Conquest

by Julian Stockwin

  The interior was riven by rocky valleys; strangely, on this island it was the summits of the mountains that were clothed in verdure, the lower slopes bare and precipitous, some shrouded in cloud and mist.

  ‘We’ll enter t’ leeward, o’ course, sir – Jamestown on the north is where we lands,’ Kendall said confidently. ‘An’ that there’s Lot an’ His Wife,’ he added, pointing to two contorted columns of dark basalt rearing high above the broken scarp.

  Rounding the sharp western extremity they passed into relative peace to leeward of the island, L’Aurore’s barrelling roll before the wind finally easing after so many days at sea. Jamestown was marked by several ships at anchor offshore and L’Aurore did likewise, her sailors agog at the new-found land. There was no need for salutes or ceremony because this entire island, complete with its governor, was a fiefdom of the East India Company.

  ‘Open the hold, Mr Oakley – we’ll take aboard fresh greenstuffs and water while we’ve the chance. And let the passengers know our boat will be going ashore in one hour,’ Kydd ordered. They were carrying three gentlemen with business on the island.

  He went below to prepare. There was no real necessity for him to visit: his orders were to return by way of a voyage east to Africa, then down the coast back to Cape Town, keeping a weather eye open for the tell-tale signs of a French landing. But St Helena was a strange and haunting island, set at such unimaginable remoteness – who knew if he’d be this way again? Besides, Renzi would never forgive him if he did not bring back an account.

  They landed at the foot of a long, narrow valley, the town not much more than a single street. A gateway through the sea wall led them in and Kydd stood for a space, admiring the bluffs that soared five hundred feet on both sides. ‘You’re for Plantation House?’ Moore, one of the passengers, asked pleasantly.

  ‘The governor?’

  ‘Yes, Robert Patton. I’ll advise a calesa, Captain. The house is at some miles’ distance.’

  At the Mule Yard they secured their conveyance. ‘The castle on the left is near crumbling with ants,’ Moore chuckled, as they ground up an incline, ‘and there is our snug Grand Parade and our steeple-less St James’s Church.’

  ‘Er, how old is it at all?’ Kydd asked, out of courtesy.

  ‘As it was building when Captain Cook chanced by. Your first visit?’

  Plantation House was in the pleasantly cooler uplands, fronted by a lawn set about with myrtles and mimosa thirty feet high, an exotic mingling of bamboo and eucalyptus, laurel and cabbage tree.

  Kydd walked past a giant tortoise contentedly munching grass and was politely conducted to Governor Patton, who greeted him with a warm handshake and invited him to sit in one of a pair of fine antique chairs.

  ‘I bring news,’ Kydd opened. ‘Cape Town is ours, and—’

  ‘This I know, Captain. Is it possible I have news for you?’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘There’s been a hard-run battle off San Domingo that’s ended the career of your Admiral Leissègues. Quite destroyed by Admiral Duckworth in as fine an action as any I’ve heard.’

  This was welcome indeed. One fewer battle squadron to worry about at the very least.

  ‘And Admiral Willaumez has been sighted to the suth’ard . . .’

  Kydd started. What the devil was such a threat doing in the south – a strike at the Cape? He stood immediately. ‘I – I must get this news to Commodore Popham.’ What could be achieved with a pair of old 64s and lesser craft would soon be put to the test.

  Patton gave a reassuring smile. ‘A company schooner is already on its way, sir.’

  Kydd left as soon as he decently could and made his way back aboard. L’Aurore was part of the Cape squadron and his thoughts were very much on the little outpost at the tip of the great continent in its time of lonely defiance.

  And then, of course, there was Thérèse. At the ball he’d been much taken with her cool poise and striking attractiveness, which had made it irksome to sail the next day. When he returned, if she had not retreated back to her wine estate, he would most certainly pay her a call . . .

  He waited impatiently until Oakley had reported stores and water aboard, then, although it was well into the first dog-watch, he ordered the ship secured for sea and they sailed into the evening to return to Cape Town.

  Close-hauled on the starboard tack in the fine south-easterly trades, L’Aurore made a good crossing, raising land soon after dawn. Notorious to every sailor, the African coast at these latitudes was treacherous, desolate and unutterably remote, a burning wilderness, what the old Portuguese called a costa dos esqueletos – the coast of skeletons.

  There was vanishingly little reason for the French to be here – but, then, what better place to conceal a secret refuge, a location where a fleet of ships could be assembled out of sight before making their strike south? Kydd dutifully went about and headed south, closing with the stark shore as near as he dared, keeping with the inshore south-westerly.

  Through the telescope he peered out at an endless march of tawny sand dunes, shimmering in the heat behind the white line of breaking surf. Occasionally a twist of rock, a low hillock or dry wash-way caught the eye, but the unrelieved boredom of the prospect soon reduced its novelty and the seamen got on with their work with no more glances shoreward.

  Shortly after the men settled to their noon meal there was a low cry from the lookout at floating wreckage across their path. It was not unknown to come across derelicts – sad, waterlogged remnants of ships abandoned in storms – and Curzon told the conn to leave it safely to leeward, but as they drew nearer sharp eyes detected movement.

  The watch were set to back the fore-topsails to lose way, and as the frigate slowed, it appeared they had stumbled upon a stove-in ship’s boat with a ragged sail stretched over what looked like two bodies. As they approached, a hand threw aside a corner of the canvas and a face burned scarlet by the sun stared up, unbelieving. With an inhuman screech, the figure tried to rise but flopped sideways. Then came husky, tearing cries, piteous in their pleading.

  Aroused by the noise, Kydd was soon on deck. ‘Heave to, if y’ please. Away the gig.’ At sea, his orders were to keep the small boat always at the ready in the stern davits, the watch-on-deck to man it.

  With a squeal of sheaves, the gig descended and quickly pulled towards the pitiful sight, one of the figures now in a paroxysm of waving and crying. The bowman went over the side into the perilously swaying wreckage, tender hands easing the transfer, and the boat returned with its cargo of suffering humanity.

  ‘Sorry, sir, an’ he won’t leave the dead ’un behind,’ the coxswain apologised, while a bloated corpse was awkwardly slithered over the bulwarks. The survivor fell on the deck, alternately blubbering and giving vent to hoarse howls.

  The surgeon arrived. ‘Extreme desiccation,’ he said, after no more than a cursory look. ‘I’d be surprised if he sees another dawn.’ He stood back and folded his arms.

  ‘Well, what’s to do, Doctor? You’ll not let him suffer?’

  ‘I suppose a measure of opium, water, of course, but sparing . . .’

  Kydd was about to have the man taken below but paused; obviously in the last extremity of thirst, he continued with his urgent cries. And his eyes, though pits of suffering, were still rational, constantly flicking from Kydd to the others. ‘He’s trying to tell us something . . . His shipmates – he’s been sent to find help!’

  But the harsh gobbles were impossible to make out. Then the babbling stopped. The man gathered his strength with desperate intensity and mouthed a single word: ‘Danske!’

  ‘He’s saying as he’s a Dane, sir,’ Kendall said positively.

  To Kydd’s knowledge, there were none of his kind aboard – the English were at war with Denmark. ‘Get him below and comfortable,’ he said, ‘then pass the word for any who think they can understand the poor wretch.’

  Later, Kydd was sent for. Olafsen, a half-Swedish sailmaker’s mate, was standing by the ham
mock in which the man lay, exhausted, eyes still restless, haunted.

  ‘Says he’s a foremast hand off the Grethe, a trader from Christianborg, sir,’ Olafsen said.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  There was a short exchange. ‘A Danish fort up the Guinea Coast.’

  Then the man went into a muscle spasm, his eyes bulging with the effort of trying to get something out – but eventually Kydd had the story.

  His ship had taken the ground and been driven ashore over the bank. Most of the crew and passengers had saved themselves, only to face a fearful arid desolation. In a desperate attempt to get help the one surviving ship’s boat, with three seamen, was launched through the surf, commanded by the mate.

  During the night the mate and one seaman had been swept over-side, their water lost and the boat swamped. The man’s remaining companion had died in heat convulsions the next day.

  ‘Ask him where the wreck is,’ Kydd told Olafsen. If they moved quickly, the rest had a chance.

  ‘He can’t say. He doesn’t know navigation. They knew to head south for Cape Town, so he thinks maybe north of here a few leagues.’

  Kydd shook his head. This simple seaman could not know of the cold, surging Benguela current thrusting up. Once swamped and helpless, the boat would have been carried inexorably north. The likelihood was that it wasn’t too far ahead on their original course – to the south.

  ‘How many aboard?’

  It turned out to be forty-seven, including passengers, but of these the captain and nine seamen had been lost in the wrecking.

  ‘Tell him we’re starting to search for ’em now.’

  With no shortage of lookouts, L’Aurore sailed south and almost immediately sighted a wreck. Stark against the glare of pale sand, it was thrust up near a sand-spit. Lieutenant Bowden was sent to make contact, but returned quickly.

  ‘Not ship-rigged and looks to be old, sir.’

  In the early afternoon another wreck was sighted. This one was at an angle to heavy breakers and still showed mast stumps – it had to be recent or would have been reduced to a grey-ribbed carcass. Careful searching with a telescope, however, showed no sign of life.

  ‘Give ’em a gun.’ A six-pounder forward banged out. There was no response.

  ‘Another.’ Nothing.

  ‘See if our survivor can be carried up on deck to identify it,’ Kydd ordered, eyeing the way in.

  There was no mistaking the Dane’s pitiful response and Bowden was sent in once more, this time in the whaler. On his own initiative, Kydd had acquired for L’Aurore a whaling boat: double-ended and sea-kindly, it could be landed through heavy surf, unlike a flat-transomed boat.

  He watched its progress. Sped ashore through the final lines of breakers, it grounded and was rapidly hauled clear. The men quickly went to the wreck, disappearing out of view, but after some time they reappeared, and went over the dunes, searching.

  After a perilous launch into the surf, with the boat in a demented rearing and bucking, a soaked Bowden reported, ‘It’s the Grethe well enough, sir. And not a soul alive, I’m sorry to say.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘There were eight or so bodies in the ’tween decks aft, but I couldn’t make good search as she was breaking up.’ He shuddered. ‘Some African beast had got to them, sir, I – I didn’t look closely.’

  ‘Your men found nothing?’

  ‘Not a sign.’

  It didn’t make sense. If they’d abandoned the wreck, surely there’d be a camp somewhere close. And lookouts to watch for a rescue vessel. Or had they already been picked up? No – they would have buried their shipmates first. If he now sailed away, he could be dooming thirty-three people to a terrible end.

  ‘I’m going to see for myself.’ In all conscience, Kydd couldn’t rob them of their only chance of rescue without one more look.

  ‘It’s fearfully hot, sir,’ Bowden said, ‘and if this swell rises, getting off again in the surf could be hard.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind. Poulden – pick a good crew.’

  Kydd stripped off his coat and, with a quick apology, borrowed a seaman’s flat sennit hat before boarding the whaler, taking the steering oar himself. It was a dizzying ride in, and the final rush to the sand was as exhilarating as it was hazardous.

  ‘Haul in.’

  While the boat was dragged clear Kydd looked about him. High sand-hills, a very few small ragged bushes and strangely coloured dunes that stretched away into a limitless distance. A sense of utter desolation beat at him as he trudged towards the dark-timbered bulk of the wreck.

  From shoreward it was not difficult to get aboard by the ropes that trailed in the water over the stern. What Bowden had not mentioned was the squeal and barking of tortured timber and the crazy working of the planking as the decks sagged on to each other. Or the stench of putrefaction mingled with bilge and sea smells.

  Bent double, Kydd worked his way forward and saw the first body, its parts scattered. In the gloom he caught the flash of eyes – some sort of hyena circling. There were other bodies – now just butcher’s carcasses – that he dimly perceived rolled together in the lower part of the canted deck.

  There was nothing to be gained by staying and Kydd made for fresh air, relieved to be away from the cloying fetor of death. He had once been wrecked in the Azores and knew how rapidly a doomed ship turned from having been a neat and trim home for sailors into a crazed death-trap.

  The Grethe was not long for this world – in a short while it would be a gaunt, grey-timbered skeleton. But where were her people? There were simply nowhere near enough bodies. It could only be that they had left the wreck and got ashore.

  Back on the vast beach he gathered his thoughts. Had they headed inland, hoping to reach some sort of civilisation? The constant wind with its sibilance of rubbing sand-grains had obliterated all tracks – even Bowden’s were now rounded and filled.

  Kydd toiled up the face of the highest dune. At the top he looked out on the most parched and bleak desert landscape he had ever seen: endless vari-coloured sand-mountains, some with dark ridges protruding, rising from a flat desert floor and stretching away into a shimmering distance, where several rounded copper mountains lay, all in the torpid stillness of a terrible desert silence – vast, brooding, impenetrable. And not the faintest human trace.

  Away from the sea, there was no cooling wind and the heated sand beat mercilessly up at him.

  Had there been a fierce attack by a native tribe? Surely nothing could live here in this landscape. The survivors had vanished – and it must remain a mystery for ever.

  He turned to go, but stopped. What if they had not accepted their fate and in desperation had struck out to find their own deliverance? It would have been a dreadful decision: to leave the relative comfort and shelter of the wreck for the unknown. Perhaps the bodies were of those who had argued for staying until rescued, while the others had taken their fate in their own hands and started out.

  Only a madman would enter the hellish aridity inland when by the sea there was some degree of coolness and hard-packed sand for travelling. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that this was what had happened.

  They would have gone to the south. The impossible dream of Cape Town would be always before them, but Kydd knew that this was an unreachable eight hundred miles away – a comfortable week’s sail for L’Aurore but an impossible march for survivors in this sun-blasted hell.

  He decided to go after them. In these conditions he could not hazard the frigate inshore close enough to pick out individual figures. It would have to be done on foot along the beach, but this should not be too difficult for fit men. He would necessarily be delaying his return to the Cape, but if there was no sign in a single day’s march, he would abandon the search.

  ‘Stand by to launch the whaler, Poulden.’

  His coxswain hesitated. ‘We’re t’ leave ’em, sir?’

  ‘No – we’re following them. You’re to take the whaler to L�
��Aurore and bring back these things – make a note, if y’ please.’

  Kydd had already decided that he should be with the searching party in case decisions had to be taken, but it needed only a few others – a couple of marines used to marching, the doctor and possibly someone with sharp eyes. And each to carry three military canteens of water at the least. Everyone to wear but a covering shirt, seamen’s trousers and sennit hat. Perhaps a scrap of canvas to lie under, some ship’s biscuits, anything easily portable to eat.

  He also scribbled an order to Gilbey to take the ship, his instructions to keep with their progress until signalled to send in a boat. And there would be three signal flags, he’d decide the meanings while the boat was away, and in the event of strange sail, he’d leave this to the discretion of the acting captain.

  The whaler launched in a mighty rearing and exhilarating explosion of rainbow spray and fought its way over each successive line of breakers until it had won the open sea and could erect its mast and sail.

  Kydd was left on the beach, feeling curiously lonely away from the company of men, just the sound of wind-driven sand and the relentless bass pounding and seethe of surf. He stripped himself down to shirt and trousers and stared over to the wreck, pondering on its gradual ruin at the hands of the ceaseless breakers.

  He took out his notebook and jotted down some elementary signals: ‘boat to come in’, ‘survivors sighted’, ‘send more water’, and others. Satisfied, he snapped it shut and waited.

  The boat returned in a wild rush through the surf and a wide-eyed Calloway, Sergeant Dodd and his corporal, Cullis, scrambled out. The boat’s crew threw out their gear after them and helped the surgeon over the gunwale, cursing as he came.

  ‘I just hope you know what you’re doing, Mr Kydd!’ spluttered Peyton, thoroughly soaked, nursing a bag of medicines.

  ‘I do. And you’ll not be wanting that coat, Doctor – do take it, Poulden.’