‘What is it, sir?’
Drawing a deep breath to steady himself, Orlov said dramatically, ‘We have lost, Captain! Our concessions have been taken by another!’
‘You have lost we must say,’ Kydd replied.
‘No, sir!’ Orlov came back with conviction. ‘We have both suffered – for it’s the French who now hold the concession.’
Kydd gulped. This was another matter entirely: a trade in naval stores not only lost to the British but flowing to a blockade-starved enemy.
Orlov went on, ‘They’ve bribed the Bey and secured the document. They now need only the signature of the Russian minister in the Mediterranean and it will be over for us all.’
‘Count Mocenigo.’
‘Yes.’
Renzi nodded. ‘Who favours the French – and this is what you yourself were undertaking in Corfu when you received word from your agent in Smyrna . . .’
‘The devil played for time,’ Orlov angrily agreed, ‘knowing what the French were obtaining. With his signature over that of the Pasha, the Kremlin will grant the concession.’
‘Tell me, when did the French leave Smyrna? There’s a possibility – a slim one – that we might overhaul them.’
‘A day – no, closer to two.’
‘Several hundred miles away by now at least. I’m sorry to say, Mr Orlov, that even with a flyer like L’Aurore we stand no chance.’
‘None? I beg you, shall we try?’
Kydd sighed. ‘Very well.’ Word was passed for the master, and charts were produced. ‘Now, do you have any idea what ship they took passage in?’
‘It was a – how do you say? – a fast tekne, a Turkish coasting trader as will not be troubled by the English.’
‘What rig is that, pray?’
‘Rig?’
‘Er, can you show me one?’
Orlov went up to the broad sweep of windows and scanned the busy scene. ‘There!’ he said, pointing to a ship with an exaggerated curving of the bow and stern, wonderfully ornamented, and square-rigged over an enormous main sprit on a single mast with a balancing flying jib.
Kydd noted the clever play of fore-and-aft and square sail, which had the craft bowling along and a bow-wave creaming from the swept-up stem. ‘Yes – at least seven, eight knots. Mr Kendall, what’s your guess?’
The master rubbed his chin. ‘Aye, I’d reckon so. But if we’re thinkin’ of a chase up the Adriatic, with that jackass fore-and-aft rig, he’ll have the legs of us on account o’ the reignin’ nor’-westerly wind in our face.’
‘Well, I’m sorry to say, Mr Orlov, there’s no answer to that. We’ll have three, four knots at most over him and that calculates to four or five days before we haul him in sight. He’ll be long arrived at the Ionians by then.’
Orlov crumpled into a chair.
‘Er, it does cross my mind . . .’ Renzi politely interjected, looking up from a chart of the eastern Mediterranean.
‘Yes?’ Kydd said.
‘The great Aristophanes speaks of the tyrant Periander in – when was it? – about 600BC, that—’
‘Not now, if you please, Nicholas.’
‘Oh. I was about to mention that he caused a species of rail-way to be made over the isthmus of Corinth, here.’
‘A what?’
‘Rail-way,’ Renzi said, in a pained tone. ‘A form of track upon which a wheeled trolley is mounted and –’
‘Might we leave this for a later time? I have to see Mr Orlov ashore, and—’
‘– which he employed to pull ships across the isthmus to the other side to be re-floated and sent on their way. As you can readily see, it obviates the need to circumnavigate the Peloponnese completely – the Morea if you will – a saving of some hundreds of miles in the voyage.’
Kendall snatched a pair of dividers and wielded them on the chart.
‘He wrote of it in Thesmophoriazusae, I think it was,’ Renzi went on, ‘as they say, “as fast as one from Corinth”, referring to this very rail-way. Which was called the “Diolkos” in antiquity,’ he added helpfully.
‘I make it close t’ three hundred miles saved, if this’n is true,’ Kendall said, in awe, but added suspiciously, ‘an’ I’ve never heard of it afore.’
‘Nicholas?’
‘It’s true. Sea-going triremes of thirty-eight tons were hauled across – Octavian surprising Marc Antony after Actium springs to mind – but the main use was to considerably shorten the trade route in marble and timber.’
‘How long to get them over?’ Kydd snapped.
‘Four miles or so – about three hours with a hundred and eighty slaves at the lines.’
Kydd bellowed for Howlett. ‘Get this barky to sea as soon as you like, sir,’ he told the startled officer.
Renzi hesitated. ‘Um, the reason we’ve not heard of this marvel is possibly the rail-way no longer exists. The emperor Nero conceived of a canal through Corinth and, himself turning the first sod, ruined the approaches beyond repair before he was murdered.’
‘And there’s a mort o’ difference a’tween a forty-ton Greeky old-timer and a frigate,’ Kendall muttered.
Kydd grinned at Renzi’s discomfiture. ‘Where your trireme went I dare to say a ship’s launch can follow. I mean to set a boat or two of size a-swim the other side under sail with carronades as will wait for our tekne and give it a fright.’
Orlov leaped to his feet. ‘I will help! Anything!’
On the deck above there was the squeal of a boatswain’s call and a rushing thump of feet as L’Aurore readied for sea. ‘No, Mr Orlov. It were best you were not seen. I fancy this is work for my first lieutenant.’
‘And I,’ Renzi offered.
‘I can’t allow—’
‘I’d hazard that you’ve considered the impropriety of bringing to and making prize of a vessel under the flag of an ally of ours? Therefore we are in disguise, our challenge is in the lingua franca of these parts – and where is your Italian speaker, sir?’
With the noble ruins of Athens passing just out of sight on the starboard beam, L’Aurore made anchor in the stillness of the little bay. Kydd had the gig away instantly. It was not hard to spot the fold in terrain between the cliffs leading through to deeper clefts – but what remained of the Diolkos?
The boat grounded softly on a gently sloped rise from the modest beach into the interior where dressed stones suggestive of ancient works lay about.
Renzi could give no further information about the rail-way, and explained apologetically that his classics master had not seen fit to include details of its engineering but that ‘rails’ in the original Greek might very well construe in the archaic form to ‘grooves’ or ‘tracks’.
Quick casting about showed only sand-heath, then low scrub over light-brown soil up and over a pass. Pressing up the slope, Kydd saw that it levelled and twisted through a gully leading on the left to a grander ravine. There were no major obstacles that he could see; if there had been any such trackway it was likely to have been along here.
‘There’s no time to lose,’ he pronounced. ‘The launch and cutter. We make our own rails: lay two spars lengthways as we do carry ’em on board, and having no slaves to hand we set fifty men on the lines.’
Nothing was more calculated to lift the spirits of Jack Tar than something novel, out of routine and fit for a yarn in later life. The two boats were fitted with their gear, men told off for crew or haulers, and in no time the little flotilla was pulling lustily for the shore.
Howlett set out ahead to survey the route while Gilbey followed with a party to hack at the scrub. The spars were laid lengthways several feet apart and a trial was made with the launch, the heavier of the two. With twenty-five on each trace and rollers thrown in over the spars the boat flew up the ‘rails’ and Kydd knew all was possible, even without the heavy tackles he had in reserve.
The scrubby bushes were no impediment and, with a hearty sailor’s ‘stamp ’n’ go’, the heavy boats were trundled rapidly up to the cr
est of the pass. Beyond, stretching out ahead past a series of lesser slopes, was the Gulf of Corinth.
At the sight the men gave a cheer and waved gaily to an astonished goat-herder on the skyline. Down-slope the boats merely needed restraining, not hauling, and well before dark they reached their goal.
The carronades arrived, six men on each sweating at the effort, others with three balls in a haversack, still more with powder. The craft were quickly rigged, and a bare four hours after setting out from L’Aurore there were two war-boats outfitted for cruising.
Kydd allowed a smile. The ancients had been right and that night on the mess-deck there would be grog tankards raised to those fellow mariners of so long ago. ‘Mr Howlett, I will wish you good fortune. You have your orders and Mr Renzi to advise. Are you clear about your mission?’
‘Sir. To make all possible speed to the island of Cephalonia, there to lie off to the nor’ard to await any tekne seen to be making for Corfu and then to—’
‘Yes. You’ll want to set sail now – I won’t detain you.’ There were further cheers and good-spirited horseplay as the boats were readied; sails were hoisted and sheeted in and, with a wave, they set out.
Kydd watched them until they were out of sight. With a twinge of doubt he knew they faced more than a hundred miles along the narrow gulf before Cephalonia was raised and then they had to intercept the unknown tekne among all the other innocent craft and board it – this was asking much, even for the Royal Navy.
He turned on his heel and returned to his ship. They weighed immediately to sail the long way around and later rendezvous with the expedition.
Renzi settled aft, content to let Howlett take charge. His mind roamed over the improbability of what they were doing and where they were. To the right the mainland of Greece and its burden of history – Athens, Thebes and the cradle of the philosophies of logic he held so dear; to the left the Peloponnesus of Sparta and the Delian League.
It was a moment of magic. For all his classical studies he had never visited here and now . . . a pity there were no romantic ruins nearby, marble pillars that had stood since Pericles had rallied Athens and—
‘Cutter, ahoy!’ bellowed Howlett to the boat bravely seething along out to larboard. ‘I’ll thank you to fall in astern and take better station!’
How petty – and how typical of the man to play the admiral when not a soul was there to witness it, Renzi thought. Then he brought to mind commanders like Cornwallis and his ceaseless blockade of Brest. He had insisted on immaculate station-keeping and, far out to sea, majestic battleships formed line and column by signal, tacked about in succession and manoeuvred as though at a fleet review, with only the seagulls to applaud.
In the worst sea conditions anywhere, these ships kept to a culture of excellence that would see them through anything the ocean or the enemy could set against them. Humbled, Renzi smiled at the first lieutenant, who blinked, puzzled.
Dusk drew in. The gulf was long and narrow, and with only one direction to go for so many miles there would be no problem in nocturnal navigation. He watched the men arrange themselves for the night. The canny Stirk had appropriated the wedge shape abaft the stem, easing a sail-cover behind his back and pulling his stout coat around him. The forward lookout sat low for ease of sighting under the flying jib on the running bowsprit and Calloway made his way aft.
The dark hours passed, the towering black mass of the coast to larboard slipping by in ill-defined shapes that slowly came and went. A pannikin of two-water grog was issued and ship’s biscuits were consumed or carefully tucked away for later.
One by one the still black figures dropped from sight below the gunwale as they sought warmth from the chill but steady northerly and Renzi was left alone with his thoughts.
If the winds held they would make Cephalonia by the evening of the next day in good time to be in position near the tip of the island to dart out across the bows of their quarry when it appeared.
If it appeared. There was no overpowering reason for it to stay close in with this, the largest of the Ionians, other than to take the most direct course for Corfu. Conceivably the Turkish master might feel uneasy so hard by Russian shores and keep an offing out of sight. Or perhaps he had even made better speed than estimated and the vessel was now long past.
Renzi shrugged off the night-time phantoms and tried to doze but another thought came to jolt him to wakefulness. That there was increasingly little chance of his ever becoming a man of letters was now approaching a certainty but there was one possible course that would bring the stability and respect which would enable him to recast his future with Cecilia.
He would rejoin the Navy as an officer. With rising feeling he savoured the thought. He was now quite recovered from the fever that had seen him invalided out, and as the ex-first lieutenant of a sixty-four-gun ship-of-the-line he was a valuable acquisition and should find no difficulty in securing a commission.
Lieutenant and Mrs Renzi! It would be a naval wedding, probably in one of the little country churches favoured by officers around Portsmouth. They would live in . . . A betraying anxiety that she might already be spoken for rushed in on his warm vision like a harsh north-westerly squall, leaving him shaken. What was wrong with his logic that he couldn’t steer a safe course through the most elementary of life’s quandaries? If he could not—
‘Ummph.’ Howlett’s body slid sideways against his, jerking the man to full consciousness. ‘I beg pardon,’ he mumbled. ‘I didn’t mean to—’
Renzi grunted, then settled to a fitful doze.
A welcome dawn found them well down the gulf, just where they did not know, but like mariners of old, they needed only to follow the coastline to their destination – cabotage, as it was termed.
A cold breakfast was handed out and they settled to another day. At a point where the gulf kinked, Howlett ordered the boats to land at a sandy spit and the men stretched and cavorted there in grateful release.
The voyage resumed. Idly Renzi wondered just how the final act would play. He was not in command, of course, but what if he were a naval officer again, leading such a party? In the hard light of day the night’s thoughts began to wilt. It would certainly be a congenial prospect, the equal fellowship of the brotherhood of the sea in the wardroom, but things had passed that had fundamentally changed him. He had scaled the heights of intellect and seen the world abstractedly as a rational sea of intertwined natural prescripts. How, then, could he now revert to being a hard, practical officer capable of sending men to their deaths?
Moodily, he let the thoughts come unchecked as he stared at the dark, broken land. For once he was not inclined to search eagerly for a striking ruin or alluring grotto.
Cephalonia was sighted towards evening, with a smaller mountainous island close off its inshore flank. Course was shaped to bring them unseen from the seaward into the narrow passage between the two; their voyaging was nearly over. Renzi glanced across to the precipitous sides of the island, in the winter cold seeming reproving and hostile.
A snatch of Homer crossed his mind, for improbably this brooding island was the famed Ithaca: ‘Odysseus dwells in shining Ithaca. There a mountain doth dream, high Neriton, in night-dark forests is covered—’
‘Brail up!’ Howlett ordered brusquely, and pulled out his watch. ‘Call the cutter alongside, Mr Calloway,’ he told the midshipman.
‘Stirk, load the carronade with ball, but ship an apron.’ They were making their first war-like move, readying their gun for instant use but with a precautionary lead cover to protect the gun-lock.
The other boat came up and Howlett outlined the plan for action. During the night there would be little they could do, hopefully making the interception some time during daylight hours. On the hasty sketch map Orlov had provided, there was a tiny beach on the extreme north-western tip of Cephalonia accessible only from the sea. It was usefully positioned as a step-off point to intercept traffic coming up the seaward side from the south.
The
y would beach there until first light. A lookout would be posted on the highest ground and at the signal they would swoop. The two boats under sail would position one on each quarter of the vessel, the launch to fire its carronade to place a warning across the tekne’s bows, the cutter to stand off and threaten with its carronade while the launch boarded.
If their quarry failed to show up in these two days they would carry on to rendezvous with L’Aurore.
Resistance was thought unlikely against a boat armed with a heavy-calibre weapon trained on the little merchantman’s unprotected stern-quarters but if necessary they would use force.
There were no questions, but Renzi had qualms. The most serious was the weather: if it came on to blow, the boats would quickly have to reef or even retire and watch their prey pass on untouched. Nonetheless he slept well, settled on the beach for the night under a sail; the tideless Mediterranean ensured the waves were kept at bay.
As soon as it was light two men were sent toiling up the steep slope, waving at the top to show they had view of the sea to the south. The boats were readied afloat with a kedge anchor to seaward and sail bent on ready for hoisting – and they waited.
There were a few craft taking the passage past, clearly hurrying on north to Corfu: feluccas, a stout brig in company with a waspish xebec and a number of brightly painted fishing caïques sailing together.
Noon came. Another cold meal. Renzi squatted next to Howlett. ‘Sir, Mr Kydd’s orders were for me to render such advice to you as might prove useful. Do you wish to hear it?’
‘Very well, Renzi. What is it? I’ll caution you that whether I take it or no is my decision.’
‘Yes, quite. Er, it does cross my mind that we should recognise the opposed boarding of an ally and subsequent actions most certainly constitutes an incident with international consequences to our flag.’
‘I know that. It can’t be helped.’
‘My advice to you, sir, is that we assume the character of Russians. Our men are in no sort of uniform, but yourself and Mr Gilbey may wish to keep wearing a foul-weather cloak or similar over yours. Seen to come from a Russian-held island, the inference is that we’re a coast patrol.’
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