Mutiny Read Online Free PDF Page B

he stepped over to the assembled representatives.
'Fine day, ge'men,' he rasped, his flinty eyes merciless. 'Kind in ye to come.'
    The eyes settled on
Kydd, and he approached to speak. 'Don' recollect I've made the acquaintance?'
The tautness of his bearing had a dangerous edge.
    'Thomas
Kydd, master's mate o' Achilles, sir.'
    The eyes appraised him
for a moment, then unexpectedly the man smiled. 'Glad t' see your ship here,
Mr Kydd - uncertain times, what?' Before Kydd could speak, he had stalked off.
    The essence of the business was
much as the marine had said: the town major tore at the prisoner's dignity with
practised savagery, the hard roar clearly meant for the parade as a whole. The
offence was the breaking into of an army storeroom while drunk.
    Stepping aside
contemptuously, he ordered the anonymous brawny soldier with the lash to do
his work. It was a lengthy and pitiful spectacle - the army had different ideas
of punishment and, although delivered with a lash that was lighter-looking than
a navy cat-o'-nine-tails the blows went on and on, thirty, forty and finally
fifty.
    At the conclusion, in a
flurry of salutes, the attendant officers were dismissed. Kydd avoided the
sight of the wretched victim still tied to the whipping post and declined the
invitation to a noon-day snifter. He wanted to get back aboard to sanity.
    'Ah, you there — Jack Tar ahoy, is it?'
A resplendent sergeant-major, tall and with four golden stripes, was heading
rapidly towards him. 'Me boy!' the soldier bawled. He came closer, his smile
wide. 'A long time!'
    Soldiers leaving the
parade-ground went respectfully around them while Kydd stared and tried to
remember the man.
    'Why, it's Sar'nt
Hotham, if m' memory serves!' The desperate times on Guadeloupe came back
vividly.
    'Not any more, it
ain't,' Hotham boomed, the effortless authority of his voice still the same.
'Colour Sar'-Major Hotham will do fer you, m'lad.' His happy satisfaction
turned to curiosity. 'An' what're you now, then?'
    'Master's mate Tom Kydd, it is now.' His
hand went out and was strongly gripped. 'Thought you wuz dead, Tom,' Hotham
said, more quietly.
    'No, got t' the
other fort on the west, got taken off b' Trajan’ he said.
    He hesitated, and
Hotham picked up on it. Td admire ter have yer as me guest in the barracks fer
a drink or so. Then we c'n take a look at th' fortress, if yez got the time.'
     
    Line wall and bastions,
counterguard and casemates, innumerable heavy gun positions and watchful
sentries everywhere. Gibraltar was nothing if not a mighty fortress. The
garrison even had its barracks, Town Range, in the centre of the town, which
was itself behind massive walls and ramparts.
    'We gets a ride on th' ration wagon,
you'll see somethin'll make ye stare.' Hotham flagged down the small cart
pulled by mules. They sat together on the back, legs dangling, and the cart
wound slowly up a steep zigzag track.
    The view rapidly
expanded, an immense panorama of misty coast, dusty plains and sea. Kydd was
fascinated.
    The cart stopped at a
gate, which was neatly set round a large hole in the side of the Rock. Hotham
dropped to the ground briskly and, nodding to the curious sentry, motioned Kydd
inside.
    Coolness, a slight damp
and the peculiar odour of unmoving air on old stone enfolded him as they strode
into the bowels of the Rock of Gibraltar.
    'Watch yer bonce,'
Hotham warned, his own tall frame stooped, but Kydd was used to the low
deckhead of a man-o'-war. The tunnel drove on, then widened, and suddenly to
the left there was a gallery with bay after bay, and in each a
twenty-four-pounder gun facing out of an aperture in the rock. The gaUery was
bright with daylight, and a cheerful breeze played inwards.
    'See 'ere, cully,' said
Hotham, edging towards the opening on one side of the first gun. Kydd stared
out at a dizzying height from the sheer face of the north aspect of the Rock.
Far below was a flat plain that issued from the base, curving around until some
miles