Conquest

by Julian Stockwin

  Kydd regarded the seas, as easy as they had ever been, a low swell from the east, no omen of a tempest in the offing, all in hand. He looked again at the cloud: small, ovoid and with a red centre; harmless in itself. Then back at the pursuing French. If Pinto was right, they should batten down for the storm soon – but if he was wrong it would be madness to shorten sail at this point: they would then be most surely delivering themselves up to the enemy. On the other hand, if he was right and it was ignored, the ship was in grave danger. How the devil could he confirm the truth of it?

  ‘Mr Gilbey,’ he said formally, ‘I desire every officer and midshipman to muster in the gunroom.’ What he had in mind was nothing less than the violation of a gentleman’s privacy.

  When the mystified group had assembled he told them, ‘I’ve been advised that the odd-looking cloud to starboard means there’s a right clinker of a blow coming.’

  The officers looked at each other uneasily. ‘Sir, you’re surely not giving ear t’ the Portuguee?’ Gilbey growled. ‘Such cat-blash as—’

  ‘We’ve a chance – a small one – to find out. If he’s right, we need to know about it. If he’s wrong, no harm done. There’s one whose intellects I’ve reason to trust, but he’s not aboard this day.’

  The purser arrived, looking confused. ‘Ah, Mr Owen. Be so good as to open Mr Renzi’s cabin. Gentlemen, you are to make use of the library you’ll see there to discover references to this “Ox-eye” or in the Portuguese, “Olho de boi”.’

  He smiled at their astonishment – he was sure Renzi would appreciate the drollery of the situation. ‘And I’ve no need to mention that time is pressing,’ he added, stepping aside to let them in.

  They set to, each selected a volume from the neat racks occupying two sides of the cabin up to the deckhead, and brought it to the gunroom table where brows furrowed in concentration.

  Even Kydd was amazed at the abstruse variety of Renzi’s reading. Thick works on the philosophies of the Ottomans, others on the agricultural practices of native peoples, still more on jurisprudence considered culturally – and, blessedly, a shelf and a half on travels and histories.

  Curzon was the first to spot it. In a frayed book a century old, Mechanism Macrocosm by one Purshall, there was reference to ‘those Dreadful Storms on the coast of Africa, which the seamen call the “Ox-eye” from their Beginning’.

  It was tantalising but more was needed. Bowden came upon a slim and very old piece, Discoveries and Voyages to the East and West Indies, a translated Dutch work with a passing reference, but then he struck gold in a dictionary. ‘Olho de boi’ – from Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino of the Lisbon of eighty years before. But it was all in Portuguese.

  ‘Get Pinto!’

  Awed to be in the presence of so many expectant officers, he took the book gingerly, and frowned. ‘Ah, the Portuguese navigators o’ the Orient Sea, is what we call t’ the east of Africa. Where we is now,’ he said, in dawning wonder.

  ‘Get on with it!’ Gilbey said peevishly.

  ‘Be silent, sir!’ Kydd snapped. ‘Carry on, Pinto – anything as can show us what we face.’

  ‘Says, Ox-eye start from little, grow wi’ colour o’ the funeral, until the face of heaven he turn scareful an’ then the wind come. Captains mus’ lower yards an’ topmasts for is sudden an’ dreadful. It say our Bartolomeu Dias when he sail in this sea in 1488 he—’

  ‘Thank you, Pinto,’ Kydd said, and summoned the sailing master. ‘Mr Kendall, your opinion, please.’

  He listened to the description, then rubbed his chin. ‘Aye, well, it sounds main like a weather gall, the most common being a rainbow. If that’s what it be, an’ so quick, then I’ve a notion it’s talking of a tropical storm in the character of a local blow, but it has to be very . . . intense, if y’ gets my meaning.’

  ‘We batten down.’

  ‘If’n the signs are there, sir.’

  The Ox-eye had grown, spreading laterally across the horizon, darkening and adding livid yellow to the red in its centre in a menacing show of aggression. Oddly, there was no indication of an approaching tempest, no high winds, heaving swell – nothing but the broadening ugliness.

  ‘Frenchies don’t mind,’ muttered Gilbey. There was no sign of a slackening in the pace of the pursuit.

  ‘I’m thinking it’ll be all of a sudden, like, when it comes,’ Kendall said, troubled. ‘All that talk o’ striking topmasts an’ such.’

  Kydd hesitated – there was still a wild chance they could make the safety of night, and if he was wrong he would be for ever damned as a looby in the Navy. Then, there was a flurry in the steady north-easterly, a flaw that set the sails to a momentary bellying and slatting before settling. And it had come from out of the east – right in line with the baneful Ox-eye, which was now distorted and barely distinguishable in the crepuscular wall of melancholy occupying near half the horizon.

  ‘We do it!’ he muttered. He turned to the master and ordered, ‘Lay us alongside each of the Indiamen – they’ll have to know we haven’t lost our wits.’

  The first was disbelieving and tried to object but Kydd was adamant. The second had heard vaguely of the phenomenon and was more prepared to comply. Both were sent to strike tophamper and distance themselves from each other.

  ‘Mr Kendall, bosun – we’re to douse all sail and send down topmasts. And we bring down the lower yards a-portlast!’ This action of laying the heavy spars down across the gunwales would lower the centre of gravity.

  The pursuing French were visibly put out: as sail vanished from their prey they themselves took in canvas, unsure, wary of a trap. But it was becoming very apparent that something dire was brewing.

  By the time L’Aurore’s yards were down the sky overhead was darkening, the sunlight cut off and the entire eastern aspect hung in livid, hideous greens and ochre upon the mass of dark grey. It had been only an hour or so from the first sighting of the Ox-eye when the winds began to break loose, slamming in from the north-east off the bow to past the beam, directly from the east. If sail had not been brought in they would certainly have been caught aback.

  More spiteful blasts rattled the rigging, and combers could be seen here and there, startling white against the grey, the wind now driving almost always from the east. There was little talk along the decks, as men stared out at the gathering phenomenon.

  Then they witnessed a strange sheeting across the surface of the sea: unnatural, flat, fan-like shapes of torn white instantly spreading and being replaced randomly by others, so when the wind hit, it was with a shocking force that sent men teetering and set L’Aurore to an uneasy rolling.

  This was like nothing Kydd had experienced before. He grabbed a line and tried to peer into the lunatic hammering from the east. The entire sea was now flattened into a tortured expanse of white, yet waves had not appeared – was it that the ‘fetch’ of the winds was too short to build up a sea?

  Again strangely, there was no rain – the darkness overhead threatened a deluge but the slam of wind remained dry, then grew damply warm in a ferocious onslaught, droning and howling dismally among L’Aurore’s stark rigging. The frigate for some reason started a nervous wallow and Kydd saw that it was because her head had fallen off the wind, which bullied and blustered mercilessly at her side, slewing her broadside to it.

  It could only be that the sea-anchor, prudently led over the bows, had parted. Broadside to the blast L’Aurore rolled like a log, viciously and frighteningly, but Kydd knew the experienced fo’c’slemen would be doing all they could to get another out quickly.

  Then the rain came: in storm-driven downpours, bruising torrents that had Kydd bent double to breathe, his sodden, flogging garments a trial as he held on grimly. There was a perceptible quiver and lurch, and L’Aurore was sullenly jibbing to the second sea-anchor, bringing round to face the wind once more.

  The merchantmen had long since disappeared into the chaos of spume and darkness and the immediate need was to endure. God knew where they�
��d have been if they had not struck the topmasts and laid the yards down. No doubt in times past ships must have encountered this terrifying phenomenon and never lived to tell the tale, just vanished into the deep.

  In an hour or so the rain had diminished and the frenzied battering lessened to a steady hard driving from the east. There was no navigating in this but there was sense in trying to reduce the awful strains aloft. Kydd raised salt-sore eyes to meet Kendall’s. ‘We’ll scud,’ he croaked, ‘reefed fore-topsail, fore-topmast staysail.’ The topsail would impel L’Aurore before the blast, lifting the bow, and the staysail would act to damp any deadly yaw.

  The rain cleared and a desolate grey seascape was revealed – an empty expanse with not a sign of any of the ships that had occupied his attention. When their sails tentatively took the fearful wind, L’Aurore immediately began to roll. It was not the characterful motion they were used to, running before the wind, but a vicious, screwing heave that had each man reaching for a solid hold.

  At the same time there was a near unstoppable yaw from one side to the other that left the four helmsmen struggling. ‘A cable, let out over each quarter,’ he shouted hoarsely at the boatswain, clinging to the mizzen shrouds.

  Oakley nodded and, working hand to hand, made his way below. Kydd watched him go – his was a near impossible job: in the insane rolling, he had to rouse out a substantial hawser and heave it overboard to trail in their wake as a damper on the yawing.

  It was finally done. The yawing eased and L’Aurore plunged on before the wind into the gathering darkness. Mercifully, with the night, the winds eased, and with little in the way of swell, the waves subsided. Only a few hours had passed, from the first appearance of the Ox-eye to its dissipation. Kendall had had it right: it was a species of local tempest that was short but shockingly intense, a product of the tropic regions.

  The morning brought an innocent sky, the wind a kindly north-easter once more, the sea a picture of blue tranquillity. It was time to take stock.

  Thanks to their precautions, there was no serious hurt to the frigate, and hands were set to clearing away between decks the broken articles, mess slopping about, all expected consequences of foul weather.

  But where were they? They had been some hundreds of miles from the coast of Africa and south of Madagascar when the Ox-eye had hit. Then they had scudded before the wind – an easterly, so ironically they had been urged on towards their final destination, Lourenço Marques. They must now find their latitude, which would be possible with precision at noon.

  The French were nowhere to be seen, but neither were the Indiamen. Who knew what had happened to them in those wild hours of the previous day? One mystery was solved later that afternoon: two ships close together were sighted ahead and away to the north. They turned out to be the Indiamen, one under tow by the other and relieved to be still afloat. The big ships’ much higher freeboard had enabled them to survive the rolling at the cost of offering a larger area for the wind to press against and they had wisely chosen to scud before it.

  Their latitude placed them comfortably south of the Limpopo River further up the coast from Lourenço Marques and it was with some relief that Kydd shaped course towards it, closing with the coast. That left just one concern: where were the French?

  The immediate task was to get the Indiamen to safe harbour. As the three storm-lashed ships made their way slowly south, Kydd and the master conferred.

  The only chart Kendall had been able to locate was a private Dutch one of ancient provenance. It seemed to warn of a breaking bar across the entrance to the port, one Baixo Paiva Manso. Past that, it opened into a dismaying twenty-mile expanse of shoals at the estuary of the Rio Espiritu Santo. And in several places at the point where the river discharged into the sea there was the ominous-sounding zandgolven, which had been underlined by an unknown hand. It didn’t need much guessing to realise it meant sub-sea sand waves, shifting, unchartable hazards.

  Without a pilot, it was going to be a difficult passage, and when they arrived off the sprawling whitish sand-hills and sliding overfalls of the river mouth, the bar was breaking and visible, but not the treacherous sand waves.

  With a seaman at the fore-chains chanting the depths and another aft, they slipped past the scrubby margin of Africa in the rising heat until they were within the twin low arms of Ponta da Macenta and opposite, the Ponta dos Elefantes, the wind fair for their goal.

  Lourenço Marques lay ten miles further, and Kydd had kept quiet about his fear that, if this was the only port worth the name on the coast to find safe haven, would not the French head for it as well?

  It was too late now: they were within the bay and the wind that made it fair for entry would at the same time make a hasty exit impossible. They went on, the coast to starboard rising in dark-green cliffs. Here and there palm-tree clumps rose above the vegetation, and as they closed with the land, the fetid fragrance of Africa reached out to them.

  Then at the sharp turn into the river there it was: a decaying fortress set about with palm trees and scrub, a scatter of humble dwellings and fishing boats. Lourenço Marques, the most southerly outpost of the ancient Portuguese Empire.

  And not a Frenchman to be seen.

  Chapter 8

  * * *

  It was a masterly stroke, Renzi conceded, and one that could never have been contemplated in any modern state. The grain shortage was the biggest single problem facing them and Baird, in a direct, soldierly manner, had found a way to solve it.

  Recognising that it was a matter of survival until the ships he had sent out returned, he had set about looking for an interim local supply and reasoned that there had to be those who would hide supplies with a view to cashing in at famine rates and farmers who were withholding their grain in the hope of higher returns.

  By a simple device he had trumped both. A regulation was introduced that repealed duties but specified that sales of cereal crops would henceforth be at a fixed price, which would be rigorously enforced. In fairness, the government would also be bound by this and in fact was opening its grain stores for immediate purchases.

  Before long creaking lines of ox-wagons materialised as hoarded stocks were brought in and government stores swelled. The crisis had been averted.

  The question of currency had not been so easy. As most English specie had been lost in the Brazilian wreck what was to be the common coinage? There had been only two options: print banknotes against the Treasury in faraway London or continue to use the current system.

  Baird had chosen to avoid the risks of runaway inflation in printing their own, which left no option but to persevere with what existed. The trouble was that ships touching at the Cape for centuries had left the colony awash with the most exotic forms of coinage, each one of which had to have its English equivalent.

  The official medium of exchange was the rijksdaalder or, as it was more commonly known, the rixdollar, and it was Renzi’s task to draw up a table of equivalence: the rixdollar of forty-eight stuivers against each coin of foreign origin and that against English sterling.

  It was a far from trivial undertaking, for there were those who stood to make a tidy sum if the conversion was struck in their favour. It was no longer to be the sentiment of the market that decided rates, and opinions were sharply and loudly divided.

  With Ryneveld’s canny assistance Renzi completed the wording of the grand proclamation. It allowed that, for the better regulation of trade and the prevention of disputes, the values of money in circulation in Cape Town should be fixed in accordance with the table shown.

  Only the more common were listed: the doubloon, Spanish dollar, rupee and ducat, the pagoda, johanna and Venetian sequin, and each with its value in stuivers and sterling. It had been a long task but diverting, complexity to be discovered in even the seemingly simplest economic activity of man.

  Baird read it carefully then frowned. ‘And you’d let us be ruined, Renzi, old chap?’

  Puzzled, Renzi took it back. ‘Er, you’
re in dispute at the rates, sir?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘The wording?’

  ‘Splendid, as far as it goes.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘My dear fellow, you’re too honest for this world. What if our fixed rate for the gold mohur is less than what some rupee wallah offers in Bombay? Why, next thing every merchant worth the name will be sending ’em over by the sackful for the premium, leaving us bare.’

  ‘Um, quite,’ Renzi said uncomfortably.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, old chap – I’ll add a bit about export o’ specie in use in the settlement being forbidden under pain of confiscation. Do get that in and posted up quickly. Oh, and one more thing. I’m supposing it’s your first public appearance, so to speak?’

  ‘Er?’

  Baird chuckled. ‘On the proclamation, under where it says all that about “Given under my hand and seal this day” and so forth, surely we’ll see “By Order of His Excellency, N. Renzi, Colonial Secretary,” shall we not?

  ‘But now – some disturbing news. This was found in a waterfront taphuis by one of our redcoats.’

  He handed across a handbill roughly printed in Dutch.

  ‘It’s Janssens’s work, urging all patriot Boers to rally to his colours in the mountains. I have to deal with it – there’s too many of these fellows up-country he can call upon. I’m without delay sending General Beresford with a column to invest his redoubt.’

  ‘These are military operations, sir.’

  ‘They do concern you, Renzi. The only effective move is to send an overwhelming force to smoke him out and persuade him of the hopelessness of his position.’

  ‘You’re going to strip Cape Town of its garrison?’

  ‘I am. While this is in train the settlement will be as near as damnit defenceless. I want you and your fiscal friend to give ear to every rumour, keep an eye on those who stand to gain by an uprising, and let me know the minute there’s a hint of unrest. We’ll deal with it together in some way.’