The Admiral's Daughter

The first cool wisps of the mist brushed his cheek. The world changed to a calm, enveloping, uniform white that left tiny dew-drops on his coat, and rendered nearby vessels diaphanous ghosts that disappeared. Kydd took a deep breath and made his decision. He was about to give the orders when he saw a still form standing back. 'Why, Mr Renzi, I didn't notice ye on deck before,' he said, distracted.

'You will anchor, I believe.'

'I never doubted it,' Kydd replied, nettled at Renzi's easy observation. Then he realised that the words were intended as a friendly contribution to the burden of decision-making and added, 'Aye, the greater risk is t' go on.'

He took a few paces forward. 'Mr Dowse, way off the ship. Mr Purchet, hands t' mooring ship. We'll wait it out.'

Their bower anchor splashed noisily into the calm and the wind died to a whisper. Dowse had previously recorded careful bearings of the shore and had now himself taken a cast of the lead and was inspecting the gravel and broken shells at its base.

A sepulchral dong from close astern was answered by their own bell, struck enthusiastically by a ship's boy. There was an occasional muffled crack of a swivel gun from a nervous vessel. Other sounds, near and distant, came flatly from all round them.

The mist swirled gently past as Kydd peered over the bulwarks. He could see the water was sliding along on its way aft equally on both sides; the tide was on the make and at her anchor Teazer was headed into it and therefore would be facing into the currents surging round the Dodman. They were as safe as it was possible to be in the circumstance and could only wait for the sun to burn off the mist.

It was little more than an hour later that the forms of vessels could be made out once more and the sun burst through. Kydd scanned about anxiously and his heart lurched as he saw that of the dense mass of ships that had followed him to sea there were only ten or fifteen left. Had they failed to notice him anchor? Had they drifted ashore? Been taken by a corsair in the fog?

'Such a practical race of sailors,' Renzi murmured.

'What?' Kydd said sharply.

'Why, I'm sure you've made notice that these vessels remaining are your deep-sea species only. The small fry, being local, have navigated clear and, inspired by your actions, have for a surety pressed on to Falmouth.'

His friend was right, of course, Kydd acknowledged grudgingly, then smiled. In brilliant sunshine and a strengthening breeze, what remained of the convoy won its anchors and rounded the Dodman. They took little more than an hour in the fine south-easterly to lay the dramatic Gull Rock to starboard, and by early afternoon they made Falmouth Bay.

Kydd, however, had no intention of going ashore at Falmouth and possibly having to make explanation, so he rounded to well off the entrance. His charges passed into the harbour, some with a jaunty hail of thanks. The cutter tacked about smartly and disappeared without ceremony.

It had been an experience but Teazer was accounting herself well in this, her first war cruise. 'Mr Standish, course south, an' all sail abroad. I mean t' clear the Manacles before dusk an' then we snug down f'r the night.'

'Aye aye, sir,' the first lieutenant confirmed. His orders were chalked on the watch-keeper's slate and Teazer shaped her course.

'Er—an' pipe hands t' supper with a double tot f'r all,' Kydd added. There was no reason by way of service custom for the generosity but he felt his little ship and her company had reached a milestone.

Dawn arrived overcast; the ship had stood off and on in the lee of the Lizard throughout the night and was now closing with the coast once more—the massive iron-grey granite of Black Head loomed.

There was nothing around but fishing craft and, in the distance, a shabby coastal ketch. Kydd decided to send the men to breakfast, then put about to press on westward. This would mean a closer acquaintance of that most evocative of all the sea marks of the south-west: the Lizard, the exact southerly tip of Great Britain and for most deep-ocean voyages the last of England the men saw on their way to war or adventure, fortune or death. It was, as well, the longed-for landfall for every returning ship running down the latitude of 49°20' finally to raise the fabled headland and the waters of home.

Kydd had seen the Lizard several times, and each experience had been different—watching it emerge leaden and stolid from curtains of rain, or seeing it dappled dark and grey in the sunshine and sighted twenty miles away —but always with feeling and significance.

'Do ye lay us in with th' coast, Mr Dowse,' Kydd ordered. Curiosity was driving him to take a close-in sight of this famed place. 'Oh—younker,' he called to a rapt midshipman, 'my compliments t' Mr Renzi an' I'd be happy t' see him on deck.' He would never be forgiven if it were missed.

The master pursed his lips. 'Aye, sir. A board to the suth'ard will give us an offing of somethin' less'n a mile.'

'Thank ye,' Kydd said gravely. With the south-westerly strengthening it was a dead lee shore around the point and asking a lot of the master to approach. They stood away to the south until the last eastern headland was reached; beyond, the Atlantic swell crowding past the Lizard was resulting in ugly, tumbling seas that put Teazer into violent motion, the wind now with real strength in it, producing long white streaks downwind from the crests.

The land receded as the offing was made, then approached again after they went about on the other tack, the seas almost directly abeam causing the brig to roll deeply. 'Call down th' lookouts,' Kydd snapped. Even at forty feet, with the motion magnified by height, the situation for the men in the foretop would be dangerous and near unendurable.

Dowse pointed inshore where the sea met the land in a continuous band of explosions of white. 'Man-o'-war reef, the Quadrant yonder.' He indicated a cluster of dark rocks standing out to sea and in furious altercation with the waves. 'An' Lizard Point.'

There it was: the southernmost point of England and the place Kydd had always sighted before from the sanctity and safety of the quarterdeck of a ship-of-the-line. He clung to a weather shroud and took it all in, the abrupt thump of waves against the bow and a second later the stinging whip of spray leaving the taste of salt on his tongue.

They eased round to the north-west and into the sweeping curve of Mount's Bay, the last before the end of