Free Command by Julian Stockwin Page B

mind the simple calculations and could find no fault. Even his little dog-leg on a whim had been taken into account and—
    “ Laaaand hoooo! Land two—three points t’ weather!” the lookout at the main royal masthead hailed excitedly, pointing over the larboard bow.
    “Luff up an’ touch her,” Kydd ordered. Although this land could not yet be seen from the deck, on the line of bearing reported, the cape would not be reached on this tack. Yet it was the cape. How was it possible?
    Going about, Teazer laid her bowsprit toward the undistinguished promontory, which Kydd easily recognised. Already he had his suspicions. “Lay me south o’ the Portopaio roads,” he told Bonnici.
    Obediently Teazer made her way to another headland a mile or two from Cape Passero, rounding to a mile distant from the scrubby, nondescript cliffs. It was a well-known point of navigation—Kydd had passed this way before as part of Nelson’s fleet—and the exact bearing of the tip of the one on the other was known. However, the bearing by Teazer ’s compass had strayed a 62
    Julian Stockwin
    considerable way easterly, much more than could be accounted for by local variation. The instrument could no longer be trusted, neither it nor the secondary one.
    There were obvious culprits and men at the conn were searched for iron implements. Nothing. Kydd questioned whether he should have taken more care over the compasses before going to sea. Some held that not only the earth varied in its faithfulness in revealing magnetic north but that the ship’s ironwork had a part to play in deceiving the mariner, but how this could be dealt with they did not say.
    There were only two explanations for the delay in their landfall: that Sicily had changed its position, or that their measure of distance run was incorrect. And as the latter was more likely and was taken by one means alone, the log, it was this that had to be at fault.
    “Mr Purchet, I’ll have the log-line faked out an’ measure the knots, if y’ please.” Speed was arrived at by casting astern a weighted triangular piece of wood, the log-ship, that was carried astern as the ship sailed on. The line flew off from a reel held overhead and at the end of a thirty-second period it was
    “nipped” to see how far it had gone out, indicated by the number of knots in the line that had been run off. As the ratio of thirty seconds was to an hour (really twenty-eight, to allow for reaction times) so the length of line was for one knot—at forty-seven feet and three inches.
    The carpenter’s folding rule was wielded industriously. And, without exception, the knots fell close enough to their appointed place.
    Kydd stood back, trying to think it through.
    “Sir—the glass?” suggested Bowden.
    It was unlikely: the twenty-eight-second sand-glass was a common enough object and the grains were specially parched to

    Command
    63
    prevent clogging. “Go below an’ check it against the chronometer,” Kydd ordered doubtfully.
    While this was done he set Teazer about and they headed safely off shore in darkening seas; during the night he and Bonnici would take careful astronomical observations. Compasses were inaccurate at the best of times but it was possible that when they had adjusted theirs in Malta harbour they had been within range of the influence of iron on the seabed, perhaps an old cannon.
    Bowden returned. “No question about it, sir. This is a thirty-three-second glass,” he said, trying to hide the smugness in his voice.
    Kydd looked accusingly at Bonnici, who reddened. “Er, a Venetian hour-glass it mus’ be, sir,” the master mumbled. “We take fr’m the Arsenale when we store th’ ship.”
    But it was nothing that could not be put right, thought Kydd, with relief, thankful that the heavens had been restored to their rightful place and his ship sped on unharmed into the warm night.
    Free from the routine of night watch-keeping, Kydd could take no advantage of the luxury of an