Conquest

would be hard put to stop it now.

Some of the braver souls unfurled hammocks and dragged them over the fire but it was hopeless and the flames rose even quicker, licking at the deckhead, spreading evilly. There was a dull whoomf as some tar barrels caught and then a general retreat through the choking smoke.

Suddenly there was a scream from the hatchway. ‘Save y’rselves, mates! There’s another fire forrard!’ On the upper-deck, flames had followed the lines of tar and leaped to the rigging.

There was an instant stampede; there came a point when a fire became a ravening beast let loose with death in its heart, and this no man could withstand.

It was time to leave the ship to her fiery doom. ‘Muster aft, all the hands!’ Kydd bellowed. A quick tally revealed two were missing. ‘Poulden,’ Kydd ordered.

The coxswain snatched at the sleeve of a sailor and they disappeared below. The others shuffled nervously, but Kydd was damned if he’d let them save themselves before the four returned.

The fire forward was spreading astonishingly quickly. The rigging was stiff with preservative tar and the flames shot up the foremast halyards voraciously, catching the varnish of spars and racing along tarry ropes between the masts to start fresh blazes.

One by one they gave way, swinging down in a shower of cinders. Yards robbed of their suspending gear jerked and swayed dangerously. Then sparks began dropping on Kydd and the others from the main-mast, whose rigging had caught.

‘Into the boat, then!’ he snapped. They needed no urging and, yanking it alongside, began scrambling in. Kydd stayed on deck, praying Poulden would soon appear as a rain of burning fragments drove them further aft.

Then Poulden’s smoke-blackened figure burst out of the after-hatchway with his mate, dragging a body with them. ‘Couldn’t get t’ Lofty,’ he said, his voice breaking. The other man looked around piteously and Kydd shied from the thought of what must have passed below.

‘We’re leaving now,’ he said brusquely, and they hurried to the side, Kydd pausing to snatch a line from a belaying pin and fashion a bowline on a bight to lower the corpse down. Anxious faces looked up, flinching at the burning fragments falling from aloft.

Without warning there was a loud, splintering crack above them. Before Kydd could look up, a weather- darkened spar swung down jerkily, trailing flaming ropes and brutally knocking them aside. It ended its careering rush through the centre of the boat, like a giant’s spear.

A shriek of agony from an unfortunate who’d been skewered ended in choking bubbles of his own blood. The cries of the trapped turned to frantic gurgling as the smashed boat filled. Frightened seamen scrabbled back up the side and joined the shocked group on deck, staring at the wreckage containing their dead shipmates settling low in the water.

‘What d’ we do now, sir?’ Poulden asked, ashen-faced. ‘No boat.’

Kydd had no quick answer. L’Aurore’s orders were not to approach Bato on any account, to guard against trickery, and simply await their return. The firing of the ship would have been spotted and the assumption made that it was Kydd’s action. But, worst of all, the boat was on the blind side and nothing would have been seen of their catastrophe. There would be no rescue.

The crackle of blazing timber from forward redoubled; in the light winds flames leaped vertically and now spread across the width of the ship, advancing aft in an unstoppable wall of fire. Kydd saw there was no longer any option – at any moment the fire would reach the ship’s magazines and they would be blown to kingdom come. ‘Into the water!’ he shouted, throwing aside his coat. ‘The magazines are ready to go!’

The seamen raced to the side but stopped dead as one shrieked, ‘Jus’ look at ’em!’ He pointed down, terrified. Lazily flicking past was the huge pale bulk of a shark. Another pallid blur cruised further out, accustomed to the ditching of ‘gash’ overside from Bato – galley scraps and the like.

‘Mr Kydd, sir?’ Poulden beseeched.

The fire – or the sharks? He was the captain.

Kydd snatched another glance over the side. At least three of the monsters were now in view. And the magazine could blow in the next second.

‘We go in!’ he ordered. ‘On m’ order, we jump together next to the boat as will frighten the buggers off. Soon as you’re in, pull yourselves into the wreck.’

It was a last and very desperate hope, but he didn’t allow the men time to think about it. ‘Ready, all? Then go!’ He plummeted into the sea. The others joined him in a confused crash of bodies. Gasping for breath, Kydd saw what was left of the boat, awash and at a crazy angle with the spar projecting, and clumsily struck out for it.

Almost immediately there was a burbling scream and frantic splashing. Twisting round, Kydd saw a giant shark fin cleaving the water towards them at shocking speed. Before his frozen mind could react, it was on them – but, incredibly, it passed them by. Kydd felt a glancing touch from the hard, muscular body.

With frantic desperation, he flailed for the boat, grasped the gunwale and was about to heave himself in when he realised why the sharks had left them alone. Attracted by the blood in the water, they were going for the trapped bodies in savage, battering charges.

More came to join in the frenzy of snapping and tearing: when that meat was gone they would turn on anything to sate their lust for flesh. They had seconds to live.

Against the brutish frenzy the distant hoarse cry was like a dream: ‘Raak niet in paniek Engelsen, we komen!’ Kydd jerked around. A Dutch longboat was pulling strongly out for them – they had seen what had happened and humanity had overcome the imperatives of war. They were saved.

Chapter 6

‘I suppose we must address you now as “Mr Colonial Secretary Renzi”, should we not?’ Baird harrumphed, but he was clearly taken with his first appointment as governor.