Julian Stockwin - Artemis

Kydd got to his feet. 'You savvy - no one hurtee you, this ship,' he said loudly. The man looked at him, then seized the bale and dragged it over.

'Thank Chroist!' the lascar said. 'Oi'm bleedin' well at t'end of me senses.'

Snatching up a rope's end, Kydd slashed him over the shoulders. 'Wha—' the lascar cried piteously.

'Shut up 'n' move!' Kydd hissed. Driving the man down the fore-companion to the gundeck, he pushed him past the canvas screening that concealed the sick quarters in the bow — he knew the three sick had been landed and the space was clear.

He spun the man round savagely. 'I've heard o' men doin' things t' run, but this is the first I heard someone wantin' so bad to get 'emselves aboard a King's ship!'

Crumpling to his knees, the man's voice caught in a sob. 'S' help me, frien', oi don' know how t' thank ye!' His brimming eyes looked up at Kydd. Taking a gulp, he continued, 'Fort William - 'tis a hell-hole loike yer worst dreams. Oi joined t' foller the colours an' a shillin' a day, not sweat in this black stink-pit.'

His face worked in a sudden paroxysm. 'This now's the cool o' the seasons — while yer wait fer the monsoon t' break, whoi, it's hotter 'n a griddle in hell — an' full uniform on parade or Sar'n't Askins'll 'ave yer!' His head dropped, and he stared hopelessly at the deck.

Kydd thought quickly. 'We sails soon, need t' get ye out o' sight.' His eyes strayed over the man's dark skin. How would it be possible to conceal such a colour? 'No idea where we're bound, but y' can get ashore easy enough — we got no pressed men aboard.'

The man caught Kydd's look. 'Ah, me dark skin. Walnut juice.'

Kydd smiled. 'Wait here.'

'Look, Oi know this looks bad, but ye've got t' unnerstan' what it's loike—'

Clapping him on the arm, Kydd stepped outside. He cannoned into a lascar waiting there, who had obviously followed them down. He gestured at the fore ladder. 'Up! You gettee up there!'

"Eard what yer said ter Ralf,' began the lascar.

Kydd groaned. 'Not you as well!' He should have known by the pale eyes, incongruous in the dark brown face.

'Well, yeah, but only the pair o' us, mate - Ralf Bunce and me, Scrufty Weems,' the man said.

'Get in there with y' chuckle-headed frien',' Kydd told him, and shoved him forward.

* * *

To his credit, Renzi only hesitated a moment when Kydd told him. Aiding a deserter was a Botany Bay offence in England; here it might be worse. There was no way the soldiers could mix in with the two hundred odd of the ship's company, for every face was familiar after the long voyage. They would have to be found a hidey-hole until they made port. 'The orlop,' Renzi suggested.

'No - mate o' the hold checks every forenoon, bound t' find anything askew.' Kydd remembered his hiding place from King Neptune's bears. 'The forepeak?'

'In this heat? Have mercy, Tom!'

However, even for this, the soldiers proved pathetically grateful and dropped down the tiny hatch into the malodorous darkness without a word.

Storing complete, the ship's company looked forward to liberty ashore, but instead they were set to scraping and scrubbing, painting and prettying in a senseless round of work that sorely tried their patience. Tales of shoreside in India grew in the telling, but Parry gave not an inch. The ship was to gleam and that was that.

Kydd and Renzi knew it was impossible to keep their secret from their shipmates. The others found it amusing that deserters from the Army thought they could find sanctuary in a man-o'-war, but in the generous way of sailors, they made their guests welcome.

Immured in the forepeak during the day, they could creep up to the fo'c'sle under cover of dark and join the sailors in a grog or two. They talked about the boredom and heat, the dust and disease of a cantonment on the plains of India. They told also of their struggle to the coast and their final bribing of the serang — and his confusion when told to beat a white man.

The sailors heard of the other side of life in India, the bazaars and what could be bought there, the heartless cruelty of the suttee funeral pyre and the deadly thuggees. Their desire for shore leave diminished.

Bunce heard Kydd recall his experience on their first morning at anchor. Sent down as part of the duty watch to clear the hawse, he had looked over the side of the beakhead forward and seen an untidy bundle wrapped around the anchor cable. He had slid down to clear it away, but closer to, it took form — a grossly misshapen corpse bleached a chalky white, barely recognisable as a young woman. It belched pungent death smells when he tried to pry it away, the sickly gases catching Kydd in the back of the throat, and there were ragged holes in the face where the kites had been tearing at it. When he prodded with a boat hook parts of it detached, floating away in the muddy river. Every day there were always one or two to clear like it.

Bunce had just nodded. 'When y' dies in India, proper drill is t' burn th' body on a pile o' wood. But there's some uz are so dirt poor, they has t' wait until dark an' then they heaves their loved 'un in th' river.'

The seamen, no stranger themselves to hardships, shuddered and vowed to see their guests safely ashore in some haven far away rather than return them to such horrors.

Two days later when the Captain returned he immediately disappeared below with Fairfax. Within the hour boatswain's mates were piping at the hatchways.

'Clear lower deck — all the hands! Haaaands t' lay aft!'

The rush to hear the news caused pandemonium, but

Powlett's appearance on deck brought an immediate expectant hush. He turned meaningfully to the sergeant in charge of marines. 'Sergeant!' 'Sah!’

'A sentry at the boats, another on the fo'c'sle! No one to leave or board the ship without my express permission.' 'Sah!'

Unbelieving looks and an exasperated grumbling spread over the assembly.

'Silence!' Powlett roared. The muttering died down. He stood near the deserted wheel with a forbidding expression. 'I am now able to tell you of our mission and why we have been at such pains with our ship.'

He paused and let his words sink into the silence. 'Artemis has been honoured to be chosen as the vessel to convey a special envoy from His Majesty King George to the Emperor of China in Peking.'

Chapter 7

That evening Lord Elmhurst and his retinue arrived, plunging the man-o'-war into a state of confusion. Eighteen souls was more than it seemed possible to cram into the spaces aft. All officers lost their cabins, but even so, with Lady Elmhurst, her daughter and maids to find privacy for, it was a near insurmountable task.

Fairfax hurried about late into the night, pursued by the shrill, demanding voice of Lady Elmhurst. The seamen retired to the forward end of the ship and let the upheaval spend itself — there would be no interference in their way of life, although in deference to the quality aboard, they would have to don shirts and for the time being forswear curses.

The frigate would sail in the morning at first light, ready or not, for there was no time to lose. There would be no touching at land en route, their first port of call would be Canton in South China, the only touching point allowed for vessels trading with China. It hardly seemed credible — a voyage to China! There was no more distant or exotic land; there were few aboard who had ever been as far east as this.

At dawn the anchor was won from the sticky mud. What followed was a particularly difficult and perilous piece of seamanship. The problem was the rapid current. The Hooghly was wide enough, but with so many other vessels at anchor it was necessary to get control on the ship as fast as possible after she was freed of the ground. But she had a leeward tide - the northerly monsoon wind was in the same direction that the current was drifting the ship. This meant that although they were moving smartly relative to the river bottom, they were not actually moving through the water. The rudder, therefore, could not bite and the ship had no steerage way — she would drift away out of control in the crowded fairway.