I DON’T BELIEVE I FAINTED – FOTHERGILL TOLD ME LATER THAT I never lost the power of my own legs – but the next thing I knew I was being bundled into a carriage waiting outside the door. The sun was high enough that its rays now touched the street, and the azure blue of an immaculate late-winter sky drifted overhead, but I barely saw them before I was in the carriage with the curtains drawn and the door slammed shut. Someone shouted instructions to the driver; then we jolted forward.
Fothergill and I were alone. Neither of us spoke. I was too exhausted even to feel relief, and still shadowed by the fear that Wilkinson must surely be hunting us. When the driver reined in the horses beside the levee and led us over to a small wherry, I pulled my coat up high to mask my face, and as we were rowed across the mile-wide expanse of the river I sat stiff in the terror of a bullet ripping through my shoulders. None came, nor did anyone challenge us when we moored on the far bank at an imposing plantation house. We passed the house, and soon we were walking down a lane between cotton fields. With the sun on my face I felt a blissful peace warming through me, something I had not felt since … it was too much effort to remember.
Gradually the fields gave way to copses, then to forest. Though I had seen no rain since I reached New Orleans, the ground grew steadily damper, and my boots started to slide and squelch. In some places the path was so bad that wooden boards had been thrown down over the mud, though even these were already rotting into the mire. Flies swarmed around us, and strange animals cackled and called in the ever-thickening undergrowth. Matted curls of grey-green moss hung like beards from the overhanging branches, brushing my shoulder. Even the sun disappeared, dappled into dim fragments by the leaves and foliage above.
Just as the path was in danger of foundering entirely, it stopped at the edge of a narrow strip of stagnant water. It did not look deep – I could see the fibrous bottom through the tea-brown water – but three wooden canoes, little more than hollowed-out logs, were drawn up on the bank. They looked to be perfectly abandoned. Lafitte’s coachman, who had accompanied us all the way, knelt beside one and rapped three times on its hull.
I almost yelped with surprise as two negroes stepped out from behind broad tree-trunks. They were barefoot, wearing ragged canvas trousers, short-sleeved shirts and broad-brimmed straw hats. Knives and pistols were crammed into their rope belts.
The coachman addressed the nearest of them, a dark-skinned man whose forearms were creased and puckered with an almost solid mass of grey scar tissue. He had said barely a word to us since we left the ballroom; now he spoke in an incomprehensible patois that was by turns French, Spanish, English, and something else foreign to all of them. I thought I heard my name, and Fothergill’s, and several repetitions of Lafitte’s; otherwise I could understand nothing of it.
The coachman turned back to me. ‘You go with Dubois,’ he said, pointing to the scarred negro.
Dumbly, I obeyed. I crawled into the bow of one of the canoes, taking great care not to upset it. The draught was so shallow, and the sides so low, that it hardly seemed I was in a boat at all. Instead I felt like one of the spiders I could see scuttling across the stagnant surface, bending the water but never breaking through.
The canoe slithered down the silvery mud, rocking gently as someone clambered into the back. Even that small movement was almost enough to tip the gunwale underwater. Craning my head back, carefully, I saw the negro Dubois sitting cross-legged on the stern thwart, a paddle in his hand. Fothergill and the other boatman were in the neighbouring canoe, also on the water, while the coachman looked on from the bank. I raised my hand in farewell; then we started moving through the water, and he was quickly lost among the moss and branches.
Most of that journey passed in a trance. Lacking sleep, drained by the misadventures I had suffered since reaching New Orleans, I lay back in the canoe and watched the swampy forest glide by. We were in a labyrinth of water: channels met and diverged with dizzying frequency, some almost wide enough to be rivers, some little more than muddy puddles. Our watery road wound around itself so many times that I soon lost all sense of my bearings. In places the overgrowth hung so low that the branches scratched my face even when I lay supine; in other places tall trees arched over the watercourse in high cathedral splendour. Everywhere about us was darkness and mystery. Knobs of wood rose out of the water like the tentacles of unseen beasts; trees picked up the skirts of their trunks and tottered on exposed roots. Sometimes I could see broad, verdant meadows, flat as bowling lawns and green as serpents, inviting me to come and lie down on them. Only the faintest ripples in the surface betrayed them to be carpets of scum, waiting to suck in any who trod on them.
All through this dream, the only human sounds were the splash and push of the paddle behind me, and the whispering of the hull. My companion, Dubois, spoke to me only once, when I absent-mindedly let my hand drift into the water.
‘No do that,’ he said, reaching forward and tapping me between the shoulder blades with the paddle. ‘Gators.’
‘What is a gator?’
‘It’s the local term for crocodiles,’ answered Fothergill from the boat behind. ‘They’ll take off a man’s hand, or his arm or his leg, as easy as you’d take a bite of cheese.’
‘Do they inhabit these waters?’ I asked, snatching back my hand and staring out at the still bayou.
‘Many,’ came the guttural voice behind me. ‘Many many.’
After that, I kept my hands knotted firmly in my lap.
We must have paddled all day, gliding through the waterlogged forest. At one point, which may have been midday, the boatman handed me a piece of salt fish and a few crumbs of cheese. Once, we had to disembark to lift the canoe over a place where silt had completely blocked the channel. The mud rose almost to the rim of my boots, and it was only by much swaying and fidgeting that I managed to pull them free. After that we were confined to the canoe again.
I marvelled that the boatman never hesitated in his course, never showed the least concern when confronted by the diverging streams. Of course he might have been taking us in circles for all I knew –there was little to distinguish one part of the swamp from another – but I gradually came to think that he must be following some preordained path. The more I looked at the forest, the more I noticed certain curiosities whenever a choice was to be made: three bunches of the hanging moss set all in a row; a forked branch thrusting out of the water; a squirrel’s tail tied around a stump. Some of these signs seemed almost calculated to deceive – a branch which appeared to block a channel, for example, which swung away like a well-oiled gate when we touched it.
It was nigh impossible to measure time, but at length the light on the leaves began to glow orange, then to fade. Mist rose off the water, and new sounds began to intrude on the dusk. I turned back to the boatman, still paddling as serenely as ever.
‘Will we continue through the night?’ I asked, uncertain whether he understood me and less certain still whether I would like his answer. General Wilkinson’s threat, so urgent this morning, now seemed impossibly remote, while fear of the crocodiles loomed ever larger in my thoughts.
In reply, Dubois lifted his paddle and gestured forward. ‘We sleep here.’
I looked forward again. In the time that I had been turned around we had come round a corner, and the channel now opened out on to a round pool perhaps fifty yards across. It was the biggest expanse of clear water I had seen since we crossed the Mississippi that morning. If creeks and bayous were the byways of this strange world, then this pool was a crossroads fed by at least half a dozen channels, though I could see none of the clandestine signs I had noticed earlier.
‘Where will we sleep?’ I doubted there were six feet of dry land to be had in that place. Nor did I wish to rest where a crocodile might come upon me and tear me apart as I slept.
Once again, Dubois answered by pointing his paddle, this time to the far side of the pool. Perhaps it was the eastern side – certainly it seemed the darkest – and for a moment I could see nothing save the usual tangle of tree-trunks, leaves, and vines. Only as we paddled nearer did the picture begin to fragment: trees which had no leaves; foliage which seemed to hang in the air without recourse to branches; straight lines and perpendicular angles quite distinct from the twisting natural order.
We crossed the golden circle of light in the centre of the pool and passed into the shadow beyond. I looked up. Now I could see plainly that the trees were in fact high stilts rising proud out of the water, their branches the beams on which platforms had been built, their leaves the palm-fronds which thatched the makeshift rooms. It was a house, of sorts – or rather a village, for there were several of these strange stilt-huts all built together around the edge of the pool. They loomed over us like giants, their unframed windows dark, vacant eyes.
The canoe butted gently against the pilings and came to a stop. Everything about this fabulous construction seemed moulded from the fabric of the forest: some of the stilts were in fact live tree-trunks, while the ropes which bound the edifice were woven from swamp creepers. While the boatman held the canoe steady, I scrambled out onto a makeshift landing stage at the foot of the pilings. Hardly had I stepped out than a challenge rang out from above. Apart from the few words I had exchanged with the boatman it was the first voice I had heard since entering the swamp, and I almost fell in the water in my fright.
The boatman answered with words I could not understand. A rope ladder dropped down to us and I climbed up, swaying precariously. As I hauled myself over the lip of the platform three pairs of eyes fixed on me, luminous in the near-darkness within. Had the rungs of the ladder not been quite so rotted, and had I not heard Dubois climbing up behind me, I might have excused myself and clambered down immediately; instead, I crawled onto the grimy floor, out of the way of the doorway. The eyes followed me in silence. I mumbled an introduction but got no response – the eyes did not even blink. Only when the boatman arrived did they suddenly burst into life, jabbering and chattering in the same unnatural dialect.
As my eyes resolved the darkness I saw that there were three of them, two men and a woman, all dressed in patchwork rags, with untamed hair and dark skins. Though they spoke no English they were hospitable enough – by which I mean that they offered us bowls of shrimp, gave us mouldering blankets, and otherwise ignored us. There was only one room in the high hut; after supper Fothergill and I made our beds in a corner while our hosts and the boatmen sat around the fire laughing and talking in their wild language, and drinking rum.
I lay down on the rush mats which covered the floor, but I could not sleep. Within myself I was all contradictions. My limbs ached with exhaustion though I had done nothing that day save sit in the canoe, yet now I was in bed I felt wide awake. I rolled over to face Fothergill.
‘Where are we?’ I whispered, anxious not to disturb our hosts.
‘They call it Barataria,’ said Fothergill. ‘Do you know Cervantes?’
‘Is he an ally of Vidal?’
Fothergill gave a dry laugh. ‘Perhaps. I was rather thinking of the author of Don Quixote.’
Even in the darkness, I blushed.
‘Barataria was the kingdom given to Sancho Panza to punish him for his sins. This place is well named. If ever there was somewhere for sinning, we are here. It is all a wilderness of swamps and marshes, uncharted rivers and hidden creeks which run to the sea. This is Jean Lafitte’s kingdom, a haven for pirates and a turnpike for smugglers.’
And this was the man Fothergill had chosen to aid our escape.
‘Do you trust him?’ I asked.
‘We have no choice. The river is controlled by the Spaniards, and Lake Ponchartrain, the other passage to the coast, by the Americans. This is the only way we could have hoped to escape once Wilkinson discovered your flight, and Lafitte is the only man who knows its ways and commands its inhabitants.’
‘He might yet betray us.’
‘He might.’ Fothergill sounded resigned to the fact. ‘But I doubt it.’
‘Because of the money you promised?’
‘That’s nothing to him. What matters more is that our ships in the West Indies keep from searching his vessels. He has lost a great deal of cargo to us; by helping you, he understands that we will turn a blinder eye to his smuggling. That is why he agreed to our bargain.’
‘But he did not agree – I beat him in his game of cards. It was purely a matter of chance.’
Fothergill laughed again. ‘Is that what you believe? Do you think that Jean Lafitte ever loses a hand of cards at his own table unless it suits him? He had made up his mind before he ever proposed the wager, and he knew your card before it was dealt.’
‘Then why—’
‘For his own amusement. Or to impress his followers. He cannot be seen surrendering to every itinerant petitioner who crosses his threshold.’ Fothergill turned over and set his back to me. ‘Now go to sleep. We will need all our wits in the morning.’
Fothergill slept; I did not. The hardness of the floor, the terrors which haunted me, and the mysterious sounds drifting over from the fire fed a frenzy of half-formed thoughts which would not abate. Every cracking twig or splash from the water below convinced me that Hook’s men had come for me, or that a crocodile must be crawling up the pilings. I tossed and turned; I cocooned myself in my blanket, then threw it off; I tried to make a pillow of my coat and felt the rustle of my uncle’s letter still sewn safely inside it.
Perhaps I did sleep eventually, though if I did my dreams were no kinder than my waking thoughts. At least it meant that when I saw a dark face with staring eyes looming over me, shaking my shoulder and hissing in my ear, I convinced myself that I was dreaming and did not scream. Only with the greatest reluctance did I at length acknowledge that it was Dubois, and recognize his urgent words.
‘We go. They comin’.’
I sat up. ‘Who’s coming?’
‘The gen’ral’s men. Come, we go.’
Dawn was breaking over the swamp as we paddled away from that curious village, spreading soft-hued pinks and oranges across the furrowed clouds. Soon we seemed to reach the edge of the forest: the lofty trees gave way to saplings and scrub, then vanished altogether. As the sun rose and the clouds melted from the firmament, I saw we had entered an entirely new landscape, a never-ending field of golden reeds which rustled and whispered in the breeze that fanned them. After the tangled murk of the forest there was something bright and honest in the reeds, though they were no less impenetrable. Sitting in the canoe so close to the water I could not see over their stalks; I was like a mouse scurrying through a field of August wheat, hemmed in on all sides.
Dubois had said that General Wilkinson’s men pursued us, and though I saw no evidence of it I did not doubt him. A shipload of American soldiers could have sailed past twenty yards away and we would not have known it. I presumed that Lafitte’s men knew who trespassed the borders of his kingdom, and when Dubois thrust a paddle into my hands I took it obediently.
After that I had little opportunity to examine the scenery. All my strength and spirit was centred on the paddle: digging it in, driving it back, lifting it out and repositioning it. My arm was quickly soaked with swamp-water, then with sweat, for the low-lying reeds offered no shade from the ascendant sun. Its rays scalded my face; I could almost feel the colour rising in my cheeks and on the back of my neck. It must have been evident to Dubois, too, for he took pity on me and offered me his broad-brimmed straw hat, which I gratefully accepted. My shoulder began to ache.
We paddled on. Once, I almost capsized the canoe craning around at a sudden noise. A flock of brown birds had risen out of the marsh behind us, squawking their indignation with short, yapping calls and wheeling in the sky. Dubois nodded, though I had not said anything.
‘Somethin’ ’sturbed ’em.’
‘General Wilkinson’s men, do you think?’
Somehow, never breaking his paddle-stroke, he contrived to shrug his broad shoulders. He looked more like a pirate than ever now, for he had removed his shirt and tied it over his shaven head. I could see the muscles rippling beneath his ebony skin as he dug the paddle into the water again and again. Beside his strength, my own efforts must have been pitiful indeed.
We forged on under the noon sun. The endless banks of reeds might make for an austere landscape, but the channels between them were as baroque as ever. Gradually, though, they began to widen. The shores drifted away. Fothergill’s canoe came alongside us so that we moved like two horses in the traces, yet the expanse of water on our quarter never narrowed. The tang of salt, which had teased my senses all morning, became inescapable: when a clumsy stroke of my paddle splashed water in my mouth, it tasted like the sea. The breeze stiffened, until at last we came around a turn and saw open water on every horizon, sparkling like a field of mirrors in the sun. I never thought I could feel such delight in seeing the sea. I put down my paddle and gazed in stupefied wonder.
A gust of wind caught us on the beam, rocking the canoe and threatening to tip us both in the water. When it had calmed, I turned back to Dubois.
‘What do we do now?’
With nothing to hinder it, the breeze was whipping up white-flecked waves which would swamp our shallow craft. Even in the mouth of the channel we risked capsizing. Ignoring my concern, Dubois paddled across to the reedy shore and then, to my astonishment, slipped over the side of the boat into the water. It rose to his chest, slopping over his shoulders and drenching his shirt-tails where they hung down over his neck.
‘What about the crocodiles?’ I asked, stabbing at the water with my paddle in an effort to keep the canoe from drifting out to sea.
Dubois’s reply was all but lost to the wind, though I thought I heard something concerning salt water. Breasting through the water like the bow of a ship, he moved up to the reeds and vanished among them. My attempts to maintain the canoe’s position grew more frantic, and I might well have pitched myself overboard if Fothergill’s craft had not come alongside to steady me. Between us, we just about managed to keep ourselves still.
‘Is this the Gulf of Mexico?’ I asked Fothergill, concentrating hard on my paddling.
‘Not yet. This is a lagoon which leads into the gulf. It is still ten miles to the coast.’
‘How will we get there?’ I glanced back up the channel we had come by, half expecting to see Captain Hook standing by a cannon in the prow of a gunboat. Nothing moved.
A rustling in the reeds answered me. Dubois had reappeared with a slimy, weed-caked rope held over his shoulder. As he hauled it forward I saw a wooden bow, then a scarred hull, and finally the whole length of a small yawl. She would have looked small enough against a ship’s longboat, or even a cutter, but she dwarfed our canoes.
Dubois drew up the boat alongside and gestured that we should climb aboard. As soon as we were in he dragged the two canoes out of sight into the reeds, while the other boatman unwrapped the large canvas bundle which lay in the bilge. It yielded a mast, a brown sail furled around its yard, a brace of rifles, a tin of powder and shot, and three pairs of oars. With Fothergill and me assisting him he stepped the mast and settled the yard in its parrels, though with the breeze coming straight up the lagoon he did not raise the sail. Instead he fitted the oars between the thole pins and then busied himself loading the muskets.
Dubois emerged from the reeds and hauled himself inboard. With a quick glance at the scrap of ribbon tied to our masthead, which still blew obstinately inland, he seated himself on one of the thwarts and took a pair of oars in his hands. Fothergill and the other man did likewise, while I sat by the tiller in the stern. The oars bit the water and we were away into the lagoon.
Even with three men on the oars it was hard work. Our southerly heading put the wind dead against us, and every wave seemed to buffet us back. I kept a constant eye on the shore, not so much to guide me as to watch for the mouth of the lagoon. Each time I saw a cove or inlet in the reed banks, my hopes rose that it would give way to open sea; each time the shore swept back in to dash those hopes.
Perhaps because I was so intent on looking forward, I was the last to see our pursuers. We had rowed about a mile and a half down the lagoon – though it was impossible to judge any distance in that unchanging landscape – when I saw Dubois frown and call something back to his colleague. Fothergill, sitting on the forward bench, had noticed it too – something behind us.
I turned around and squinted through the glare. In that sea of infinite horizons, where the world was reduced to water, reeds and sky, the two boats were easy to see, dark against the golden background. I could not tell their size from that distance, but there seemed to be a great number of oars sprouting from their sides, rising and falling in unison like giant wings. Amidships, sheaves of bayonets glittered in the sun.
I looked at Dubois opposite me.
‘The general’s men?’ I asked hoarsely.
He did not reply. All the answer I needed was in those scarred arms, heaving on the oars with new and desperate power. I shifted myself around on the thwart so that I could glance both ahead and astern. Even in that short time, the general’s boats seemed to loom larger.
It was a desperate race, and one we were bound to lose. Though their boats were larger and heavier than ours, weighed down by the soldiers they carried, their oarsmen outnumbered us six-fold. We were too few, and too wearied from a day and a half in the canoes. On Dubois’s orders I abandoned the tiller and crawled forward to sit beside Fothergill, so that we could double-bank our oars. It made little difference – our pursuers still ate away our advantage. Now I could see the American ensigns fluttering from their sterns; I almost fancied I could see Hook himself crouched in the bow.
‘Can we escape into the marshes?’ I shouted to Dubois. I could not tell whether he heard me, for my only answer was another heave of his almighty shoulders as he pulled on his oar. Indeed, without any hand on the tiller our course seemed to be turning westwards, further out into the middle of the lagoon.
Rarely can I have suffered such perfect torment. With my back to the bow, unable to turn around, I could not even look forward and hope. All I could see were the boats behind us, steadily closing. My hands were virtually chained to the oar: when salt spray splashed in my eyes I could not wipe it away but had to endure the stinging pain; when blisters rose and burst and rose again in the scars I could not even tend them. The wound in my shoulder throbbed so hard I feared it would reopen in a gush of blood. Always, I had to row.
The man in the bow of our leading pursuer stood. It must be Hook, I was sure of it – I recognized the squat frame, the high-crowned hat he wore against the sun. A rifle was handed to him, and it must have been loaded for he did not even check the priming, but lifted it to his shoulder, peered down the barrel and fired. The flat report echoed across the lagoon, rolling on for an eternity. A small splash, like a gull diving for fish, told where the ball fell: behind us, but not nearly far enough. Hook threw the musket back into the boat, and almost immediately another was passed forward to him.
I could row no further. My hands had started to bleed, my head was almost split in two with pain, and my back felt as though it had tasted a dozen strokes of the cat. I slumped over my oar. The yawl slewed around; Dubois shouted imprecations at me. I did not care. I tipped back my head and stared at the sky in defeat.
Above me, the small scrap of ribbon tied to the masthead streamed out to larboard. I watched it dance in the breeze, wishing I could melt away and float off in the air.
I rubbed my eyes and looked around. All three of my companions were still pulling desperately on their oars, though we were losing ever more ground. A cloud of smoke in our pursuer’s bow suggested Hook had fired again, though I had not heard it. I tugged on Fothergill’s arm, flinching to see the wild gaze he fixed me with. All the time I had known him he had been a prodigy of serene confidence; now his eyes were sunken in, his cheeks gaunt, his hands as raw as my own. I pointed to the masthead.
‘The wind,’ I croaked. My salt-crusted lips cracked with the effort. ‘The wind has changed.’
Fothergill was no sailor but he took my meaning immediately. He shouted something in French to Lafitte’s men, pointing furiously at the sail. The words were barely necessary. Forgetting my bleeding palms, the agony in my shoulders and all else, I had seized hold of the halyard and was hoisting the yard towards the masthead. The sail followed behind it, flapping and snapping in the breeze. Even spurred by hope it was more than I could manage; I almost let it go completely, but Fothergill was at hand and together we hauled it snug against its block. Dubois took the sheet and pulled it taut, then paid it out as his companion reached for the tiller and put us about. The canvas stiffened and bent; the seams strained. For a moment I thought it might split apart, but then it bellied out and the yawl began to gather speed.
I heard shouts behind us, and a ragged volley of musketry. They were close enough that one ball actually struck our hull, biting a deep wedge out of the gunwale, but mercifully none hit the sail. Looking back, I could see our enemies in a great state of confusion. They were trying to step their mast, but with so many soldiers in the way they fouled their lines and had to lower it again. In the bow, wreathed in smoke, Hook was waving his arms and screaming like a madman.
We boated our oars and stowed them in the bilge, then lay on the benches in utter exhaustion while Dubois took over the tiller and steered us south-east. I could hear water hissing under the hull, and our bow slapping against the wavelets. I felt I had spent half a lifetime on river craft – flatboats, keelboats, canoes and bateaux; now I lazed back and let the wind speed me to the sea.
A hand on my arm roused me. Fothergill was peering forward, examining something on the horizon. Reluctantly, and with a slice of pain cutting through my shoulders, I pushed myself up.
The landscape had changed. Ahead of us the lagoon seemed to taper to a narrow channel, blocked by a low island. A spine of thick trees ran along its ridge, while pearly sand fringed the water. As our course took us nearer I saw huts and houses clustered beneath the trees. Some were little more than shacks of matted palm leaves; others had stone walls and shingled roofs. I could see gulls pecking at the fishing nets which were draped out over posts to dry, and a flotilla of small boats drawn up on the beach.
‘Is this the coast?’ I asked.
Fothergill nodded. ‘That is the island of Grand Terre. The Gulf of Mexico is on the far side. But we are not out of danger yet.’
He turned and pointed behind us, and my hopes sank. Hook’s two boats still chased us, and though we had increased the interval to about half a mile they had at last managed to raise their masts and bend on the canvas. Their heavy-laden hulls wallowed in the water: they were not gaining, but nor were they falling back.
The green island slid past. I could see more of it now: the slanted trees stretching towards us; the late-afternoon sun reflecting off the waxy leaves like glass. Dark-skinned children played at the water’s edge, pointing as we passed. There was great consternation when they saw the soldiers in the boats behind: they raced along the beach to keep pace with us, their numbers swelled ever greater by a growing throng of men and women.
‘Baratarians,’ said Fothergill. ‘Grand Terre is a pirate colony. They will not take kindly to having Wilkinson’s army sailing past their island.’
Indeed they did not. As I watched, I saw a group of men run down to the boats and start dragging them into the lagoon. When the men were waist-deep in the water they heaved themselves over the sides with practised ease, and in seconds had their oars sweeping through the waves. In the bow of each boat was mounted a small swivel cannon.
At first Hook’s men tried to ignore the threat, but though the Baratarians lacked sails they were fearsome oarsmen and rapidly closed the distance. I could see their gunners priming the cannon, and the flash of steel as men drew cutlasses. Belatedly, Hook recognized the threat. His sails came down as he tried to clear space for his soldiers to fire, so quick that he must have cut the halyards, but that only compounded his disadvantage. Some of his men were buried under the sheets of canvas, while others became tangled in the ropes. Without sail, and with the oars trapped where they had been stowed, the boats lost steerage; they bobbed on the water almost as if sitting at anchor, while turmoil engulfed their crews.
The Baratarian flotilla closed around them. I heard shouts exchanged, then shots – the crack of muskets and the louder blast of cannon – and screams. The Baratarians rowed in, and very quickly all was lost in a shroud of white smoke, rising off the water like steam. Even so, I could not keep from staring back until we passed a sandy promontory and the cloud vanished. Then I looked around.
We had come into a crooked bay, beyond which I could see the foam of surf and hear the crashing of breakers. The beach was deserted, and no houses squatted in the shade of the trees, but it was not empty. Riding at anchor a few hundred yards away, the white band along her gunwale turned gold by the setting sun, lay a solitary schooner. Everything about her was immaculate, from her gleaming topmasts down the stiff rigging to the black paint at her waterline, yet I could not see a single man aboard.
‘Whose is this?’ I murmured.
The wind had dropped and the evening air was still. None of the others spoke, or questioned what we were about; they seemed to understand it perfectly. Furling the sail, we fetched out the oars and rowed the last quarter-mile to the ship, without urgency this time. The only sound was the creak of the oars in their pins, and the gentle ripple as the blades teased through the water.
I had my back to the schooner, so did not see its approach. Far sooner than I expected, Dubois put the tiller over and nestled the yawl up against the schooner’s hull. I looked up, but still no-one appeared to challenge us. Fothergill gestured at me to climb the ladder.
Squeezing every last ounce of strength from my limbs, I hauled myself inboard. Immediately, I saw that the ship was not deserted. Her crew, most of them in striped shirts and short trousers, had been on deck all the time, sitting out of sight in the lee of the gunwales. One of them scrambled to his feet as I arrived. He was not dressed as a sailor, nor as an officer either, but in a plum-red coat and sparkling black shoes. With an awkward smile he offered me his hand; then, seeing the raw state of my own hands, he reached his arms around me and clasped me to him in a firm embrace.
‘Jerrold,’ he said. ‘Thank God you are here.’
It was Nevell.