Julian Stockwin - Mutiny

The master's lean face became haggard with strain and concentration as together they fought the ship clear. A fraction of inattention or misreading of the thrumming pressures transmitted up the tiller ropes and at this speed they would slew broadside in an instant.

The rumbling stopped — they must be clear of the sand. Orders pealed out that had canvas clewed up, yards braced round and a slowing of their mad backward rampage. The master's eyes met Kydd's, and he smiled. 'That's cutting a caper too many f'r me,' he said, in a gusty breath of relief.

Kydd returned a grin, but he held to his heart that this fine mariner had called on him, Thomas Kydd, when he needed a true seaman alongside.

The beat north through the Adriatic was an anticlimax. After re-watering from a clear stream on the remote west coast of Sardinia, they had thankfully rounded Malta and Sicily at night, through the Strait of Otranto and on into the Adriatic. The stranding had not had any observable ill-effects.

They now flew the red swallow-tail of Denmark. It was unlikely that any French at sea would interfere with a touchy Scandinavian of a country they were in the process of wooing into their fold.

In the event, they saw no French. But they did, to Kydd's considerable interest, sight all manner of exotic Mediterranean craft. Built low but with a sharply rising bow in line with sea conditions in the inland sea, there was the three-masted bark, with its canted masts, lateen sails and beak instead of a bowsprit; the pink, which could use the triangular lateen sail interchangeably with the familiar square sail on its exotically raked masts, and the more homely tartan coaster.

Once, sighted far off and in with the coast, they saw a galley, fully as long as Bacchante, sails struck and pulling directly into the wind. The dip and rise of the oars in the sunlight was steady and regular, a never-ending rhythm that went on into the distance.

They were getting close to Venice at the head of the gulf, and that evening Kydd caught Renzi gazing ahead with an intense expression. 'Y'r Venice is accounted a splendid place, I've heard,' Kydd ventured.

Renzi appeared not to have heard, but then said distantly, 'It is, my friend.'

'A shame we can't step ashore. I'd enjoy t' see the sights.'

Renzi responded immediately: 'In Venice you'd see spectacle and beauty enough for a lifetime.' He turned on Kydd with passionate intensity. 'There you'll find the most glorious and serene expressions of the human spirit - and in the same place, soul's temptation incarnate, licentiousness as a science, a pit of profligacy! E sempra scostumata, if you'll pardon the expression.'

Kydd tried to resist the smile pulling at his mouth; at last, this was the Renzi he remembered, not the cheerless introspective he had seemed to become of late.

Renzi noticed and, mistaking its origin, frowned in disapproval. 'This is also, I might point out, the Venice of the Doge and his cruel prisons, where torture and death are acts of state and the Council of Ten rules by fear.

'But it is also the Venice of carnival,' he continued, in a softer voice. 'The masks will be abroad at this very time, I think you'll find, and in the evening—'

'You've been t' Venice before.'

Renzi looked away. 'Yes.' There was a pause before he went on: 'In the last years of the peace. You will know it is the custom for the sons of the quality to perform a Grand Tour. My companion and I knew no limits in the quest for education, you may believe.'

Kydd waited for Renzi to continue, and saw that it was causing him some difficulty. 'I was a different being then, one whose appreciation of life as the aggregate of pain and heart's desire was a litde wanting in the article of penetration to the particulars.'

Wondering what lay behind the careful cloud of words, Kydd decided not to pursue it. He had not seen Renzi so animated for a long time, but his features were a curious mixture of longing and sadness. Whatever blue devils were haunting him, the proximity of the fabled Venice had awakened life in him once more.

This far north the winds of spring were chill and strong; the frigate closed the Italian coast that night, and launched her cutter. It was too dark to make out much of the lonely figure of the Venetian agent helped down into the boat, but Kydd felt for him, going out alone into the unknown night.

Kydd knew the general area from the charts — a long thin spit of land enclosing a vast lagoon inside it, with the island of Venice in the middle. The agent had insisted they come no closer than the southern corner of the lagoon, the fishing-port of Chioggia, which now lay somewhere out in the darkness.

The cutter's sails went up and were sheeted home smartly, the boat quickly disappearing into the murk. After some hours it returned on time, magically reappearing under their lee having sighted the special red-white-red lanthorns set as a signal, and without the agent. Bacchante lost no time in making for the safety of the open sea, to spend the daylight hours in standing off and on.

It was disappointing — the whole mystery of Venice just out of sight, and one they would not see — for in the absence of any English opposition the French were rampaging down Italy in an unstoppable wave and could be anywhere. It was not a place to linger more than was necessary.

They returned that night; the agent would have news or, better, the important person himself, presuming all was well ashore. They could soon be in a position to crowd on all sail, turn about and fly back to Gibraltar.

Kydd didn't know whether to be pleased at an early return to Emily or dismayed at the prospects of reverting to his fractious, low-spirited ship. Emily's image seemed oddly unreal in his mind's eye, and he was uneasily aware that the hot sap that had risen before was gone.

He sought out his friend, who as usual was to be found on the foredeck with his clay pipe, taking advantage of the frigate's easy motion and looking pensively out to seawards.

'You think I'm pixie-led, quean-struck on her?' Kydd blurted, after a while.

Renzi turned to him, amused. 'Not as one might say.' Did his friend think that he was the first to be infatuated with an older woman? His own past was not one he could hold as an exemplar. In this very place he and his fellow young gentlemen on the Grand Tour had been shamelessly dissolute, uncaring and unfeeling as any young and careless sprig of nobility. But Kydd's honesty and sincerity in his voyage of self-discovery touched something in Renzi. 'Cupid casts his spells unevenly, capriciously, we cannot command his favours. If she has not been blessed in full measure with the same warmth of feeling as yourself, then ...' 'She has!'

'Oh? You said before that she hadn't declared her feelings for you, had not thrown herself at your feet.' Kydd remained silent, frowning. 'When you volunteered for this mission, there was no urgent message, no beseeching to keep from danger.' He paused significandy. 'In fine, your ardour exceeds hers?

Kydd reddened but said stubbornly, 'She'll be waitin' for me, see if she don't.'

'It might be the more rational course to allow her time to reflect. Cool your fervency, steady your pace — haul away, keep an offing, so to speak.'

'Aye, I c'n see this, but y' see, my course is set. Nicholas, before we sailed I sent her a letter, a warm letter in which - in which I made m' feelings known.'

'Good God!'

'I wanted t' set her right about things. Make sure she knows — makes no mistake about m' passion.'

'May I know, er, what you said in this letter?'

It took some embarrassing prodding but the full story was not long in coming. In Kydd's own strong round hand it had opened with flowery darlings, then plunged into hot protestations of undying love, the usual heights and depths, and — was such innocence believable? - a final urging to find it in her heart to break with an unhappy, sterile marriage and flee with him to Paradise.