Betrayal

Easing into a smile, Dougal slid across the bread barge, a wicker basket that held pre-broken hard tack and carefully sliced cheese. Kydd took a piece of the wood-hard and greyish cheese and helped himself to the dry biscuit, which he calmly tapped on the table. No weevils emerged and he tucked in with appreciation, feeling the disbelieving eyes of the three foremast hands on him.

‘We’ve the Dago biltong to follow,’ piped up Beekman, a South African midshipman originally brought aboard Diomede in Cape Town. He hesitantly offered some to Kydd.

‘Thank ’ee,’ he said, with a grin, and set to on the dried beef strips. These were not the spicy, toothsome morsels of Africa he’d enjoyed but they would have to do. With no galley fire in a craft so diminutive there could be no coffee or piping hot kai – cocoa stripped from a chocolate block – until they made port once more but there was a welcome mug of grog: Kydd had insisted that it be included in the rations.

As the evening drew on, the talk eddied back and forth over the age-old sailorly concerns of wind and weather, the quality of Buenos Aires as a step-ashore port, the prospects for action. Inevitably it turned to the immediate future, and Beekman asked, ‘Sir, if you please, things are in a pretty moil, you’ll agree. What will happen to us if- ?’

‘Don’t pay any mind to that, m’lad,’ Kydd said heartily. ‘We’ve one parcel of Spanish locked up on the north shore and we’ve just beaten the other. All we’ve to do is hold out until the reinforcements arrive.’

‘When’s that, then, sir?’ the young man said artlessly.

‘Who’s to say? Tomorrow, next week? On the way here the commodore sent dispatches from St Helena requesting ’em, which I saw with my own eyes. They’ll be here shortly, never fear.’

Knowing that the rest of the table were behind him, the midshipman persisted. ‘If’n Mr Liniers gets across and joins with the goochies, the Army’ll be hard pressed to hold ’em. And if we can’t get ships in close to give fire . . .’

Kydd nodded: these were no ignorant loobies and deserved an answer. ‘If things go against us, we retire,’ he said flatly. ‘Take the Army off and return to Cape Town. No heroic last stands. Clear?’

It seemed to satisfy and he stretched and yawned. ‘Well, I’m for my ’mick. I’ll take a turn about the uppers and then get my head down. Dougal, I’m to be called the instant there’s a change o’ weather or tide.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

‘Goodnight, then,’ Kydd pronounced, and left for his customary sniff at the wind before sleep.

The weather had eased even further: there was nothing but a light offshore breeze and the pale dappling of wavelets. The moon was totally hidden behind low cloud that stretched in a sullen stillness in every direction, leaving a dull, uniform luminosity just sufficient to make out the low, scrubby shoreline.

He shivered. The thought came again that the sooner he was quit of this place the better. Then he paused for a moment, something subliminal touching his senses. The scene was blameless, a bird flapping on the sea the only disturbance, and nothing but a grey desolation of mud-flats and reeds.

Hairs prickled on his neck – there was something.

‘Keep a bright lookout, you men,’ he called, and stood for a space, listening intently. Nothing. Then something caught his eye along the shoreline to the left – he strained to see but couldn’t make out anything, then tried the old lookout’s ruse of looking off to one side to trick the eye into perceiving motion.

And then he saw. somewhere among the scruffy wooded inland, a barely perceptible spider-web-thin vertical line that moved. And, close by, another. He froze, trying to make sense of it. Then he had it.

‘Get below and turn up the hands!’ he barked. They tumbled up, confused and blinking.

‘Sir?’ Dougal said, with a bewildered look.

‘The Spanish. They’re in the channel under oars and mean to take us.’ Too long the stalker, they had not imagined themselves to be prey – Kydd mentally took off his hat to the audacious commander who had looked to turn the tables on them.

It was their masts he had seen, unavoidably above the level of the undergrowth as they made their way stealthily out to the open water. The question now was whether to open fire as soon as they were visible or keep quiet to lure them near and to destruction.

But there was a big risk. If these two had soldiers to swell their boarders the Stalwarts might easily be overwhelmed. And if they were resolutely handled they could press home their attack through Stalwart’s ‘broadside’, which consisted only of the two carronades and two swivels. After that they were defenceless, apart from their small arms.

This implied a single course of action: allow the Spanish to believe their surprise had been successful, then open up with everything that could fire in a single devastating blast of shot. In the night it might be terrifying enough to deter the onslaught or, at the very least, to gain them enough time to reload.

‘Silence fore ’n’ aft!’ Kydd snapped, and made his dispositions, having the men keep out of sight until his order. Each had a blade weapon and a brace of pistols with four muskets lying in the chest, while the oil lamp was suspended out of sight by rope yarns, ready to be lashed to the foremast as a fighting lantern for reloading the carronades.

There was little more he could do.

Water chuckled against the vessel’s side, the wind dropping yet more to a cold night zephyr bringing a stillness that carried every sound in breathless clarity. The distant betraying slither and clunk of unmuffled oars on the air became plain as the two faluchos emerged from the channel and came around. Kydd gave a conspiratorial grin at Dougal, lying on the deck next to him – that would never do in a professional cutting-out expedition.

It was a half-mile of hard pulling for them; they could have hoisted sail and done it in less time but the sudden pale glimmer of canvas would have been an immediate giveaway. Kydd was content to let them tire themselves, the better to dull their fighting ardour.

At two hundred yards he hissed, ‘Stand by!’

In the winter gloom men gripped their weapons, loosened pistols in readiness and tensed for the order.

‘Fire!’ Kydd roared.

The night was split apart by multiple flashes and concussion as ball, grape and musket fire hammered into the hapless faluchos, shrieks and shouts accompanying the mayhem. Slewing sideways the leader canted to one side, out of the fight, but the other stretched out frantically with the obvious intention of falling on Stalwart before her guns were reloaded.

The fighting lantern was in place but to go through the motions with sponge, rammer and charge was asking a lot of men who were half blinded by gun-flash. Kydd felt a creeping anxiety as the enemy craft came in fast, broad on their beam. An officer was shouting encouragement and foreign-sounding cheers came floating over the water.

Kydd saw the white face of Beekman looking back at him from forward, waiting on his decision. A gentle puff of the night breeze came; they were at anchor, stemming the slight current and-

‘Get that mizzen hoisted!’ he bellowed, in sudden conviction.

Startled, men turned in incomprehension.

‘Now! Hoist the bugger!’ His voice cracked with the effort, but it lashed them into movement. Two seamen clambered aft and helped him raise the ponderous sail. It flapped twice, then bellied, and under the leverage of sail aft on the anchor forward, Stalwart obediently began swinging into the wind – bows on to the approaching enemy.

It had worked! Now the target they offered was reduced and, most important, under oars there was no easy coming in to board at an angle amidships; instead they must either grapple and come in over the bow by ones and twos or crab around to get alongside while under fire the whole time.

They chose the bows.

With three men on muskets and pistols and two reloading, Stalwart did what she could but a grapnel came sailing in and hauled the craft together, the other bowsprit spearing over their fore-deck until the two were awkwardly locked side by side. With a roar of triumph the enemy boarders crowded forward.

Throwing aside their empty pistols the defenders drew their cutlasses and, with bared teeth, dared them to try. The first two ran out on the bowsprit – if Stalwart had had pikes they would have been dead men – and with sword points extended they leaped down either side, then raced for the defenders.

Kydd had four men in a line across the wider part of the triangular fore-deck and the two closed with a vicious