'He has no knowledge of any war,' Stanhope replied, 'but, then, I doubt he knows of much beyond his village - I cannot take the risk. We must confer, gentlemen.'
The men clustered around the chart; Cecilia sat down on a rock and luxuriously splashed her feet in the clear sea.
'Kindly show me the essentials of our position, if you please.'
'Aye, m' lord. Here we are, near half-way along th' Caribbean coast o' South America. Port Royal is here,' he indicated to the north-west of the chart, 'an' Barbados here to the east.'
'And how far to return to Port Royal?'
'In the longboat, m' lord?'
'If necessary.'
'Hmmm, this is not less'n five hundred miles, but with the nor'east trades a-beam . .. about three, four days.'
Stanhope was thoughtful. Renzi looked up with an apologetic smile. 'I will earn Cecilia's eternal loathing, but duty obliges me to point out that we are perhaps six days from Barbados if we continue, but if we return to Port Royal the vessel we take there must necessarily retrace our course, meaning a total time of around twelve days, even a fortnight. This—'
'We press on, I believe.'
'Yes, my lord. Might I suggest her brother be the one to inform Cecilia ... ?'
A jabbering from the little boy to his warily curious father brought attention back to the man. 'If we have coins, perhaps we can persuade him of some fruits,' Renzi suggested.
Cecilia was delighted with what was brought - not only fruits but corn bread, dried strips of meat and four eggs. 'We shall dine right royally before we face that odious sea again,' she vowed, and set Renzi to building a fire, claiming the boat baler as her cooking pot.
Kydd saw braiding in the sand along the beach and knew at that spot there would be water — the two barricoes would be full when they left, more than enough for a six-day voyage. As Cecilia's soup laid its irresistible fragrance on the air, he bent his mind to the job in hand. 'Nicholas, we need t' clear the Dutch islands, an' as well keep away fr'm the coast shipping. Do ye think we should run down the 14-degrees line o' latitude to the Wind'ard Islands?'
'I do, dear fellow, but I worry that we are sadly at risk if we cannot fix our longitude for the Barbadoes after passing through the islands. Should we ignorantly sail past, into the empty Atlantic .. .'
'Aye, you're in the right of it, m' friend, but I have an idea.' Kydd assembled his thoughts carefully. 'Do we not now have, at this moment, complete and certain knowledge of our position — our longitude, in fine?'
'Yes?'
'And when we sail, this is lost. But what if we conjure our own chronometer? Do y’ ask Lord Stanhope if we c'n borrow his fine watch. I take m' noon sighting right here in th' usual way, when the sun tells us it's exactly midday.' Kydd paused significantly. 'This is then our noon at this longitude, which we do know. An' if I am not mistaken in m' reasoning - I pray humbly I am not — then we know fr'm this the exac' time we are here ahead o' Greenwich noon.'
'At the rate of one hour for every fifteen degrees — you are, of course, completely right’
'So we subtract this time an' set th' watch to our Greenwich noon, and by this we have a chronometer — an' fr'm now on, the difference between our local noon and this watch gives out y'r exac' longitude.'
Renzi, who had seen it coming, nevertheless joined in the general applause. 'You are indeed in the character of a magician, right enough.' No matter that the watch was a poor substitute for the precision of a real chronometer, it would nevertheless put them well within sighting distance of their goal — and if it did that, then it was all they could desire.
Apart from some far-distant flecks of white there was no indication that they were crossing a major sea highway. In a world with privateers and pirates no ship would be inclined to indulge their curiosity and they sailed on unmolested into
