‘A fine day’s work,’ Kydd pronounced, to the grinning men, ‘as will give you a dog-watch yarn none may beat.’ There were eight altogether. With none of the usual challenges of a new-captured ship – securing prisoners, frantic pumping to keep afloat and the rest – it would be enough.
L’Aurore was under orders to keep off until he returned, in case of a trick, but it didn’t matter for he’d simply leave a couple of hands and, on return, send back more. He smothered a sigh and sent his men to carry out a quick inspection – it would not do to have to rouse out later any drunken and resentful crew who’d remained onboard.
The afternoon sun beamed down, and while he waited, Kydd considered what to do next. To keep men aboard Bato in idleness while L’Aurore sailed away was not the best use of a frigate’s prime seamen. If he delayed for a day or so he could send to Cape Town for guard-duty soldiers, but his orders were for critical haste.
A muffled cry came up the main hatchway – and another. If it was a trap it made no sense: Kydd and his men had been outnumbered before – why wait until now to spring it? Kydd raced over to the hatchway as two of his men burst up from below, horror on their faces.
‘S-Sir! Ship’s afire, sir!’
Over the fore-hatch Kydd saw a shimmering that did not owe itself to noon-day heat. Somewhere below . . . ‘Follow me!’ he roared. The Dutch had fired the ship, but if they moved fast they had a chance. It was worth taking almost any risk – at stake was a ship-of-the-line. The guns alone were . . .
He raced down the fore-hatch. The air below was hot and acrid with resinous smoke from Stockholm tar, which was almost certainly what they had used to start the blaze. It was a sailor’s worst nightmare, but Kydd knew his men were with him. He flew down the steps to the next deck. Now smoke was swirling around him but there were no visible flames.
Was it even further below? The orlop? He made out a flickering orange glow in the gloom forward. Coughing, he plunged into it, tripping on rubbish strewn about the decks, and soon saw a hasty pile of carpenter’s stores – chippings, glue, resin – well alight.
‘The fire engine! Find it ’n’ rig it!’ he shouted hoarsely. Poulden beckoned a seaman and hurried aft. ‘The rest, grab a hammock to smother it – move y’rselves!’
He looked round wildly: there was a roll of old canvas to one side. ‘Get the other corner,’ he spluttered at a seaman, and they drew it clumsily at the fire. It died away for a moment but, choking, they had not managed to aim well and flames began licking out from under the material.
One seaman screamed, the whites of his eyes vivid in the gloom. He fell back, mesmerised. Kydd tried to reposition the canvas but now it was only fuelling the fire.
‘Sir – we found an engine but it was in pieces, like,’ Poulden shouted nervously from behind.
Flames eagerly took to the canvas flaring some old paint encrusted on it and Kydd felt real heat now. The fire engine was wrecked: what else was to hand? He shielded his eyes from the glare, looking about wildly. The cunning Dutch had started the fire low in the ship – a bucket brigade was useless this far down and even a whole crew would be hard put to stop it now.
Some of the braver souls unfurled hammocks and dragged them over the fire but it was hopeless and the flames rose even quicker, licking at the deckhead, spreading evilly. There was a dull whoomf as some tar barrels caught and then a general retreat through the choking smoke.
Suddenly there was a scream from the hatchway. ‘Save y’rselves, mates! There’s another fire forrard!’ On the upper-deck, flames had followed the lines of tar and leaped to the rigging.
There was an instant stampede; there came a point when a fire became a ravening beast let loose with death in its heart, and this no man could withstand.
It was time to leave the ship to her fiery doom. ‘Muster aft, all the hands!’ Kydd bellowed. A quick tally revealed two were missing. ‘Poulden,’ Kydd ordered.
The coxswain snatched at the sleeve of a sailor and they disappeared below. The others shuffled nervously, but Kydd was damned if he’d let them save themselves before the four returned.
The fire forward was spreading astonishingly quickly. The rigging was stiff with preservative tar and the flames shot up the foremast halyards voraciously, catching the varnish of spars and racing along tarry ropes between the masts to start fresh blazes.
One by one they gave way, swinging down in a shower of cinders. Yards robbed of their suspending gear jerked and swayed dangerously. Then sparks began dropping on Kydd and the others from the main-mast, whose rigging had caught.
‘Into the boat, then!’ he snapped. They needed no urging and, yanking it alongside, began scrambling in. Kydd stayed on deck, praying Poulden would soon appear as a rain of burning fragments drove them further aft.
Then Poulden’s smoke-blackened figure burst out of the after-hatchway with his mate, dragging a body with them. ‘Couldn’t get t’ Lofty,’ he said, his voice breaking. The other man looked around piteously and Kydd shied from the thought of what must have passed below.
‘We’re leaving now,’ he said brusquely, and they hurried to the side, Kydd pausing to snatch a line from a belaying pin and fashion a bowline on a bight to lower the corpse down. Anxious faces looked up, flinching at the burning fragments falling from aloft.
Without warning there was a loud, splintering crack above them. Before Kydd could look up, a weather-darkened spar swung down jerkily, trailing flaming ropes and brutally knocking them aside. It ended its careering rush through the centre of the boat, like a giant’s spear.
A shriek of agony from an unfortunate who’d been skewered ended in choking bubbles of his own blood. The cries of the trapped turned to frantic gurgling as the smashed boat filled. Frightened seamen scrabbled back up the side and joined the shocked group on deck, staring at the wreckage containing their dead shipmates settling low in the water.
‘What d’ we do now, sir?’ Poulden asked, ashen-faced. ‘No boat.’
Kydd had no quick answer. L’Aurore’s orders were not to approach Bato on any account, to guard against trickery, and simply await their return. The firing of the ship would have been spotted and the assumption made that it was Kydd’s action. But, worst of all, the boat was on the blind side and nothing would have been seen of their catastrophe. There would be no rescue.
The crackle of blazing timber from forward redoubled; in the light winds flames leaped vertically and now spread across the width of the ship, advancing aft in an unstoppable wall of fire. Kydd saw there was no longer any option – at any moment the fire would reach the ship’s magazines and they would be blown to kingdom come. ‘Into the water!’ he shouted, throwing aside his coat. ‘The magazines are ready to go!’
The seamen raced to the side but stopped dead as one shrieked, ‘Jus’ look at ’em!’ He pointed down, terrified. Lazily flicking past was the huge pale bulk of a shark. Another pallid blur cruised further out, accustomed to the ditching of ‘gash’ overside from Bato – galley scraps and the like.
‘Mr Kydd, sir?’ Poulden beseeched.
The fire – or the sharks? He was the captain.
Kydd snatched another glance over the side. At least three of the monsters were now in view. And the magazine could blow in the next second.
‘We go in!’ he ordered. ‘On m’ order, we jump together next to the boat as will frighten the buggers off. Soon as you’re in, pull yourselves into the wreck.’