Seaflower

The boatswain of the yard, sitting in the stern-sheets of the dockyard boat with Kydd, stared idly ahead. The rowers pulled heavily, towing two massive sheer-legs in the water.

To Kydd, it was strangely affecting to step over the bulwarks and be in a sea world belonging to others.

While the boatswain talked to the Captain, his eyes strayed to little things that would be embedded in the consciousness of the ship's company - the dog-vane to point the direction of the wind and fashioned into a red-petalled rose, the binnacle finished with a varnished bolt-rope, the smart black japanned speaking trumpet also with a painted rose - all these would be the familiar images of daily life at sea,

Rose's seamen looked at him curiously, his small band of black men at his back. 'What cheer, mate?' said one. 'Where's to go on th' ran-tan?'

Spared from having to answer by the boatswain's hail from forward, Kydd reported himself and his men. 'You, Kydd, get y'r men out o' the way fer now, but I'll want 'em on the cross spar afore we cants the sheers,' the boatswain said, and turned to his own crew.

Kydd stared at the scene with some anxiety. The fo'c'sle was a maze of ropes and blocks laid out along the deck each side from when the topmast had been struck. How it was possible to pluck the feet-thick foremast, like a tooth, straight out from where it ended morticed into its step on the keel he had no idea. Juba did not volunteer a word. He stood aside, watching with a patience that seemed limitless and at the same time detached.

The boatswain's men ranged mighty three-fold purchases. The sheaved blocks were each nearly double the size of a man's head, the falls coiled in fakes yards long. Lesser tackles were made fast to knightheads and kevels, and all was ready to bring aboard the sheers. But then the boatswain stepped back, his arms folded. Kydd saw why: in a nice division of responsibilities, it was men of the Rose who manned the jeer capstan to take the weight, then lower the heavy seventy-five-foot width of the foreyard, indecently shorn of its usual complexity of buntlines and halliards.

The foremast now stood alone, its wound clearly visible as a long bone-coloured fracture under the capstan bars, which had been splinted around it. 'Kydd, y'r cross spar!' the boatswain called impatiently.

Kydd had been too interested in the proceedings and was caught unawares but he swiftly rounded on Juba. 'Cross spar!' he snapped, stepping towards the sheers. He looked fearlessly at the man, who hesitated just a moment, looking into Kydd's eyes, then moved into action. In low tones he called to the other negroes, in words incomprehensible to Kydd. The men split into two parties and slid the fore topgallant yard athwartships, then up against the splayed end of the sheers. They stopped and Juba looked up slowly. Kydd turned to the men at the cross-piece of the sheers and told them to pass the seizing.

'Like a throat-seizing an' not too taut,' the boatswain suggested.

'Aye,' said Kydd, happy with a new-found realisation: no matter how complex and technical the task, it could be rendered down to a series of known seamanlike evolutions.

The sheers were duly canted, tilted up so the guys could get an angle to sway the sheer-legs aloft. At the same time tackles at their feet held them firmly in place. It was almost an anti-climax, knocking aside the mast wedges, freeing the partners and hearing the massive tackle creak as it strained in a vertical pull up on the mast, which gave in a sudden and alarming jerk upwards.

There was suddenly nothing to do as the freed mast was angled and slowly lowered over the ship's side to be floated ashore, a fearsome thing that could spear the heart out of the frigate if it was accidentally let go. Kydd glanced at the motionless Juba, intrigued by the man's self-possession. Unexpectedly Juba allowed a brief smile to appear. Kydd smiled back, and pretended to follow the progress of the mast over the side.

The softness of a Caribbean evening was stealing over the waters when Kydd was finally able to return to the dockyard.

The replacement foremast had needed work. Awkwardly placed along the deck of the frigate it had had to be held securely on trestles while shipwrights went to work with adze and angled mast axe. As the chips flew, the craftsmen held Kydd in awe at their skill with such awkward tools. He now knew a good deal more than he had at break of day, and he felt happier than he had at any time since he had left Trajan: this was better than being a spare hand to whatever ship would claim him.

Closer in to the dockyard, he could hear the cries and laughter of the ship's company of Avenger, a ship-sloop whose bulbous, naked hull was heaved right over for careening on the other side