experience before elevation to flag rank.
'Kydd, brig-sloop
'Joining the Downs from where, Mr. Kydd?' the officer said distantly, as they walked together.
'The Channel Islands, for m' sins,' Kydd said, as lightly as he could.
Boyd raised one eyebrow. 'A sea change of note,' he said drily. 'You've seen active service, no doubt.'
'The Nile—and Acre following,' Kydd said, with a touch of defiance.
Boyd stopped. 'Did you really, by God?' he said, suddenly respectful. The droll affectation fell away as he resumed walking. 'Then you'll relish the Downs—no end to the sport to be had there.'
They entered a small office and a worried-looking lieutenant glanced up from his desk. 'Do carry on, Dukes,' Boyd told him testily, then asked Kydd, 'You have somewhere to stay?'
'The White Hart in Charles Street.'
Boyd nodded, then crossed to gaze out of the window. His office overlooked the vast parade-ground behind Horse Guards, the army headquarters further along. Distant screams of sergeants and the regular tramp of soldiers in formation drifted up in the warm sunshine. He turned back to Kydd. 'The volunteers. Always at their marching up and down, I see. Now, Mr. Kydd, I rather think you'll need me to provide something a trifle more useful than I can at short notice. Shall we say tomorrow at ten?'
'At ten would be most civil in you, sir.'
'Oh, and it might be politic to present yourself at the Admiralty reception tonight,' Boyd added. 'A Russian who thinks to mount some expedition that has our interest. Carriages at six—swords and decorations, I'm afraid.'
'No, sir. Mr. Renzi has not yet returned,' Tysoe informed him.
Kydd sighed and took an armchair. His friend could be anywhere in the vast, seething city, after some musty book or arranging to meet a savant—just when he needed reassurance before an important social occasion, both formal and diplomatic. Idly, he picked up the morning newspaper. A theatre scandal occupied all of three columns and trading figures for the stock exchange were neatly summarised on the right, but by far the majority of articles were in some way connected to the war.
One piece dealt at tedious length with a review by the Duke of York of the Medway militia battalions. A breathless editorial alerted the faithful readers to the dangers of a Baltic embargo on ship timber. Another item reported that the conveyance of a trade minister of Spain, said to be very soon an enemy state, had been set upon by a mob and lucky to escape with his life. The pretext had been a punitive increase on duty for imported Spanish wines. Hardly his fault, Kydd thought wryly.
He turned to the next page and stared in surprise at a detailed picture of a vast platform of heroic dimensions, fit to carry a regiment of men and horses and held aloft by a dozen fire balloons of the kind that the Montgolfier brothers had demonstrated before the French Revolution. In earnest words, the newspaper reiterated its promise to keep its readers informed of the plans of Napoleon Bonaparte to deploy such craft in great numbers for the invasion of Britain—ten thousand men and guns to cross the water as fast as a galloping horse, then descend from the skies in irresistible numbers, visiting upon Britain what the continent had already suffered.
It was pointed out gravely that if any would doubt it they had only to recall the historic first flight across the Channel by Jeffries and Blanchard, which had occurred all of twenty years before.
Kydd paused. He had no idea of the practicality of the scheme but if it were true then the Navy would be helpless to defend the shores as the giant platforms sailed across overhead to invade. It was a menace as unanswerable as that which he had heard from a garrulous army officer in the coach, that Bonaparte was employing his idle army in Boulogne to dig a tunnel under the Channel.
Kydd tried to dismiss a mental picture of battalions of crack grenadiers suddenly pouring out of the earth in the pretty countryside of Kent to overwhelm the local volunteers. Yet who could say it was impossible? At one wheelbarrow of earth from each man every twenty minutes, with a quarter of a million men, it would not take so very long to tunnel the eighteen miles. Bonaparte had been preparing his invasion now for more than a year; the tunnel might be nearing completion at that very moment.
'How's this, sir? As some might say, a brown study?' Renzi had returned unnoticed and came to sit in the other chair. 'Here, old fellow, I have something for your diversion.' He slapped down a few garishly coloured prints.
Kydd picked up the top one, entitled, 'A Correct View of the French Machine Intended to Convey Their Soldiers for the Invasion of England.' It was a gigantic raft and had what appeared to be windmills spaced along its sides. To give point to its size, troops of horses were galloping about its decks.
'Most ingenious,' Renzi murmured. 'The mills may be turned into whatever direction the wind deigns to blow, and being in train each to a paddle-wheel, we have a means of locomotion for a vessel to enable it to proceed on any course it wishes. One may assume even directly into the wind's eye,' he added thoughtfully.
Kydd perused the next, a French print of a vessel,
Kydd's eyes met Renzi's in sombre reflection before he picked up the next. This was of a flat, lozenge-shaped raft fully seven hundred feet across with a central citadel and powered by a giant lateen sail on a swivel, itself five hundred feet long. It was soberly estimated to be capable of transporting thirty thousand troops. Other prints depicted man-carrying kites, unsinkable hide-covered cork boats and other bizarre contrivances.
'And today I heard of a weapon of terror that would chill the blood of any man,' Renzi said. 'It is a species of clockwork balloon.'
'A what?'
'An automaton aloft,' Renzi said. 'Set forth, it requires no man aboard to control it. A deadly craft of the skies which, when commanded by its mechanism, soullessly rains down fiery destruction on the cowering wretches beneath.'
'It . . . Surely they'd never . . .'
