Invasion

attention, please . . .' Lieutenant Keane and HM gun-brig Locust were issuing a challenge-at-arms to HMS Teazer for the honour of hoisting a 'Cock of the Downs' for the better ship.

Locust lay a quarter of a mile to the eastward, moored, like Teazer, head to wind. Keane was proposing a contest of boarding—the very proficiency that would be so needed in the near future. Kydd read aloud the challenge: it was to be undertaken from an eight- oared pinnace, the only boat held in common by both sides, the object being to haul down the other's colours in the face of various unspecified discouragements, then return.

There were some interesting provisos. Boarders were to be fully 'armed' and might not enter at any point between the quarterdeck and fo'c'sle. The winners would be the first to return to their own ship and triumphantly re-hoist their own colours to the masthead. And, to prevent later recrimination, the respective captains would lead the boarders.

'An impudence!' spluttered Hallum. 'They can't just—'

But Kydd had made up his mind and turned to Poulden. 'Mr. Calloway is t' hoist Locust's pennant over the 'affirmative,' if y' please,' he said firmly.

It was well conceived. Distance to cover under oars was equal, as were the number of men carried in the boats. Bearing arms and coming aboard only over the bow or stern meant a boarding under realistic conditions and discouragements would add the necessary incentive to haste.

Recalling Keane's confidence, Kydd grinned. He would be leading the Teazers and it was fairly certain that the young officer had not heard of his own years as a young and agile seaman . . .

With boats in the water in deference to Locust's lack of the newfangled davits, it needed only the signal to start. Actaeon's gig arrived and Savery, suitably grave as befitted an official umpire, proceeded to an inspection of Teazer's boarders.

'A fine body of men, Captain!' he pronounced. They were not the words Kydd would have used of his crew of desperadoes in every kind of piratical rig clutching their wooden 'cutlasses' and grinning at each other in anticipation.

'Into your boats!'

Kydd settled at the tiller and tried not to beam back at Stirk, gunner's mate, and a seaman who went back to his earliest time at sea. Ready with his grapnel in the bows he snapped. 'Toss oars!' In obedience to the 'rules' oars were thumped down and held vertically as a sign that the boarders were standing by. Savery sighted over at Locust: their boat was in similar readiness.

'Fire!' A swivel gun manned up in the maintop cracked out but the sound was almost drowned in the storm of cheering from the spectators. Kydd's urgent roar sent oars thudding down between the thole pins and the boat slewing round to leap ahead, straight as an arrow, for the trim gun-brig.

The Locusts were in view almost at once, her captain crouched, urging on his crew like a lunatic and coming on at a dismaying rate. It was not Kydd's way to shout at men doing their best but he quickly found himself leaning forward and berating them as lub-bardly old women and a hopeless parcel of gib-faced mumpers. The resulting expressions of delight seemed to indicate it might have been expected.

As the pinnaces passed each other halfway, yells of derision were hurled across. Keane stood precariously and bowed solemnly to Kydd, who couldn't think what to do other than doff his hat in reply. Then it was the final stretch, the seamen panting and gasping with the brutal effort.

Defenders were spaced evenly along the decks of Locust and doing suspicious things with sacks. Like Teazer, the gun-brig was flush-decked with a continuous deck-line. Her fo'c'sle was rounded and therefore without the usual beakhead with its useful climbing-aboard points. It had been agreed that boarding nettings would not be deployed as inviting damage to His Majesty's sea stores, so it was a choice between bluff bow or sturdy transom.

Kydd made up his mind and went for the stern. Instantly there was a frantic rush along the decks of the brig to take up position to repel boarders. He snatched a glance behind: the Locusts were heading at breakneck speed directly for Teazer's bows and there was the same mad scramble forward to meet the boarding. He smiled wickedly—it would be a valiant crew who made it to that hostile deck.

Just a few hundred yards away from their goal he weighed up the angles and distances. With Locust's protruding rudder stock, a side-to approach allowing simultaneous exit from the boat would not be possible. Better a head-on one, with Stirk leading the charge up and over that plain sternwork.

They neared, and he spotted defenders hunkered behind the low bulwark. Just before they made ready Kydd twisted to look behind. At the last minute Keane had put over the tiller, shooting under the bowsprit and at full tilt sped down the length of the ship to end up under Teazer's more ornate stern. Grapnels flew up in a perfectly timed—

'Sir! ' Poulden's anxious cry brought him back—Locust's humble stern with its two small windows, was looming above them but before he could act the boat drove head on into her timbers with a rending thump, sending the oarsmen down in a tangle of legs and bodies.

'Go!' Kydd cried hoarsely, from the bottom-boards but Stirk had already hurled his grapnel and swarmed up the line with a roar. He took the contents of a pail of galley slops full in the face, then bilge-water, flour, slush and the like rained down. Stirk let out a howl, but quickly recovered and fought his way slowly up through the deluge. The Teazers were now spurred on with the prospect of revenge, and as Stirk disappeared over the bulwarks he was followed by the rest, with Kydd fighting through the vile onslaught to join him.

On the neat little after deck the Locusts were waiting with their wooden cutlasses at point, except one sailor who was taken helpless with laughter at the sight of the enemy. It was too much for Stirk who threw himself at the man and, with a show of strength, wrestled him to the side and up-ended him bodily into the sea.

The decks resounded to fierce snarls and the sharp clik-clok of wooden combat, but the Teazers' blood was up and it didn't take long to fight through to the mainmast halliards. Guarded by a ring of vengeful seamen, Kydd rapidly hauled down their colours.

Returning to the boat, some jumped headlong into the early summer sea to rid themselves of their ordure, then hauled themselves dripping over the gunwale. 'Move y'selves,' Kydd urged, taking the tiller again.

They stretched out manfully. The contest would not be over until their own colours had been restored. The Locusts, however, were already two-thirds back, well on their way to victory.