A sashed, ramrod-stiff
figure with a tall shako detached himself from the melee and marched up, coming
to a crashing halt before Kydd. His eyes flickered at Kydd's polite doffing of
his hat and strayed to the marines motionless behind him.
'Sah! With me. Sah!' He
wheeled about abrupdy and marched energetically across to a ragged square of
men across the parade; Kydd saw with relief that a few were in navy rig.
'An' what happens
next?' Kydd asked a weathered marine lieutenant. The other navy representatives
nodded cautiously or ignored him in accordance with rank.
The man's bored eyes
slid over to him. 'They brings out the prisoner, the town major rants at 'im,
trices him up t' the whipping post, lays on the lashes, an' we goes home.' The
eyes slid back to the front in a practised glassy stare.
Kydd saw the whipping
post set out from the wall they were facing, an unremarkable thick pole with a
small platform. He had grown inured to the display of physical punishment at
sea, seeing the need for it without a better solution, but it always caused him
regret. He hoped this would not take long.
The parade sorted
itself into a hollow square behind them. Within minutes a small column of men
appeared from the further side of the parade-ground. They were accompanied by a
drummer with muffled drum, the slow ta-rrum, ta-rrum of the Rogue's March
hanging heavy on the air.
The prisoner was a
blank-faced, scrawny soldier without his shako. The column halted and turned
to face the post. From the opposite corner of the parade-ground, a small party
appeared, led by a short, florid officer strutting along bolt upright.
'Actin'
town major,' murmured the marine.
The peppery army
officer looked about testily, ignoring the prisoner. Slapping his gloves
against his side irritably, he stepped over to the assembled representatives.
'Fine day, ge'men,' he rasped, his flinty eyes merciless. 'Kind in ye to come.'
The eyes settled on
Kydd, and he approached to speak. 'Don' recollect I've made the acquaintance?'
The tautness of his bearing had a dangerous edge.
'Thomas
Kydd, master's mate o' Achilles, sir.'
The eyes appraised him
for a moment, then unexpectedly the man smiled. 'Glad t' see your ship here,
Mr Kydd - uncertain times, what?' Before Kydd could speak, he had stalked off.
The essence of the business was
much as the marine had said: the town major tore at the prisoner's dignity with
practised savagery, the hard roar clearly meant for the parade as a whole. The
offence was the breaking into of an army storeroom while drunk.
Stepping aside
contemptuously, he ordered the anonymous brawny soldier with the lash to do
his work. It was a lengthy and pitiful spectacle - the army had different ideas
of punishment and, although delivered with a lash that was lighter-looking than
a navy cat-o'-nine-tails the blows went on and on, thirty, forty and finally
fifty.
At the conclusion, in a
flurry of salutes, the attendant officers were dismissed. Kydd avoided the
sight of the wretched victim still tied to the whipping post and declined the
invitation to a noon-day snifter. He wanted to get back aboard to sanity.
'Ah, you there — Jack Tar ahoy, is it?'
A resplendent sergeant-major, tall and with four golden stripes, was heading
rapidly towards him. 'Me boy!' the soldier bawled. He came closer, his smile
wide. 'A long time!'
Soldiers leaving the
parade-ground went respectfully around them while Kydd stared and tried to
remember the man.
'Why, it's Sar'nt
Hotham, if m' memory serves!' The desperate times on Guadeloupe came back
vividly.
'Not any more, it
ain't,' Hotham boomed, the effortless authority of his voice still the same.
'Colour Sar'-Major Hotham will do fer you, m'lad.' His happy satisfaction
turned to curiosity. 'An' what're you now, then?'
'Master's mate Tom Kydd, it is now.' His
hand went out and was strongly gripped. 'Thought you wuz dead, Tom,' Hotham
said, more quietly.
'No, got t' the
other fort on the west, got taken off b' Trajan’ he said.
He hesitated, and
Hotham picked up on it. Td admire ter have yer as me guest in the barracks fer
a drink or so. Then we c'n take a look at th' fortress, if yez got the time.'
Line wall and bastions,
counterguard and casemates, innumerable heavy gun positions and watchful
sentries everywhere. Gibraltar was nothing if not a mighty fortress. The
garrison even had its barracks, Town Range, in the centre of the town, which
was itself behind massive walls and ramparts.
'We gets a ride on th' ration wagon,
you'll see somethin'll make ye stare.' Hotham flagged down the small cart
pulled by mules. They sat together on the back, legs dangling, and the cart
wound slowly up a steep zigzag track.
The view rapidly
expanded, an immense panorama of misty coast, dusty plains and sea. Kydd was
fascinated.
The cart stopped at a
gate, which was neatly set round a large hole in the side of the Rock. Hotham
dropped to the ground briskly and, nodding to the curious sentry, motioned Kydd
inside.
Coolness, a slight damp
and the peculiar odour of unmoving air on old stone enfolded him as they strode
into the bowels of the Rock of Gibraltar.
'Watch yer bonce,'
Hotham warned, his own tall frame stooped, but Kydd was used to the low
deckhead of a man-o'-war. The tunnel drove on, then widened, and suddenly to
the left there was a gallery with bay after bay, and in each a
twenty-four-pounder gun facing out of an aperture in the rock. The gaUery was
bright with daylight, and a cheerful breeze played inwards.
'See 'ere, cully,' said
Hotham, edging towards the opening on one side of the first gun. Kydd stared
out at a dizzying height from the sheer face of the north aspect of the Rock.
Far below was a flat plain that issued from the base, curving around until some
miles further on it dissolved into mainland.
'Spain,
cully!' Hotham declared, waving outwards.
'Where?' These guns
could fire far, but not to the hills.
Hotham grinned.
'There!' He pointed directly down to the flat plain. No man's land, and only
some half a mile away. So close — an enemy in arms against Britain, continuously
ready to fall upon them if there was the slightest chance. Kydd tried to make
out movement, figures on the hostile side of the lines, but to his
disappointment could not.
'We got a hunnerd
'n' forty like this'n,' Hotham said, patting the twenty-four-pounder, 'an'
thirty-twos, coehorns, even our own rock mortars. Nothin' ter fear, really, we
ain't.' Kydd wondered what it must be like to look up at the sheer heights of
the Rock, knowing the fire-power that could be brought down on any with the
temerity to test the impregnability of Gibraltar.
Kydd was no more than half-way
returned to his ship when he heard the first gun, a low
crump,
from somewhere above him. He craned to
look, scanning the skyline, but there was only dissipating smoke. Suddenly,
below him, there came the heavier thud of an answering gun. Kydd hurried on.
Within minutes there were signs of agitation, shopkeepers emerging to look
about nervously, water-carriers halting their donkeys in confusion. A young
seaman acknowledged Kydd, just as the measured thump of a minute gun started
from somewhere in the harbour. Guns opened up in other parts of the Rock and
the sudden soaring of a rocket from below was quickly followed by others.
Achilles, It could be
nothing less than an urgent general recall. Kydd had to make it back: there was
peril abroad and his deepest instincts were with his ship. At the Ragged Staff
gate there was a scrimmage for boats; Kydd and others quickly packed into the
launch. Bedlam erupted all along the Rock — guns, church bells, shouting and
confusion.
'What's
th' rout, then?' one sailor demanded.
'Spanish. Sighted t'
the east, mebbe a dozen or more sail-o'-the-line, comin' on like good 'uns an'
straight for us!'
The Spanish
Mediterranean battle fleet was usually skulking far away in Cartagena but they
had heard of the English evacuation of the Mediterranean and knew Gibraltar was
at the moment defended only by an old 64, a handful of unrated ships and local
craft. Were they now going to take revenge for nearly a century of humiliation
— and finally liberate the Rock?
Achilles was frantic
with activity: she couldn't go to quarters until sail had been bent to the
yards as she was still in refit. But a single ship? The enemy fleet would now
be in sight from the point, a sinister straggling of tiny sail spreading over
half of the eastern horizon.
Kydd's battle quarters
was on the main gundeck, but for now he was at the foremast, frantically
driving men to send up the long sausages of sails to seamen on the yard. The
new hands, landmen all, were pale and frightened at the prospect of battle and
needed hard pressing. Kydd grew hoarse with goading. 'Haaands to unmoor ship!'
The boatswain's mates
pealed out their calls, but Kydd knew they had two anchors out, which would
take time to buoy and slip — it was a race against time.
From his station at the
catheads, Kydd kept an eye on the point: the eastern side of Gibraltar was
sheer and inaccessible, and any invading force must come round to this side,
sweeping aside with concentrated cannon fire the single ship of significance
before beginning their landing.
First one or two then a dismaying cloud
of heavy men-o'-war appeared from beyond the point, keeping well out of range,
however, of the guns perched high up on the Rock. Kydd's heart beat fast. The
last cable-buoy splashed into the water: they were now free to sail out to meet
the enemy.
The ship cast to
larboard and, under all plain sail, stood out from the harbour. The urgent
thundering of the drum to quarters sounded, and Kydd snatched a last look at
their opponents, then closed up on the main deck, briefly regretting having to
face the battle in his best rig. Gun-crews with unskilled landmen, shot not
brought up to the garlands from the lockers, gunner's party sewing cartridges
like madmen: it was the worst conceivable timing for a Spanish descent, with
Admiral Jervis and the fleet far in the north, but Kydd accepted that the
sacrifice of their ship had to be made. They could not stand aside meekly and
allow Gibraltar to fall.
'They've
hauled their wind!' the voice of the forward midshipman shrilled, withdrawing
from a gunport. 'Headin' north!'
Kydd brushed a gun-crew aside and peered
out. The Spanish had not completed the turn into the Bay of Gibraltar: they had
simply braced up and headed north, past - and away. After the urgent recall to
his ship, Kydd felt a sense of frustration. But then the lieutenant of the
gundeck, staring hard at the enemy ships, said coldly, 'They're making for
Cadiz. Together they will outnumber even Jervis, heaven help us!'
The cro'jack was got up into the
mizzen very satisfactorily. Kydd's party in the tops took care of the chain
sling and, his suggestion being adopted, additional cleats were secured out on
the yard through which the truss-pendants could be led to their own thimbles.
By this neat solution, the wicked swing of the cro'jack in any kind of beam sea
would be effectively damped without the need for rolling tackles from the deck.
Idly he watched his
seamen passing the rose-lashing, which fixed in place the cushioning dolphin
underneath the spar, and relished a sense of satisfaction in a job well done.
He had personal experience enough of fine seamanship as a life-preserving
imperative never to take the short path.
Cockburn dismissed the
deck party and waited for Kydd to descend the shrouds. 'Tell me, in what
character will you be attending your assembly?'
Taken
aback, Kydd hesitated. 'I should
—'
'You will have noticed
"'masquerade" on the invitation, of course.'
'But ...' Kydd had no
idea of the oddities of polite society, and could only wait for the elucidation
that Cockburn was clearly looking to provide.