Julian Stockwin - Conquest

‘We’re leaving now,’ he said brusquely, and they hurried to the side, Kydd pausing to snatch a line from a belaying pin and fashion a bowline on a bight to lower the corpse down. Anxious faces looked up, flinching at the burning fragments falling from aloft.

Without warning there was a loud, splintering crack above them. Before Kydd could look up, a weather-darkened spar swung down jerkily, trailing flaming ropes and brutally knocking them aside. It ended its careering rush through the centre of the boat, like a giant’s spear.

A shriek of agony from an unfortunate who’d been skewered ended in choking bubbles of his own blood. The cries of the trapped turned to frantic gurgling as the smashed boat filled. Frightened seamen scrabbled back up the side and joined the shocked group on deck, staring at the wreckage containing their dead shipmates settling low in the water.

‘What d’ we do now, sir?’ Poulden asked, ashen-faced. ‘No boat.’

Kydd had no quick answer. L’Aurore ’s orders were not to approach Bato on any account, to guard against trickery, and simply await their return. The firing of the ship would have been spotted and the assumption made that it was Kydd’s action. But, worst of all, the boat was on the blind side and nothing would have been seen of their catastrophe. There would be no rescue.

The crackle of blazing timber from forward redoubled; in the light winds flames leaped vertically and now spread across the width of the ship, advancing aft in an unstoppable wall of fire. Kydd saw there was no longer any option – at any moment the fire would reach the ship’s magazines and they would be blown to kingdom come. ‘Into the water!’ he shouted, throwing aside his coat. ‘The magazines are ready to go!’

The seamen raced to the side but stopped dead as one shrieked, ‘Jus’ look at ’em!’ He pointed down, terrified. Lazily flicking past was the huge pale bulk of a shark. Another pallid blur cruised further out, accustomed to the ditching of ‘gash’ overside from Bato – galley scraps and the like .

‘Mr Kydd, sir ?’ Poulden beseeched.

The fire – or the sharks? He was the captain.

Kydd snatched another glance over the side. At least three of the monsters were now in view. And the magazine could blow in the next second.

‘We go in!’ he ordered. ‘On m’ order, we jump together next to the boat as will frighten the buggers off. Soon as you’re in, pull yourselves into the wreck.’

It was a last and very desperate hope, but he didn’t allow the men time to think about it. ‘Ready, all? Then go!’ He plummeted into the sea. The others joined him in a confused crash of bodies. Gasping for breath, Kydd saw what was left of the boat, awash and at a crazy angle with the spar projecting, and clumsily struck out for it.

Almost immediately there was a burbling scream and frantic splashing. Twisting round, Kydd saw a giant shark fin cleaving the water towards them at shocking speed. Before his frozen mind could react, it was on them – but, incredibly, it passed them by. Kydd felt a glancing touch from the hard, muscular body.

With frantic desperation, he flailed for the boat, grasped the gunwale and was about to heave himself in when he realised why the sharks had left them alone. Attracted by the blood in the water, they were going for the trapped bodies in savage, battering charges.

More came to join in the frenzy of snapping and tearing: when that meat was gone they would turn on anything to sate their lust for flesh. They had seconds to live.

Against the brutish frenzy the distant hoarse cry was like a dream: ‘ Raak niet in paniek Engelsen, we komen! ’ Kydd jerked around. A Dutch longboat was pulling strongly out for them – they had seen what had happened and humanity had overcome the imperatives of war. They were saved.

Chapter 6

‘I suppose we must address you now as “Mr Colonial Secretary Renzi”, should we not?’ Baird harrumphed, but he was clearly taken with his first appointment as governor.

‘As you wish, Sir David.’ Renzi was secretly gratified at his elevation – the honours of the post had not turned his head but at Baird’s right hand he was above the petty manoeuvring yet at the centre of events, well placed to gather his ethnical curiosities.

‘There’ll be a mort of hard work for us both, you may be sure – but satisfying for all that.’

‘Sir.’

Baird paused, then looked at him keenly. ‘Forgive me, Renzi, but you do present as something of a man o’ mystery. What makes you tick, sort o’ thing? Wine, women – any vice as will be revealed to me in due course?’

‘To me, sir, the pleasures of the mind are the more perdurant and grateful to the senses. I’ve been these last years labouring over a study that seeks to relate ethnical character to economic response and . . . and it’s showing promise,’ he ended abruptly.

‘Ethnicals! Then, sir, you should go to India. There you’ll find every kind of God-forsaken creature and outlandish practice as would be meat for a thousand tomes!’ He guffawed, then sobered in reflection. ‘With cruelty and corruption in great palaces, side b’ side with the deepest sort o’ thinkers, who’d give pause to Pythagoras himself.’

‘As opportunity permits, of course,’ Renzi answered politely. ‘The Dutch as incomers to a tribal Africa should be a diverting enough ethnical spectacle.’

Baird’s eyes narrowed. ‘You have objection to the civilising of savages?’

‘Sir, the deed is done, as is the way of the world. My interest is in its outworking, the play of peoples and nature, threat and reply, never the sterile confrontations of politics.’

‘Then I declare I’ve a colonial secretary of the first water! You’ll find there’s the conquered Dutch, the Hottentots o’ various stripe, and who knows what we’ll see up-country? All these to keep content and govern for His Majesty, and I’ve a notion you’ll have a contribution to make.’

Baird sat back, contemplating. ‘So, we begin. You have experience of conjuring a government ex nihilo , from a vacuity as it were? No? Then neither have I.’

It was going to be a task of monumental proportions: the creation of a system of rule, its codifying, and then its declaration and promulgating on a subject people. From the detail of ceremonials to the rule of law. Allegiance, tax revenues, land-holding, defence of the realm, municipal water supply.

‘I conceive, as first step, a committee, a cabinet of advisers as will give their views when asked. Not too big, say . . . half a dozen? Hmm. Dasher Popham, of course, and a military type? Ferguson will do. We’ll have a doctor – public health and so forth. Munro would like the job, I’m sure – he’s our senior regimental surgeon.’

‘Could I suggest a gentleman of an accounting persuasion?’ Renzi offered quietly. ‘We’ll be facing problems of revenue and expense of quite another kind.’

‘Just so. Then I think it’s to be Tupley, our quartermaster general. Dry old stick, but knows his financials. There’ll be others, but this will do for a start, I believe. Well, now, I must see about finding you an office and assistants, Mr Secretary. Oh, and in the matter of a salary, I fear at this stage we must be cautious. Would, say, four hundred per annum satisfy at all?’

Incredibly, his income was now greater than Kydd’s. ‘There’s need of a residence of sorts,’ Renzi replied, greatly daring.

‘Why, most certainly. Grace ’n’ favour of the Crown, of course. Can’t have a secretary as won’t be found when needed.’

‘I’m most grateful, sir.’