'Y'r pardon, Mr Kydd,' said Luke anxiously. He stood at the door respectfully. 'I c'n have yer scran alongside, should yer want it now.'
Kydd felt abashed: he had not really meant it when he told Luke he was a servant. Now the lad was taking him at his word. On reflection, however, he realised that, given the circumstances, it might be the best thing. 'Thank ye, Luke, I will.'
Kydd returned to his paper. The King's Negroes' chief employment was as a skilled crew to assist shipwrights and riggers in major operations, such as in heaving down ships for underwater repairs or replacing whole masts. His would be the first party to board men-o'-war entering harbour having been wounded in battle or savaged by a hurricane.
Luke spread a small tablecloth on the sitting-room table. Without looking up, he carefully laid a single place with pewter plate and knife, and withdrew.
Kydd finished the paper, smiling to himself at the strictures on keeping his men sober and diligent.
The cool of the morning showed Antigua in its best light: delicate tints, clarity of air, and everywhere the sparkling translucence of the sea.
On the flat grassy area next to the boat-house Kydd surveyed the King's Negroes. They returned his contemplation with stony indifference, or looked away with disinterest. Big, well-muscled and hard-looking, they were dressed in canvas trousers and buttoned waistcoat over naked skin. Some wore old-fashioned three-cornered cocked hats, others a bandanna. Unusually for slaves, all carried a sheathed seaman's knife.
'An' who's the driver?' Kydd asked, in even tones. The men kept silent, staring back at him. Kydd tried to sense their feelings, but there was a barrier.
'The driver!' he snapped. If it was going to be this way, so be it, but then the hardest-looking of them pulled himself up slowly and confronted Kydd. The driver,' he said, his voice deep and strong. He regarded Kydd impassively from under hooded black eyes, his arms folded.
Kydd looked at the others. There was no feeling in their expressions. They existed in stasis, much like beasts of the field, it appeared. 'I'm Kydd, and I'm th' new master,' he said. There was no response, no interest. 'What's y'r name?' he demanded of the driver.
'Juba,' he said.
'What are their names?' said Kydd. 'They are t' tell me themselves,' he added.
A flicker of curiosity showed in their faces. 'Nero,' grunted an older one. Kydd nodded, and prompted the man next to him.
'Quamino.'
'An' you?' Kydd went on. 'Ben Bobstay.'
One by one, he had a name from each. He hesitated over whether to make a strict speech of introduction, but thought better of it. 'If ye does y'r duty, ye'll have nothing t' fear fr'm me,' he said firmly, and turned to greet Caird, who had just arrived.
'I see you have mustered your crew already,' Caird said. 'Fort Shirley has signalled that
Kydd had no experience of such skilled work, and if he was expected to take charge . ..
'The boatswain will be overseer,' said Caird, as if sensing Kydd's thoughts. 'It only requires that you tell your driver the task — he has done this work, and you may feel sure that he knows what to do.'
The 28-gun frigate Rose sailed in without warping, even with minimal sail at the fore, a fine piece of seamanship in the exuberant late-summer breezes. She had suffered at the hands of the hurricane — sea-whitened timbers and ropes leached of their tar, stoppers seized at places in her rigging, the patchy wooden paleness of new repairs showing here and there. But she rounded to, and her sails came in smartly, as if her company were conscious of their fortune in being spared by the fates.
