Command

the landing place on the bleak-walled Lazaretto Island. The nervous boat's crew insisted on lying off while Kydd went in to enquire. It took him moments only to discover that Renzi was no longer there; apparently he should have gone to Isla del Rey, the round island up the harbour where the hospital and its records were.

'L'tenant Renzi of Tenacious,' he insisted yet again, to the man at the door. This time it brought results: an intense, dark-featured Iberian appeared. 'Yes?' he asked brusquely, wiping his hands on a towel. Kydd explained himself. 'He lives still,' the man grunted. Hope flooded back. 'But not for long. If you wan' say goodbyes, come now.'

The cloying, sickly smell of suffering humanity hit him like a wall, bringing back unbearable memories of his time in a yellow-fever hospital in the Caribbean. 'Here,' the Iberian said, with a gesture, and stood back cynically.

Kydd bent over the pitiable grey form. It was Renzi. 'M' friend—' he said huskily, but a lump in his throat prevented him continuing.

'He c'n not hear you.'

'May I know—the fever, is it—'

'Is not infecting. Th' fools on your ships know nothing.'

'How—how long?'

'It is th' undulant fever—do you know this?'

'No,' said Kydd, in a low voice.

'He has a week—a month. Who know? Then . . .'

'Is there any cure, at all?'

'No.' The finality in his voice sounded like the slam of a door. Then he added, 'Some believe th' change of air, but I cannot say.'

The boat trip back to Teazer in the bright sunshine was a hard trial; all he wanted now was the solitude of his cabin to grapple with what he had seen. His dearest friend on his deathbed, a motionless grey form. So different from the man who had roped himself to Kydd when they cast themselves into the sea at the wreck of Artemis, who had been by his side at Acre with bloody sword as they defied Napoleon himself. More images came and Kydd bit his lip and endured until the boat finally reached Teazer.

After he had come aboard Dacres handed him a packet. The promised orders had arrived. But Kydd needed time to face what had happened. His particular friend, who had shared so many of the adventures that had formed him, and given him the chances that had led to this, the culmination of his life, was dying—and he could do nothing.

His fists balled while helplessness coursed through him. Then he took a deep breath to steady himself.

He took up his orders, now his only link with normality, the real world, and his duty. Life—naval life—had to go on, and if there was anything to which Renzi had scrupulously held, it was his duty.

The packet of orders was thin. Normally containing signals in profusion and pages of ancillary matters, this appeared to consist only of a single folded paper. He slit the seal and opened it out: it was curt, precise and to the point. Teazer was to sail for England with immediate effect. She was to proceed thence to Plymouth, the nearest big port. There, her commission would come to an end and she would be placed in ordinary, laid up, her masts, riggings, sails and guns removed. Her ship's company to disperse, her officers' commissions to terminate and her commander to become unemployed.

It was the end of everything.

CHAPTER 10

IT WAS NOT AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN, his return to the land of his birth. Still numb with shock at the way his fortunes had changed so precipitously, the sight of the sprawling promontory of the Lizard, bleak against the desolate cold grey autumn seas, left him sad and empty.

The disintegration of the life he had come to love so much had started almost immediately when the Maltese had refused to continue to England and had left the ship. He had let Bonnici go with them and the few others who preferred a Mediterranean sea life to the uncertainties of peacetime Britain, and sailed short-handed.

Some of Teazer's company were eager to return, those with families, loved ones, a future. Others were subdued, caught by the sudden alteration in their lives and the uncertainty of what lay ahead.

The Eddystone lighthouse lay to starboard as they headed for Plymouth Sound and shaped course for the naval dockyard. There seemed to be so many more craft plying the coasts than Kydd remembered and each seemed bent on throwing herself across Teazer 's track.

The desolation Kydd felt had only one small glimmer of light: Renzi still clung to life. Kydd had seized on the one thing that he had heard might benefit his friend: a change of air. He had cleared out his great cabin, then stretchered Renzi aboard and set Tysoe to caring for him. The fever was still in full spate, coming in spiteful waves, and while Kydd sat with him there was no sign that Renzi understood what was going on.

Time passed in a series of final scenes: the growing definition of land to greens and blacks and the occasional scatter of village dwellings, passing Drake Island and the grandeur of Plymouth Hoe, then the concluding passage to larboard and around Devil's Point to the wider stretch of the Hamoaze.

The vast Admiralty dockyard was located along the east side of the Tamar River; for the best part of a mile the shore was pierced with graving docks and lined with ordnance wharves, quays and jetties without counting. And inland, as far as the eye could see, there were long stone buildings and chimneys, storehouses and smith's shops, sail lofts and mast houses in endless industrial display.

But Kydd had no eyes for these wonders. Even the impressive sight of ships-of-the-line in stately rows and the heart-catching sadness of the long file of little ships secured head to tail in mid-channel in ordinary did not divert him. There was one last service he could do for Renzi: his poor racked body, tightly wrapped against the late autumn misery, was landed and taken to the naval hospital at Stonehouse.

In the days that followed Kydd himself suffered: HMS Teazer had reached the end of her sea service and, by degrees, was rendered a shell fit to join the melancholy line of others at the trots. As they were de-stored, the ship's company was paid off and departed until, in an unnatural, echoing solitude, there was left only the purser, his clerk and the standing officers, who would remain until the ship was sold or disposed of— the boatswain, carpenter, gunner and cook.