Mutiny

_{'Nunky,' Kydd greeted an older able seaman.}

_{There was the same caginess. 'Yes, mate?'}

_{The seamen looked at him steadily. The visitors were clearly long-service and showed no emotion. Kydd shrugged and moved down the fore-hatchway to the gundeck, the lower of the two lines of guns, and to the screened-off areas for the married men along the sides of the deck between each pair of cannon. There was an air of an unexpected domesticity, ladies gossiping together on benches along the midline of the deck, brats scampering about. A dash of colour of a bunch of flowers and the swirl of dresses added an unreality to the familiar warlike nearness of the gundeck. Kydd answered the cheery hails of some with a wave, a doff of his hat to others, and passed aft, happy there would be no trouble there.}

_{A final canvas screen stretched the whole width of the deck. Kydd lifted it and ducked beneath. In the way of sailors, girls they had taken up with in this port before became 'wives' again for their stay. But in deference to real wives they were not accorded the same status or privacies. In hammocks, under hastily borrowed sailcloth between the guns, the men consorted with their women, rough humour easing embarrassment}

_{Kydd moved on, eyes steadily amidships, alert for the trouble that could easily flare in these circumstances. Then down the hatchway to the orlop — the lowest deck of all. In its secretive darkness anything might happen. He kept to the wings, a walkway round the periphery, hearing the grunts and cries from within the cable tiers. It was a harsh situation, but Kydd could see no alternative; he would not be one to judge.}

_{On deck again he was passed a note by a signal messenger. 'Fr'm offa bumboat, Mr Kydd.'}

_{It was addressed to the officer-of-the-watch. Kydd opened it. It was in an unpractised but firm round hand:}

Dere Sir,

I humblie pray thet yuo will bee so kind as too allow my dere bruther, Edward Malkin, be set ashor on libbertie. Whyle he was at see, his muther dyed an I must aqaynt him of itt. Iff yuo find it in jor harte to lett him on shoar to the atached adress he will sware to repare back on bord tomorow afor cok-crow.

Yor servent, sir

Kitty Malkin Queen Street Sheerness

_{Kydd's heart sank. There had not been so many deaths on} Achilles's _{commission, but Ned Malkin's had been one, a lonely end somewhere in the night after a fall from a yardarm into an uncaring sea. His pay had stopped from that hour; Kydd hoped that the family were not dependent on it.}

_{The captain had not yet returned with the admiral's sanction to shore-leave, and no one could go ashore, except on ship's business.}

_{He stared across the grey sea to the ugly sprawl of Sheerness at the tip of the island. The least he could do while he was delivering the dockyard demand was call and gently extinguish false hopes. As he gazed at the land he imagined a forlorn soul looking out across the stretch of water, silendy rehearsing the words of grief she would have to impart.}

_{Folding the paper and sliding it into his coat, he said, 'Tarn, you have th' ship. L'tenant Binney is in the wardroom. I'm takin' a boat to the dockyard.'}

_{As he watched the modest ramparts of the garrison fort rise above grey mud-flats, the low marshy land stretching away on Sheppey island as well as across the other side of the Medway, the isolation of the place settled about Kydd. Even when they rounded the point and opened up a view into the dockyard, the bleakness of Sheerness affected his spirits.}

_{The dockyard itself was concentrated at the Thames-ward tip of Sheppey, the usual features easily apparent — a ship under construction on the stocks, a cluster of hulks further along and countless smoky buildings of all sizes and shapes. An indistinct clamour of activity drifted across the water as the cutter went about and headed in to a mud-dock.}

_{The last of the tide had left the stone steps slippery with weed, and Kydd stepped carefully ashore, finding himself to one side of a building slip. His experience in a Caribbean dockyard did not include new ships and he looked up at the towering ribbed skeleton with interest.}

_{Direcdy ahead, across the dusty road, were the dockyard offices. These had seen many a naval demand and Kydd was dealt with quickly. He was soon out again in the scent of fresh-planed timber and smithy fumes.}

_{He gathered his thoughts. The dockyard was not big: he would find where the Malkin family lived fairly quickly, then get it over with. While still in the boat he had seen a sizeable huddle of houses just outside the gates, and guessed that this would be where most lived.}

_{It was not far — between the saw-pits and clangour of the smith's workshop, past more graving}