He chortled, hearing the marine sentry outside the door stir uneasily.
Before a spanking north-east trade wind the little armada made good speed across the South Atlantic, the weather remaining kind if steadily dropping in temperature into the southern late autumn. The continental influence far to starboard was of a quite different quality from Africa at the same latitude. At five hundred miles off, Leda and L’Aurore were detached to range on ahead.
Kydd complied unhappily, for Justina had still not hauled into sight. His mind shied from the implication and took refuge in his duty, the satisfaction of shaking out sail and quitting the slow progress of the rest of the force.
They criss-crossed the sullen grey wastes for days without incident until they reached the parallel of the great estuary at which their instructions were to make rendezvous with Narcissus, sent on before to reconnoitre. Shaping course due west, the pair ran down the latitude of the River Plate until, astonishingly, even at seventy-five miles to seaward, discolouring of the monotonous grey-green seas became noticeable, strengthening until the entire character of the sea was changed.
By nightfall they were within the loom of the land but prudently lay to until morning for there was every possibility that Narcissus would have news of the return of the Spanish warships. At first light they resumed their course, and when a rumpled grey-blue rising on the starboard bow announced their landfall on South America, with it was the distant pale blur of sails – Narcissus on her beat across the wide estuary mouth.
The three ships lay together in the cross-swell and exchanged news. The captain of Narcissus blared out from his speaking trumpet that, to his knowledge, the Spanish Navy had not yet returned, that all was quiet but that navigation in the estuary was the very devil due to its uncertain and shifting shoals, mud-banks and terrifying squalls.
Kydd hailed back that the fleet was on its way and that all was well, while Honyman in Leda wanted to know if Ocean had been sighted.
Narcissus then spread sail for the open sea to find the commodore. She was replaced on station by Leda while Kydd, with the shallowest draught, was dispatched to penetrate deeper into the River Plate to make sure of the reconnaissance.
It was a fearful task: at nearly 150 miles across at the mouth to a mile or two at its inner end hundreds of miles away, every rutter, pilot and guide they could muster was unanimous in its warnings. The chief peril was the shallow and treacherous trending of the river, which made impossible any approach into the estuary by a sea-going vessel unless by the deeper channels, which wove among the notoriously shifting hard-packed banks. It was said a thousand ships had laid their bones in this bleak place.
The other threat was the weather. The southern bank of the River Plate was in effect the edge of the endless flat plains of the Pampas across which the wind could blast without check. The notorious pampero could become so strong as to kick up a sea potent enough to stop the river in its flow – one from the south-east was sufficient, incredibly, even to reverse the tide – and a hard blow coming from the north-west could virtually dry out the estuary.
Kydd and the master pored over the charts. The funnel-shaped estuary had on the north side the outlying port of Maldonado, with Montevideo fifty miles further in at the true entry to the River Plate. The river narrowed there from sixty miles to thirty, at which point the past Portuguese settlement of Colonia lay opposite Buenos Aires. Twenty miles further on, it ended abruptly in a maze of marshes.
The south side had, except for the capital, no settlements of note and was very low-lying, with cloying mud-flats that stretched for miles. And in the river there were two main sandbanks: the long Ortiz Bank in the middle, and the sinuous length of the Chico closer inshore towards Buenos Aires. Beyond there was nothing but un-navigable shallows.
In hostile waters, without local knowledge or a pilot, they stood in as grave danger as anywhere Kydd had known before. Their stowaway, Serrano, was apologetic: he knew nothing of the sea so their track was entirely their own decision.
‘We stand towards Montevideo, then keep in with the north,’ Kydd finally decided.
Narcissus, a heavy frigate with a draught to match, had been unable to look into this port, the most likely to harbour defending Spanish men-o’-war. It was an essential first step, of course, for this was the designated assault point for the expedition.
With Maldonado safely out of sight, well to the northward, L’Aurore set her prow to the west with doubled lookouts. The lowering grey skies were menacing and the captain and ship’s company were sombre. As they headed in, it was hard to believe they were sailing up a river for there was no land in sight and none expected: it was as if they were in the open ocean, but for the shorter wave-shape and tainted sea.
The master studied intently his Remarks, a printed booklet produced by a merchant captain of half a century before that persuasively gave sailing instructions for safe entry into the port of Montevideo. ‘Bear west b’ north until we raise the isle o’ Flores,’ Kendall intoned.
L’Aurore progressed under cautious sail. A shout came from one of the seamen looking over the side: the water had now turned a repellent mud-brown, solid and impenetrable – the great effluvium of a continental river.
‘Leadsmen!’ Kydd snapped.
A monotonous chant began from the forechains. ‘No bottom wi’ this line!’ It would be a wet and cold job but it would last for as long as they were within the estuary.
Then they reached soundings. ‘By the mark – fifteen!’ So far from land and only ninety feet . . .
Barely half an hour later it was by the deep twelve and then eight, shoaling fast – they must be reaching the vast extrusion of sediment extending seaward. At six fathoms Kydd put another man in the opposite forechain to call out of sequence with the first.
‘Laaand hooo!’
Kydd could not see it from the deck. Then came the hail that it was a long, rambling island – Isla de Flores. Montevideo was just fifteen miles further on.
‘The island – no nearer’n three mile, sir.’
They bore away and almost immediately anxious shouts came from the leadsmen. ‘I’ve five fathom! B’ the mark five!’
It was incredible but with no land in sight they had less than twelve feet of water under their keel. Any rise or knoll in the invisible seabed and they would touch.
‘Heave us to, Mr Kendall,’ Kydd ordered, and turned to the boatswain. ‘I want three boats in the water ahead with a hand lead in each.’
Spread in a line across their bows, they would give indication of the best passage. ‘Says here, sir, if you brings up mud, you’re in the channel, black sand and ye’ve strayed either side.’ Now the leadsmen would be looking to the base of their leads, smeared with tallow to bring up an indication of the nature of the sea bottom.
It was agonisingly slow work. The fitful wind fluttered the sides of the sails; it had been mercifully constant until now but if it veered from its south-westerly direction they would be headed, and the reconnaissance would be over.
After a little more than an hour, the mainland of South America was raised at the masthead: Punta Brava at the outer point of the Bay of Montevideo.
When the land could be seen from the quarterdeck it was flat and uninteresting, scrub, occasional sand dunes and then the last point before the bay. Would they see a tell-tale forest of masts, a swarm of angry gunboats emerging?