Tall, graceful window lights with mullioned panes and a walking gallery stretching the full width of the Great Cabin towered above as I passed under the stern of this splendid and imposing three-decker. Amongst the golden decorations that climbed in gilded waves up to the quarter-deck fully thirty feet away arched a wood-carved banner proclaiming her to be the Joyeux de La Rochelle.
Tying off our little cutter at the ship’s waist, I glanced apprehensively up the boarding steps over the bulging curve of her huge topsides, wondering what awaited me on deck. I mounted the gangway in trepidation, past three rows of gunports — all of them open, with the giant guns run out for extra room tween-decks in harbour — and on past the great ironworks of the channels and chainplates bearing the enormous rigging loads. I had never ascended to such a leviathan, never even set my foot on the decks of any Navy vessel. Now here I was going aboard a French admiral’s flagship, expecting somehow to treat for my bark’s freedom.
Early that morning, closing the blue-grey streak that resolved slowly into the coastline of Martinique, the frigate had signalled us to bear off. We let the Diamond run along in a gusty breeze under high cliffs until the rocky coast sheered away. There opened before us an expansive bay, the Rade de France, stretching two leagues wide at the mouth. As we entered, with the frigate in close escort astern, the swells eased down, the gusts and flaws steadied and the schooner came upright, creaming along in smooth water.
The sight that greeted my eyes I could hardly credit. Such a host of sail was riding here that even these vast, open roads appeared crowded. Between the clustered vessels ran great numbers of wherries and sail-rigged cutters, dozens of longboats and launches too, plying busily across the waters. On the high land, towering behind and above the ships’ masts, there stood monumental fortress works — bastions, ramps and gun emplacements — commanding the whole of the roads beneath. We must have been under the minutest observation from the hundred or more ships at anchor, and from unknown numbers of look-outs and spy-glasses ashore.
For a country that went by display and ostentation, this was a true exhibition of martial and Naval might. There was an abundance of not just the shipbuilder’s artistry but of the carpenter’s poetry and the gilder’s munificence. These French barks were tall-sided vessels, high at both bow and stern where gold-painted castles rose above the weather-deck. With two and three decks of guns carrying thirty and forty pieces — I counted one with fifty — they were sea-going fortresses, and made an English cruzer look like an ordinary lightly-armed merchantman. Yet these great French sea-castles were over-burdened, hindered by their own weight and unbalanced, top heavy from waterline to weather-deck but with stunted rigs and the stoutest masts imaginable. They’re nothing like the handy, fast sailing warships that come out of Dutch and English yards, I mused, and a world away from our flashing little Diamond.
We brought the schooner to anchor in six fathoms. When the frigate’s launch came over once again, Mister Wrack, following my instructions, insisted we were free sailors under the French flag and refused leave for anyone to board. He handed down a note for the captain and a letter for the admiral of the fleet. The boy gave a shrug, as if to say, you cannot escape anyway, and bade his men stroke back to the frigate.
My letter had its effect and I was peremptorily summoned to the admiral’s vessel. Now, alone — at their insistence, for they had an English speaker aboard, they advised — I gained the rail of the foreign warship, my heart pumping not from the exertion of climbing her impossibly high topsides but from fighting the instinct to fling myself over the side and swim for dear life.
The Joyeux’s weather-deck stretched away fore and aft, stacked with stores and barrels and garland racks and coils of rope. A brace of formidable capstan heads occupied much of the midships space, barely leaving room for passage about the deck and for men to work the belays. As for the deck-pieces, even the Cornelius’s six-pounders were puny toys by comparison, for these well-blacked guns measured ten feet from barrel to touch-hole and rested on four-wheeled carriages with hefty running-out tackles permanently rigged. People were everywhere, men and women going about their business or sheltering under awnings from the day’s heat. The fellows were mostly in the uniform of gunners and musketmen, soldiers rather than sailors. The jack-tars stood out in their unmistakable blue slops and, unlike the landsmen, ran barefoot.
Signals had been sent in advance and a Naval officer from the Joyeux’s complement stood waiting to receive me. He wore a splendid fancy rig which by drawing so much attention to his figure served only to exaggerate his portliness and lack of height, a combination which proportioned him exactly like a water barrel. Beside him stood a younger man, lesser decorated, thin faced and decidedly edgy. Both men considered me, in my borrowed clothing rig-out from Will Wrack’s own store, with something approaching distaste. Nevertheless, I made them a formal bow.
’Captain Matthew Loftus, the schooner Diamond,’ I announced.
The junior officer, holding my letter, acknowledged me in workable English delivered in hideously contorted accents. Then he introduced his pompous companion as fleet Secretaire to the admiral.
’Captain, your bark is well known to the authorities here,’ the young man said. ‘As you are wearing the Royal standard of France, your vessel is to be requisitioned without further delay.’
‘Requisitioned?’ I said, appalled. ‘Why, that’s illegal–’
He cut me off. ‘You are also ordered to hand over any items of value to the Sovereign, such as those mentioned here. The tables for the — ah — Method of the Lunar Distance?’
He waved the letter Will Wrack had carefully enscribed in French while I dictated. I repeated my demand that the Diamond be allowed free passage, without threat or action, in return for the item in question, whose immense military and strategic value the admiral himself had undoubtedly recognised.
‘The Secretaire admonishes the impertinence of your request to an audience with Admiral Chamblaire,’ said the thin-faced young man, ‘and informs you he considers your assertion of the item’s value preposterous and incredible. Where, he demands, is your proof of its nature? Without such, the admiral orders your vessel to be boarded forthwith and you placed under arrest.’
As calmly as possible, I reached inside my weskit and withdrew two folded pages of parchment. ‘Be so kind as to show these to Admiral Chamblaire. That’s your proof.’
They snatched the sheets — with torn edges where they had been removed from the volume’s binding — from my grasp and examined them. There was much muttering and shaking of heads, for the two pages displayed nothing but row after row and column upon column of handwritten numbers. There was no doubt the Frenchmen were soundly impressed.
‘If the admiral has an interest in seeing the rest,’ I said, tilting forward the minutest degree, ‘will you advise him that, regrettably, he has only a few minutes in which to act?’
The thin fellow took a step forward, thrust his face close and stared up at me.
‘A few minutes? Preposterous!’ he spluttered. Then he tilted his head, keeping his eye on me like a cockerel examining an approaching fox. ‘Why do you say this?’
‘Because the volume in question — of which you have two sample pages — may become unavailable for future use by the French Navy or indeed any other Navy. It is rolled up, tamped into one of my deck-pieces, and wadded tight against a full charge of powder. If I do not return unmolested before the half-hour glass has run, my men have orders to fire the gun.’ Ostentatiously, I brought from my weskit a pocket-clock — Will Wrack’s, and a poor time-keeper, he admitted — examined it and said, ‘I estimate that only twelve minutes remain.’
The two of them exchanged a few rapid sentences. I had called their blustering attempt to cow me and they knew it. The portly Frenchman, holding the papers, turned quickly and headed aft towards the admiral’s quarters.
‘If any boat, Monsieur le Secretaire,’ I hailed after him, sharply interrupting his progress, ‘other than my own cutter with me alone in it, approaches the Diamond, the deck-piece shall be touched off instantly.’
This time I made sure my bow was of the sincerest nature, a dip from the waist with my eyes lowered. The thin man gabbled a translation to the Secretaire, who promptly marched off again. When he returned a minute later, red-faced and perspiring, he barked out a series of instructions so fiercely that his junior flinched.
Before the half-glass could be turned, I was back aboard the schooner with the anchor hauled up and the Diamond under way, a foaming wave at her bow. We were headed for sea with an armed French sloop in close company off our beam. When we reached the heads of the bay, well out of range of the shore batteries or any anchored bark, both vessels hove to and a minute cutter was lowered from the sloop, in which the Joyeux’s thin-faced officer was rowed across by a single pair of oarsmen. Stepping aboard, damp about the briches, a touch of green to his cheeks, he staggered as the Diamond lifted to a lumpy swell, clearly happier aboard a three-decker on an even keel in the roads than on a schooner bouncing in the swells by the harbour heads.
‘Show me the tables, if you please,’ he muttered.
With a silent prayer, I handed over the leather-bound volume, tightly rolled and tied with a ribbon, the cover somewhat distressed from having been pressed into the barrel of a gun and then dragged out again by a drawstring. The Frenchman grasped the book and opened it flat to its spine. I winced as he brusquely turned the pages, licking a finger and flicking over the leaves as if it were nothing more than a politickal tract, or a prayer-book.
‘It seems to be entirely in manuscript,’ said the Frenchman, ‘as were the sample pages. Thus, it is prior to any publication?’
I nodded.
‘And this is the author — the astronomer, one is to presume — who has signed his name on what would be the frontispiece?’
I bowed.
Satisfied, he closed the book and handed me a parchment. It was written in good English, signed ‘Chamblaire’ and sealed with a handsome mark. It purported to guarantee the Diamond free passage from the Rade to the high seas beyond French waters. Balancing one-handed at the rail, with the precious volume tucked under his arm, the officer paused.
‘Sir, I trust you have noted,’ he said, ‘the admiral’s explicit provision that if met by our warships on the high seas and running under any other colour than the King of France’s, your bark shall be arrested — and sunk if you resist.’
I gave another bow, and said, ‘It is well noted, as is the illegality of such a threat.’
He looked surprised. ‘Ono, sir! Not in time of war.’
Will and Adam gave a simultaneous sharp intake of breath.
The young man’s thin features cracked into the hint of a smile. ‘Captain, word reaches us that England has been at war with France for more than a two-month.’
My mouth was dry. I performed my practised bow with as much dignity as I could muster, and he turned for the boarding rope. Without a word, the Diamond’s crew got her under way in scrambling haste. I twisted nervously round half expecting to see a frigate weighing and coming after us, or to find a dozen shots whistling over to smash us to pieces. But the sloop was passing peacefully back into the roads and in no time we found ourselves quite alone on the wide waters of the open sea, the Rade de France a mere dim outline astern.
Adam came back to the quarter with something in his cupped palms.
‘Sir, this mud in my hand,’ he said deliberately, ‘came up on the anchor flukes. It is French soil.’ He gathered the cheeks of his mouth and gobbed juicily on it, then threw it on my feet.
‘Adam, you misunderstand –’ I began, but he turned on his heel and marched off to the beak to stand gazing seawards with his back to Martinique.
‘And neither shall I ever forgive you,’ put in Will Wrack sternly.
With that, he dived for the hatchway and disappeared below leaving me alone at the tiller, mulling over what had happened. Wrack emerged moments later bearing a heavy black bottle. Pulling out the cork, he sniffed at the bottle’s mouth, savouring the sweet aroma of sugar-rum.
‘We’ll drink to our freedom,’ he said, taking a long swig and handing the rum to me, ‘and to my loss.’
I pulled lustily at the sugar-rum bottle, smacking my lips as it seared down my gullet. ‘Forgive me, Mister Printer Wrack, but it had to be done.’
‘Aye, and the bone-headed Frenchies fell for it like a bonito taking the baited hook.’ He simpered, and adopted an accent. “This is the astronomer’s signature, I take it?” says that Frenchy, observing the proud name of Wm. Wrack, and upon a mere Mathematickal schoolbook at that.’ He drank down two fingers of rum. ‘Ah, Captain Matthew, how could you? My last memento of all those years in Wimpole-court — the only old manuscript I ever kept for sentiment.’
I grinned sympathetically and swigged from the bottle. ‘Has is it occurred to you, Mister Wrack, that we are now on the run not just from the English Navy but the French Navy as well?’
‘That’s new for me,’ he mused, ‘but hardly uncommon for pirates.’
‘Take the steering,’ I said, handing him the tiller-bar. ‘Poor Adam’s convinced I’m England’s greatest traitor.’
The boy’s anger was hard to assuage, until I took him below and showed him the precious Spatchears volume, still safe aboard though minus two pages. Then Adam too took a couple of pulls off the bottle and matched our smiles, his grin disappearing only momentarily when he remembered how long we had enjoyed his misery before disabusing him.
The friendly night came down upon the four of us, three sailors and the little Diamond tilting along beneath our feet. We fell to imagining the portly Frenchman berating his thin-faced junior, then ducking into the Great Cabin to cower before the admiral’s wrath. How would he explain giving a trio of English rogues and their handsome bark a free passage in exchange for nothing more than a handwritten school text, the manuscript of a book published twenty years ago and as useless as the time of yesterday’s tide?
Later, when darkness was fully upon us and the Diamond left a frothing wake glowing astern in a greenish and sparkling trail, while Mister Wrack was below rooting through his stores for salted fish and rice to feed up my crew’s appetites, Adam all at once called from the pump brake at the foremast. ‘Sir, I just got two hundred strokes of water before she dried!’
Then I remembered how the English cruzer’s closest ball had grazed the Diamond’s strakes, perhaps loosening the caulking or, worse, splitting a board. Will stuck his head up from the hatchway and I shot him a questioning look.
‘Aye,’ he said at once, his eyes wide, ‘she’s taking on water, and pretty damm’d badly.’