Artemis - Kydd 02 (28 page)

There would be no danger from the indolent Spaniards on this holy day and so far from the provincial centres; Powlett could rest easy with his men ashore for a few hours — a cannon fired from the ship would have them back in minutes.

As they walked the familiar sounds of the sea fell behind, replaced by the curious cries of geckoes, the swooping mellow call of the oriole, the screech of parrots.
Sudden rustl
es in the undergrowth were perhaps wild pigs or other, unknown, species.

They halted at the edge of the village and were met by the wizened
cabe
z
a.
His formal speech was rendered in Spanish by Goryo and in turn to English by Pinto. The words may have suffered on their journey but the sentiments were plain. Powlett bowed and they moved on into the village. The inhabitants stood in awe, grouped in the open clearing before the
nipa
palm thatched huts. To one side a glowing pit was tended by the old men of the village, whose job it was to slowly turn the
lechon —
an enormous spitted roast pig.

Gracefully shown to one side, the Captain sat with the
cabe
z
a
at the only table with a covering, Goryo and Pinto standing behind. The rest of the men sat cross-legged on the bare earth, keenly aware of the tables on the opposite side of the clearing waiting to be loaded with food.

Stirk placed the sea-chest strategically behind Powlett. It contained unused remnants of finery left over from Lord Elmhurst's entourage. At the right time it would be brought forth, but not now.

Chivvied by one of the adults a file of children approached, and shyly presented to each man a
little
package wrapped in a charred banana leaf. Unsure, the men looked to their Captain. Powlett gingerly unwrapped the parcel. Inside was a discoloured rice cake.
'Bibtngka^
said Goryo, with satisfaction.

Kydd did likewise, and bit into it. The taste was a chaotic mix of flavours that made him gag. Powlett recovered his composure first and politely enquired of the
cabez
a.
It transpired they were eating gelatinous rice with fermented coconut milk and salted eggs.

Pressed into line, the children sang. It was a remarkably unselfconscious performance, full, melodious and clear but no tune that Kydd could recognise. Renzi sat next to him, delicately picking at his
bibingka.
He didn't respond to Kydd's comment, wearing a faraway look that discouraged talk.

A hush descended. Powlett got to his feet. 'Bo'sun's mate,' he growled, 'pipe "hands to carols".' Hesitating only for an
instant, the man's silver whistl
e whipped up and the call pealed out, harsh and unnatural in the jungle clearing.
'Haaaands
to carols!' he roared.

The men stood up and shuffled their feet. '"Away In A Manger",' said Powlett.
"Awaaaay
In A Manger",' bellowed the boatswain's mate.

Doud's voice sounded out first, pure and clear. A bass picked up and others followed, and soon the ship's company was singing in unison. Kydd stole a glance at Haynes. The hard petty officer was singing, his voice low and heartfelt. He wouldn't meet Kydd's eye, and Kydd felt his own eyes pricking at the buried memories being brought to remembrance.

The children watched wide-eyed, wondering at the volume of sound the seamen produced, but when two or three more carols had been sung, they stepped forward and drew the men over to the tables where the feast had been laid.

No matter that the comestibles were as different from their normal fare as the exotic jungle chaos from the warlike neatness of a frigate. Language difficulties happily drew a veil over the true identities of the delicious fruit-bat broth, the ant-egg caviar and the dogmeat in
nipa
and garlic. The men ate heartily.

The children squealed in joy as they were carried on the shoulders of a fierce sailor, then thrown in the air and caught by those who in another world could reach effor
tless
ly in darkness for invisible mizzen shrouds then swarm aloft. A red-faced Doody had them screaming in delight as he became a village pig and snorted and oinked at them from all fours. Others were chased shrieking about the compound by a burly boatswain's mate and a tough gun captain, but the act that stole the show and had Powlett's eyebrows raising was Bunce and Weems doing an excellent imitation of an indignant sergeant drilling a private soldier up and down, carrying a 'musket' of bamboo.

The afternoon raced by; the drink on offer was
lambunog,
specially fermented for the occasion the previous evening from palm-tree sap. This was served in half coconut shells, but its pale pink viscid appearance and stomach-turning strength gave pause to even the stoutest friend of the
bottle
.

Evening approached. The probable nearby presence of a volcano added violence to the red of the promising sunset, and Captain Powlett reluct
antly
got to his feet. 'Pipe all the hands,' he ordered. The shriek of the boatswain's calls pierced the din. With a bow, Powlett presented the contents of the sea-chest and bundles, and in the enthralled stillness the sailors left
quietly
.

Artemis
put to sea immediately, subdued and replete with last-minute mangoes and bananas. Men looked astern as the ship heaved to the long Pacific swells, privately contrasting the spreading gaudy sunset behind them with the anonymous dark blue vastness ahead.

As days unbroken by any events turned into endless weeks of sameness, the sheer scale of the seas crept into the meanest soul. The winds were constant from the north-east to the point of boredom — an onrushing stream of ocean air that drove them on, still on the same larboard tack, the motion always an easy heave and fall, repeating the same rhythm, surging over the great billows in a gentle but insistent advance. Onward, ever onward, they angled south-eastward towards their vital intercept with the diametric meridian, the furthest they could possibly be from the land that gave them birth, and indeed further from any demesne that could be termed civilised.

Renzi watched Kydd staring out over the great wilderness of white-dashed azure and the immensity of the deep blue bowl of sky overhead.

'Dark, heaving boundless, endless, and sublime, The image of Eternity . . .'

he intoned
softly
, watching for reaction.

Kydd picked up his faded blue striped shirt, his favourite one, and resumed his stitching. The cotton had softened under the ceaseless exposure to sun and sea spray and now caressed the skin g
ently
, but it would not take too many more patches. 'Aye, but Prewse had me at th' charts again last forenoon. You'd not be enjoyin' yourself quite s' much were I t' tell you that he brought down the workin' chart fr'm the quarterdeck, and - no flam - he quick sketches in that
little
island we saw earlier.'

'So?'

Kydd sighed. 'Nicholas, we have our sea-chart we navigate from, an' most of it is white, nothin' there. An' the Master is fillin' in the details as we go along. Does this give you y'r assurance they know where we are?'

Renzi hid a grin. 'Dear fellow, pray bring to remembrance the fact that we bear two natural philosophers - eminent
gentlemen
I am in no doubt — whose study is the earth's form. We are embarked in the foremost man-o'-war of the age, and a captain who is an ornament to his profession. What else would you have?'

Kydd's serious expression did not ease. He looked away over the vast waste of tumbling waters and replied, 'An' I'll bring
jou
to remembrance of what we say at church — "God save us and keep us — the sea is so big and our ship is so small.'"

Renzi kept silent and let Kydd resume work moodily with his needle. He gazed up. The mastheads gyrated against the sky in wide irregular circles, describing never an identical path but always a rough circle. The bowsprit rose and fell each side of the far horizon; the hull thrust and pulled at the body in its continual sinuous forward movement. Everything was in motion, all different, all the same.

'Grog's up soon — I'm going below,' he said, offhandedly. Kydd nodded but did not look up.

The gloom and odour of the berth deck bore on Renzi's spirit. The wearisome constancy of their lives was not congenial to his nature. He had found it necessary to ration his reading, which made the books infinitely the more precious. He had taken up Goethe's
Prometheus,
Cecilia's parting gift t
o him, and again found the restl
ess subjectivity not to his liking - but on occasions he had seen her face emerge, ghost-like, from the pages, troubled, concerned. He persevered with the volume.

'Er, yer pardon, Mr Renzi.' It was the petty officer's mess-boy, Will, caught off-guard in his scrubbing of the mess table by Renzi's early return.

'No matter,' said Renzi, rummaging in his sea-chest for the Rousseau. He would spark an interest in his friend for the radical precepts of the philosopher, the supremacy of Nature as the measure of all things, which would lead him to an acceptance of the Noble Savage as the superior form of man. He brightened at the thought of how he would present these jewels of intellect to Kydd one night watch in the comfort of the lee of the weather bulwark. He found the
Discours surles sciences et les arts
and stuffed it into his ready-use ditty bag for later.

'Get yer arse outa here, skinker.' Haynes's grating voice preceded his wiry figure as he flung aside the canvas screen. Before the noon grog issue was not a good time to be about where Haynes was concerned.

Mullion arrived and sat opposite. His blue-black hair was compressed by the red bandanna he still wore after the hour's gun practice the larbowlines had just finished. He sat sullenly but quiet.

Crow entered and immediately undid the catches of their neat side locker, and passed down glasses. No one spoke until Kydd arrived with the pannikin of rum, which he gave to Crow. The copper measure filled and filled again as the tots were prepared under the gaze of the whole mess — half a pint of best West Indian rum to each petty officer, dark and rich.

The last of the rum did not fill the measure. Crow paused, and looked up. In the silence Haynes's voice held whispered menace. 'Kydd - he's bin bleedin' the monkey!'

It was nonsense, of course. But Kydd knew he would have to confront the challenge, face Haynes or back down. He didn't hesitate. His open face broke into a broad smile.

Almost immediately Mullion took it up and snorted in mock derision. 'Kydd? He's green enough, he'd let 'em gull 'im on the measures. I'll 'ave that.'

Crow's eyes flicked over to Haynes, but he passed the glasses round.

The rum was grateful to the stomach, even if it was suffused by the taste of half an ounce per man of lemon juice, insisted upon by Powlett as the most reliable method of forcing the consumption of the anti-scorbutic. The mood lightened.

'Fair makes me qualmish, seein' that devil-fish trailin' in our wake all day,' Mullion rumbled. The shark had been following them for days, seldom more than thirty yards astern, its great pale bulk shimmering a few feet below the waves.

Renzi spoke for the first time. 'It's interested in our gash only,' he said, referring to the mush of bones and organic refuse that was pitched overside after every meal.

'No, it ain't,' Haynes spat. 'It's waitin' - there's some soul aboard it's waitin' for, it knows who that is, an' it's a-waitin' fer the time that's written fer 'im.'

'So what d'ye want to do about it? Shark's not easy ter kill,' Crow responded mildly.

'We rigs a tackle aft, streams a line an' hook with a lump o' pork, and when it strikes, all the watch on deck tails on an' heaves it aboard, holus bolus.' His eyes gleamed. 'An then we kills it.'

Mullion grunted. 'Seen one caught that way - in
Amph
ion
frigate in Antigua. We was at anchor, an' had one o' them big white monsters fair 'n' square b' the throat. Couldn't land it on deck till we had a purchase around its tail, an' a full luff tackle on that — what a mauler!

'Near an hour it took, mates, afore we had it on the fore-deck, an' that's but half the story. Threshin' around right mad it was, near a ton o' weight smashin' an' snappin' with its great mouth open — yer could see right inside, teeth an' all.' He paused in open admiration. 'Then we has ter settle it. At it like demons we was, a-hittin' and a-slicin' -blood and gizzards all over the decks, twenty on us, an' still it weren't finished. OF Davey, he slips in the blood 'n' in a flash them teeth has a slice outa his hide.'

Mullion swayed back in his seat as if backing away from the sight. Taking another pull of his rum he grimaced. 'So help me, Joe, when we cut 'im open, 'is heart still beats right there in me hand - an' his tail still twistin' even tho' it's cut right orf his body!'

'What did yer find in the stomach, Jeb?' Crow wanted to know.

The table perked up in interest. Human skulls and gold watches impervious to stomach acids were not unknown. 'Last night's supper,' was the prompt reply, bringing reluctant grins all round.