Invasion (16 page)

He turned to go back inside but Kydd stopped him. “No hands? I'll work ye a bargain, Mr. Cribben. We crew f'r you an' ye're going t' tell us where t' find our Luke. Agreed?”

“Ye'll want shares in the hovel.”

“No shares, should y' keep this t' yourself.”

Cribben hesitated for a moment. “Wait,” he ordered, and snatched an oilskin from behind the door, then plunged off down the beach frontage. Kydd followed.

“Ye're breaking ship y'self, then,” Stirk said, with relish, as he caught up.

The lively seas were rolling in, with white-capped breakers here and there, the wind flat and hard from the east. If they left now they would make it out to
Teazer
, a wet and uncomfortable trip, but if they delayed . . .

Kydd chuckled. “Well, we bein' held up ashore, th' ship's boat won't take seas like this, will it now? S' what we do while we waits for th' weather t' ease is no one's business . . .” They laughed together, like youngsters out on a prank.

Cribben disappeared inside a hut further along and came out with a weathered individual. “Dick Redsull,” he threw over his shoulder. “We needs another.” The man was clearly of some years and cackled a greeting at them, but Kydd recognised the wiry build of a seaman.

Cribben hurried along to another boat-hut, but without success. “Long Jabber Neame?” Redsull suggested reedily.

“If 'n he ain't betwaddled wi' ale,” muttered Cribben, but entered a small cottage and emerged with a large, bewildered man carrying sea-boots and trying to pull on foul-weather gear.

“Jack Neame, lads,” he said apologetically. His red-rimmed eyes probably owed more to grog than salt-spray but he steered a straight enough course.

“Get some foulies f'r ye,” Cribben said, and briefly ducked into his house, finding Kydd and Stirk sea-boots, jerseys and oilskins. They were well used, with the smell of tar, linseed oil and humanity.

Leaving the grateful pair to haul them on, Cribben went away to get further word on the ship. He returned with a satisfied grin. “A three-master t' seaward o' the Knoll,” he said, to understanding nods from the hovellers. “We'll
go 'im
I think. Oh—what does we call ye, then?”

“Ah, Tom's m' tally an' this here is Toby.”

Cribben nodded, then explained that the ship was probably a foreigner without a pilot, too much in dread of a notorious reputation to attempt the narrow channels through the treacherous sandbanks to the shelter of the Downs on the other side. And, with the easterly wind strengthening, so would be their anxieties over the anchor and cable that were holding them.

Daisy May
was lying stem seaward with deck-covers whipping and hammering in the gusts, but already a large beach party was milling about in expectation of employment. Cribben waved cheerily at several men as he tramped over to the field past the King's Naval Yard.

Dozens of anchors of all shapes, weights and vintages recovered from the sands were laid out there; Cribben took his time and picked a stout piece nearly twice his height. “This 'un,” he declared. It needed twenty men and a sledge to bring the awkward monster to the water's edge, the seas breaking heavily about it in a seething hiss.

The crowd held back respectfully while Cribben heaved himself up into the lugger and carefully checked the gear. “Jack?” he called, and Neame joined him. The long fore and mizzen yards with sails already bent on were handed into the boat, clapped on to their masts and quickly rigged.

A steady stream of men laid square timbers down the shingle. “Come on, let's be havin ye!” Cribben urged. Kydd heaved himself up over the high bulwarks and stumbled over a dismaying tangle of ropes and spars lying about in the capacious hull.

Fortunately a dipping-lug rig was the simplest of all, and by the time impatient shouts were going up from those outside, he had taken it in: two masts, a yard for each, tacks and sheets. Under the wet snarl of rigging, all around the bottom-boards, there were regular coils of substantial rope, with the left-hand lay of anchor cable.

“You, Tom, go take th' fore wi' Jack. Toby, aft wi' me.” Kydd did as he was told and glanced to seaward. It was a scene he had seen many times before—but from the deck of a well-found man-o'-war, not an open boat hardly bigger than a frigate's launch.

Under the hammering easterly the white-caps were increasing and now marched in on the backs of grey-green waves, setting the many ships in the Downs jibbing energetically to their anchors. But what drew Kydd's attention was an indistinct white line developing on the grey horizon: wild seas piling up on the hovellers' destination, the Goodwin Sands.

The tide was low, making it nearly a hundred feet down steep shingle to pull the craft to its native element. The beach party crowded round, every inch of the boat manned, and a double rope led out forward with willing hands tailing on.

Kydd looked down on scores of backs bent ready.

“Alaaaawww!”
At the hoarse cry every man buckled to.

They were launching into the teeth of a dead muzzler, and Kydd knew they had to win their way against wind and the surging combers.

“Alaaaawww!”
the cry went up again. It was answered immediately by a regular chant, and the heaving began. “Alaw boat,
haul
, alaw boat,
haul
,
haul, haul, haaauuul!
” At first the straining saw no result, but then the boat shuddered and inched forward over the timbers.

“Alaaaawww!”
The ton deadweight of the
Daisy May
picked up speed and slithered down the ways until she met the seas in thumps of spray—and they were afloat, the wet black iron of the big anchor left forlorn on the beach.

“Jack, damn ye!” But Neame had already leaned over the bluff bow and taken the dripping rope handed up to him, straightening and passing it rapidly to the waiting Redsull. Then Kydd understood: this was a haul-off warp, and he bent to help get it over the stout windlass so that they could heave their boat bodily out to sea past the line of breakers.

Daisy May
reared and shied at the considerable seas now rampaging in, but with three men at the windlass they hauled out steadily in the teeth of the wind to the warping buoy and quickly tied off. Then the hard work began: lines had been taken to their beached anchor and secured around its peak, where the shank met the flukes, in order to drag it out without it digging in.

It was back-breaking work in chill bursts of spray and on an unsteady footing: six-foot handspikes were thudded into square sockets in the horizontal windlass drum, then came a heroic backwards straining pull, the rhythm kept up by having the holes offset from each other so each man could re-socket at different times.

Unaccustomed to the toil, Kydd's muscles burned, but there could be no slacking—he had seen Stirk's devilish grin. All four laboured until, when the anchor was near, Cribben called a halt. Then it was more work at tackles to align
Daisy May
before the last task—lifting the anchor bodily from under them until it hung suspended close beneath. Cribben ordered the jigger tackles secured and their tethering to the warp buoy singled up, then raised an arm.

Kydd had to concede it masterly seamanship, performed in the wildest conditions.

“Get on wi' ye,” Neame said good-naturedly. The long yard needed to be hooked to the foremast and hoisted. Kydd aligned the spar to the direction of the wind, seized the halliard and looked aft with concern.

A dead foul wind blowing hard could drive them helpless back on to the shore to be cast up. There would be no second chance.

Redsull pushed his way past to the bow painter while Neame, at the sheet, looked steadily at Kydd, who in turn kept his gaze on Cribben. His arm fell: Kydd hauled furiously hand over hand and the heavy yard began to lift. The wind hustled at it until, at chest height, it caught the exposed sail, which bellied to a hard tautness,
Daisy May
's bow shying away in response. At the same time Neame threw off the buoy slip rope, the mizzen briskly rose and took, and suddenly they were making way against the towering boisterousness of the onrushing seas.

Kydd hunkered down behind the bow with Stirk, trying to avoid the sheets of spume curling over as they met each wave with a crunch and smash of white spray. They were winning their way slowly to seaward. Light-headed, he felt a guilty thrill at the escapade but savoured the exhilaration of such seamanship. He flashed a grin at Stirk, who winked back.

They thrashed out through the anchored ships and towards the line of smoking white that now lay across their entire horizon, vivid against the dark of the storm-clouds. With her burden
Daisy May
made slow progress against the powerful seas but she was sure: this was her true element, and her high-waisted, broad lines felt sturdy and secure.

On impulse, Kydd abandoned his shelter and passed hand to hand down the boat to where Cribben sat at the tiller. “Snug as a duck in a ditch,” Kydd offered.

“Aye, she is that.”

“We're going north-about, then?”

Cribben looked at him in astonishment. “No, mate, we're goin' through in course,” he said, as if speaking to a child.

“Through! Why, we're—”

“F'r them as knows th' Goodwins it's no great shakes,” Cribben said. “Ye'd have t' know that they's shiftin' all the time—ye have t' keep a trace o' every little spit and bay, where the swatch-ways run in a tide-fall, th' gullies an' scour-pits all a-changing, where lies th' deepest fox-falls, how the tide runs, an', b' heaven, we knows it!”

During their slow beat out he went on to tell of the sands themselves. In calmer weather they dried to miles of hard-packed grains on which the local lads would play cricket in bravado—but woe betide the laggard, for the returning tide could race in faster than a man could run. Then the water would transform the vast sand-bar into hillocks that ran like hot wax, quickening the sand into treacherous glue to drag a victim under. And if a ship was unfortunate enough to be cast up she had but one tide to break free: when the sand became quick she would “swaddle down” to be held in the maw of the Goodwins for ever—like as not, with her crew as well.

“More'n two thousan' good ships've left their bones t' rot here,” Cribben said soberly. “It's bin called b' your Bill Shakespeare, th' ‘Ship Swallower' an' he's right an' all.”

They drew closer, and the effectiveness of the huge mass of the sands in arresting the onrush of the gale's heavy seas was becoming apparent: to the weather side, there was a broad band of hanging spray where the waves were in violent assault, while to its lee
Daisy May
was making her laborious way in perfect safety.

The Goodwins were now in full view with the ebbing tide—a long, low menace, not the golden yellow of a beach but the dark, sable sand of the seabed, stretching away unbroken into the far distance in both directions.

A gull landed on the gunwale, hooking in its claws and swaying under the battering of the wind. It was not the usual grey-white species but a big, flat-headed type with cruel yellow eyes that watched them with cold calculation. Every member of the boat flailed at it, sending it quickly up and away. “Is a priggin' corpse eater,” cursed Redsull.

Then, ahead, Kydd saw their way: at a sharp diagonal through the main banks and therefore unseen before, it stretched away through to the violence on the other side. They went about for the approach. “Kellett Gut,” grunted Cribben. “Nothing to worry of—we's more'n sixty feet under us.”

Hundreds of yards wide only and churning with a tide-race, it seemed a fearful prospect for the plucky little boat but she won through, emerging into a quite different seascape—murderous combers crashing in to spend their fury in a bass thunder of breaking seas, their tops smoking with white spume, the stinging spray driven mercilessly downwind by the blast of the gale.

No more than half a mile to the north, a foreign-looking barque was near hidden in the mists of spume. Cribben gave a soft smile and shouted against the wind, “He's in a fair way o' takin' the ground where he's at—loses his holding there, an' it's all deep water t' the Knoll.”

Kydd understood: the barque was hanging on to an unseen narrow spit, and if her anchor tore free of the sand under the wind's blast, the deep water between it and the steep-sided Knoll would give no holding whatsoever—they were in dire peril. “Go forrard then, Tom, where we needs ye,” Cribben told him. He pulled on the tiller and, crabwise,
Daisy May
came up with the deep-laden ship, passing into the small lee around her stern. Smart work with fore and mizzen kept her there, while Cribben stood and, hanging onto a stay, hailed the anxious faces peering down from her taffrail.

“Yez standin' into danger, that there sand-spit.
Compree?
” he bellowed.

“Ach, ve know,” came back a faint hail. “But vot can we do?”

It was a Prussian barque, a Danziger with a valuable freighting, but when her master realised what was afoot he quickly turned cagey. However, Cribben had done such haggling many times before and did not have to mention how inadvisable it would be if, in the event of an insurance claim, it became known that the offer of a perfectly sound set of ground tackle had been turned down.