Julian Stockwin - Seaflower

But on the fourth day a milestone was reached: the meridian of 65 west. It was time to leave their eternal easterly progression and shape their course to pass through the Windward Islands chain and direct to Barbados. The empty sea looked exactly the same, but the filigreed hands of the watch mysteriously said that not only had they passed the Dutch islands safely astern but that the several island passages that were the entrance to the Caribbean Sea were now only a couple of hundred miles ahead, say no more than a day of sailing.

'Huzzah!' cried Cecilia, and Doud stood tall on a thwart and sang of England and sweethearts to the uncaring sea and sky. They had adequate water; the food was now a monotonous hard tack soaked in water tinged with wine, cheese of an heroic hardness and a precious hoard of treats — dried meat strips cut into infinitely small pieces to suck for minutes a time, dainty cubes of seed-cake and, for really special occasions, one preserved fig between two, with a whole one for the helmsman of the watch.

The boat lapsed into a silence; rapt expressions betrayed minds leaping ahead to another, more congenial plane of existence. The clean fragrance of fresh linen in a real bed. Surcease for body and spirit. What would be the first thing to do after stepping ashore?

And then the wind fell. From a breeze to a zephyr, from that to a playful soft wafting around the compass, and then nothing. The longboat ceased any kind of motion. The sails hung lifeless with only an occasional dying twitch, and the heat closed in, blasting up from the limitless watery plain, a hard, blinding force that could be felt behind closed eyes. The awning seemed to trap a suffocating humidity beneath it, but the alternative was to suffer both the unremitting glare reflected from the pond-like sea, and the ferocious heat from a near-vertical sun.

Time slowed to an insupportable tedium. Rooted to their places on hard wood for an infinity of time, the slap and trickle of water the only sound, the choking heat their only reality, it was a trial of sanity. Doud lay in the V of the bow, staring fixedly ahead. Stanhope sat under the awning against the mast, with Renzi opposite. Cecilia lay in the curve of the lower part of the boat, and Kydd still sat at the motionless tiller, his mind replaying a quite different nightmare — the shrieking darkness of Cape Horn.

The baler was passed from hand to hand, a scoop of seawater poured over the head gave momentary relief, but the sticky salt remaining only added to the misery. Water, precious water, it was no longer a given thing. Life — or death - was in the two hot wooden casks in the bottom of the boat, and when they were broached, eyes followed every move of the person drinking their tiny ration of tepid, rank fluid.

'I fear we have a contrary current,' Kydd croaked, after the painful duty of the noon sight. 'Only a half-knot or one, but...' Nobody spoke, the idea of being carried back into the Caribbean a thought too cruel to face.

As the afternoon wore on, water in its every guise crept into the brain, tricked itself into every thought, tantalised and tempted in a way that could only call for wonder at the creativity of a tortured mind. Still the implacable sun glared down on them, sending thoughts fluttering at the prison bars of reality, desperate for any escape from the torment. Time ground on, then astonishingly the sun was on the wane — a languorous sunset began, full of pink-tinted golds and ultramarine sea. And still no wind.

Renzi crawled over to a thwart and drew out of his package a small book. 'My friends,' he began, but his voice was hoarse and unnatural, and he had to clear his throat. 'We are at some hazard, I'll grant, but... these words may put you in mind of another place, another time, what we may yet...

'"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds . .."'

'Oh, Nicholas, Nicholas!' Cecilia wept. She moved to Renzi, and hugged his arm while the measured, burnished phrases went on until Renzi could no longer see the text.

Night fell. They lolled back and gazed at the vast starry heavens as they drifted in perfect calm beneath. But bodies were now a mass of suffering from the aches of unyielding hardness everywhere and the sight for them held no beauty.

The night progressed, the moon travelled half the sky and still no wind. Then in the early hours an inconsequential puff from nowhere had the sails slatting busily. Kydd heaved himself up from the bottom of the boat where he had been lying and looked across the ebony black sea, glittering with moonlight. A roughening of texture in the glassy sea away in the distance had his heart hammering. It approached, flaws and ripples in a darting flurry that came nearer and nearer. Kydd held the tiller in a death grip, fearful with anticipation, and suddenly they were enveloped in a brisk breeze that sent the longboat heeling, then in a joyful chuckling of water they were under way again.

Croaking cheers broke out - but the breeze dropped, their speed fell away .. . and then the wind picked up even stronger than before in a glorious thrusting urge. The winds held into the morning; with a steady breeze from the north-east, the heat was under control. Eagerly, the midday ceremony with octant and watch was anticipated with little patience, for Kydd took the utmost pains to ensure his workings were unassailable.

Finally he looked up from the frayed chart. 'I’m grieved t' say it, but I was wrong,' he said, but the staring eyes that looked back at him made him regret his black humour. 'That is, th' current, it wasn't as bad as I thought. In fact...' he paused dramatically and pointed '... there — there you will find St Lucia distant but twenty leagues, and there, that is St Vincent. We pass between them and to Barbados beyond.'

It was incredibly elating to be making plans for landfall within the next day. 'Can we stop at an island for water on the way?' Stanhope said. His voice was croaking with dehydration.

'No,' said Kydd decisively. 'We don't know if the French are still in control — after what we've suffered, I don' want us t' end in a Frog prison.'

Cecilia lifted a barricoe and shook it. 'We don't have much left,' she said. Her voice was husky and low, her skin dry and cracked.

'We don't stop,' Kydd said, concentrating ahead. His own voice had a harsh cast.

For a long time there was nothing said, then Lord Stanhope murmured, 'I could insist . . .'

Kydd gripped the tiller. 'No. Y'r not th' Captain. If y’ needs water then you c'n have my share.'

"That won't be necessary,' Lord Stanhope croaked, 'but thank you, Mr Kydd, that was nobly said.'

'We don't stop.'

'No.'

The passage between the two islands was more than twenty-five miles; at their height-of-eye they would probably not even see them. Kydd concentrated on the boat compass, the card swimming lazily under the lubber's line. He had to be certain of his course for if he steered true Barbados lay just eighty-odd miles beyond in the Atlantic, less than a day away.

'When we gets t' Barbados, th' thing I'd like best—'

Before Doud's thought could be finished there was a sickening crunch and a crazy rearing. The longboat came to a sudden halt, sending all hands sprawling and the mast splintering in two. Then the boat slid backwards crazily and into deep water again. The sea was as innocent as it was possible to be, but inches under water, and therefore invisible, a projection of reef not on the chart had been lying in wait. The boat lay in disorder, and Kydd saw clear water in the bottom. 'Clear away th' raffle, Nicholas - we're takin' in water,' he said thickly.