Julian Stockwin - Mutiny

The prisoner was a blank-faced, scrawny soldier without his shako. The column halted and turned to face the post. From the opposite corner of the parade-ground, a small party appeared, led by a short, florid officer strutting along bolt upright.

'Actin' town major,' murmured the marine.

The peppery army officer looked about testily, ignoring the prisoner. Slapping his gloves against his side irritably, he stepped over to the assembled representatives. 'Fine day, ge'men,' he rasped, his flinty eyes merciless. 'Kind in ye to come.'

The eyes settled on Kydd, and he approached to speak. 'Don' recollect I've made the acquaintance?' The tautness of his bearing had a dangerous edge.

'Thomas Kydd, master's mate o' Achilles, sir.'

The eyes appraised him for a moment, then unexpectedly the man smiled. 'Glad t' see your ship here, Mr Kydd - uncertain times, what?' Before Kydd could speak, he had stalked off.

The essence of the business was much as the marine had said: the town major tore at the prisoner's dignity with practised savagery, the hard roar clearly meant for the parade as a whole. The offence was the breaking into of an army storeroom while drunk.

Stepping aside contemptuously, he ordered the anonymous brawny soldier with the lash to do his work. It was a lengthy and pitiful spectacle - the army had different ideas of punishment and, although delivered with a lash that was lighter-looking than a navy cat-o'-nine-tails the blows went on and on, thirty, forty and finally fifty.

At the conclusion, in a flurry of salutes, the attendant officers were dismissed. Kydd avoided the sight of the wretched victim still tied to the whipping post and declined the invitation to a noon-day snifter. He wanted to get back aboard to sanity.

'Ah, you there — Jack Tar ahoy, is it?' A resplendent sergeant-major, tall and with four golden stripes, was heading rapidly towards him. 'Me boy!' the soldier bawled. He came closer, his smile wide. 'A long time!'

Soldiers leaving the parade-ground went respectfully around them while Kydd stared and tried to remember the man.

'Why, it's Sar'nt Hotham, if m' memory serves!' The desperate times on Guadeloupe came back vividly.

'Not any more, it ain't,' Hotham boomed, the effortless authority of his voice still the same. 'Colour Sar'-Major Hotham will do fer you, m'lad.' His happy satisfaction turned to curiosity. 'An' what're you now, then?'

'Master's mate Tom Kydd, it is now.' His hand went out and was strongly gripped. 'Thought you wuz dead, Tom,' Hotham said, more quietly.

'No, got t' the other fort on the west, got taken off b' Trajan’ he said.

He hesitated, and Hotham picked up on it. Td admire ter have yer as me guest in the barracks fer a drink or so. Then we c'n take a look at th' fortress, if yez got the time.'

Line wall and bastions, counterguard and casemates, innumerable heavy gun positions and watchful sentries everywhere. Gibraltar was nothing if not a mighty fortress. The garrison even had its barracks, Town Range, in the centre of the town, which was itself behind massive walls and ramparts.

'We gets a ride on th' ration wagon, you'll see somethin'll make ye stare.' Hotham flagged down the small cart pulled by mules. They sat together on the back, legs dangling, and the cart wound slowly up a steep zigzag track.

The view rapidly expanded, an immense panorama of misty coast, dusty plains and sea. Kydd was fascinated.

The cart stopped at a gate, which was neatly set round a large hole in the side of the Rock. Hotham dropped to the ground briskly and, nodding to the curious sentry, motioned Kydd inside.

Coolness, a slight damp and the peculiar odour of unmoving air on old stone enfolded him as they strode into the bowels of the Rock of Gibraltar.

'Watch yer bonce,' Hotham warned, his own tall frame stooped, but Kydd was used to the low deckhead of a man-o'-war. The tunnel drove on, then widened, and suddenly to the left there was a gallery with bay after bay, and in each a twenty-four-pounder gun facing out of an aperture in the rock. The gaUery was bright with daylight, and a cheerful breeze played inwards.

'See 'ere, cully,' said Hotham, edging towards the opening on one side of the first gun. Kydd stared out at a dizzying height from the sheer face of the north aspect of the Rock. Far below was a flat plain that issued from the base, curving around until some miles further on it dissolved into mainland.

'Spain, cully!' Hotham declared, waving outwards.

'Where?' These guns could fire far, but not to the hills.

Hotham grinned. 'There!' He pointed directly down to the flat plain. No man's land, and only some half a mile away. So close — an enemy in arms against Britain, continuously ready to fall upon them if there was the slightest chance. Kydd tried to make out movement, figures on the hostile side of the lines, but to his disappointment could not.

'We got a hunnerd 'n' forty like this'n,' Hotham said, patting the twenty-four-pounder, 'an' thirty-twos, coehorns, even our own rock mortars. Nothin' ter fear, really, we ain't.' Kydd wondered what it must be like to look up at the sheer heights of the Rock, knowing the fire-power that could be brought down on any with the temerity to test the impregnability of Gibraltar.

Kydd was no more than half-way returned to his ship when he heard the first gun, a low crump, from somewhere above him. He craned to look, scanning the skyline, but there was only dissipating smoke. Suddenly, below him, there came the heavier thud of an answering gun. Kydd hurried on. Within minutes there were signs of agitation, shopkeepers emerging to look about nervously, water-carriers halting their donkeys in confusion. A young seaman acknowledged Kydd, just as the measured thump of a minute gun started from somewhere in the harbour. Guns opened up in other parts of the Rock and the sudden soaring of a rocket from below was quickly followed by others.

Achilles, It could be nothing less than an urgent general recall. Kydd had to make it back: there was peril abroad and his deepest instincts were with his ship. At the Ragged Staff gate there was a scrimmage for boats; Kydd and others quickly packed into the launch. Bedlam erupted all along the Rock — guns, church bells, shouting and confusion.

'What's th' rout, then?' one sailor demanded.

'Spanish. Sighted t' the east, mebbe a dozen or more sail-o'-the-line, comin' on like good 'uns an' straight for us!'

The Spanish Mediterranean battle fleet was usually skulking far away in Cartagena but they had heard of the English evacuation of the Mediterranean and knew Gibraltar was at the moment defended only by an old 64, a handful of unrated ships and local craft. Were they now going to take revenge for nearly a century of humiliation — and finally liberate the Rock?

Achilles was frantic with activity: she couldn't go to quarters until sail had been bent to the yards as she was still in refit. But a single ship? The enemy fleet would now be in sight from the point, a sinister straggling of tiny sail spreading over half of the eastern horizon.

Kydd's battle quarters was on the main gundeck, but for now he was at the foremast, frantically driving men to send up the long sausages of sails to seamen on the yard. The new hands, landmen all, were pale and frightened at the prospect of battle and needed hard pressing. Kydd grew hoarse with goading. 'Haaands to unmoor ship!'

The boatswain's mates pealed out their calls, but Kydd knew they had two anchors out, which would take time to buoy and slip — it was a race against time.

From his station at the catheads, Kydd kept an eye on the point: the eastern side of Gibraltar was sheer and inaccessible, and any invading force must come round to this side, sweeping aside with concentrated cannon fire the single ship of significance before beginning their landing.