Command

A bell or two before the end of the watch, the squall had eased.

East Indiamen and others had the comfortable habit of snugging down to topsails during night hours but Captain's Orders specified that Tenacious, in common with most vessels in the Navy, must press on under all plain sail. Kydd's duty, therefore, was to set courses again.

It would have been more practical, though, to leave it until the end of the watch, less than an hour away: after breakfast both watches would be on deck to make short work of it. In any case, a pressing need for speed was irrelevant in the endless beat of blockade.

Rowley was correct in the strictest sense, that Kydd was in dereliction of orders, and was bringing the matter —and all the other equally mindless 'offences'—to the attention of the admiral, who would be obliged to take the part of one of his captains.

An awkward shuffling and clinking outside Kydd's cabin signalled the posting of a marine sentry. There would no longer be any privacy and the officers would ignore him for fear of being tainted. Only the first lieutenant would take it calmly, logically. Renzi would know how to act in the matter, but Kydd had vowed that his friend would not be drawn into the insanity between Rowley and himself.

His anger ebbed but his thoughts raced. It was less than two years since he had stood, with bloody sword, at the ancient walls of Acre and watched as Buonaparte skulked away in defeat. How things had changed. With brazen daring, the man had abandoned his army to its fate and escaped to France, where he had risen to the top in a power struggle and declared himself First Consul of the Republic with dictatorial powers. He had then brought together the military resources of the entire French nation into one fearsome fighting machine.

For the British, their earlier return to the Mediterranean had been crowned with success: defeat and annihilation for Buonaparte's great invasion fleet at the Nile followed by domination of the sea.

The last major French presence, the fortress of Malta, had recently capitulated after a desperate siege, and the fleet was free to concentrate on locking up the remaining enemy forces in Toulon, off which they lay in close blockade.

Why then was there a sense of unease, of foreboding in the wardrooms of the fleet? It had seemed to Kydd that the very pillars of existence had trembled and proved fragile. Then, too, his great hero Nelson had scandalised many by his open dalliance with the wife of the ambassador to Naples and his subsequent involvement with political intrigue in that city. Kydd had stoutly defended him, even when Nelson was relieved of his command and recalled.

More generally troubling was the resignation of Pitt, the prime minister who had been so successfully conducting the war against such great odds. On the face of it, this had been on a matter of principle but it was widely held that he was exhausted and in ill-health. His successor was Addington, whose administration, of colourless jobbery, had already drawn from Canning the cruel epigram: 'Pitt is to Addington as London is to Paddington.'

And everyone mourned at the news that the King had suffered a relapse into madness on being informed of Pitt's departure from office. It was a depressing backdrop against which the war was being fought and bitterness surged back as Kydd contemplated his future . . .

His interview with the commander-in- chief had been mercifully brief. Keith, a forbidding figure whom Kydd had only seen before at formal occasions, had listened with an expression of distaste as Rowley had brought out his smooth litany of the younger man's shortcomings.

Before evening, orders had arrived that now saw him staring moodily out to sea as a passenger in HMS Stag, a light frigate escort to a convoy approaching Malta.

It might have been worse. He had received orders to report for duty in distant Malta and at least had not been summarily dismissed from his ship. No adverse entry would appear on his service record. His career, though, was now all but over. Malta had run down its naval presence since the surrender six months earlier and, as far as Kydd was aware, only minor vessels were attending to the usual dull tasks of a backwater. All of the real action was at the other end of the Mediterranean.

The officers of the frigate had taken to ignoring him and his moods, no doubt making up their own minds about the reasons for his removal. He didn't care: he was leaving their world and mentally preparing himself for the narrowing of professional and social horizons that would be his lot.

There was a scattering of familiar faces from Tenacious on the foredeck—Laffin, Poulden, others—part of an augmentation of hands from the fleet for the Malta Service. Away from the discipline and boredom of blockade, they appeared in good spirits. One of the midshipmen volunteers was Bowden; heaven only knew why such an intelligent and experienced youngster had turned his back on the opportunities of big-fleet service under the eye of an admiral.

An irregular blue-grey smudge became visible on the horizon, one of Malta's outer islands; the convoy would be safely delivered before night. His spirits rose a little with the familiar excitement of a new landfall, but the memory of Renzi's farewell intruded and bleakness lowered in Kydd over the loss of their friendship. Never again would they debate philosophy during night watches in the South Seas, or step ashore together in exotic foreign ports.

Kydd and Renzi had been able to stay together as foremast hands because volunteers could choose the ship they served in, but officers were appointed at the whim of the Admiralty. They had been lucky enough to remain serving in the ship into which they had been promoted, Tenacious, but it could not last and now they had finally parted.

He wondered if he would ever see Renzi again. It was more than possible that he would not, unless their respective ships were in the same port at the same time. As the war spread far across the globe, that was increasingly unlikely.

Renzi's farewell gift to Kydd had been his own first edition of Wordsworth, which Kydd knew he had treasured; he felt unhappy that he had had no gift of equal worth to press upon his friend. With few words spoken, they had parted quickly, each to his separate destiny.

Depressed, Kydd had no real interest in their arrival. The main town of Malta and their final destination, Valletta, was in the south-east, a series of great fortresses occupying the length of a peninsula, with indented harbours on either side and more fortifications on each opposite shore.

Kydd went below to find his dispatch case, given to him by Keith's aide. He had a duty to deliver the contents ashore at the earliest opportunity; the rest of his baggage could wait until he knew more of his fate. He returned on deck, waited for the boat, then climbed aboard with other officers for the short trip to the stone quayside.

More boats from other vessels of the convoy converged on the landing place in an unholy scrimmage as seniorities were demanded loudly and boats manoeuvred deftly to land their passengers ahead of others. The Barriera, a stockaded enclosure, held the new arrivals until they could prove a clean bill of health to the Pratique Office and were granted the right to land.