself out," Kydd said confidently. Cheslyn merely stumped below.