The first away was the Captain's barge with Captain Bomford and the first lieutenant looking uncomfortable in their dress uniforms. The next was the longboat, its sturdy bluff bow pushing the water aside as it made its way shoreward. It would be returning with naval stores too valuable to be left to the local lighters even now putting off from the inner harbour.
Moodily, Kydd watched the boats lose themselves among the throng of other watercraft beetling among the many anchored vessels and the shore. He could see enough of the land's details to feel frustrated: he wanted to know what a Caribbean island looked like.
Trajan creaked in sequence as a swell passed down her length, accompanied by a lethargic rhythm of clacks and slatting from aloft as blocks and ropes ratded against the masts with the movement.
'Haaands to store ship!' Kydd's duty as quartermaster's mate required his presence. He took one last reluctant look at the shore. Already lighters were putting off from the distant quay with water, big leaguer casks in rows. He watched, astonished, as just two men fended off, then began manipulating mighty pole-like oars — all of fifty feet long - to bring out one of the heavy lighters.
To get at the hold, it was necessary to open the main-hatch on each deck, one under the other. At the orlop the decking was taken up, revealing the noisome darkness of the hold, now made light by the strengthening sun coming down through the hatches. Kydd dropped down to the top of the stores. The empty casks had to be cleared away to allow the full ones to lower down into the ground tier, safely nesded *bung-up and bilge free' in shingle ballast. The stench was thick and potent — the shingle had absorbed bilge water and the stink roiled up as it was disturbed. In the heat it was hard to take, and Kydd felt a guilty pang as he scrambled above. Clear of the hold, he wrote his reckoning on his slate.
'All the haaaands! Clear lower deck ahooy’ Hands lay aft!' The boatswain's mates sounded distantly above.
Kydd cursed — this was not the time to be stopping work. 'Secure!' he growled, at the questioning faces of his work party below.
The Captain had returned unexpectedly and now waited patiently at the break of the poop, flanked by his officers.
'Still!' roared the master-at-arms. Conversations faded and the sound of shuffling feet quickly died away.
Captain Bomford stepped forward to the rail. 'Trajans, I have asked you here to tell you the news.' There was silence at his words. 'Our duty to the convoy is done.' This was met with stony looks — the slow progress of the convoy across the Atlantic had been tedious.
'Now we are released for our true work.' He let the words sink into the silence. 'We shall now sail for the French island of Guadeloupe. You will be happy to hear that His Majesty's arms have met with great success in the West Indies. We are taking the French islands from them, one by one, Martinique, St Lucia, and now Guadeloupe. We sail immediately. On arrival, all hands should be prepared for shore service. However, I do not anticipate much opposition.'
Trajan and the 3 2-gun frigate Wessex sailed unopposed into the sheltered arms of Grande Baie, Guadeloupe. The sleepy island was oddly shaped: to larboard a bulking, rounded beast of land, to starboard a low, rumpled coastline stretching away, the two forming an inward curve. Where they met, the land dipped to a flat joining place.
Sun-splashed and deeply green, the land seemed all that Kydd expected of an isle in the Caribbean. There were no wharves and shanty towns that he could see, just verdancy and, here and there, the golden lines of beaches. The heady scent of land on the brisk wind entered his nostrils, immediate and exciting.
The anchor dropped and cable rumbled out. Motion ceased on the Trajan, but Wessex continued on. Inshore, from a small, squat coral-stone fort, Kydd saw white puffs appear close to the water's edge. The puny guns seemed to have no effect on the ship, which glided on. Kydd wondered how he would feel if positions were reversed. Here was the equivalent of an entire artillery battery of the heaviest guns of the army coming to punish the little fort.
There was no more gunsmoke from the fort. Kydd guessed that the gunners were fleeing the menace closing in. But there was no time to watch. He was in charge of one party of fifteen seamen under Lieutenant Calley and a master's mate he didn't know, and they would shortly board one of the boats for the shore.
The sudden crash of a broadside echoed around the bay -
