Seaflower (15 page)

Luke
spread a small tablecloth on the sitting-room table. Without looking up, he
carefully laid a single place with pewter plate and knife, and withdrew.

Kydd
finished the paper, smiling to himself at the strictures on keeping his men
sober and diligent.

The
cool of the morning showed Antigua in its best light: delicate tints, clarity
of air, and everywhere the sparkling translucence of the sea.

On
the flat grassy area next to the boat-house Kydd surveyed the King's Negroes.
They returned his contemplation with stony indifference, or looked away with
disinterest. Big, well-muscled and hard-looking, they were dressed in canvas
trousers and buttoned waistcoat over naked skin. Some wore old-fashioned
three-cornered cocked hats, others a bandanna. Unusually for slaves, all
carried a sheathed seaman's knife.

'An'
who's the driver?' Kydd asked, in even tones. The men kept silent, staring back
at him. Kydd tried to sense their feelings, but there was a barrier.

'The
driver!' he snapped. If it was going to be this way, so be it, but then the
hardest-looking of them pulled himself up slowly and confronted Kydd. The
driver,' he said, his voice deep and strong. He regarded Kydd impassively from
under hooded black eyes, his arms folded.

Kydd
looked at the others. There was no feeling in their expressions. They existed
in stasis, much like beasts of the field, it appeared. 'I'm Kydd, and I'm th'
new master,' he said. There was no response, no interest. 'What's y'r name?' he
demanded of the driver.

'Juba,'
he said.

'What
are their names?' said Kydd. 'They are t' tell me themselves,' he added.

A
flicker of curiosity showed in their faces. 'Nero,' grunted an older one. Kydd
nodded, and prompted the man next to him.

'Quamino.'

'An'
you?' Kydd went on. 'Ben Bobstay.'

One
by one, he had a name from each. He hesitated over whether to make a strict
speech of introduction, but thought better of it. 'If ye does y'r duty, ye'll
have nothing t' fear fr'm me,' he said firmly, and turned to greet Caird, who
had just arrived.

'I
see you have mustered your crew already,' Caird said. 'Fort Shirley has
signalled that
Rose
frigate
will be here this morning — she has a sprung foremast, which we shall in course
replace.' He stopped to take a sheaf of lists from a waiting shipwright and
scanned them quickly. 'Where are your roves, sir?' he asked impatiently. 'Were
you thinking to secure with nails?' His forehead creased, and the shipwright
cringed. Caird turned to Kydd again. 'We shall not need the sheer hulk — the
boatswain of the yard will rig sheers on her foredeck.'

Kydd
had no experience of such skilled work, and if he was expected to take charge .
..

'The
boatswain will be overseer,' said Caird, as if sensing Kydd's thoughts. 'It
only requires that you tell your driver the task — he has done this work, and
you may feel sure that he knows what to do.'

The
28-gun frigate Rose sailed in without warping, even with minimal sail at the
fore, a fine piece of seamanship in the exuberant late-summer breezes. She had
suffered at the hands of the hurricane — sea-whitened timbers and ropes leached
of their tar, stoppers seized at places in her rigging, the patchy wooden
paleness of new repairs showing here and there. But she rounded to, and her
sails came in smartly, as if her company were conscious of their fortune in
being spared by the fates.

The
boatswain of the yard, sitting in the stern-sheets of the dockyard boat with
Kydd, stared idly ahead. The rowers pulled heavily, towing two massive
sheer-legs in the water.

To
Kydd, it was strangely affecting to step over the bulwarks and be in a sea
world belonging to others.

While
the boatswain talked to the Captain, his eyes strayed to little things that
would be embedded in the consciousness of the ship's company - the dog-vane to
point the direction of the wind and fashioned into a red-petalled rose, the
binnacle finished with a varnished bolt-rope, the smart black japanned speaking
trumpet also with a painted rose - all these would be the familiar images of
daily life at sea,

Rose's
seamen looked at him curiously, his small band of
black men at his back. 'What cheer, mate?' said one. 'Where's to go on th'
ran-tan?'

Spared
from having to answer by the boatswain's hail from forward, Kydd reported
himself and his men. 'You, Kydd, get y'r men out o' the way fer now, but I'll
want 'em on the cross spar afore we cants the sheers,' the boatswain said, and
turned to his own crew.

Kydd
stared at the scene with some anxiety. The fo'c'sle was a maze of ropes and
blocks laid out along the deck each side from when the topmast had been struck.
How it was possible to pluck the feet-thick foremast, like a tooth, straight
out from where it ended morticed into its step on the keel he had no idea. Juba
did not volunteer a word. He stood aside, watching with a patience that seemed
limitless and at the same time detached.

The
boatswain's men ranged mighty three-fold purchases. The sheaved blocks were
each nearly double the size of a man's head, the falls coiled in fakes yards
long. Lesser tackles were made fast to knightheads and kevels, and all was ready
to bring aboard the sheers. But then the boatswain stepped back, his arms
folded. Kydd saw why: in a nice division of responsibilities, it was men of the
Rose
who manned the jeer capstan to take
the weight, then lower the heavy seventy-five-foot width of the foreyard,
indecently shorn of its usual complexity of buntlines and halliards.

The
foremast now stood alone, its wound clearly visible as a long bone-coloured
fracture under the capstan bars, which had been splinted around it. 'Kydd, y'r
cross spar!' the boatswain called impatiently.

Kydd
had been too interested in the proceedings and was caught unawares but he
swiftly rounded on Juba. 'Cross spar!' he snapped, stepping towards the sheers.
He looked fearlessly at the man, who hesitated just a moment, looking into
Kydd's eyes, then moved into action. In low tones he called to the other
negroes, in words incomprehensible to Kydd. The men split into two parties and
slid the fore topgallant yard athwartships, then up against the splayed end of
the sheers. They stopped and Juba looked up slowly. Kydd turned to the men at
the cross-piece of the sheers and told them to pass the seizing.

'Like
a throat-seizing an' not too taut,' the boatswain suggested.

'Aye,'
said Kydd, happy with a new-found realisation: no matter how complex and
technical the task, it could be rendered down to a series of known seamanlike
evolutions.

The
sheers were duly canted, tilted up so the guys could get an angle to sway the
sheer-legs aloft. At the same time tackles at their feet held them firmly in
place. It was almost an anti-climax, knocking aside the mast wedges, freeing
the partners and hearing the massive tackle creak as it strained in a vertical
pull up on the mast, which gave in a sudden and alarming jerk upwards.

There
was suddenly nothing to do as the freed mast was angled and slowly lowered over
the ship's side to be floated ashore, a fearsome thing that could spear the
heart out of the frigate if it was accidentally let go. Kydd glanced at the
motionless Juba, intrigued by the man's self-possession. Unexpectedly Juba
allowed a brief smile to appear. Kydd smiled back, and pretended to follow the
progress of the mast over the side.

The
softness of a Caribbean evening was stealing over the waters when Kydd was
finally able to return to the dockyard.

The
replacement foremast had needed work. Awkwardly placed along the deck of the
frigate it had had to be held securely on trestles while shipwrights went to
work with adze and angled mast axe. As the chips flew, the craftsmen held Kydd
in awe at their skill with such awkward tools. He now knew a good deal more
than he had at break of day, and he felt happier than he had at any time since
he had left
Trajan:
this
was better than being a spare hand to whatever ship would claim him.

Closer
in to the dockyard, he could hear the cries and laughter of the ship's company
of
Avenger, a
ship-sloop
whose bulbous, naked hull was heaved right over for careening on the other side
of the water. These men would be accommodated ashore while their ship was in
such a condition, and were making the most of the relaxing of discipline,
taking their evening grog around the shore galley near the capstan house with
raucous frivolity. Kydd eased into a grin at the familiar antics.

The
injured mast could wait in the water off the mast-house for the morning and he
could now dismiss his crew and get some supper. 'Well done, m' lads,' he said,
unconsciously regarding them in the same way as a party of seamen after a hard
day. Too late the thought came that possibly he should treat slaves in some
other way, more at a distance, perhaps. However, they did not respond, and
padded off silently together, he couldn't help wondering where.

The
shore galley manned, Luke was able to get a hearty platter for him, complete with
leaves of some mysterious local vegetable, and he tucked in with a will. It was
hard to eat alone, though, with nothing but a candle and circling moths for
company.

The
conviviality flowing from the capstan house was hard to resist, and Kydd found
himself strolling in the warm dark of the evening towards the sounds of
merriment. The open frontage of the low building, with its three great
capstans, was a favourite place to gather in the growing soft darkness. The
lanthorns hung along the beams welcomed him in with splashes of golden light.
Men lolled about, taking a clay pipe of tobacco or drinking deep from their
pots, in time-honoured sailor fashion outdoing each other in sea yarns and
remembrances.

Kydd
knew none of them, but could recognise the types even though they were of
another ship: the hard, confident petty officers in short blue jackets with
brass buttons that glittered in the light of the lanthorns; young seamen bred
to the sea, with an easy laugh and a tarry queue unclubbed so its plaited length
hung a foot or more down their backs; the lined old shellbacks, whose sea
wisdom it would be folly to question.

A
man hauled himself up to sit on one of the capstan heads and his fiddle was
passed up to him. After a few flourishes he nodded to a handsome seaman with
side-whiskers next to him. The man stepped forward and sang in a resonant
tenor:

'Oh!
Life is the Ocean, and Man is the Boat

That
over its surface is destin'd to float;

And
joy is a cargo so easily stor'd

That
he is a fool who takes sorrow on board!'

The
well-known chorus drowned the singer, who affected vexation, stumping around
the capstan in high dudgeon. Kydd laughed heartily with the rest, and raised
his wooden tankard in salute.

Sensing
the mood, the singer stalked to the front of the capstan, and stood akimbo,
arms folded, glaring at his audience. The chatter died away expectantly.

A
movement on the opposite side caught Kydd's eye. One of the seamen had a woman
under his arm, a black woman. Kydd shifted his gaze back to the singer, who
leaned forward as though in confidence, and there launched into the racy,
driving strains of 'The Saucy
Arethusa':

'Come
all ye jolly sailors bold

Whose
hearts are cast in honour's mould

While
English glory I unfold

On
board of the
Arethusa'

The
sailors burst into song, and Kydd felt his cheeks glow with pleasure. The
singer bowed and accepted a dripping tankard. Kydd looked about him with a
grin.

'Clinkin'
good singer, is our Dansey!' A seasoned petty officer grinned back at Kydd.

‘Rattlin'
fine voice!' agreed Kydd. 'Are ye Avengers, then?'

'Aye
— Ben Kittoe, gunner's mate,' the man replied, taking a pull from his
blackjack, a dark tarred leather tankard.

'Kydd,
Tom Kydd, quartermaster's mate o'
Trajan
as was,' he said.