In the event, Joyce was proved right. Just three or four miles ahead, the docks of Santander were in full view and, apart from what looked like a fishing boat, empty. He could venture into the port, but what if it was in French hands, as it most likely was? He’d seen that there was naught of interest, so he’d move on.
‘Our nor’-westerly, sir.’
Scud was beginning to race overhead, sure portent of an increase to a gale – and this made it a dangerously lee shore.
‘Mr Joyce. Do you know-’
‘Santona. Less’n ten miles ahead.’
The master conned Tyger around the broad, rock-infested coastline, not deigning to make to seaward. The same hard wind gave them a rapid passage past, seamen glancing ashore with sombre faces at the ceaseless thunder and explosions of white Atlantic combers with a fetch of thousands of miles breaking at last against the land.
A dismal evening clamped in, the flat, hard blast of the gale wearying and tedious, and Kydd’s instincts were all for putting down the helm and going for the open sea before darkness set in.
‘Five miles more of this and we head out,’ he warned, but Joyce was confident, and shortly they sighted a long, flat beach and, beyond, a massive, rearing hill a mile or more across. They rounded it and, to Kydd’s grateful surprise, it went further, exposing a river mouth a bare couple of hundred yards wide, giving a snug lee of a good mile and a half.
The gale abruptly cut off as they felt the blocking effect of the four-hundred-odd-foot hill, and Kydd eased. A fine place to see out the gale. Both bowers went down and Tyger settled to her rest.
Shaking his oilskins, Kydd glanced round. There was little sign of habitation, what looked like an ancient town on the inner side of the island-like hill and marshes inland. Nothing to worry about, and he went below.
It was typical Biscay meanness but the gale blew itself out over two days.
Kydd gave orders to sail on the following morning. The crew would appreciate another all night in and, in any case, things could change back just as rapidly.
He took a light dinner and decided to continue his letter to Persephone.
This night he felt a special bond, a golden thread that connected them over the miles of sea. From their position he knew they were precisely at the longitude of Knowle Manor. If by some magic he could faithfully follow true north he would eventually end up in her garden, she tending the roses then suddenly looking up in surprise, running to him and …
Full of tender thoughts he pulled out the sheet of paper that he’d already begun writing on. Like those of all sailors, it was in the form of an endless missive that only concluded when a mail boat was about to sail for England. To put pen to paper so privately, just to her, was a warm and touching experience, the next best thing to being with one’s love. And, as he’d discovered, there was an ease to saying things in a letter that he was diffident to say face to face.
Suddenly weary, he turned in and the ship went to routine for the silent hours.
When urgent shouts pierced his sleep he was on deck before he was fully awake. More shouts, the thump of running feet. His mind scrambled to make sense of it – they were at anchor, and if it were any sudden sail it would have the officer-of-the-watch beating the ship to quarters.
He pushed past to the after hatchway, jostled by men recklessly bolting for the upper deck. The ship sinking? His heart started to pound at the ominous rushing for the open air and when he finally reached the quarterdeck he hurried over to the group around the wheel and Brice, the officer on watch.
‘What’s to do, sir?’ he blurted, breathless. ‘Why is the ship in such a confounding?’
There were now dozens, scores of seamen on deck, what they were doing unclear in the dark.
‘Didn’t know whether to call you or no,’ Brice said, the whites of his eyes showing in the dimness.
‘Well, quickly, man, I’m here now! What’s it all about?’ More seamen were racing up from below, a rising babble of confusion spreading fast.
‘I – I- Well, the fore larboard lookout, he, umm …’
‘For God’s sake! Get on with it!’
‘Well, sir,’ Brice gulped, ‘He thought it proper to inform me that he’d sighted an, er … mermaid.’
‘A what?’ Kydd gasped in disbelief.
‘A mermaid. That’s what he said, sir.’
‘And you-’
‘I went forrard and … and saw that he was, um, right in the particulars. I myself saw a mermaid out to leeward a half pistol shot, swimming as who’d believe it. I sent for a lanthorn and when the mermaid came close, the looby who held it took fright and dropped it, seeing it close up like.’
‘Have you called for another?’ Kydd snapped, although internally he felt the creeping chill of the supernatural invade his vitals.
‘Yes, sir. And sent for the doctor, he being in the physiological line and all.’
‘Where’s it now?’
‘Um, last seen close to the hull, making slow way aft, then out o’ sight under the counter. She – that is, it must be thereabouts at this moment.’
Kydd hesitated as all the sailors’ superstitions of his past came back to him. A mermaid – if it was – posed no threat other than luring the common sailor to his doom. Should he give orders not to let the creature come aboard, no one to talk to it?
Another lanthorn arrived. ‘Clear the after end of the upper deck and keep silent,’ he ordered.
When the noise had died, he went to the taffrail and looked nervously over the side into the inky depths, letting the light play down where the upper edge of the massive rudder could be seen … There was something down there!
Then, shocking in its unexpectedness, the form of a mermaid flicked into view, half clothed with pale arms and a pallid face with long dark hair, staring up at him with a piercing look of entreaty.
Kydd froze. She rolled on her back and called up at him in a thin, haunting voice, ‘Capitan! Do let me come on board your ship, I beg you!’
He jerked back – into his mind came a frightful thought: the mermaid was trying to lure him!
She shoved off effortlessly into full view, her face still on his, the voice calling, her legs a shimmer of-
Legs? Mermaid?
‘Mr Brice! Away seaboat’s crew. Get your mermaid inboard this minute, sir!’
The Tygers crowded round, goggling in fascination as a girl was brought in, her clothing plastered to her body, shivering uncontrollably in the blustering night wind. On the deck there were small wet female footprints. The practical Tysoe quickly appeared with one of Kydd’s dressing-gowns, which he fussed on before shepherding her below. Kydd followed, knowing every single eye was on him. ‘Get turned in, you blaggards! We sail at daybreak!’ he roared over his shoulder.
With the girl tidying herself in his bedplace, he snapped, ‘Get Mr Dillon.’
His secretary appeared with suspicious alacrity.
‘I didn’t see you to the fore when I went to find out what we’d snagged.’
‘Ah. I was … asleep,’ he answered, shamefaced.
‘Well, wake yourself up. I need some answers.’
The girl appeared shyly, so petite in Kydd’s gown. ‘I – I’m so sorry, Capitan,’ she said in delightfully accented English, clutching the robe, her tiny feet peeping out beneath.
‘Ah, yes. Now, we can’t have a young lady swimming about in the dark like a … like a mermaid,’ he harrumphed.
‘My name is Lucila Ochoa,’ she said, ignoring his clumsy fatherly tone. ‘I risk my life because I trust the English and swim to you from the land. For a very important reason.’ She could only be sixteen or so but her air was that of someone much older.
‘I am Captain Sir Thomas Kydd. This is His Majesty’s Ship Tyger. What reason have you for swimming out to us?’ Very few sailors could swim a stroke, he himself only barely.
She bit her lip. ‘Sir, I ask you to pity Spain at this time. The French are barbarians. They steal and destroy without mercy. It is a torment for the people. And so they have risen up. I am of a band of patriots, that of Koldo Uribe, and we have sworn to stay in arms until they are cast out entirely.’