The Guineaman

  During their last few busy days in Newport, Kite half-hoped and half-feared to meet Sarah Tyrell again. In the event, as Nantucket Island faded astern and resumed the blue insubstantiality that Jones had first sighted weeks earlier, Kite was glad that nothing further had passed between them. Arthur Tyrell had sent his clerk down with the papers he required Kite to take with him and later the same day, shortly before sailing, Kite had waited upon Tyrell in his counting house to enjoy a glass of wine and a fine view over the harbour. He had cleared Spitfire outwards at the Custom House and was enjoying the last moments of relaxation before he took the schooner to sea. It was Christmas Eve and a fine winter’s morning. Tyrell had been in a cordial mood, solicitous that Kite would not remain in Newport over the festive season, but sympathetic to his anxiety to sail, so that Puella could be brought to bed in England, with the passage behind them.

  ‘My wife will be disappointed,’ he remarked as they took their leave, an uncomfortably enigmatic enough remark from Sarah’s husband to make Kite feel a shred of guilt at the warmth Sarah had kindled in him. But it was the closest he got to Sarah, and to Kite’s relief Puella gave no further signs of jealousy. In his self-conceit, Kite did not realise the extent to which Puella was a prey to fear. Nearing the time of her confinement, alone and bereft of the support of Dorothea that she had enjoyed during the birth of Charlie, Puella was as much worried over the approaching ordeal of a long ocean passage, as the uncertainty of her future and the arrival of her quickening child.

  Kite was blissfully unaware of her acute anxiety. The final arrangements about the cargo, its stowage and the necessity of attending the Custom House filled his time and thoughts. As they slipped seaward in the last of the daylight of Christmas Eve, 1759, the land was already in shadow and Kite could not see the solitary horsewoman who, from the eminence of Castle Hill, watched the Spitfire turn east south east, heading south of the skein of islands beyond Buzzard’s Bay.

  They took their navigational departure the following day from the eastern extremity of Nantucket Island. Ahead of the Spitfire lay the broad expanse of the Atlantic. Taking a final glance at the low and misty shore, Kite could persuade himself that no such place as Newport existed, and no such person as Sarah Tyrell had ever smiled at him.

  Only the flaking scab on his cheek reminded him otherwise.

  The Spitfire ran east under her modified rig at a fine clip. It was cold, bitterly cold at times, and the west north westerly wind blew for nine days at gale force, but the schooner and her company were undeterred. The North Atlantic, even in her wintry mood, seemed disposed to treat them kindly. Those few of the hands who regretted leaving the warm climes of the tropics were seduced by Whisstock’s glowing accounts of London and Liverpool where, he affirmed, a man could live like a prince once he had made his fortune. So seductively did Whisstock descant upon the delights of these cities, so easily did he brush aside the actual mechanics of securing a fortune, that even Jones was persuaded there might be something in Whisstock’s claims. Consequently one evening, as he handed over the watch to Kite, he raised the matter with him.

  Kite laughed. ‘He is deceived, Mr Jones. Liverpool is a foul place, though London might be well enough, I wouldn’t know, I have never been there. But Liverpool…’ Kite pulled a face. ‘True, there are some elegant dwellings there,’ Kite went on, relying on Makepeace’s assertions rather than any experience of his own, ‘but without any means, and I don’t suppose Whisstock has any means, he will be reduced to seeking lodgings in low alehouses where the only things he can rely upon seeking him out are the drabs and the pick-pockets.’

  ‘It’s the old choice between the pox, penury and an outward ship, then?’ Jones queried with a grin.

  Kite nodded. ‘I fear so, Mr Jones, but he may prove useful in a counting house and so avoid the first and last. As for the pox, that depends upon his continence.’

  ‘I supposed as much,’ Jones said, embarrassed at his temporary gullibility.

  They laughed and Jones, having passed over the watch and relieved himself of his ignorance, went below.

  As the days passed, Kite felt an increasing confidence, for the clear cold weather enabled him to verify their latitude and it held until they approached the north coast of Ireland and ran along the parallel of Malin Head, a month out of Newport, Rhode Island. He continually made plans, revised, honed and discarded them in favour of new ones; so high were his spirits that Susan Hebblewhite’s murder was only a faint shadow on his horizon.

  The plain truth was that the land ahead was as insubstantial as the fading blue of Nantucket astern, and the joy of sailing in this crisp, fine weather, for all the icy blow that hurled itself at them from the north west, was unalloyed. Time enough, he thought, to worry. Makepeace was right. If not rich, Kite possessed sufficient funds to stand trial with a good defence if matters reached that extremity.

  Puella grew in girth and was warm in her bearskin. The brief social encounter with Sarah had persuaded her she could hold her own among white society and Kite was too ignorant himself to disabuse her. As a country apothecary’s son he was incapable of making the distinction between the easy manner of the wealthy, meritocratic colonial gentility, and the rigid hierarchies of his native land. Thanks to the influence of Mulgrave and his experiences in Antigua, Kite had matured into a genteel and courteous young man. His own manner was natural and uncontrived, but insofar as England was concerned, he lacked the sophistication or pretension to judge how England would regard himself, let alone his beautiful but black mistress. While his high mood and higher hopes were a measure of his new-found confidence, they were also a measure of his youth.

  They sighted Malin Head on the horizon to the southward, and the island of Inistrahull a point or two on the starboard bow shortly before nightfall thirty three days out from Newport. Kite bore up and hove-to for the night, unwilling to run down on so dangerous a coast in the dark. During the hours of darkness, the wind dropped, and Kite came on deck at dawn to find them wallowing in a dense fog. What wind their was, was light and fluky, while the damp struck into their bones with far greater chill than the brisk cold wind of their passage. All about them lay a wall of damp and impenetrable vapour.

  Kite swore, suddenly feeling the lonely burden of command after the jolly, light-hearted days of carefree running. He was again made abruptly and humiliatingly aware of his ignorance and lack of sea-experience as the clammy fog insidiously depressed him. Lost in his thoughts he wanted to return to his cabin, to bury himself in the bearskin alongside Puella; he realised the temptation to give up and abandon matters was a strong and seductive compulsion to a man eager to conceal his inadequacy. Was this why men like Makepeace got drunk or drowned themselves in sensuality? Now vulnerable, bereft of self-confidence again, Kite felt the looming spectre of the gallows rise. He could put the future out of his mind no longer. His imagination conjured the loathsome and fearful image within the wraiths of fog, feeling again a sense of personal doom.

  Fate was mocking him, chastising him for his weeks of satisfaction as Spitfire raced across the Western Ocean. He damned himself for his folly, for being seduced by Sarah Tyrell and agreeing to undertake her husband’s commission; damned himself for listening to Makepeace and his plans for wealth and partnership. The fog was an omen, a certain portent that matters would not, could not, go well for him.

  Kite swore again, the foul oath bursting forth with all the conviction his ardent and frustrated nature could muster. He regarded the deck ahead of him with distaste. It was now full daylight and he could see the planking sodden with condensation; every rope dripped and moisture ran in rivulets from the slatting, idle sails; even the helmsman could do little with the tiller as the rudder kicked back in the low swell. Kite fretted as the hours passed, frustrated and worried, the anxiety eating away at the pit of his stomach. He wondered whether waiting until the damned fog lifted was all he could do.

  On this occasion Jones was of no use to him, for cold and fog were as unfamili
ar to Jones as to Kite, and although Kite had known both since his boyhood on the fells of Cumbria, he had then borne no responsibility and he knew the country so well that he had never been lost.

  Now Cumbria and its beloved fells lay not far away, beyond the narrow strait of the North Channel, through which he yet had to take the Spitfire. There was much yet to accomplish and whatever happened to him, he must at least see his father and sister again. The decision brought him up with a round turn. This was no time for self-pity and he was suddenly contemptuous of the temptation to give in. If men like Makepeace could master situations like this, so could Kite. Then he suddenly recalled something Makepeace had said to him. It was almost his last remark, a friendly afterthought as he contemplated Kite’s homeward passage.

  ‘Don’t forget, Kite, that if you are in home waters, you have to consider the run and the set of the tide. If you are lost in fog and in soundings, you should anchor.’

  He had forgotten about the tides! God what a fool! At least he had had the forethought to put about the night before. He called forward to have a man set in the chains and to begin swinging the lead. As he waited for his order to be carried out and the leadsman’s monotonous chant to begin, he resolved that, once ashore he would leave Liverpool for Cumbria and proceed directly to his father’s house. He would hire a conveyance and make short work of the journey. God-willing he would find his father and Helen in good health. They would take Puella in, care for her and tend her during her labour. He could then return to Liverpool, wait upon Makepeace and try his luck or take the consequences. The resolution cleared his mind. It seemed easy enough and honest enough; he had not, after all, killed Susan. A doubt crossed his mind that his father might be dead and Helen married, but then the leadsman began to call out the soundings from the starboard chains.

  ‘By the mark thirteen!’

  Kite’s heart hammered; it was not a great depth of water after the bottomless Atlantic. ‘call all hands,’ he bellowed, ‘prepare to anchor!’

  There followed half an hour of confusion as the cable was roused out and dragged forward to be bent on the starboard bower. This in turn had been released from its secure stowage, catted and prepared for dropping. By this time the leadsman was calling twenty fathoms and then twenty-five. Kite went forward and stared down into the water, telling the leadsman to leave the weight on the seabed for a moment, in order that he could estimate the speed and direction of their drift.

  The line lay stubbornly against the ship’s side. For a few moments Kite was deceived, then he had the lead cast again from the opposite side. The line drew rapidly away from the ship’s side, out on the larboard beam. Kite hurried aft and peered into the binnacle.

  ‘Is she steering?’ he asked the helmsman.

  ‘No, Cap’n,’ the man responded, as if he had been asked if the Spitfire had been flying.

  ‘Damnation!’ The schooner’s head lay to the north, but according to the evidence of the leadline they were drifting east. Kite was mystified, then the leadsman’s voice sang out shrilly: ‘By the deep four!’

  ‘Dear Christ!’

  ‘Let go, sir?’ Jones called, his voice high-pitched with fear.

  ‘By the mark, seven!’

  The temptation to relax was great. Was the depth increasing or not?

  ‘By the mark, five!’

  Then they all heard the echo, ’by the mark, five!’

  ‘Jeeesus Chris’!’

  ‘Let go!’ Kite shrieked, hearing the splash of the anchor, then the diminuendo of his fearful order bouncing back at them. The hairs on the nape of Kite’s neck crawled as he felt the deck tremble slightly as the cable ran out through the hawse-pipe. They must be close… So close.

  ‘Nip it! Nip it!’ Kite bellowed when he thought enough had run out to hold the Spitfire. Somewhere the unseen cliffs mocked him: ’Nip it! Nip it!’

  Kite hurried forward and peered over the side. The cable ran round the bow, rubbing against the stem and he could see the tension in it as the anchor bit, then he felt the schooner’s head snub round as the anchor brought up and spun the Spitfire head to tide. Now the cable ran down into the water at an angle, disappearing into the depths; the Spitfire was static, and not adrift on the bosom of the sea.

  Kite felt the deep undulation of the incoming ocean swell and saw the velocity of the tide as it sluiced past them as if a mill-race. He felt his heartbeat subside and he swallowed, his mouth dry. Straightening up, he felt an immense relief that they were, for the moment at least, out of immediate danger.

  As he composed himself, he sensed a change in the weather. The deck seemed to be less damp, the dankness of the fog diminishing, the vapour increasingly nacreous. Then, patchily at first, the limits of visibility began to extend as the fog began to thin. It took a moment to perceive anything, then slowly, with each man exclaiming at the sight, the echoes of their surprise bouncing back, the cliff reared upwards alongside them. It was huge and close, so close that the schooner was rocking to the backwash of the breaking swell as it met the vertical rock face.

  ‘Good God!’ whispered Kite to himself. He stared up at the fissured mass. The strata lay at a slight angle to the vertical. Here and there small ledges bore the stains of bird-lime, spring nesting places for guillemots, kittiwakes, razorbills and little auks. The dark purple of the striated rock reared above their mastheads and was shrouded in misty cloud and the swell broke in a ceaseless necklace of foaming water at its foot. Kite shuddered. Would the tide have swept them clear, or did sunken rocks lurk nearby, as the variability of the soundings suggested? He would never know. All that he could be certain of was that they had avoided disaster.

  As the warmth of the wintry sun slowly burnt off the fog, the first whispers of a breeze began to ripple the water. Fortunately these airs came from the south west, filling the sails so that, sheeted home, the Spitfire began to creep up tide, over their cable. Their situation was too precarious to tarry and Kite ordered the cable cut. They would lose an anchor but the slant of wind might be temporary and Kite could not wait to leave the proximity of that mighty cliff.

  The Spitfire stood slowly to the west north west and the cliff disappeared astern in the mist. Kite could only suppose he had touched the coast somewhere near the Mull of Kintyre, or perhaps the coast of Islay, but he was never afterwards sure. All he knew at the time was that he must get away and stand back out into the Atlantic to wait for a final clearing of the weather before he attempted anything so foolish as to head for the North Channel and the Irish Sea.

  It was two days before the visibility finally improved, and when it did, Kite saw a sail to the east. The stranger was a brig, standing close-hauled to the north west, heading towards them.

  ‘Outward bound,’ Kite remarked to Jones, who had come on deck to relieve him. The two vessels closed on reciprocal courses, the brig flying a bright new red ensign, prompting Kite to hoist his own colours.

  ‘I suppose,’ Jones remarked, ‘she could be a naval brig-sloop, come to take a look at us.’

  The strange vessel was edging down, and would pass close to them and Kite agreed, remarking that, ‘I think you’re correct. She appears to have her guns run out…’

  The suddenly the two were approaching to pass close, a man standing atop the rail of the outward bound brig waving his hat and Kite, leaping up on his own rail and hanging on to the main rigging, waved back.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Jones yelled, ‘get down!’

  The red ensign was descending in jerks to reveal the white and gold lilies of the Bourbon French. At the same instant a few puffs of grey smoke, accompanied by points of fire, rippled along the brig’s gunwhale. The shot tore over their heads. Holes appeared in both the main and foresails and a ball hit the hull in a cloud of splinters which erupted with the impact. Then the brig’s helm went over and her sails slammed aback. A second later first her main and then her foreyards swung as she tacked and stood close across Spitfire’s stern.

  ‘He’s going to rake, sir!’
shouted Jones, as the horror of their predicament struck them, ending their stupefaction. Kite heard Puella screaming but thrust the intrusion aside.

  ‘Larboard watch, run out the larboard guns! Starboard, tend the sheets! Up helm!’ Kite lunged at the helmsman, helping to push the heavy over to windward.

  It was as well they had met the brig at the change of the watch with the entire crew on deck. Kite had no very great chance of getting off a shot at the enemy, but he could run for it, at least gaining a small lead on his opponent whom he rightly concluded was a French corsair. By turning the same way as the enemy, Kite succeeded in buying himself a few moment’s respite, avoiding the catastrophe of the brig’s broadside being poured into Spitfire’s stern where Puella was hiding.

  But Puella was not hiding, she was on deck. ‘What is happening?’

  In the cabin she had heard the discharge of the brig’s guns and felt the impact of the shot, then the heel of Spitfire’s deck had caught her off balance as Kite turned towards the enemy. Frightened, she could remain below no longer. Kite was strangely glad to see her. She had wrapped herself in the bearskin and looked so incongruous that seeing her thus, he smiled despite the circumstances.

  ‘We are in trouble, Puella; that is a French privateer. An enemy ship. We must try and escape.’

  As the brig tuned, so did Spitfire, frustrating the French commander as he tried to place his vessel so that his guns could fire the length of the schooner’s deck. Instead Kite drew away to the north and east, running before the wind, with the brig swinging in Spitfire’s wake. Kite picked up the watch glass and levelled it on the brig. She had completed her turn in Spitfire’s wake and although Kite had opened up a lead, she was clearly able to overhaul her quarry. That she was well manned and ably handled he had no doubt. There had been sufficient insouciance in the ruse of the waving officer, and the smart execution of her turn under their lee to convince him of that. But having turned away, Kite could think of nothing further that could be done. He looked forward. The larboard watch were laboriously loading and running out the larboard battery, but he had insufficient men to work the guns on one side of the ship, let alone two, even supposing he had a crew of competent gunners. This he had neglected, despite the letter of marque-and-reprisal that Spitfire carried. It had not been intended that she operated as a privateer until after she had fitted out properly in Liverpool. As it was, she carried scarcely sufficient powder and shot to fire off a dozen guns, let alone fight with her broadsides. Besides, Kite thought bitterly, as a privateer Spitfire was supposed to act offensively, not in abject self-defence.