A decision could not be delayed much longer: both ships were being carried into the Caribbean by a current as fast as a man briskly walking. They would be abreast of Grenada later in the day and he would be forced to either break off or go on.
He knew even as he thought about it what he would do. Keep on while the wind was still fair for Grenada, then tack about into St George’s where there was a small British garrison and see if there was news, otherwise warn them. It helped that this was in fact more or less what he had been sent to do.
After midday the breeze freshened, the more extravagant sail was taken in, and by three they were bowling along. The chase was still not in sight. There was nothing for it – L’Aurore hauled her wind for the north, and before evening made landfall on Grand Bay, rounding Point Salines safely well to windward before opening up St George’s Bay itself.
And almost immediately they saw, not more than a mile or two ahead, a terrified merchantman of precisely the same size and rig as their chase desperately making for the safety of the harbour.
It took a short visit only to establish that this was their quarry. The vessel had unusually shortened sail in the night to furled lower courses rather than topsails, the longer to remain out of sight at daybreak. And there was no immediate intelligence of an enemy in the vicinity. They had done what they could.
After spending the night at anchor in order to transit the coral banks to the north in daylight, L’Aurore proceeded back to sea.
There was no guarantee that the big merchantman was the ship seen through the rain squalls by the Danish but it seemed likely; in any event Kydd’s orders were to return to Barbados and report. They slipped north past the steep, tropical slopes of Grenada, taking their leave of the area, and into the island-studded seas to the north.
‘Lay Ronde well to starb’d,’ Kydd instructed, sniffing the breeze. He reluctantly left the sunlit brilliance of the morning and went below to prepare his day.
In the middle of the third paragraph of his report he froze, then jerked upright, listening.
Some preternatural sense had triggered an alarm – something so out of kilter with his ordered world that it made the hairs on his neck rise.
He waited, quill poised. It came again, more felt than heard. The deep crump of an explosion – more; then sounds coming together.
He raced for the cabin door, nearly knocking down Gilbey, on his way to report, who blurted, ‘Gunfire! Heavy gunfire coming from out o’ the north!’
A sudden chill stole over Kydd. It was inexplicable that somewhere ahead a fleet action was taking place among the maze of islands that made up the Grenadines. But, then, with St Lucia and Martinique not so far further on and Barbados itself to the east, was it impossible?
Napoleon’s master-stroke.
Renzi was already on deck and pointed to a distant ragged smudge of smoke that spread as they watched. The rumbling became sharper, then tailed off and the smoke dissipated.
‘All sail to bowlines,’ Kydd snapped, ‘then clear for battle.’ How he might join a major action with not the slightest knowledge of dispositions or foe was not clear, but his duty was: he must get his ship to the British commander on the scene as soon as he could.
Lookouts were tripled with orders to report the character and position of every ship they could see. If he could build a picture before he was engulfed in the madness of combat …
But they remained completely silent as the frigate made for the distant thinning band of smoke. Then, without warning, there was a sudden concussion and a colossal plume of flame and smoke shot up – some unfortunate vessel had blown up before their eyes. It explained why the firing had died away, just as it had those years ago at the Nile when there was utter silence for long minutes after the explosion of the French flagship L’Orient.
The racing wave kicked up by the blast reached them, still with enough energy to send L’Aurore into a fretful jibbing and tossing. Yet as they neared, there were no sightings. Not a sail, let alone a line-of-battle.
In an awed hush L’Aurore progressed on. Eerily, the entire battlefield was innocent of anything save the deep blue and emerald green of the sea. Not a single ship.
A cry from a seaman and an outstretched arm pointed to a dark speck in the water off the bow. Closer, it resolved into a body, clinging to a piece of wreckage.
‘Bring it in,’ Kydd said tersely.
He was a black man, his body burnt and bloody. As he was laid on deck there was movement, weak and spasmodic. Eyes half open, he rolled to his side to retch before flopping back with an agonised groan.
‘What ship?’ Kydd demanded bending over him. Then, when there was no response: ‘Quel navire?’
Someone brought a roll of canvas and packed it under his head. The surgeon arrived and inspected the man.
‘Are we going to get anything from him, do you think?’ Kydd asked.
Before the answer came, the man moaned hoarsely, then spoke inaudibly and closed his eyes in pain.
‘Er, what was that?’
‘Man, Kick ’em Jenny!’ the man croaked with effort.
Kydd looked up, baffled.
‘Sounded like, “Kickum cherry”,’ Gilbey offered.
A startled cry from forward took their attention. A seaman was urgently gesturing to a sight that clutched at every shellback’s heart, out off the bow. From the Stygian gloom of the deep, an intense, spreading luminescence was rising, moving slowly, with infinite menace. Was a sea-monster of unimaginable size about to appear and devour them?
Petrified seamen watched as it took shape, rising, growing. With it came a foul smell that …
Renzi turned on Kydd in sudden understanding. ‘Naples!’
Kydd reacted instantly. ‘Hard down y’r helm! Get us away, for God’s sake!’
L’Aurore heeled and ran from the hideous apparition but when they were not one mile off, with a cataclysmic spasm, an underwater volcano vented. Bursting skyward with a deafening blast, a towering plume of grey, shot with flame and lazily arcing black fragments, climbed and then subsided into lesser paroxysms, a fearful and stupefying drama of nature.
When the heavy rumbling had died away the man opened his eyes again and whispered, ‘Dere – she wake up. Dat Kick ’em Jenny!’
An invitation arrived from the commander-in-chief, Leeward Islands station to a formal dinner marking the first anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar and the loss of Lord Nelson. It was extended to every naval officer in Cochrane’s command, and the guest of honour was to be the only one of Nelson’s captains on that dread day who was serving on the station: Thomas Kydd.
The very highest in civil society would be invited to attend too, and in view of the unprecedented numbers, the governor had graciously extended the use of the state banqueting hall, the Long Room.
It would be, without question, the occasion of the year.
Kydd felt both humbled and elated. Guest of honour – that meant not only a faultless appearance but a speech, delivered before several hundred sea officers and important guests.
Renzi could be relied on to confect a splendid talk, replete with apt quotations from the classics and full of elegant, rolling phrases that would be commented on for months – but this time Kydd knew he had to make it his own: set down what it had been to be part of the exalted realm of Nelson’s band of brothers; open to his listeners just what the brutal pressures had been on the little admiral, how he’d triumphed over every one to lead his devoted men to victory in the greatest sea battle of all time.
And perhaps share something of the humanity and warmth in the man, those details of administration and concern for the fleet, which showed he understood that the men in the ships won his battles for him and …