"Why, Mr Peake, what is it?" Kydd said. It dawned on him that this was probably the first time the chaplain had seen guns fired in war.
"S-s-sir, I have difficulty in finding the words. This—this blackguard," he stuttered, "I saw with my own eyes, telling his men to take the fallen and—and drop them into the sea! I cannot believe his contempt for the dead! He is blind to humanity! He—he does—"
Suddenly, severed by a shot aloft, the entire length of an eighty-foot main topgallant lift slithered down in an unstoppable cascade, throwing Peake forward into the pin-rail. Kydd picked him up and steadied him. "Mr Peake, why are you here? Your duty—"
"My duty is to be with my flock wherever they've been called, even to this barbaric struggle, and—and to do what I can."
He seemed both pathetic and noble at the same time. Kydd felt unable to respond harshly. "Mr Peake—your duty is not here on deck, or at the guns."
The chaplain looked at him resentfully. "You will speak to this man, then? Tell him—"
"He is doing his duty, Mr Peake. The dead have t' be cleared from th' fighting space of the living or every sacrifice is in vain." Kydd took a deep breath. "They will be remembered, sir, that y' may rely on—and by every one o' their shipmates as they'd wish it. This is the custom o' the Service, sir, and may not be put aside," he finished firmly.
"I—I cannot—that is to say ..."
Kydd paused. There was no lack of fortitude in the man but an edge of madness was lapping at his reason. "Come, sir, there are those that need ye," he said, and drew him away.
He took Peake firmly by the arm and led him below, past the bedlam of both decks of guns, down to the after hatchway and past the sentries to the orlop.
If ever the parson needed a glimpse of hell, thought Kydd, this was it. There was no daylight in the gloomy cavern but lanthorns were sufficient to show such a scene that Peake held back at the bottom of the hatchway ladder, rigid with horror. Spreading out from the base of the ladder where they had been brought and left, wounded men lay moaning and writhing; some were ominously still. Cries of pain and mortal despair filled the air, almost drowning the rumbling of guns run out on the deck above.
Further into the orlop, in the space outside the midshipmen's berth known as the cockpit, a table had been set up on three sea-chests, a smaller spread with the dull gleam of medical instruments. A bunch of lanthorns above gave light to this operating table and Pybus, almost unrecognisable in a bloody apron, was directing the surgeon's mates and loblolly boys in preparing the next man for his attention.
Kydd's gorge rose, but he stepped resolutely round the wretches on the deck, and pulled Peake to Pybus. The doctor looked at them briefly. "You'll wait your turn with the others," he snapped, turning his back. Kydd was shocked at the change in their dry-humoured surgeon—his black-rimmed eyes were sunken but there was an iron control and ferocious purpose. "Get out of my way," he snapped crossly. A seaman was lifted on to the table, his lower leg a grisly tatter of blood and bone fragments below a kerchief tourniquet. The man was white with pain. His eyes rolled as he understood where he was being laid, but the loblolly crew took his arms and legs and spreadeagled him with ropes to four stanchions.
Kydd and Peake were mesmerised. The seaman's bloody trousers were cut away quickly, the sudden touch of the surgeon's mate making him flinch with dread. A leather pad, dark with stains, was put into his mouth, and as Pybus approached, the man's piteous eyes fixed on his, following his every move. His body was rigid with terror. "Hold still, and I'll not make a mistake," Pybus said levelly, and closed in for the job.
Unable to look away Kydd saw Pybus take his bloody knife and thrust it up between the man's thighs. It did not hesitate: in a whirl of movement the knife sliced, in a single practised stroke, clear round the entire leg. A mind-freezing howl came from the wretch on the table, who writhed hopelessly against his tethers, but without delay Pybus took his saw—much like a butcher's—and applied himself to the bone. While the man fought and shrieked into the leather in his teeth the harsh grating of the saw continued until the pitiable remnant of leg separated and fell with a meaty thud. It was retrieved and dropped into a tub.
Pybus took his needle and, standing astride the stump, swiftly sutured across a flap of skin left for the purpose, then stood aside to let his mates treat it with spirits of turpentine. The whole procedure, incredibly, was over in less than two minutes. He mopped his forehead, then said thickly to Kydd, as he wiped down his blade, "What are you here for, then?"
"Ah, Doctor, I have here Mr Peake, who desires t' be of some use." He felt faint but carried on: "Er, if ye could indicate to him any who might have need o' some, er, comfort of religion, why, please t' inform him."
For a space Pybus regarded them both, his expression unreadable. "You might see to him," he said, pointing to a quiet figure pulled to a sitting position against the ship's side. "He's ruptured his femoral—no hope, he's only minutes left. Oh, and that powder monkey, his face burned so, and calling for his mother ..."
Kydd made quickly for the hatchway; the chaplain would find employment enough now. For a moment the cocoon of belief in his own invulnerability slipped and terror seized him at the thought of his own maiming and subsequent descent into the orlop. But that way led to nightmares and cowardice, and he crushed the images.
Deliberately he shifted his thoughts to Renzi and paused at the top of the ladder to the gundeck to catch a glimpse of his friend. There, it was a different kind of hell. Men worked their guns by only the dim light of battle lanthorns in the stinking, thunderous gloom amid thick, swirling powder-smoke. Consumed with a wild thirst from the acrid fumes, they were unable to see their antagonist in the outer darkness but for the deadly flash of their cannon muzzles.
This was brutal, killing work, serving the iron beasts like slaves—knowing that whichever was the first to falter would lose the battle. Gun captains drove on their men with hoarse cries and curses, locked for ever in the ceaseless rhythm of swabbing out hot muzzles, loading and running out, a manic imperative that pushed men on and on to heroic feats of strength and endurance.
It was impossible to see across the deck and he feared for his friend. Then Renzi, his uniform stained grey, appeared from a gusting swirl of smoke, calm and pacing slowly with a half-smile that stayed in place. Kydd's joy and relief at seeing him metamorphosed a cheery wave into a grave doffing of his hat, which was equally solemnly returned.
Kydd bounded up the ladder and out on to the familiar dark chaos of the open quarterdeck. He looked about for the pacing figures of the captain and other officers, but when he located them they were motionless, all their attention in one direction: beyond the stern of their adversary and across a short stretch of sea, the enemy's mighty flagship was afire.
CHAPTER 6
FIRE! SEAMEN COULD BRAVE GALES to go aloft or stand fearless against the deadliest cannonade but the elemental terror of fire aboard ship could turn the hardest man to craven panic. And Kydd had a personal dread of it. In the Caribbean, in Seaflower, he had seen a ship ablaze: they had tried to claw against the wind to save the sailors but, helpless, had been forced to watch their end—a choice of being burned alive or throwing themselves into the water to sharks in a feeding frenzy.
"Seems t' be aft, around the mizzen chains, the poop ..." Kydd forced his voice steady as he trained his signal telescope on the intermittent flaring on the big ship's after-end, where her signal crew would be gathered. His imagination supplied the details. There would be frantic scrambling to extinguish the flames before they took hold; fire-buckets dashed at them by men held with feral dread as if charged by a wild bull. Sailors would be taken from the guns, from below—everyone who could be spared would be put to work for a bucket chain before the engine and hose were brought into play.