Seaflower

clapped on, and they had a fully working rudder once more. It was amazing how quickly a neat, seamanlike scene could turn into a picture of utter despair — bedraggled ropes and anonymous timbers and wreckage — and how quickly return to a shipshape condition merely by getting to the heart of the circumstance and doing what was needed. He had seen Capple do just that and acknowledged the lesson.

On deck again, and at the wheel, Kydd saw that the winds had grown marginally less frantic, were definitely more in the west. There was no change in the vista of white-streaked water, horizontal clouds of spume flying over the surface. Huge waves crested, tumbled and were blown downwind to spindrift. The master paced down the deck past Kydd, who flashed him a grin.

Quist stopped, as if surprised in his thoughts. 'Good lad,' he said, against the wind noise, 'an' if it stays as is, we're thrown clear o' the blow betimes.' He smiled amiably and paced on.

So, it was only a matter of time. The old ship-of-the-line plunged on before the relentless wind. The hours passed. Kydd remembered Quist's words earlier. He mentally faced into the westerly wind and worked out that at nine points on his right hand, the centre of the storm was passing somewhere out there in the wildness to the north.

He was relieved at noon, and took the lee helm again for the last dog-watch with Capple, wind to the south-west. By now his eyes were red-sore with salt and his body ached for rest; it seemed to Kydd a malicious cruelty of the fates when the dread cry passed aft, TLand hooo — I see breakers aheeeaaad!’

Lookouts forward had sighted land in their path. Large or small it was an appalling hazard for a vessel barely under control, flying before the wind as she was. Images of the death of his lovely Artemis crept remorselessly into Kydd's skull. He shook his head and beat them back. Now Trajan needed him.

'Wear ship - we wear this instant!' Auberon bawled.

Kydd and Capple threw up the helm, and the vessel answered grudgingly. It would be difficult to wear around with only the reefed course and staysails, but it would have to be done. The storm jib was thrown out at just the right moment and, with violent rolling, Trajan turned about.

'Lie to, Mr Quist,' Auberon ordered, as the Captain appeared, driven by the sudden change in motion.

Tying to, sir,' Auberon reported, while Bomford studied the ugly dark line extending across the horizon. 'We'll never claw off, you know,' he said quietly, gazing at the endless barrier of land ahead. Trajan lay over crazily as the low sails took the wind from nearly abeam.

Bomford staggered but continued to observe, then snapped his glass shut. 'Clear away both bowers. We anchor!'

The veering crew in the cable tiers needed no telling; the cables would go to their fullest extent, and in the stink and dread of the near darkness in the bowels of the vessel they readied the cable. At the cathead in the bow the conditions for the seamen working to free the anchor for casting were frightful too. Kydd's heart wrung at the white fury of the seas coming inboard, receding to reveal the black figures of men resuming their fight.

First one anchor let go, then the other. The dead weight of the hempen cables, even before the great anchors could touch the sea-bed, heaved Trajan's bows around, head to sea. The effect was immediate. Taking the seas directly on the bow, she pitched like a frightened stallion, at one moment her bare bowsprit stabbing the sky, then a fearful onrush of seas down her sides, before a heart-stopping drop downwards, ending in a mighty crunch and explosion of spray at her bows.

Kydd stood ineffective: Trajan was now held by her anchor cables, meeting the hurricane head-on, and therefore his duty at the helm held no more purpose. It gave him time to look back at the line of land, which was nearer than he had thought. The constant mist of spume on the sea's surface had obscured the lower half of the band of hard black, and he quailed.

A perceptible yank and quiver: untold fathoms below, the iron claws of an anchor had come to rest in the sea-bed. The motion changed: the high soaring of the bows was the same, but after the lurch downwards, in the hesitation before the swoop up, the ship snubbed to her cable — a disorienting arrest of the wild movement for a big ship.

'Off yer go, then, cock, get somethin' ter eat, an' I'll see yer in an hour,' Capple said. Kydd flashed him a grateful smile. He had not had anything since