Seaflower (45 page)

'Well,
sis, we are somewhere here,' he said, with a sweep of his hand across the chart
along the known line of latitude.

'Oh,'
she said.

Kydd
added, 'If only we'd a longitude, we c'd tell exactly where we was.'

'Yes
we must not be accounted lost,' added Renzi. 'We have but to extend our
south-easterly heading and we shall be quite certain to end our voyage on the
coast of South America.'

Cecilia
looked at him with round eyes. 'Are the natives fierce there?' she asked
fearfully.

'I
rather think they have been tamed by the Spaniards by now? dear lady,' Renzi
replied.

The
low, rambling coastline of the continent emerged out of the haze of noon the
next day, sending the seamen feverishly to their chart, but it would be no easy
fix, and they closed the coastline with some trepidation.

'My
lord, you see that we have made landfall at an unknown point,' Renzi explained,
'and, should we be too far east, we will encounter the Dutch ...'

'Wi'out
our longitude, sir, we cannot know,' Kydd added.

Cecilia
was in no doubt. 'Yes, you can, and very easily!'

The
men looked at her incredulously.

'So
simple. You go *and ask where we are — from one of your natives.'

It
was simple. The boat kissed the sand of the unknown land on a small rock-strewn
beach, raw red cliffs leading up to a profusion of greenery alive with the
noise of animals and birds. Cecilia and Lord Stanhope were helped out,
staggering around at the change of sensation.

'And
where, then, will we find an accommodating native of these parts?'

Renzi's
answer came.from further up the beach, in the form of a barking dog belonging
to a figure standing watching them.

'I
shall speak with him,' said Lord Stanhope.

Kydd
waved and hailed with a foretopsail-yard-ahoy bellow. 'Hoay — ahoooy there!'
The man approached. As he moved a small boy hiding behind him became apparent,
dressed almost as a miniature of himself, with a wide straw hat and a gaily
coloured poncho.

Cecilia
was entranced. 'I do believe he has never seen the English before.' His dark
brown weathered features were a mask of uncertainty. The man's black eyes
flicked from the boat to the two well-built seamen and then to Cecilia, the
little boy clinging fearfully to his cloak.

'Buenos
dias, senor.' The eyes swivelled to Lord Stanhope. 'Por favour puede
informarnos donde nos encontramos. ..' The others waited impatiently while the
exchange continued, at one point the man pointing along the line of foreshore
to the right.

'Ah,
that settles it,' said Stanhope. 'We are within Spanish territory, and Cuerda
Grande lies just four milliaria beyond . . .'

The
two sailors dived for the chart. "There!' exclaimed Kydd, his finger
jabbing victoriously at the spot. The others came over, agog to hear the news.
'Hmm, quite a way further east than I thought,' said Kydd. 'See, this is
Barranquilla, an' here we have your Hollanders,' he added, indicating islands
not so very far away.

'Perhaps
this man can say if war is declared,' Cecilia asked.

'He
has no knowledge of any war,' Stanhope replied, 'but, then, I doubt he knows of
much beyond his village - I cannot take the risk. We must confer, gentlemen.'

The
men clustered around the chart; Cecilia sat down on a rock and luxuriously
splashed her feet in the clear sea.

'Kindly
show me the essentials of our position, if you please.'

'Aye,
m' lord. Here we are, near half-way along th' Caribbean coast o' South America.
Port Royal is here,' he indicated to the north-west of the chart, 'an' Barbados
here to the east.'

'And
how far to return to Port Royal?'

'In
the longboat, m' lord?'

'If
necessary.'

'Hmmm,
this is not less'n five hundred miles, but with the nor'east trades a-beam . ..
about three, four days.'

Stanhope
was thoughtful. Renzi looked up with an apologetic smile. 'I will earn
Cecilia's eternal loathing, but duty obliges me to point out that we are
perhaps six days from Barbados if we continue, but if we return to Port Royal
the vessel we take there must necessarily retrace our course, meaning a total
time of around twelve days, even a fortnight. This—'

'We
press on, I believe.'

'Yes,
my lord. Might I suggest her brother be the one to inform Cecilia ... ?'

A
jabbering from the little boy to his warily curious father brought attention
back to the man. 'If we have coins, perhaps we can persuade him of some
fruits,' Renzi suggested.

Cecilia
was delighted with what was brought - not only fruits but corn bread, dried
strips of meat and four eggs. 'We shall dine right royally before we face that
odious sea again,' she vowed, and set Renzi to building a fire, claiming the
boat baler as her cooking pot.

Kydd
saw braiding in the sand along the beach and knew at that spot there would be
water — the two barricoes would be full when they left, more than enough for a
six-day voyage. As Cecilia's soup laid its irresistible fragrance on the air,
he bent his mind to the job in hand. 'Nicholas, we need t' clear the Dutch
islands, an' as well keep away fr'm the coast shipping. Do ye think we should
run down the 14-degrees line o' latitude to the Wind'ard Islands?'

'I
do, dear fellow, but I worry that we are sadly at risk if we cannot fix our
longitude for the Barbadoes after passing through the islands. Should we
ignorantly sail past, into the empty Atlantic .. .'

'Aye,
you're in the right of it, m' friend, but I have an idea.' Kydd assembled his thoughts
carefully. 'Do we not now have, at this moment, complete and certain knowledge
of our position — our longitude, in fine?'

'Yes?'

'And
when we sail, this is lost. But what if we conjure our own chronometer? Do y’
ask Lord Stanhope if we c'n borrow his fine watch. I take m' noon sighting
right here in th' usual way, when the sun tells us it's exactly midday.' Kydd
paused significantly. 'This is then our noon at this longitude, which we do
know. An' if I am not mistaken in m' reasoning - I pray humbly I am not — then
we know fr'm this the exac' time we are here ahead o' Greenwich noon.'

'At
the rate of one hour for every fifteen degrees — you are, of course, completely
right’

'So
we subtract this time an' set th' watch to our Greenwich noon, and by this we
have a chronometer — an' fr'm now on, the difference between our local noon and
this watch gives out y'r exac' longitude.'

Renzi,
who had seen it coming, nevertheless joined in the general applause. 'You are
indeed in the character of a magician, right enough.' No matter that the watch
was a poor substitute for the precision of a real chronometer, it would
nevertheless put them well within sighting distance of their goal — and if it
did that, then it was all they could desire.

Apart
from some far-distant flecks of white there was no indication that they were
crossing a major sea highway. In a world with privateers and pirates no ship
would be inclined to indulge their curiosity and they sailed on unmolested into
the empty seas of the central Caribbean.

Routine
set in — the scrupulously doled-out rations, the morning square-away that Kydd
insisted on, Doud's never-failing evening songs. And, most crucial, the noon
sight. It seemed a fragile thing indeed to entrust their lives to a ticking
watch. A frail artefact of man in the midst of effortless domination by nature,
yet in itself a token of the precious intelligence that could make man the
master of nature. It was the first thing to be stowed safely beneath the
thwarts when the rain came down.

Thick,
hammering, tropical rain. Tied to the tiller for hours at a time, unable to go
to shelter, Kydd endured. The rain teemed down on his bowed head, his body, his
entire being. The incessant heavy drops became a bruising torture after a
while, and it took real courage to keep to his post. The others crouched
together under the slacked-off awning, just the regular appearance of a hand
sending a bright sheet of water from the baler over the side from under the
lumpy canvas.

It
was trying afterwards as well: from being comprehensively soaked to a brazen
sun warming rapidly. The result was a clammy stickiness that had clothing
tugging at the skin in a maddening clinging heaviness. Cecilia's appearance
from under the old sail showed that she had not escaped. Patches of damp had
her distracted, plucking at her sun-faded dress and trying to smooth her
draggled hair; she was in no mood for conversation with the men.

Mile
succeeded mile in a near-invisible wake that was a perfect straight line
astern. The dying swell of the storm petered out into a flat royal-blue
immensity of water, prettily textured by myriad dark ripples from the warm and
pleasant breeze. Then the sun asserted itself — there was real bite in the
endless sunshine now, a heat that was impossible to escape.

But
on the fourth day a milestone was reached: the meridian of 65 west. It was time
to leave their eternal easterly progression and shape their course to pass
through the Windward Islands chain and direct to Barbados. The empty sea looked
exactly the same, but the filigreed hands of the watch mysteriously said that
not only had they passed the Dutch islands safely astern but that the several
island passages that were the entrance to the Caribbean Sea were now only a
couple of hundred miles ahead, say no more than a day of sailing.

'Huzzah!'
cried Cecilia, and Doud stood tall on a thwart and sang of England and
sweethearts to the uncaring sea and sky. They had adequate water; the food was
now a monotonous hard tack soaked in water tinged with wine, cheese of an
heroic hardness and a precious hoard of treats — dried meat strips cut into
infinitely small pieces to suck for minutes a time, dainty cubes of seed-cake
and, for really special occasions, one preserved fig between two, with a whole
one for the helmsman of the watch.

The
boat lapsed into a silence; rapt expressions betrayed minds leaping ahead to
another, more congenial plane of existence. The clean fragrance of fresh linen
in a real bed. Surcease for body and spirit. What would be the first thing to do
after stepping ashore?

And
then the wind fell. From a breeze to a zephyr, from that to a playful soft
wafting around the compass, and then nothing. The longboat ceased any kind of
motion. The sails hung lifeless with only an occasional dying twitch, and the
heat closed in, blasting up from the limitless watery plain, a hard, blinding
force that could be felt behind closed eyes. The awning seemed to trap a
suffocating humidity beneath it, but the alternative was to suffer both the
unremitting glare reflected from the pond-like sea, and the ferocious heat from
a near-vertical sun.

Time
slowed to an insupportable tedium. Rooted to their places on hard wood for an
infinity of time, the slap and trickle of water the only sound, the choking
heat their only reality, it was a trial of sanity. Doud lay in the V of the
bow, staring fixedly ahead. Stanhope sat under the awning against the mast,
with Renzi opposite. Cecilia lay in the curve of the lower part of the boat,
and Kydd still sat at the motionless tiller, his mind replaying a quite
different nightmare — the shrieking darkness of Cape Horn.

The
baler was passed from hand to hand, a scoop of seawater poured over the head
gave momentary relief, but the sticky salt remaining only added to the misery.
Water, precious water, it was no longer a given thing. Life — or death - was in
the two hot wooden casks in the bottom of the boat, and when they were
broached, eyes followed every move of the person drinking their tiny ration of
tepid, rank fluid.

'I
fear we have a contrary current,' Kydd croaked, after the painful duty of the
noon sight. 'Only a half-knot or one, but...' Nobody spoke, the idea of being
carried back into the Caribbean a thought too cruel to face.

As
the afternoon wore on, water in its every guise crept into the brain, tricked
itself into every thought, tantalised and tempted in a way that could only call
for wonder at the creativity of a tortured mind. Still the implacable sun
glared down on them, sending thoughts fluttering at the prison bars of reality,
desperate for any escape from the torment. Time ground on, then astonishingly
the sun was on the wane — a languorous sunset began, full of pink-tinted golds
and ultramarine sea. And still no wind.