Invasion

Then the hard work began: lines had been taken to their beached anchor and secured around its peak, where the shank met the flukes, in order to drag it out without it digging in.

It was back-breaking work in chill bursts of spray and on an unsteady footing: six-foot handspikes were thudded into square sockets in the horizontal windlass drum, then came a heroic backwards straining pull, the rhythm kept up by having the holes offset from each other so each man could re-socket at different times.

Unaccustomed to the toil, Kydd's muscles burned, but there could be no slacking—he had seen Stirk's devilish grin. All four laboured until, when the anchor was near, Cribben called a halt. Then it was more work at tackles to align Daisy May before the last task—lifting the anchor bodily from under them until it hung suspended close beneath. Cribben ordered the jigger tackles secured and their tethering to the warp buoy singled up, then raised an arm.

Kydd had to concede it masterly seamanship, performed in the wildest conditions.

'Get on wi' ye,' Neame said good-naturedly. The long yard needed to be hooked to the foremast and hoisted. Kydd aligned the spar to the direction of the wind, seized the halliard and looked aft with concern.

A dead foul wind blowing hard could drive them helpless back on to the shore to be cast up. There would be no second chance.

Redsull pushed his way past to the bow painter while Neame, at the sheet, looked steadily at Kydd, who in turn kept his gaze on Cribben. His arm fell: Kydd hauled furiously hand over hand and the heavy yard began to lift. The wind hustled at it until, at chest height, it caught the exposed sail, which bellied to a hard tautness, Daisy May's bow shying away in response. At the same time Neame threw off the buoy slip rope, the mizzen briskly rose and took, and suddenly they were making way against the towering boisterous- ness of the onrushing seas.

Kydd hunkered down behind the bow with Stirk, trying to avoid the sheets of spume curling over as they met each wave with a crunch and smash of white spray. They were winning their way slowly to seaward. Light-headed, he felt a guilty thrill at the escapade but savoured the exhilaration of such seamanship. He flashed a grin at Stirk, who winked back.

They thrashed out through the anchored ships and towards the line of smoking white that now lay across their entire horizon, vivid against the dark of the storm-clouds. With her burden Daisy May made slow progress against the powerful seas but she was sure: this was her true element, and her high-waisted, broad lines felt sturdy and secure.

On impulse, Kydd abandoned his shelter and passed hand to hand down the boat to where Cribben sat at the tiller. 'Snug as a duck in a ditch,' Kydd offered.

'Aye, she is that.'

'We're going north-about, then?'

Cribben looked at him in astonishment. 'No, mate, we're goin' through in course,' he said, as if speaking to a child.

'Through! Why, we're—'

'F'r them as knows th' Goodwins it's no great shakes,' Cribben said. 'Ye'd have t' know that they's shiftin' all the time—ye have t' keep a trace o' every little spit and bay, where the swatch-ways run in a tide-fall, th' gullies an' scour-pits all a-changing, where lies th' deepest fox-falls, how the tide runs, an', b' heaven, we knows it!'

During their slow beat out he went on to tell of the sands themselves. In calmer weather they dried to miles of hard-packed grains on which the local lads would play cricket in bravado—but woe betide the laggard, for the returning tide could race in faster than a man could run. Then the water would transform the vast sandbar into hillocks that ran like hot wax, quickening the sand into treacherous glue to drag a victim under. And if a ship was unfortunate enough to be cast up she had but one tide to break free: when the sand became quick she would 'swaddle down' to be held in the maw of the Goodwins for ever—like as not, with her crew as well.

'More'n two thousan' good ships've left their bones t' rot here,' Cribben said soberly. 'It's bin called b' your Bill Shakespeare, th' 'Ship Swallower' an' he's right an' all.'

They drew closer, and the effectiveness of the huge mass of the sands in arresting the onrush of the gale's heavy seas was becoming apparent: to the weather side, there was a broad band of hanging spray where the waves were in violent assault, while to its lee Daisy May was making her laborious way in perfect safety.

The Goodwins were now in full view with the ebbing tide—a long, low menace, not the golden yellow of a beach but the dark, sable sand of the seabed, stretching away unbroken into the far distance in both directions.

A gull landed on the gunwale, hooking in its claws and swaying under the battering of the wind. It was not the usual grey-white species but a big, flat-headed type with cruel yellow eyes that watched them with cold calculation. Every member of the boat flailed at it, sending it quickly up and away. 'Is a priggin' corpse eater,' cursed Redsull.

Then, ahead, Kydd saw their way: at a sharp diagonal through the main banks and therefore unseen before, it stretched away through to the violence on the other side. They went about for the approach. 'Kellett Gut,' grunted Cribben. 'Nothing to worry of—we's more'n sixty feet under us.'

Hundreds of yards wide only and churning with a tide-race, it seemed a fearful prospect for the plucky little boat but she won through, emerging into a quite different seascape—murderous combers crashing in to spend their fury in a bass thunder of breaking seas, their tops smoking with white spume, the stinging spray driven mercilessly downwind by the blast of the gale.

No more than half a mile to the north, a foreign-looking barque was near hidden in the mists of spume. Cribben gave a soft smile and shouted against the wind, 'He's in a fair way o' takin' the ground where he's at—loses his holding there, an' it's all deep water t' the Knoll.'

Kydd understood: the barque was hanging on to an unseen narrow spit, and if her anchor tore free of the sand under the wind's blast, the deep water between it and the steep-sided Knoll would give no holding whatsoever— they were in dire peril. 'Go forrard then, Tom, where we needs ye,' Cribben told him. He pulled on the tiller and, crabwise, Daisy May came up with the deep-laden ship, passing into the small lee around her stern. Smart work with fore and miz-zen kept her there, while Cribben stood and, hanging onto a stay, hailed the anxious faces peering down from her taffrail.

'Yez standin' into danger, that there sand-spit. Compree?' he bellowed.