Command

He had it. He would go to Renzi's sealers and ask them if they had seen the French. And there was a prime place to go— islands that lay directly athwart the passage through Bass Strait, between the continental mainland and the Furneaux group— Kent's group.

'Mr Renzi, I believe it t' be time to make visit to y'r sealers.'

A tiny smile appeared. 'Thank you, Mr Kydd.'

Kydd laid course for the islands. According to the hand-drawn chart, there was clear water all the way. With time fleeting by he would chance a night passage. However, it would be cloudy and dark and their first warning of danger would be the gleam of white breakers in the murk. Suffolk turned her bowsprit northeast and sheeted in for a long beat.

Morning dawned on a tumbling waste of grey-green water and the irregular rounded summits of what appeared to be a double island. 'Cap'n Kent's group,' Kydd said definitively. It was not hard to recognise from the description: as they drew nearer, a deep-cleft channel became evident that completely separated a steep, hummocky island to the east from a smaller to the west.

The islands had been explored only the previous year and Kydd had just the pencilled remarks by the explorer, Murray of the Lady Nelson, on an earlier rudimentary map. He approached cautiously. Granite pillars tinged with the yellows and reds of lichens soared out of the sea at the entrance—a bare few hundred yards across and leading into the cleft passage.

A landing place was marked not far inside. They entered—and in one dizzying motion were gyrated broadside to their track, then round and back again in the grip of a current so fierce that miniature whirlpools formed and re- formed as they were swept along.

About to roar orders to hand sail, Kydd felt the wind die. The sails hung limp, an extraordinary thing with the sea wind's bluster only yards away out of the passage. Helpless, they whirled along as fast as a man could run. Kydd's order changed hastily to an anchoring, but as the readied bower splashed down, a blast of wind from the other direction bullied and blustered at them for long minutes until the lee gunwale was awash. The williwaw eased, and Suffolk swung to her anchor into the current while she snugged down to bare masts.

'A tide rip,' Kydd said to Boyd. 'I should have known it, th' passage running at such a parallel t' Bass Strait. Would've been helpful t' make mention o' this on the chart.'

The boat was prepared, a mast stepped for the run in to the little cove. 'Nicholas?' Kydd was cheered at the first sign of animation he had seen in his friend. Renzi looked about with interest as they curved towards the sandy beach at the head of the cove. A dark-timbered boat lay upside down in the dune grass.

Avoiding rounded red-stained rocks they hissed to a stop at the water's edge and clambered out. Immediately, the back of Kydd's throat was caught by the thick reek of a waft of blubber-oil smoke. A track beaten through the tussocky grass led past the upturned boat. Renzi took the lead energetically and they hurried forward.

Over the rise the track threaded through more dramatic granite pinnacles and suddenly opened into a rough clearing with half a dozen crude huts, constructed of driftwood and bark. In front of one a short man in a leather apron stiff with gore was stuffing chunks of seal flesh into a vast tryworks over a fire.

'Wha' do ye want?' he shrilled nervously. His appearance was the most squalid and dirty that Kydd had ever seen, his grey beard and whiskers sprouting unchecked, his eyes beady and suspicious. An Aboriginal woman emerged from the hut and stood goggling at the intruders.

Renzi seemed taken aback but stepped forward and offered a wicker bottle, which the man snatched greedily. 'I'm here to enquire about the sealing trade, with a view to, er, investment,' he said doubtfully.

The man hefted the bottle and shook it next to his ear before he answered. 'You gov'ment?' he squeaked.

'No,' Renzi said. 'Nor Navy. I want to know directly about you sealers—what's the cost, what's the profit, what you have to do.'

The man cocked his head to one side and cackled harshly. 'Has ye got any vittles? Man gets tired o' seal an' penguin meat b'times.'

'I'm sure I can find you something if my business is concluded satisfactorily,' Renzi offered.

The man nodded. 'What d'ye want t' know, then?' He took a long swig from the bottle, and then began. It was a brutally hard life: men were left alone with provisions on the impossibly remote islands of Bass Strait to hunt seals. A ship would return months or even years later to retrieve them, with their accumulated pelts and oil. Some were entirely on their own while others were joined by runaway convicts and drifters to become sealing gangs.

It was clearly extremely profitable: from nothing to hundreds of sealers, possibly more, in just the few years since discovery implied that an insatiable demand was driving a massive expansion of the industry.

Renzi lightened visibly at this but Kydd broke in impatiently: 'M' friend—we need t' know—have ye b' chance heard anything o' the French? Two fair-size ships bound west'd? We think they want t' claim an' settle somewhere in Van Diemen's Land. Have ye heard tell at all?'

The man screwed up his face in concentration and replied, 'Did see ships, but three on 'em.'

'Three!'

'Two big an' a pawky sloop a week ago. Could be y' French, but me eyes ain't as they was.'

It was doubtful but Kydd persevered: 'Was they t' the north or south o' this island?' If they had taken the north side they were probably on their way through the strait—Robbins and Cumberland would find them. To the south would imply that they were somewhere along the northern coast where Suffolk had been. And if the wretched man was mistaken or lying . . . the French might even now be dropping down the east coast of Van Diemen's Land to make their landings in the far south—in the Derwent.

'Ah, now, I can't rightly remember. North, was it?'

'Thank ye,' Kydd said. The man could tell them little more. 'Now, Nicholas, if you've hoisted aboard enough o' the sealing profession . . .'

Renzi hesitated. 'Dear fellow, if it were at all possible to remain an hour or two more, it would gratify my curiosity infinitely to observe the procedures to be followed in . . . acquiring the pelts.'