Invasion

'Point your gun, then,' Kydd said impatiently. When the men with the crow stood about, looking confused, he added, 'At the French, you lubbers—there!' The coast of France was a grey line on the far horizon.

'Stand by!' The lieutenant's order sounded thin and nervous. The entire amphitheatre of the harbour went still.

A final glance at the implacable Kydd and the order was given. 'Fire!'

A fraction of a second later there came the bursting thunderclap of sound and a vast gouting of powder-smoke. The crash echoed around the harbour, sending a dense cloud of seagulls screaming skyward as onlookers clutched each other.

The swirling smoke finally cleared, leaving a stupefied gun crew standing in horror at what they had achieved.

'There! So now you know what a real battle is like,' Kydd said happily.

It remained to make acquaintance with the seagoing Fencibles, and he pulled out the chart once more. It did not take long to find somewhere squarely within the invasion area but sufficiently small so as not to warrant too senior a presence. Rye.

Guiltily, Kydd knew that an element of his choice was his curiosity to see the place. It was an ancient town of the medieval Cinque Ports and therefore entitled to '. . . right of soc and sac . . . blodwit and fledwit, pillory and tumbril, infangentheof and outfangentheof, mundbryce . . . flotsam and jetsam . . .' and probably the oldest port in England.

So old, in fact, that the town lay far inland where centuries of silt from the river had extended the coastline out several miles into a flat, reedy estuary.

Teazer let go her anchor in a lively sea, pivoting immediately to meet the waves, but when her boat reached the narrow mouth of the Rother it grew quickly peaceful. The river was dead straight for more than a mile, the result of untold years of striving to keep the port open as the land extended itself. Rye harbour was at the first bend; a pair of gunboats should have been maintained there by the Sea Fencibles to throw into any last desperate clash off the beaches. Kydd braced himself for what he might find.

The boat swept round the bend but then he was confronted with the last thing he expected: along the gnarled old timber quay were lined up men in smart jackets and trousers that would not have been out of place in a man- o'-war at divisions, and as the gig glided in, an officer in full-dress Fencibles uniform called his men to order and swept off his hat. 'Welcome to Rye Harbour, Mr. Kydd,' he said. 'I do hope we'll not disappoint.'

Collecting himself, Kydd suspected that word of his mission had been passed on—Dungeness suggested itself but, anyway, this was all to the good in the greater scheme of things. 'A fine body o' men, Lieutenant. I shall inspect them.'

They were a stout crew: fit, well turned out, direct eye gaze, capable seeming. All the signs of a good officer looking after his men. Satisfied, Kydd turned to their charges.

The gunboats were secured to improvised trots out in the stream and Kydd summoned them alongside. One was in a pattern of the last war but wonderfully kept; gunboats were numbered but this one sported a nameplate on the bow, with Vixen of Rye picked out in gold on scarlet.

Kydd dropped down into it. Double-ended and capable of rigging a lateen on a folding mast it mounted a respectable eighteen-pounder on a slide on the foredeck and a handy carronade aft.

He went forward to the gun, the officer hovering anxiously. He inspected the bore—it was an old pattern requiring a quick-match to fire it rather than a gunlock. Kydd used the old gunner's trick of reflecting sunlight from the back of his fob watch into the bore but there was no sign of kibes, the bright metal of a flaw made by a shot loose in the bore striking along its length.

The vent-work was in pristine condition, and the rest of the boat quite up to it, so there was little Kydd could find to criticise. The other vessel, of similar vintage and named Wolf of Winchelsea, was in the same fine shape. Sensing Kydd's pleased surprise, the lieutenant rubbed his hands together. 'They're to your satisfaction, sir?' he asked.

'Most certainly.'

'Then it will be my pleasure to invite you to our usual meeting at the George in Mermaid Street, sir.'

'Not so fast.'

'Sir?'

'I desire you should now attack my ship.'

'A-attack?'

'I shall be towing a barrel a cable astern. That will be your mark. You have powder, shot?'

The young man's face beamed with pleasure. 'Why, certainly!'

'Then shall we say half a league offshore in one hour?'

Out in the bay the seas were as lively as ever, but there would be no allowances: this onshore blow was ideal for a fast French crossing and they would have to cope.

Vixen emerged first, her plain lugsail set taut and making to seaward of Teazer in a swash of white bow-wave. The smaller Wolf remained inshore, but both bucketed along in the brisk seas. Kydd nodded approvingly.

When at the wind's eye to Teazer, the first lowered her long yard at the run and manned sweeps. Before long her single cannon opened up, the powder-smoke whipped away in the strong breeze. The ball, however, tore up the sea only a dozen yards ahead of the small vessel. 'Too much motion for 'em,' was the general opinion of interested watchers. Wolf was not much better: her shot went somewhere into the unknown and Vixen's second passed close overhead with a vicious whuup.

Kydd winced, but these were keen and valuable men who could not be expected to know how a gun was pointed in the open sea with no one to show them. It was time to take a hand. 'Mr. Duckitt,' Kydd told Teazer's gunner, 'you and Mr. Stirk each are to go aboard and teach 'em how to point a gun in anything of a seaway. Then, to spare Teazer's hide, we'll set the barrel adrift and