Kydd

A fire bucket of seawater bearing the cipher of King George was produced. Measuring his distance, Quentin dashed the full contents against the man’s back.

Donnelly shrieked just once and hung senseless.

A midshipman crumpled to the deck.

Tyrell scowled. “Cut him down,” he grunted.

CHAPTER 4

At a somber dinner Kydd pushed away his wooden platter. It was not possible to eat after the scenes he had witnessed.

“Some says as how you’re not a real sailorman till you’ve got your red-checked shirt at the gangway,” said Bowyer.

Nobody laughed.

“Pat should never’ve got more’n half a dozen,” Doud said, playing with his hard tack. Various growled comments supported him, although Renzi sat in his usual, watchful silence.

“How the bloody hell can y’ take it like this?” Kydd flared. “Are we animals t’ be whipped? Even a pig farmer takes better care o’ his stock. What lunatic way is this?”

“Yer right enough, lad,” Claggett replied. “But yer have ter understand our sea ways too. See, we’re different to youse ashore where you hang a man for stealin’ a handkerchief or clap him in a bridewell fer bein’ half slewed in the street.”

“Me brother was transported ter Botany Bay fer twitchin’ just two squiddy cock pheasants,” Whaley agreed.

Claggett nodded. “Well, what I means to say is that if we chokes off everyone on board what does somethin’ wrong, why, soon we’d have no one left to man the barky. Besides which, makes no sense to bang anyone up in irons doing nothin’ fer too long, or we’d soon be gettin’ shorthanded. An’ that makes no sense if we meets a blow, or comes up with an enemy.” He finished his grog. “So everythin’ we does is short and sharp, and back on course again, yardarms square, ’n’ all a-taunto!”

In a low voice Bowyer added, “But there was no call for Tyrell to come the hard horse like that. Pat’s a right good hand. Has a short fuse only.”

Kydd brought up the subject again when the two returned to the maintop. Bowyer was working on one of the many blocks. His keen-edged knife split the frayed strapping, which pulled away from the deep score around the wooden shell of the block. He began a short splice on a new length of rope to create a circular shape.

“Joe, you really think floggin’ a man is right?”

“It’s one way o’ discipline, we do hold with that, but there’s them what makes too free with it, and that’s demeanin’ to our honor,” Bowyer said seriously, twisting the splice to make it lie more easily. His marline spike had an eye, a length of twine secured it to his belt and Kydd guessed that this was to prevent it from falling on the heads of those below.

“Here, clap on to this,” Bowyer said.

Kydd did as he was told, extending the circle so Bowyer could ply his wooden serving mallet to apply a tight spun yarn covering continuously around.

“It’s important to us – that is to say, we.” Bowyer smiled at Kydd. “A sailor has pride, ’n’ so he should. There’s none can hold a candle to us in the article o’ skill. I’d like to see one of them there circus akrybats step out on a topsail yard, take in a stuns’l when it comes on to blow. Or one of yer book-learned lawyers know the half of how to cat and fish a bower anchor.”

The covering finished, Bowyer put the serving mallet aside and flexed the stiff circle. He settled it over the scored part and offered the block to Kydd. “Hold it in place here, mate,” he said, and prepared to apply a stout round seizing at the base of the block to bowse the strap close in. “You see, Tom, when we gets a thunderin’ squall comes up and we has to get aloft and get in sail, we don’t want no misgivin’s about the jack next to yer on the yardarm. In the short of it, I’m saying we has our loyalty, and it’s to our mates, our ship and the Navy.” He seemed uncomfortable with expressing sentiment, but finished firmly, “But we expects it back, shipmate.” The seizing was finished with riding turns and crossed. “There you are, Tom – take pride in yer work ’n’ you can be sure it’ll return the compliment ’n’ look after you, just when yer come t’ need it.” Bowyer carefully gathered up the odd bits of twine and stranded rope, and put them in his leather belt pouch. “Ned, keep a weather eye for that toggled lift coming up, mate,” he told Doud. “Kydd is goin’ to be a-learnin’ some bends ’n’ hitches.”

He reached for a light jigger tackle belayed to a cleat and helped himself to its end. “Now, Tom, this could save yer life one day. It’s called the bowline, an’ it’s the only one you c’n tie one-handed.”

Bowyer was a good teacher, patient and with a vast fund of salty asides to give meaning to what was being done. He made Kydd practice each action until it was instinctive. “Middle of a gale o’ wind ain’t no time to be puzzlin’ over which way to bend on a line – your mates relying on yer an’ all.”

Kydd descended from the tops to the lower world with a twinge of regret. Something of Bowyer’s simple contentment at the exercise of his sea skills was attractive to him, especially when contrasted with the harsh imperatives of life on the lower deck. He imagined wistfully what it would be like to be a true son of the sea.

Toward evening one or two boats were still circling the ship, forlornly hoping for a change of heart, but whenever they closed on the Duke William they were menaced with the threat of a cold shot hove through their bottom. Eyes aboard the old ship watched hungrily, but it was common knowledge that Tyrell had told the Master-at-Arms that if any came aboard, then he himself would be turned before the mast as a common seaman. Even so, shoreside grog somehow found its way on board and before the end of the dog-watches there were eight men in irons – long bars along which iron shackles slid, seizing them by their legs as securely as the stocks ashore.

At supper there was little avoiding the topic.

“It’s fair burstin’ me balls just watching them trugs in the boats!” Whaley tried to laugh, but a cloud of depression hung about him.

Howell leered at him. “Like as not, boy, we’re goin’ to ground on our own beef bones waiting for somethin’ to happen, and no steppin’ ashore in the meantime, not with our hellfire jack of a first luff! So best you get used to the idea, cully!”

Kydd tried not to notice Bowyer’s downcast silence. He looked over at Wong. The man’s forehead glistened, but otherwise his bearing gave nothing away, and therefore Kydd almost missed the slight movement of his hands. His pale stubby fingers held a tankard, and as if of its own tiredness, the pewter slowly crumpled into a shapeless ball, the rest of Wong’s body remaining quite motionless.

“And so say us all, that so, mate?” Doud’s attempt to draw in Buddles failed, the man’s misery was so deep.

Doud got to his feet. “Gotta see a man about a dog,” he said, and hurried off, but not before receiving an approving wink from Claggett.

“Hear tell as how you’re skylarkin’ in the tops now, Tom.” Whaley looked at Kydd with interest: for a landman only days aboard to have made it aloft so soon must indicate something of his mettle.

Kydd flushed with pleasure. He was being included in the general conversation for the first time in this mess, and felt pleased that it was Whaley, the born seaman, who had done so. “Couldn’t help it – Joe would’ve given me a quiltin’ with a rope’s end, else,” he said, a wide smile firmly in place.

Howell stirred with irritation. “Said before, younker, you’re a land-man ’n’ not bred to the sea. Ye’ll take a tumble off a yard first blow we gets and -”

“Clap a stopper on it, Jonas. Man wants t’ be a sailor, is all.”

Doud arrived back, and Kydd recognized what was going on in the play with the jacket and Buddles’s pot.

Doud pushed across the pot with its dark mahogany contents. “Get this in yer, cuffin,” he said quietly. “Things’ll look different after, you’ll see.”

Buddles stared at him, then took a good swallow, sputtering his thanks. No one seemed to know quite what to say to him, and stared at the table or looked pensively at each other.

The conversation turned to other subjects over the greasy boiled salt pork, which followed.