the sails on the wrong side.
'Mark my motions well. When we move, it'll be dead astern, an' if we mishandle, we'll sheer around an' it'll all be up wi' us,' the master warned. A ship going backwards would put prodigious strain on the rudder, and if they lost control it would slew sideways and slam the wind to the opposite side of the sails. At the very least this would leave Bacchante with broken rigging, splintered masts and the impossibility of getting away from the gathering threat.
Kydd gripped the spokes and stared doggedly at the master. His job, as leeward helmsman, was to add his weight intelligently to the effort of the lead helmsman, and he knew this would be a fight to remember.
Shot was passed up from the lockers in the bowels of the ship, each man taking two eighteen-pound balls. 'One bell to be ready, the second and you're off,' the first lieutenant called from the belfry forward.
One strike: the men braced. Another — they rushed across the deck, more perhaps of a reckless waddle. They turned, and the bells sounded almost immediately. They rushed back. Some saw the humour of the situation and grinned, others remained straight-faced and grave.
Twice more they ran. Kydd snatched a glimpse up at the bulging, misshapen sails fluttering and banging above; the men were panting now. The boatswain had a hand-lead over the side, and was staring grimly at its steady vertical trend.
Near him Kydd could hear a deep-throated creaking amid the discordant chorus of straining cordage. He dared not look away — the moment, if it came, would come suddenly. The bells and thumping feet sounded again — and again.
The deck shifted under Kydd's feet, an uneven rumbling from deep within, and the boatswain's triumphant shout: 'She swims!'
Forced by the wind, the frigate started to slide backwards. The wheel kicked viciously as the rudder was caught on its side. The master threw himself at the wheel to wind on opposite helm, Kydd straining with him, following his moves to within a split second. The pressure eased, but the ship increased speed backwards, at the same time multiplying the danger in proportion.
The master's lean face became haggard with strain and concentration as together they fought the ship clear. A fraction of inattention or misreading of the thrumming pressures transmitted up the tiller ropes and at this speed they would slew broadside in an instant.
The rumbling stopped — they must be clear of the sand. Orders pealed out that had canvas clewed up, yards braced round and a slowing of their mad backward rampage. The master's eyes met Kydd's, and he smiled. 'That's cutting a caper too many f'r me,' he said, in a gusty breath of relief.
Kydd returned a grin, but he held to his heart that this fine mariner had called on him, Thomas Kydd, when he needed a true seaman alongside.
The beat north through the Adriatic was an anticlimax. After re-watering from a clear stream on the remote west coast of Sardinia, they had thankfully rounded Malta and Sicily at night, through the Strait of Otranto and on into the Adriatic. The stranding had not had any observable ill-effects.
They now flew the red swallow-tail of Denmark. It was unlikely that any French at sea would interfere with a touchy Scandinavian of a country they were in the process of wooing into their fold.
In the event, they saw no French. But they did, to Kydd's considerable interest, sight all manner of exotic Mediterranean craft. Built low but with a sharply rising bow in line with sea conditions in the inland sea, there was the three-masted bark, with its canted masts, lateen sails and beak instead of a bowsprit; the pink, which could use the triangular lateen sail interchangeably with the familiar square sail on its exotically raked masts, and the more homely tartan coaster.
Once, sighted far off and in with the coast, they saw a galley, fully as long as Bacchante, sails struck and pulling directly into the wind. The dip and rise of the oars in the sunlight was steady and regular, a never-ending rhythm that went on into the distance.
They were getting close to Venice at the head of the gulf, and that evening Kydd caught Renzi gazing ahead with an intense expression. 'Y'r Venice is accounted a splendid place, I've heard,' Kydd ventured.
Renzi appeared not to have heard, but then said distantly, 'It is, my friend.'
'A shame we can't step ashore. I'd enjoy t' see the sights.'
Renzi responded immediately: 'In Venice you'd see spectacle and beauty enough for a lifetime.' He turned on Kydd with passionate intensity. 'There you'll find the most
