Julian Stockwin - Command

"Ah, now, I can't rightly remember. North, was it?"

"Thank ye," Kydd said. The man could tell them little more. "Now, Nicholas, if you've hoisted aboard enough o' the sealing profession . . ."

Renzi hesitated. "Dear fellow, if it were at all possible to remain an hour or two more, it would gratify my curiosity infinitely to observe the procedures to be followed in . . . acquiring the pelts."

"Y' wants t' see?" The man's gap-toothed smile widened as he looked pointedly at the bottle. At Renzi's understanding nod, he chortled. "Come wi' me."

The trail led to a ridged summit overlooking a wide slab of rock, slimed with droppings and inclined down to the sea. The area was nearly covered with seals, pale fur seals and their darker-skinned pups lying in the weak sun, suckling, flopping up from the water's edge or squabbling with each other. Seabirds wheeled above, their cries piercing the din of squealing and barking.

"We waits f'r low tide—more room ter move." They watched as other sealers hefting clubs and lances appeared and crouched out of sight of the seals.

A sudden hoarse animal cry was quickly taken up by others. The gang of sealers had got to their feet and were racing in from both sides along the edge of the water, cutting off the seals from their escape. When the two lines of men met they turned in and set to the slaughter.

The ungainly animals had no chance: wildly swinging clubs smashed skulls in a gleeful orgy of killing. Terrified beasts squealed and tried to flounder away, but were overtaken and mercilessly dispatched. In a very short time the foreshore was aswim with blood from a hundred corpses.

The last of the seals herded far up from the sanctuary of the sea suffered a similar fate. In a pathetic gesture of defiance one male seal turned on his killers to defend the females but it only served to make his attacker miss his stroke and the creature screamed in the pain of splintered bones. In disgust the sealer moved on from a damaged pelt, leaving the animal to thrash about in its final agony.

It had taken just minutes. Now the frantic pace slowed as the butchery began. Each piteous body was deprived of its skin, leaving an unrecognisable bloody mass; blubber was peeled away and carried off to the tryworks while an occasional long-drawn-out shriek came from an animal incompletely killed, whose skin was torn from it while still alive.

A charnel house of blood, bones and viscera on the rock slab waited to be washed off by the next tide but of the life that was there before there was nothing left.

The silence on the summit above was broken by the sealer. "We takes th' skins an' salts 'em down. Wan' t' see 'em? We got more'n two thousan' skins an' three hunnerd barrels of oil ready," he said proudly. "China market takes all we c'n get."

Before nightfall Suffolk was stretching south past the bleak fastness of Furneaux Island with the intention of reaching Banks Strait by dawn; on board there was little conversation and Renzi slipped below, his face pale and stricken.

In the morning a backing north-easterly met the strong east-going tidal stream and an unpleasant toppling sea kept the decks wet, the motion uncomfortable. However, the same conditions meant that the many half-tide rocks and islets were betrayed by sullen breaking seas in flurries of white round a jagged dark menace.

Black Reef was laid well to starboard by noon and, easing away southward in accordance with orders, the little vessel began the run to the opposite end of Van Diemen's Land. Now clear of the rock-strewn Bass Strait and into open water it was plain sailing with no fear of peril. All square sail was set with the favourable northerly and the schooner seethed along; Kydd sent the men to their meals and Boyd went below for a rest.

It was pleasurable sailing; the northerly still had the warmth of the continent and the seas were moderate, the ship well found and willing. Kydd missed the precision and bluff certainties of the Navy but that was now in the fast-receding past. In a short while he would be on his way back to England and his promised merchant ship—and who knew? His naval service in command might be attractive to the prestigious East India Company in the grand routes to India and beyond, and with his experience in the commercial sphere mounting, he might well be offered . . .

His thoughts turned to Renzi. He had changed, now so unlike his previous elegant self. Gone was the noble poise and sureness of touch, the quiet logic informing a character of calm self-possession. In its place was a brittle defensiveness, a pathetic pretence at what should have been a natural instinct—the station of well-born gentleman. Whatever had happened since he put down roots in New South Wales had affected him severely, and now this business with the sealers. Just what did it all mean?

Automatically Kydd glanced up at the rigging; the sails were all drawing well and trimmed to satisfaction, but his eyes were caught by the sight ahead of clouds in a peculiar regular formation. He had seen precursors to foul weather around the world— the Mediterranean tramontana, electrical storms off Africa and, indeed, howling gales in the North Atlantic; this seemed of no account, though, and he dismissed it from his mind.

He breathed deep of the clean sea air and found himself drawn to his family so far away, especially his sister Cecilia. Was there anything he could do for her? It would have been a sad blow to lose the position that had elevated her beyond expectation. Ironically, he mused, she had suffered from the same declaration of peace that had brought to an end his own treasured career.

Boyd came on deck, paused, sniffing the wind and reorienting to current conditions. He looked forward and stiffened in alarm, then hurried aft.

"Sir, we must get th' sail off her." The cloud had consolidated into a remarkable elongated roll that lay curiously suspended above the sea for miles across their track, not at all suggestive of danger.

"How so, Mr Boyd?" said Kydd, looking at the oddity. There had been nothing like this before the onset of any bad weather in his experience, but Boyd seemed disturbed by the sight.

"This is y'r Southerly Buster, Mr Kydd. 'Twill be a rare moil soon, sir. Wind c'n swing a whole sixteen points in a minute or so and catch ye flat aback."

Kydd was learning more about this strange southern world with its different stars in the heavens, and seasons turned on their head, but it would not do to defy the elements. "Very well, Mr Boyd, do what ye will t' get the barky in shape f'r it."

All square sail vanished, followed by the foresail, leaving Suffolk languidly rolling to a jib and close-reefed main. The line of cloud advanced and distant hanging curtains of white on the grey told Kydd that this was a species of line squall—but it was closing at a disturbing rate.

"We'll rig hand lines," he ordered. These were secured along the deck for safety; Suffolk was not so big that she could withstand a sudden roll when the squall hit.

The quality of light altered as the cloud threw a dull pall over the seascape—and then it was upon them. The warm, reliable northerly transformed in an instant to a chill, streaming bluster and, as promised, it shifted around in bursts of spite until, in gusts of cold, driving rain, it stayed steady in the south.

Things had changed radically. No longer bowling along before a soldier's wind Suffolk could no longer think of voyaging south; the savagery of the southerly blasts had rotated the vessel round and she scudded before the wind, headed for who knew where.

Over to larboard was the empty wilderness of Van Diemen's Land, and to starboard, the open sea leading to New Zealand and the South Seas. Kydd had neither the charts nor provisions and water for such a protracted deviation.