‘Your men found nothing?’
‘Not a sign.’
It didn’t make sense. If they’d abandoned the wreck, surely there’d be a camp somewhere close. And lookouts to watch for a rescue vessel. Or had they already been picked up? No – they would have buried their shipmates first. If he now sailed away, he could be dooming thirty-three people to a terrible end.
‘I’m going to see for myself.’ In all conscience, Kydd couldn’t rob them of their only chance of rescue without one more look.
‘It’s fearfully hot, sir,’ Bowden said, ‘and if this swell rises, getting off again in the surf could be hard.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind. Poulden – pick a good crew.’
Kydd stripped off his coat and, with a quick apology, borrowed a seaman’s flat sennit hat before boarding the whaler, taking the steering oar himself. It was a dizzying ride in, and the final rush to the sand was as exhilarating as it was hazardous.
‘Haul in.’
While the boat was dragged clear Kydd looked about him. High sand-hills, a very few small ragged bushes and strangely coloured dunes that stretched away into a limitless distance. A sense of utter desolation beat at him as he trudged towards the dark-timbered bulk of the wreck.
From shoreward it was not difficult to get aboard by the ropes that trailed in the water over the stern. What Bowden had not mentioned was the squeal and barking of tortured timber and the crazy working of the planking as the decks sagged on to each other. Or the stench of putrefaction mingled with bilge and sea smells.
Bent double, Kydd worked his way forward and saw the first body, its parts scattered. In the gloom he caught the flash of eyes – some sort of hyena circling. There were other bodies – now just butcher’s carcasses – that he dimly perceived rolled together in the lower part of the canted deck.
There was nothing to be gained by staying and Kydd made for fresh air, relieved to be away from the cloying fetor of death. He had once been wrecked in the Azores and knew how rapidly a doomed ship turned from having been a neat and trim home for sailors into a crazed death-trap.
The Grethe was not long for this world – in a short while it would be a gaunt, grey-timbered skeleton. But where were her people? There were simply nowhere near enough bodies. It could only be that they had left the wreck and got ashore.
Back on the vast beach he gathered his thoughts. Had they headed inland, hoping to reach some sort of civilisation? The constant wind with its sibilance of rubbing sand-grains had obliterated all tracks – even Bowden’s were now rounded and filled.
Kydd toiled up the face of the highest dune. At the top he looked out on the most parched and bleak desert landscape he had ever seen: endless vari-coloured sand-mountains, some with dark ridges protruding, rising from a flat desert floor and stretching away into a shimmering distance, where several rounded copper mountains lay, all in the torpid stillness of a terrible desert silence – vast, brooding, impenetrable. And not the faintest human trace.
Away from the sea, there was no cooling wind and the heated sand beat mercilessly up at him.
Had there been a fierce attack by a native tribe? Surely nothing could live here in this landscape. The survivors had vanished – and it must remain a mystery for ever.
He turned to go, but stopped. What if they had not accepted their fate and in desperation had struck out to find their own deliverance? It would have been a dreadful decision: to leave the relative comfort and shelter of the wreck for the unknown. Perhaps the bodies were of those who had argued for staying until rescued, while the others had taken their fate in their own hands and started out.
Only a madman would enter the hellish aridity inland when by the sea there was some degree of coolness and hard-packed sand for travelling. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that this was what had happened.
They would have gone to the south. The impossible dream of Cape Town would be always before them, but Kydd knew that this was an unreachable eight hundred miles away – a comfortable week’s sail for L’Aurore but an impossible march for survivors in this sun-blasted hell.
He decided to go after them. In these conditions he could not hazard the frigate inshore close enough to pick out individual figures. It would have to be done on foot along the beach, but this should not be too difficult for fit men. He would necessarily be delaying his return to the Cape, but if there was no sign in a single day’s march, he would abandon the search.
‘Stand by to launch the whaler, Poulden.’
His coxswain hesitated. ‘We’re t’ leave ’em, sir?’
‘No – we’re following them. You’re to take the whaler to L’Aurore and bring back these things – make a note, if y’ please.’
Kydd had already decided that he should be with the searching party in case decisions had to be taken, but it needed only a few others – a couple of marines used to marching, the doctor and possibly someone with sharp eyes. And each to carry three military canteens of water at the least. Everyone to wear but a covering shirt, seamen’s trousers and sennit hat. Perhaps a scrap of canvas to lie under, some ship’s biscuits, anything easily portable to eat.
He also scribbled an order to Gilbey to take the ship, his instructions to keep with their progress until signalled to send in a boat. And there would be three signal flags, he’d decide the meanings while the boat was away, and in the event of strange sail, he’d leave this to the discretion of the acting captain.
The whaler launched in a mighty rearing and exhilarating explosion of rainbow spray and fought its way over each successive line of breakers until it had won the open sea and could erect its mast and sail.
Kydd was left on the beach, feeling curiously lonely away from the company of men, just the sound of wind-driven sand and the relentless bass pounding and seethe of surf. He stripped himself down to shirt and trousers and stared over to the wreck, pondering on its gradual ruin at the hands of the ceaseless breakers.
He took out his notebook and jotted down some elementary signals: ‘boat to come in’, ‘survivors sighted’, ‘send more water’, and others. Satisfied, he snapped it shut and waited.
The boat returned in a wild rush through the surf and a wide-eyed Calloway, Sergeant Dodd and his corporal, Cullis, scrambled out. The boat’s crew threw out their gear after them and helped the surgeon over the gunwale, cursing as he came.
‘I just hope you know what you’re doing, Mr Kydd!’ spluttered Peyton, thoroughly soaked, nursing a bag of medicines.
‘I do. And you’ll not be wanting that coat, Doctor – do take it, Poulden.’
The whaler was being bullied sideways by the onrushing waves and Kydd didn’t want to detain it, but Poulden asked, in some concern, ‘An’ shall we stay wi’ ye, sir? Could be cannibals an’ all behind them dunes.’
‘We’ll be fine, thank you. Goodbye.’
The little group formed up, the two marines trying not to be awed by the daunting spectacle of the limitless wilderness. Canteens were slung, small bags swung over shoulders and they set out.
The sun was ferocious, the heat almost like a weight bearing down as they paced along, grateful for the hard sand underfoot. Sergeant Dodd carried a light pole, at its tip signal flag numeral one fluttering out to signify to watching telescopes, ‘Am proceeding normally’.
Conversation was an effort, and they swung on in silence until, after an hour, Kydd called a halt.
Peyton sat in the soft sand, his head in his hands, but Kydd was not inclined to be sympathetic. ‘I’m looking for signs – clues that tells me they’ve been this way. Anything at all – cast-off pieces of baggage, empty water canteens, things thrown aside.’ Glancing scornfully at Peyton, he added, ‘But if there’s no evidence by sundown, we return aboard.’