Conquest

Chapter 9

This had been an edgy voyage. Kydd had been tasked to search out any lurking French squadrons so L’Aurore had ranged along the track of the Indiamen as being the most likely hunting ground, meeting each dawn with the utmost vigilance, as the starry night faded to first light, extending out until the wave-tossed horizon could be meticulously searched.

Nothing had been seen of the enemy, but there had been some moments of heart-pumping tension: as one night lifted, it had shown a fleet of ships bearing down on them. These, however, had proved to be an outward-bound John Company convoy, who were glad to hear of the capture of Cape Town but had no news of the French.

For Kydd it was always something akin to magic, the diligent application of tables and the wielding of sextant and chronometer, then land conjured from the immensity of ocean. He stood on the quarterdeck, gazing at the jagged blue-grey that was St Helena; unspeakably remote, a speck in the watery vastness of the South Atlantic but a valued rendezvous point for the rich India convoys.

Kendall knew St Helena well and, as they drew near, directed L’Aurore to pass to the west. Close to, the island was a spectacular sight: massive crags pounded by waves driven ceaselessly a thousand miles or more by the constant open-ocean trade-winds that ended their run in a thundering assault on the south-east of the island.

The interior was riven by rocky valleys; strangely, on this island it was the summits of the mountains that were clothed in verdure, the lower slopes bare and precipitous, some shrouded in cloud and mist.

‘We’ll enter t’ leeward, o’ course, sir – Jamestown on the north is where we lands,’ Kendall said confidently. ‘An’ that there’s Lot an’ His Wife,’ he added, pointing to two contorted columns of dark basalt rearing high above the broken scarp.

Rounding the sharp western extremity they passed into relative peace to leeward of the island, L’Aurore’s barrelling roll before the wind finally easing after so many days at sea. Jamestown was marked by several ships at anchor offshore and L’Aurore did likewise, her sailors agog at the new-found land. There was no need for salutes or ceremony because this entire island, complete with its governor, was a fiefdom of the East India Company.

‘Open the hold, Mr Oakley – we’ll take aboard fresh greenstuffs and water while we’ve the chance. And let the passengers know our boat will be going ashore in one hour,’ Kydd ordered. They were carrying three gentlemen with business on the island.

He went below to prepare. There was no real necessity for him to visit: his orders were to return by way of a voyage east to Africa, then down the coast back to Cape Town, keeping a weather eye open for the tell-tale signs of a French landing. But St Helena was a strange and haunting island, set at such unimaginable remoteness – who knew if he’d be this way again? Besides, Renzi would never forgive him if he did not bring back an account.

They landed at the foot of a long, narrow valley, the town not much more than a single street. A gateway through the sea wall led them in and Kydd stood for a space, admiring the bluffs that soared five hundred feet on both sides. ‘You’re for Plantation House?’ Moore, one of the passengers, asked pleasantly.

‘The governor?’

‘Yes, Robert Patton. I’ll advise a calesa, Captain. The house is at some miles’ distance.’

At the Mule Yard they secured their conveyance. ‘The castle on the left is near crumbling with ants,’ Moore chuckled, as they ground up an incline, ‘and there is our snug Grand Parade and our steeple-less St James’s Church.’

‘Er, how old is it at all?’ Kydd asked, out of courtesy.

‘As it was building when Captain Cook chanced by. Your first visit?’

Plantation House was in the pleasantly cooler uplands, fronted by a lawn set about with myrtles and mimosa thirty feet high, an exotic mingling of bamboo and eucalyptus, laurel and cabbage tree.

Kydd walked past a giant tortoise contentedly munching grass and was politely conducted to Governor Patton, who greeted him with a warm handshake and invited him to sit in one of a pair of fine antique chairs.

‘I bring news,’ Kydd opened. ‘Cape Town is ours, and—’

‘This I know, Captain. Is it possible I have news for you?’

‘Oh?’

‘There’s been a hard-run battle off San Domingo that’s ended the career of your Admiral Leissègues. Quite destroyed by Admiral Duckworth in as fine an action as any I’ve heard.’

This was welcome indeed. One fewer battle squadron to worry about at the very least.

‘And Admiral Willaumez has been sighted to the suth’ard . . .’

Kydd started. What the devil was such a threat doing in the south – a strike at the Cape? He stood immediately. ‘I – I must get this news to Commodore Popham.’ What could be achieved with a pair of old 64s and lesser craft would soon be put to the test.

Patton gave a reassuring smile. ‘A company schooner is already on its way, sir.’

Kydd left as soon as he decently could and made his way back aboard. L’Aurore was part of the Cape squadron and his thoughts were very much on the little outpost at the tip of the great continent in its time of lonely defiance.

And then, of course, there was Thérèse. At the ball he’d been much taken with her cool poise and striking attractiveness, which had made it irksome to sail the next day. When he returned, if she had not retreated back to her wine estate, he would most certainly pay her a call . . .

He waited impatiently until Oakley had reported stores and water aboard, then, although it was well into the first dog-watch, he ordered the ship secured for sea and they sailed into the evening to return to Cape Town.

Close-hauled on the starboard tack in the fine south-easterly trades, L’Aurore made a good crossing, raising land soon after dawn. Notorious to every sailor, the African coast at these latitudes was treacherous, desolate and unutterably remote, a burning wilderness, what the old Portuguese called a costa dos esqueletos – the coast of skeletons.

There was vanishingly little reason for the French to be here – but, then, what better place to conceal a secret refuge, a location where a fleet of ships could be assembled out of sight before making their strike south? Kydd dutifully went about and headed south, closing with the stark shore as near as he dared, keeping with the inshore south-westerly.

Through the telescope he peered out at an endless march of tawny sand dunes, shimmering in the heat behind the white line of breaking surf. Occasionally a twist of rock, a low hillock or dry wash-way caught the eye, but the unrelieved boredom of the prospect soon reduced its novelty and the seamen got on with their work with no more glances shoreward.

Shortly after the men settled to their noon meal there was a low cry from the lookout at floating wreckage across their path. It was not unknown to come across derelicts – sad, waterlogged remnants of ships abandoned in storms – and Curzon told the conn to leave it safely to leeward, but as they drew nearer sharp eyes detected movement.

The watch were set to back the fore-topsails to lose way, and as the frigate slowed, it appeared they had stumbled upon a stove-in ship’s boat with a ragged sail stretched over what looked like two bodies. As they approached, a hand threw aside a corner of the canvas and a face burned scarlet by the sun stared up, unbelieving. With an inhuman screech, the figure tried to rise but flopped sideways. Then came husky, tearing cries, piteous in their pleading.

Aroused by the noise, Kydd was soon on deck. ‘Heave to, if y’ please. Away the gig.’ At sea, his orders were to keep the small boat always at the ready in the stern davits, the watch-on-deck to man it.

With a squeal of sheaves, the gig descended and quickly pulled towards the pitiful sight, one of the figures now in a paroxysm of waving and crying. The bowman went over the side into the perilously swaying wreckage, tender hands easing the transfer, and the boat returned with its cargo of suffering humanity.

‘Sorry, sir, an’ he won’t leave the dead ’un behind,’ the coxswain apologised, while a bloated corpse was awkwardly slithered over the bulwarks. The survivor fell on the deck, alternately blubbering and giving vent to hoarse howls.

The surgeon arrived. ‘Extreme desiccation,’ he said, after no more than a cursory look. ‘I’d be surprised if he sees another dawn.’ He stood back and folded his arms.

‘Well, what’s to do, Doctor? You’ll not let him suffer?’

‘I suppose a measure of opium, water, of course, but sparing . . .’

Kydd was about to have the man taken below but paused; obviously in the last extremity of thirst, he continued with his urgent cries. And his eyes, though pits of suffering, were still rational, constantly flicking from Kydd to the others. ‘He’s trying to tell us something . . . His shipmates – he’s been sent to find help!’

But the harsh gobbles were impossible to make out. Then the babbling stopped. The man gathered his strength with desperate intensity and mouthed a single word: ‘Danske!’

‘He’s saying as he’s a Dane, sir,’ Kendall said positively.

To Kydd’s knowledge, there were none of his kind aboard – the English were at war with Denmark. ‘Get him below and comfortable,’ he said, ‘then pass the word for any who think they can understand the poor wretch.’

Later, Kydd was sent for. Olafsen, a half-Swedish sailmaker’s mate, was standing by the hammock in which the man lay, exhausted, eyes still restless, haunted.

‘Says he’s a foremast hand off the Grethe, a trader from Christianborg, sir,’ Olafsen said.

‘Where’s that?’

There was a short exchange. ‘A Danish fort up the Guinea Coast.’

Then the man went into a muscle spasm, his eyes bulging with the effort of trying to get something out – but eventually Kydd had the story.

His ship had taken the ground and been driven ashore over the bank. Most of the crew and passengers had saved themselves, only to face a fearful arid desolation. In a desperate attempt to get help the one surviving ship’s boat, with three seamen, was launched through the surf, commanded by the mate.

During the night the mate and one seaman had been swept over-side, their water lost and the boat swamped. The man’s remaining companion had died in heat convulsions the next day.

‘Ask him where the wreck is,’ Kydd told Olafsen. If they moved quickly, the rest had a chance.

‘He can’t say. He doesn’t know navigation. They knew to head south for Cape Town, so he thinks maybe north of here a few leagues.’

Kydd shook his head. This simple seaman could not know of the cold, surging Benguela current thrusting up. Once swamped and helpless, the boat would have been carried inexorably north. The likelihood was that it wasn’t too far ahead on their original course – to the south.

‘How many aboard?’

It turned out to be forty-seven, including passengers, but of these the captain and nine seamen had been lost in the wrecking.

‘Tell him we’re starting to search for ’em now.’

With no shortage of lookouts, L’Aurore sailed south and almost immediately sighted a wreck. Stark against the glare of pale sand, it was thrust up near a sand-spit. Lieutenant Bowden was sent to make contact, but returned quickly.

‘Not ship-rigged and looks to be old, sir.’

In the early afternoon another wreck was sighted. This one was at an angle to heavy breakers and still showed mast stumps – it had to be recent or would have been reduced to a grey-ribbed carcass. Careful searching with a telescope, however, showed no sign of life.

‘Give ’em a gun.’ A six-pounder forward banged out. There was no response.

‘Another.’ Nothing.

‘See if our survivor can be carried up on deck to identify it,’ Kydd ordered, eyeing the way in.

There was no mistaking the Dane’s pitiful response and Bowden was sent in once more, this time in the whaler. On his own initiative, Kydd had acquired for L’Aurore a whaling boat: double-ended and sea-kindly, it could be landed through heavy surf, unlike a flat-transomed boat.

He watched its progress. Sped ashore through the final lines of breakers, it grounded and was rapidly hauled clear. The men quickly went to the wreck, disappearing out of view, but after some time they reappeared, and went over the dunes, searching.

After a perilous launch into the surf, with the boat in a demented rearing and bucking, a soaked Bowden reported, ‘It’s the Grethe well enough, sir. And not a soul alive, I’m sorry to say.’

‘None?’

‘There were eight or so bodies in the ’tween decks aft, but I couldn’t make good search as she was breaking up.’ He shuddered. ‘Some African beast had got to them, sir, I – I didn’t look closely.’

‘Your men found nothing?’

‘Not a sign.’

It didn’t make sense. If they’d abandoned the wreck, surely there’d be a camp somewhere close. And lookouts to watch for a rescue vessel. Or had they already been picked up? No – they would have buried their shipmates first. If he now sailed away, he could be dooming thirty-three people to a terrible end.

‘I’m going to see for myself.’ In all conscience, Kydd couldn’t rob them of their only chance of rescue without one more look.

‘It’s fearfully hot, sir,’ Bowden said, ‘and if this swell rises, getting off again in the surf could be hard.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind. Poulden – pick a good crew.’

Kydd stripped off his coat and, with a quick apology, borrowed a seaman’s flat sennit hat before boarding the whaler, taking the steering oar himself. It was a dizzying ride in, and the final rush to the sand was as exhilarating as it was hazardous.

‘Haul in.’

While the boat was dragged clear Kydd looked about him. High sand-hills, a very few small ragged bushes and strangely coloured dunes that stretched away into a limitless distance. A sense of utter desolation beat at him as he trudged towards the dark-timbered bulk of the wreck.

From shoreward it was not difficult to get aboard by the ropes that trailed in the water over the stern. What Bowden had not mentioned was the squeal and barking of tortured timber and the crazy working of the planking as the decks sagged on to each other. Or the stench of putrefaction mingled with bilge and sea smells.

Bent double, Kydd worked his way forward and saw the first body, its parts scattered. In the gloom he caught the flash of eyes – some sort of hyena circling. There were other bodies – now just butcher’s carcasses – that he dimly perceived rolled together in the lower part of the canted deck.

There was nothing to be gained by staying and Kydd made for fresh air, relieved to be away from the cloying fetor of death. He had once been wrecked in the Azores and knew how rapidly a doomed ship turned from having been a neat and trim home for sailors into a crazed death-trap.

The Grethe was not long for this world – in a short while it would be a gaunt, grey-timbered skeleton. But where were her people? There were simply nowhere near enough bodies. It could only be that they had left the wreck and got ashore.

Back on the vast beach he gathered his thoughts. Had they headed inland, hoping to reach some sort of civilisation? The constant wind with its sibilance of rubbing sand-grains had obliterated all tracks – even Bowden’s were now rounded and filled.

Kydd toiled up the face of the highest dune. At the top he looked out on the most parched and bleak desert landscape he had ever seen: endless vari-coloured sand-mountains, some with dark ridges protruding, rising from a flat desert floor and stretching away into a shimmering distance, where several rounded copper mountains lay, all in the torpid stillness of a terrible desert silence – vast, brooding, impenetrable. And not the faintest human trace.

Away from the sea, there was no cooling wind and the heated sand beat mercilessly up at him.

Had there been a fierce attack by a native tribe? Surely nothing could live here in this landscape. The survivors had vanished – and it must remain a mystery for ever.

He turned to go, but stopped. What if they had not accepted their fate and in desperation had struck out to find their own deliverance? It would have been a dreadful decision: to leave the relative comfort and shelter of the wreck for the unknown. Perhaps the bodies were of those who had argued for staying until rescued, while the others had taken their fate in their own hands and started out.

Only a madman would enter the hellish aridity inland when by the sea there was some degree of coolness and hard-packed sand for travelling. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that this was what had happened.

They would have gone to the south. The impossible dream of Cape Town would be always before them, but Kydd knew that this was an unreachable eight hundred miles away – a comfortable week’s sail for L’Aurore but an impossible march for survivors in this sun-blasted hell.

He decided to go after them. In these conditions he could not hazard the frigate inshore close enough to pick out individual figures. It would have to be done on foot along the beach, but this should not be too difficult for fit men. He would necessarily be delaying his return to the Cape, but if there was no sign in a single day’s march, he would abandon the search.

‘Stand by to launch the whaler, Poulden.’

His coxswain hesitated. ‘We’re t’ leave ’em, sir?’

‘No – we’re following them. You’re to take the whaler to L’Aurore and bring back these things – make a note, if y’ please.’

Kydd had already decided that he should be with the searching party in case decisions had to be taken, but it needed only a few others – a couple of marines used to marching, the doctor and possibly someone with sharp eyes. And each to carry three military canteens of water at the least. Everyone to wear but a covering shirt, seamen’s trousers and sennit hat. Perhaps a scrap of canvas to lie under, some ship’s biscuits, anything easily portable to eat.

He also scribbled an order to Gilbey to take the ship, his instructions to keep with their progress until signalled to send in a boat. And there would be three signal flags, he’d decide the meanings while the boat was away, and in the event of strange sail, he’d leave this to the discretion of the acting captain.

The whaler launched in a mighty rearing and exhilarating explosion of rainbow spray and fought its way over each successive line of breakers until it had won the open sea and could erect its mast and sail.

Kydd was left on the beach, feeling curiously lonely away from the company of men, just the sound of wind-driven sand and the relentless bass pounding and seethe of surf. He stripped himself down to shirt and trousers and stared over to the wreck, pondering on its gradual ruin at the hands of the ceaseless breakers.

He took out his notebook and jotted down some elementary signals: ‘boat to come in’, ‘survivors sighted’, ‘send more water’, and others. Satisfied, he snapped it shut and waited.

The boat returned in a wild rush through the surf and a wide-eyed Calloway, Sergeant Dodd and his corporal, Cullis, scrambled out. The boat’s crew threw out their gear after them and helped the surgeon over the gunwale, cursing as he came.

‘I just hope you know what you’re doing, Mr Kydd!’ spluttered Peyton, thoroughly soaked, nursing a bag of medicines.

‘I do. And you’ll not be wanting that coat, Doctor – do take it, Poulden.’

The whaler was being bullied sideways by the onrushing waves and Kydd didn’t want to detain it, but Poulden asked, in some concern, ‘An’ shall we stay wi’ ye, sir? Could be cannibals an’ all behind them dunes.’

‘We’ll be fine, thank you. Goodbye.’

The little group formed up, the two marines trying not to be awed by the daunting spectacle of the limitless wilderness. Canteens were slung, small bags swung over shoulders and they set out.

The sun was ferocious, the heat almost like a weight bearing down as they paced along, grateful for the hard sand underfoot. Sergeant Dodd carried a light pole, at its tip signal flag numeral one fluttering out to signify to watching telescopes, ‘Am proceeding normally’.

Conversation was an effort, and they swung on in silence until, after an hour, Kydd called a halt.

Peyton sat in the soft sand, his head in his hands, but Kydd was not inclined to be sympathetic. ‘I’m looking for signs – clues that tells me they’ve been this way. Anything at all – cast-off pieces of baggage, empty water canteens, things thrown aside.’ Glancing scornfully at Peyton, he added, ‘But if there’s no evidence by sundown, we return aboard.’

They each took a careful swallow of water and moved on. Ahead there was nothing but a featureless glaring haze, a glittering white mist hanging over the crashing breakers, as far as the eye could see. By midday it was clear they needed to shelter from the blazing heat.

An outcrop of rock ahead had a shadow underneath and they thankfully plodded up to it but the sun-heated slabs were like a stove-top, burning to the touch. They rounded the ridge and found a deeper ledge, which offered a haven of cool in its shade.

Seeing Peyton’s red face, Kydd suggested, ‘Cullis – take the doctor’s kerchief and soak it in the sea, will you?’ The marine collected one from all of them and returned with blessed coldness for each man. Kydd fretted at the delay but in these inhuman conditions there was little choice and they stayed in their crevice.

At about three he ventured out. They had to get going and with a light onshore breeze it was just bearable. ‘On your feet, gentlemen – remember what we’re about.’

The shape and colour of the dunes was changing, a dramatic deep yellow-brown shading into iron red but always the pallid under-colour of bleached desert sand. Twisting valleys leading into the interior appeared in the dunes, and once they crossed what surely was the broad emerging of a dried-up river. Here and there were splashes of faded green, vegetation hanging on to some kind of existence in this infernal region.

A little further on a small salt marsh opened up. Calloway froze, then slowly pointed across to the base of a rearing sand-hill.

‘Wha’ . . . ?’

Slowly and methodically, as if in a dream, five elephants plodded past in the sand, ears flapping and occasional snorts proving their reality. Winding around the sand-hill, they disappeared from sight as if they’d never been.

The little party went on, one foot in front of the other in mechanical rhythm. At one place they stumbled through a field of sea-rounded pebbles, a startling profusion of varicoloured granite, lava and agate, and every so often a gaunt, sand-scoured ghost tree leaning out of wind-sculpted pastel dunes, some of which were near a thousand feet to their sharp summits.

A point of rock protruded out in the beach, obscuring the view ahead. When they rounded it there was another surprise: the bizarre sight at the tide-line of the carcass of a beached Antarctic whale. As they passed it what they saw brought them to a standstill – an animal had been recently feeding on it, the claw and toothmarks savage and massive.

‘Lions!’ It could be nothing else.

Fearfully they looked around. It was past imagining – a lion feeding on a whale! This desolate coast was proving to be anything but that.

‘Stay together!’ Kydd could think of nothing else to say – going after shipwreck survivors armed with heavy muskets would have been nonsensical. They resumed their monotonous tramping, tired muscles burning.

More mighty whale-bones were passed; was this why the first Portuguese had called it the coast of skeletons? Then the beach ahead began to curve, a long sweep that allowed them to see ahead for miles into an empty distance. And still there was no sign whatsoever.

‘We carry on to an hour before sunset!’ Kydd snapped, at a comment from the doctor. Then they would make the signal and quit this God-forsaken place, reluctantly leaving the survivors to their fate.

They trudged on, each wrapped in a private world of heat, weariness and fiery muscles until, the sun descending to the sea, it was time. Looking out at the horizon Kydd tried to make out L’Aurore but she was far offshore, out of sight at their height of eye.

Uneasily, he saw there was now a difficulty: mesmerised by their plodding progress he had not noticed that the seas had imperceptibly increased, their regular booming roar and hiss being no more than a constant background he had filtered out. Now they were foaming in at a height that would cause the whaler to swamp over the gunwale, or be uncontrollable and end tumbling broadside. Against the odds, the boat might make it in but would certainly not get off again.

They were trapped ashore.

Dully, he tried to focus. He cursed his stupidity in overlooking the elementary check. They’d simply have to spend the night ashore and try again in the morning.

‘Take down that flag and hoist numeral two and three,’ he told Calloway. The message would tell L’Aurore that the seas were too high for boat operations, and Gilbey would realise that this meant they would necessarily be staying ashore overnight.

‘Let’s find somewhere to get our heads down,’ he said apologetically, after explaining their predicament.

With loud groans from Peyton they went up the beach to a stony bluff and, in the fading daylight, found they had a choice between lying on hard rock still warm from the sun or the open beach, which was noticeably cooler now. To a man they lay on the soft sand; with painful limbs, and trying not to think of roaming wild beasts, they sought the solace of sleep.

Did lions sleep at night? Where were the elephants now? What other beasts were out there beyond the dunes? Aching and weary, tossing and turning in the gritty sand, Kydd finally drifted off.

After a few hours he woke to pitch darkness, damp and cold. A heavy dew had descended and they were all sodden to the skin; in the night breeze they began to shiver uncontrollably. Peyton cursed endlessly in a monotone, hugging his knees, while the marines stoically endured.

There was no question of sleep now, but as a full moon rose none could find words to appreciate the haunting beauty of the stark and mysterious scene that unfolded.

The moon rose higher, the light almost enough to read a book by. One of the marines got to his feet and paced up and down, flapping his arms for warmth. He was joined by the other and then Calloway stood and asked, teeth chattering, ‘Sir, the survivors – it sits bad with me, we’re leaving ’em now. While we’re stranded, just to get warm can’t we . . . go on a-ways?’

‘Sit down, you fool boy!’ Peyton snarled, but Kydd was touched.

‘I’m putting it to the vote, Doctor. All those agreeable to pushing on for a bit longer . . . ?’

The two marines instantly nodded, and with Kydd and the midshipman also in favour, there was nothing Peyton could do. ‘So we go on for a while. Of course, Doctor, you’re free to remain here, if you so wish.’

Grumbling under his breath, Peyton got up, brushing the sand away while their gear was collected and distributed.

The trudging pain resumed, but this time in a surreal landscape of silvered contrasts. Then, within minutes, the whole situation changed.

Dodd spotted it first. Above the tide-line and close up to the shifting base of the dunes a little mound stretched lengthways. When they went over they saw a crudely fashioned cross at its head.

And there were footprints, not yet entirely filled by the restless sand, proof that this had occurred recently. The survivors, therefore, were somewhere ahead.

Kydd guessed they were moving by the cool of the night so he and his party must also. Forgetting the pain, they pressed on, and in another hour Calloway’s sharp eyes picked up a cast-away leather bottle and, further on, some pieces of clothing.

Into the night they continued, hoping against hope for a sight of faraway moonlit figures and the end of the quest. At one point there was an ominous sound to their left – a reverberation so low-pitched it was more sensed than heard. They tried to make it out: a long, muffled, dull roaring somewhere out in the sand-hills. Numbly they waited for the nameless beast to emerge – then the noise slowed and stopped: some inscrutable force of nature at work in the towering dunes.

It was another hour before they came upon the corpses, dark shapes on the edge of the dunes. Closer, the moonlight pitilessly revealed an elderly man, burned to disfiguring by the sun, laid out in dignified repose, his hands crossed over his breast, eyes closed. And a woman by his side, one arm over his body, her sightless eyes staring up, horror and suffering still on her face.

The doctor examined them, then stood up slowly. ‘No more than hours ago,’ he said, his voice falsely brisk. ‘I conceive that the man could not go on and . . . and his wife stayed by him.’

Sergeant Dodd dropped to his knees and began scooping out the sand. Cullis joined him and a little later the two bodies were laid to rest for ever.

In the cold hours before dawn they found faint footprints, but this time meandering, scuffed, meaningless. Then the moon faded and darkness returned for a time. The swell had quietened during the night, now only a lazy boom and hiss.

Daybreak finally came, and with it, the cruellest stroke. It brought a dank mist that developed into a full-scale rolling sea-fog – there was now no way of signalling to L’Aurore.

A dense fog to rival any on the Thames here on this scorching desert coast! They were trapped ashore.

Their hard tack had long since gone and their precious water was unlikely to last for much longer – should they go on?

Visibility dropped to yards and it became difficult to make out even themselves, but nobody seemed to want to slacken the pace. Hunger biting, limbs afire, they slogged on – but then Kydd held up his hand for silence. He’d heard a commotion ahead: faint cries, a general hubbub.

Pushing through the swirling fog-bank, they hurried forward, tripping painfully on dark, jagged rock shards protruding from the sands at what must be a point of land – and beyond they found themselves in the middle of a colony of seals, which, in their quarrelling, completely ignored them.

They stumbled through the bedlam. It was bitterly disappointing. At the end of his stamina, Kydd knew it would be asking too much of his men to carry on blindly in the hope of reaching the survivors, who might be a mile – five miles – ahead and still moving. They had to give up – it was not humanly possible to—

And then the fog lifted.