Quarterdeck: A Kydd Sea Adventure by Julian Stockwin

Author:Julian Stockwin [Stockwin, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Action & Adventure, Historical, Historical Naval Fiction
ISBN: 9781590133088
Google: lP8O6_07wI0C
Publisher: McBooks Press, Incorporated
Published: 2006-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

‘Damn! That cursed tailor will hound me to my grave,’ groaned Pringle. The mail-boat had arrived back from the dockyard and the wardroom sat about the table opening letters and savouring news from home.

Adams, clutching six, retired to his cabin but Bampton slipped his into a pocket and sipped his brandy, balefully watching the animation of the others.

Kydd was trying to make sense of his borrowed Essays on Politesse Among Nations, despairing of the turgid phraseology; his restraint in matters social, and sudden access of interest in literature, was generally held to be owing to some obscure improving impulse, and he was mostly left to it.

‘You don’t care for letters, Mr Kydd,’ Pybus said, with acerbity. He had received none himself, but was still scratching away lazily with his quill.

Kydd looked up and saw that there was indeed one letter left on the table. ‘For me?’ He picked it up. ‘From m’ sister, Doctor,’ he said. She wrote closely, and as usual had turned the page and written again at right-angles through the first to be frugal in the postage.

‘Well?’ demanded Pybus.

But Kydd was not listening.

Dear Thomas – or should I say Nicholas as well? I do hope you are keeping well, my dears, and wrapping up warm. The willows are budding early along the Wey here in Guildford and . . .

The words rushed on, and Kydd smiled to picture Cecilia at her task. Her evident concern for them both warmed him but her admiration for him as an officer in the King’s Navy sparked melancholy.

A hurried paragraph concluded the letter:

. . . and Father says that it would be of service to him should you enquire after his brother Matthew. You remember they came to some sort of a misunderstanding an age ago, and his brother sailed to Philadelphia? Papa says that was in 1763. Since then we have heard nothing of him, except that in the War for Independence he was a loyalist and went north with the others to Halifax in about 1782. Thomas, it would so please Papa to know that he is alive and well – do see if you can find him!

Of course, his uncle: an adventurer in this wilderness land, carving a future for himself – or perhaps he was a successful trader, even a shipowner in the profitable Atlantic trade routes.

‘News?’ Pybus said drily.

‘Oh, aye. Seems it could be m’ uncle is here, Doctor, in Halifax. Who would credit it?’ A Kydd ashore, possibly one who had achieved eminence in society and was highly thought of in the community. For the first time in a long while he felt a rush of excitement. ‘I do believe I’m t’ visit him today.’

‘Kydd – Mr Matthew Kydd.’ It was strange uttering the words. There were not so many Kydds in the world that it felt anything other than his own name.

The man he had stopped considered for a moment. ‘Can’t say as I’ve heard of the gentleman, sir,’ he said finally. ‘You may wish to try Linnard’s the tailors.

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