In the afternoon, those off-watch went to their accustomed leisure on the fo’c’sle while the watch-on-deck took grave glee in exercising their sea skills – stropping a block, invisibly joining two ropes with a long-splice, or rattling down the shrouds on the leeward side. Intricate knots were worked, thick canvas was sewn with palm and needle, and impossibly complex tackles and purchases were devised to move an inoffensive mess-tub. The general took in that these were but a small part of what an able seaman was expected to do for his ship.
‘Four bells, sir,’ Gilbey reported.
‘Very well. Make it so.’
This was a signal for the last act. ‘Hands t’ take stations f’r lowering.’
The launch at sea was stowed on the upper-deck waist, the pinnace nested inside. To ensure its ton weight safely afloat was no trivial feat, demanding the rigging of heavy tackles from the fore-yard and main-yard, connected together with stay tackles and masthead top-burtons to ease the weight. The entire operation, from rest on the chocks to a lively boat in the sea alongside, was conducted in silence, the only sound the harsh piercing of the boatswain’s call.
It was a telling illustration of the skills and training necessary for even the most straightforward of tasks at sea. By contrast, the gig on davits over L’Aurore’s quarter descended to the water in a squeal of sheaves, the boat’s crew making light of scrambling along the driver boom to the jacob’s ladder at its end to tumble handily into it.
Beresford’s attention was drawn back to the launch, which was stroking away to the frigate’s beam, and he was startled at the light-hearted cry from the main-top lookout. ‘Deck ahooooy! I spy pirates! Pirates on the st’b’d beam!’
The launch had rounded to and boated oars but up the stumpy mast rose the dread banner of the skull and crossbones. From their hidden positions in the bottom of the boat a dozen pirates appeared. Fearsome in red bandannas and eye patches, they screeched curses and brandished cutlasses. Then the launch was joined by the gig, and the two, manning their oars, swept round and headed straight for L’Aurore.
‘Repel boarders, Mr Gilbey,’ Kydd ordered crisply.
The first lieutenant wore a sour expression at the sight of the men disporting themselves, but he had his orders. ‘Stand t’ your fore!’ he snarled.
The pirates came on in fine style, swarming up the sides and spilling on to the deck in a tidal wave of action. The brave defenders did what they could but were hard pressed and fell back, hewing and slashing, pistols banging. Casualties mounted on all sides until, with a dreadful roar that startled even Kydd, the awe-inspiring figure of Stirk appeared at the main hatchway, bringing a wave of reinforcements for an attack from behind.
It was quickly over, the last pirates alive preferring a watery grave overside to the wrath of the King’s men.
‘Well done, well done!’ Beresford laughed. ‘His Majesty’s jolly tars triumph again!’
But Kydd had not finished. As the panting men stood down, he called over a pikeman.
‘On guard!’ he ordered. Obediently the man stood firmly, legs astride, the butt of the long pike wedged on deck in the ball of his foot, its forged iron tip questing outward at eye level for the first over the bulwark. ‘Sir, you see here a formidable weapon awaiting a boarder. But it has a fatal flaw.’
He took a cutlass from another and made to strike at the pikeman, who instantly responded, the deadly point turning unwavering on Kydd’s eyes. In a flash Kydd had dropped to one knee in the classic fencing pose for a lunge, but with his cutlass diagonally above his head. Then his blade swung up with a clash on the pike, preventing it lowering, and at the same time he rose, forcing the blade along the pike in a lethal slither – inside the man’s defences.
‘This man is now at my mercy, which does not exist in a boarding.’
Beresford acknowledged with a slow nod. ‘Pistols?’
‘One shot only,’ Kydd replied shortly, ‘into the face, then it’s aught but a club.’
‘Knives?’
‘Worse than useless.’
‘Tomahawks?’ He remembered some boarders had carried these.
‘Never carried by defenders as not for fighting – their use is to cut away defensive ropery when rigged.’
‘Then-’
‘Far better to stop ’em boarding in the first place – canister or grape from carronades, the marines and such with muskets seen to be waiting, and swivels on the breast-rail or in the tops. In harbour there’s boarding nettings spread from below the gun-ports, which can stop even the most vicious assault. We’ve naught to fear except in close battle with a larger.’
‘Oh. So your little show is nothing but a confection.’
‘No, sir. It has a purpose.’ Kydd waited until he had full attention, then went on quietly, ‘In all my professional life at sea, I’ve only been boarded by the enemy once, yet I’ve taken my men to the enemy three, four, five times. This is the reality: that the Royal Navy is more active, enterprising and resolute than the enemy.
‘I ask you, General, now to reverse the situation here and consider that each time you read of a valiant boarding or cutting-out we are the attackers who must overcome any or all of these defences which the enemy can be relied on to throw out.’ He had the attention he wanted.
‘Therefore, sir, think on the quality of the men that I have the honour to command, that I lead in perfect confidence that none will shrink, that all will follow me whatever the day brings.’
Beresford stood for a moment, pursing his lips and watching L’Aurore’s men cheerfully disperse. ‘Captain Kydd. I’ve never before given you an order, but I’m minded to, should it be in my power to issue it. Sir – and forgive if the form is wanting – do you splice the mainbrace!’
The gunroom dinner went off to the greatest satisfaction. Kydd yielded his customary position at the head of the table, when guest of the wardroom, to Beresford, who was unanimously voted Mr Vice by an awed mess. L’Aurore, under easy sail, daintily dipped and heaved, the gimballed lights setting uniforms a-glitter and casting constantly moving shadows, the feeling so beguilingly that of a living being that, for the thousandth time, Kydd wondered at how shore folk could be content with the inert deadness of the land.
After the cloth was drawn, Mr Vice was prompted for the loyal toast, restrained from rising in the Army way, and, suffused with good humour, did the honours most graciously.
Talk then became general, with anecdotes of service in all the seas of the world coming out.
Renzi, gently teased for his performance the previous year as a Russian to seize enemy documents, set the gunroom in a roar with his tale of a Lieutenant Kydd furiously signalling to an invading fleet in Minorca with a pair of red undergarments. Lieutenant Bowden added to the glee by detailing the forlorn state of Kydd’s first command in Malta when they had nevertheless formally commissioned HM brig-sloop Teazer with only themselves as both crew and witness.
Beresford responded with reminiscences of his adventures as a young captain at the fraught siege of Toulon in the first year of the war, when the royalist insurgency had been destroyed single-handed by the actions of an equally young French captain of artillery, one Napoleon Bonaparte.
A most agreeable evening concluded with the appearance of a midshipman to report the lights of Cape Town in sight.
‘A cognac in my cabin, General, while these gentlemen go about their duties?’ Kydd suggested.
This was what the entire day had been leading up to, uninterrupted access to the one who was seen as most likely to take the bait as military commander of the expedition – and he was the chief conspirator.
Tysoe served their drinks and silently withdrew. Kydd summoned his wits: this sly politicking was foreign to his nature but he knew it would not be the last occasion he would need to deploy it.
Beresford raised his glass. ‘I don’t mind telling you, Kydd, I’m impressed. In my twenty years in the Army I’ve learned to be a judge of men, and you have the best. I honour and envy you for it.’