Julian Stockwin - Artemis

'Sir - I have t' tell you . . .'

'They are indignant that their plunder is sailing away from them,' Evelyn said, not even raising his eyes from his work. 'No matter, I am nearly done. You may remove all but this.'

Kydd called across a party of men to carry the instruments to the boats; Fairfax had his men embarked and pulled back to Artemis in good order. The savages became more bold, covering half the distance to the stockade now to perform their displays. Muskets banged away despite Powlett's orders to conserve fire for a rush, and more and more bodies lay still in the grass.

The boats returned. 'Sir, the Captain . . .' Kydd tried to say.

'Yes, yes — my last reading, he will not grudge me that?'

Evelyn replied testily. The sound of the war-cries filled with bloody-minded hatred tore at Kydd's courage.

'Sir, my authority. . .'he said earnestly, but was interrupted by a disturbance. A group of warriors had run along the length of the stockade outside and, shielded by its timbers, had gathered sufficient numbers for an assault. They massed around one or two of the posts and heaved and pulled until they had loosened and fallen away. They had breached the stockade.

'Fall back to the boats!' roared Powlett, as the savages poured through. There would be no second chance, and the defenders made haste towards the shore.

Kydd swung to the ground, and looked back to Evelyn, to see him take a spear in his side. The astronomer slumped back in his canvas chair. 'Damn,' he said faintly, plucking at the vicious barbed weapon. Kydd grabbed a musket and fired at the thrower. The musket missed fire with a fizz of priming. The warrior grinned and swung a bone club. Kydd swung the musket up with two hands; the club splintered against it. The musket bent uselessly, but with it Kydd crushed the warrior's skull.

In their lust to stop the ship from escaping, the savages streamed past each side of the platform, leaving the two men untouched. Kydd bent to Evelyn who was now white with shock. 'Th' - the obs-erva-tions,' he whispered in shallow gasps, clutching the chair in great pain. Kydd looked down and saw the polished box, open, papers neatly inside. He grabbed it and slammed the lid, and looked up to meet Evelyn's wild stare. 'Leave!' Kydd hesitated in an agony of indecision. 'Leave! Go! That is worth more than any man's life. Go, damn you!' Kydd nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and fled, the box under his arm.

The last men were throwing themselves into the boats, and Kydd tossed the box into the pinnace. He looked back, but Evelyn had disappeared under a swarm of enraged savages, like ants over prey. Their barbarous weapons rose and fell, hacking and chopping. At last the bow swivel gun mounted in the cutter had a clear field of fire. It blasted out, and a storm of canister swept the scene, changing the full-throated war-cries to screams.

One by one the boats from Artemis retired in good order, and headed back to their rightful place.

Chapter 13

Kydd's nose wrinkled. The hog's lard was giving out, and on the foreshroud deadeyes he was having to work with a nauseating mixture of fat and rancid butter. It was essential activity, for any slackness in the rigging would result in the destruction of a spar as it worked to and fro. Each separate shroud ended in a deadeye, with lanniards running down to the channel outboard to give tension adjustment, but Kydd and his party found that such was the stretched state of the rope that now, in addition, they had to take up the racking on the shrouds themselves. Finally, with gear well taut, Kydd was satisfied and allowed his three men to secure from work.

Left alone, he gave a final tug at the lines, and became aware that he was no longer on his own. He looked up and saw Renzi standing with a set face, looking out over the tumble of blue-grey seas.

Kydd hesitated. His sociable advances before had been repelled with a cold intensity and he was not sure how he would be received now. He fiddled with the loose end of a downhaul and waited. His decisive action on the island

had not been forgiven by Renzi, who had retreated into himself, but ironically, in the week or so since, this had been generously misinterpreted by his shipmates who were convinced that he was recovering from a mind-scarring experience. They gave him every possible sympathy.

Kydd watched Renzi covertly, the face in profile appearing even more solitary and inaccessible. A larger sea surged from astern, faster than they could sail. It overtook them with a swelling and falling accompanied by a marked lurch that sent them both staggering and reaching for a steadying rope. This simple human impulse seemed to bring a fluidity to the situation: Kydd caught a flicker in Renzi's eye. He wandered over beside him.

'Hearty sailin' weather,' Kydd said. He tested the tautness of the nearest rope. Renzi did not move away. He still faced outwards, his expression set — but his lips moved slightly as though speaking to himself. Encouraged, Kydd looked at him directly. 'Mullion says as how we'll be stayin' on this same tack f'r all of three thousan' miles.'

'That would be a logical assumption,' Renzi replied coolly, his gaze still on the heaving seascape.

'Our gear had better be sound, I believe,' Kydd added, anxious to keep momentum in the conversation.

Renzi looked sideways. 'If it is not then no one will ever know — but us,' he said, and Kydd could swear a smile hovered.

'A hard end t' our island adventure,' he dared.

There was just a moment's hesitancy, then, 'I have been considering the whole experience.' Kydd waited. 'It would appear that my expectations were over-sanguine in the matter of Man and Nature. The essence of Rousseau's thesis remains unaltered; timeless in its perception, sublime in its penetration - but it is subverted. We are too late.'

Clearing his throat Kydd began, 'But why . . .'

'It is now very clear. If even in so distant an island as this "civilisation" has come, then it must have spread its canker over the entire inhabited globe. Is there anywhere left at all on this terraqueous sphere that a true self may go to attain perfectibility? I think not/ A pensive expression replaced his forbidding look. 'Perhaps Rousseau would have achieved a higher immortality were he to have demonstrated a modus of perfectibility within the mundus vulgaris. In short, my friend, I accept that there is no longer any possibility for me to achieve a state of natural grace, and thus I bow to the ineluctability of my fate.'

The smile surfaced, and Kydd responded, barely able to restrain himself from clapping Renzi on the back. 'Never fear, we have a long haul ahead before we reach our own civilisation, an' that at war,' he said.

Renzi's face cleared. The blue Pacific rollers were now behind them, the grey of the Southern Ocean was the predominant theme, and he gazed intensely at the clouds obscuring the wan sun.

'Fierce and more fierce the gathering tempest grew, South, and by West, the threatening demon blew; Auster's resistless force all air invades, And every rolling wave more ample spreads.'

'Y'r Wordsworth, then?' Kydd guessed. He would have been just as happy at the fine words if it had been the village blacksmith.

'I believe it might have been the peerless Falconer, talking about the mighty ocean in his Shipwreck, but I may be mistaken.'

Kydd smiled broadly - all was right with the world.

'Yair, second time fer me, mates,' said Crow, his face animated at the memory, 'an' that's twice too many fer me.' He pushed his pot forward. 'Worst place in th' whole god-blasted world fer a sailor, an' that's no error.' The faces of his audience grew serious.

'We gets westerlies all th' way, should be quick,' Mullion said.