Kydd saw the white face of Beekman looking back at him from forward, waiting on his decision. A gentle puff of the night breeze came; they were at anchor, stemming the slight current and-
‘Get that mizzen hoisted!’ he bellowed, in sudden conviction.
Startled, men turned in incomprehension.
‘Now! Hoist the bugger!’ His voice cracked with the effort, but it lashed them into movement. Two seamen clambered aft and helped him raise the ponderous sail. It flapped twice, then bellied, and under the leverage of sail aft on the anchor forward, Stalwart obediently began swinging into the wind – bows on to the approaching enemy.
It had worked! Now the target they offered was reduced and, most important, under oars there was no easy coming in to board at an angle amidships; instead they must either grapple and come in over the bow by ones and twos or crab around to get alongside while under fire the whole time.
They chose the bows.
With three men on muskets and pistols and two reloading, Stalwart did what she could but a grapnel came sailing in and hauled the craft together, the other bowsprit spearing over their fore-deck until the two were awkwardly locked side by side. With a roar of triumph the enemy boarders crowded forward.
Throwing aside their empty pistols the defenders drew their cutlasses and, with bared teeth, dared them to try. The first two ran out on the bowsprit – if Stalwart had had pikes they would have been dead men – and with sword points extended they leaped down either side, then raced for the defenders.
Kydd had four men in a line across the wider part of the triangular fore-deck and the two closed with a vicious clash of steel. Dougal took one and Kydd the other but, behind, two more were jumping down and Kydd was aware of the set-faced petty officer beside him lunging forward to meet them, and a vague impression of their fourth giving savage blows to one side before he was swallowed in the confusion.
His opponent had an old-fashioned rapier, which flicked about like a snake’s tongue, searching for an opening, its lightness giving it deadly speed while Kydd’s snatched-up cutlass seemed heavy and unresponsive.
In the flickering pool of light, the fight was brutal and with no quarter possible – but they had to hold the line: no more enemy boarders could make it on to the crowded deck while they did so, and their attackers knew it, throwing themselves forward in a frenzy of violence, stabbing, hacking, smashing.
As he parried and slashed, a tiny part of Kydd’s mind coolly told him he was right: this ferocity owed its intensity to the need to stop a secret being spilled, which could only be the point of entry of the arms smuggling.
His momentary lapse in concentration was punished by the sight of the pitiless features of his opponent as the rapier pierced his defences in a lunge to his face. He reflexively tried to avoid the blade but it hissed through his collar and he felt its hot burn along his neck. Instinctively he twisted away – it brought pressure on the rapier blade, impeding its withdrawal, and Kydd desperately brought his cutlass in a wide slash across towards the belly. The man pulled back – and tripped, falling full length, and Kydd was on him, the heavy cutlass swinging down and laying the man’s body open in a welter of blood and viscera.
In a split second Kydd trampled over the body and thrust his bloody cutlass at the one bearing down on Dougal. The man swung to meet him but Dougal’s blade transfixed his side – in this morbid hackery there was no space for the gallantries of the fencing code and he whirled around to meet one about to impale him from behind. His blade at parry, something made the man hesitate – Kydd pressed his advantage and his opponent stumbled backwards against the low bulwark to topple over the side.
The sound of the plunge was loud against the grunts, steel clashing and slithers that filled the air. Thinking, perhaps, that his comrades were abandoning the fight and swimming for their lives, one made the fatal mistake of looking over his shoulder and was cut down in an instant; another turned and ran, and a last leaped over the side.
There were more in the falucho but they hesitated. A figure bravely darted past Kydd and began sawing at the grapnel line with his midshipman’s dirk. It fell free, the craft swinging clear, but with their boarders out of the line of fire there was a last vengeful burst of musketry from the enemy. In the vicious whip of bullets, Kydd’s upraised blade took a ball squarely, with a numbing clang that caused him to drop it in pain but, with a sudden flash, their starboard carronade had banged out and a storm of grape tore into the men opposite, throwing them aside like bloody skittles.
It was the end of the fight: the falucho, out of control, drifted away, leaving the Stalwarts to count the cost.
There were two enemy dead, one seaman on his hands and knees rocking with pain, another biting off gasps as a shipmate bound his forearm – and the huddled form of Beekman still forward. Kydd hurried over but by the sputtering light of the lamp it was obvious his wound was mortaclass="underline" even as the midshipman had knelt at his ship-saving task, a ball had struck in at the shoulder and raked down into his body.
The lad’s consciousness was slipping, his eyes flicking from one side to the other, desperately scrabbling for life. Kydd tried to cradle the absurdly slight body while the last battle was fought, his heart wringing at the pity of it. A sudden spasm seized the boy in a paroxysm of desperation but when it had left – so had his life.
Chapter 12
The sound of Kydd’s steps echoed from the stone stairs as he made his way yet again to the roof parapets of the fort. He stood and looked out to the restless grey water, with its limitless horizon, feeling for the freedom and contentment of the open sea.
With every fibre of his soul he wanted to be quit of the place, with its mood of foreboding and treachery; the monotony of the flat, endless landscape; the inescapable stink of mud and animals; the pinched rations and strained faces; the tedium of waiting and keeping his flotilla at their vital blockade until relief finally came.
He thought of brave little Beekman, who would leave his bones here, never again to see the grand sight of Cape Town’s Table Mountain and the sun-splashed veld. In his sea life Kydd had seen countless tragedies and had acquired a detachment that usually kept him distant, but Beekman had got under his guard. Such a pitiable waste.
Swallowing, Kydd forced himself to concentrate as he made his usual appraisal of the weather. The glass was falling but too little to worry about, the winds gusty and sulky from the north-east, not a concern for the blockade of Colonia. Moreover, the mud-flats close by were under water, ensuring there was navigability around the Chico Bank. There was no telling, however, in these duplicitous waters: he had heard of one occasion when, with an adverse wind, the incoming tide had actually been cowed into retreating, leaving the whole River Plate a vast mud-flat, shore to shore.
He turned to go, but hesitated at what he saw developing inland to the south-west. A peculiar roll of cloud, separate from the rest, stretched for miles and had a dark, unhealthy hue. It put him in mind of the Southerly Buster, a phenomenon he had once been caught up in some years ago off Australia: it had the vicious trick of advancing with high winds from one direction, then whipping round to attack an unfortunate ship from the opposite direction.
When he wandered back up just before noon to check, it was considerably nearer, a peculiar uniform long tube of brown-grey, slowly and ominously rolling forward. Under its baneful influence the winds before it faded, bringing an oppressive humidity and the feral apprehension that always came before a storm.