Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea (18 page)

Lady Beatrice had read Mr. Fielding’s
Tom Jones.

Mrs. Corvey began to wonder if Pickett would survive the dessert course. In fact, when it arrived—an assortment of summer berries arranged like a Roman mosaic in a mortar of almond cream—she was willing to bet their mission would end with the villain felled by a brain paroxysm. However, Mrs. Drumm deftly carved the dessert into tiles, revealing an underpinning of rich cake; poured rum over each serving and set them ablaze. This precluded Lady Beatrice from feeding Picket by hand, but her work between fork and lips was so provocative that it was a miracle Pickett did not plant his own fork in his eye.

The meal ended with tiny glasses of sherry (Mrs. Drumm had been correct; it was poor stuff), after which the participants sat quietly. Lady Beatrice exchanged compliments with Pickett, and idle talk with Mrs. Corvey for the duration of their sherry. Pickett breathed in and out, as if he had to concentrate to keep doing it.

He might have sat there all evening staring at Lady Beatrice had not she finally reminded him—with a discreet tap on his foot under the table—that he had promised to show her something special.

Pickett, eyes fairly starting from his head, pulled his watch from his waistcoat pocket and hastily checked the time.

“Indulge me just a few minutes more, ladies,” he said. “I have a splendid viewing to show you, dear Beatrice, but it is dependent on when and where we are upon the sea. Let me go up and check to see how our course stands.”

He departed hastily.

“Do you suppose we have been so fortunate as to have made him miss his rendezvous?” Lady Beatrice said.

“No, worse luck. Still, you all but dragged him under the table; very good work, Beatrice. The attack would go on whether or not he is on time,” Mrs. Corvey said. “Though you may have impaired his judgment for a while, I fear it will not last in the face of his larger obsession.”

And on the heels of her observation, a cannon blast rang out from above.

The Ladies had made their final swim round the last curve before the sea-caves, and come ashore. Before them lay a small deep cove, where the water surged in great slow pulses against the cliffs but only broke into a small fringe of foam on the shingle. It seemed there was no great power in the waves here. When they made their way down to the beach it was obvious why: the cove was carpeted, just below the surface, with great waving kelp fronds.

Their ultimate goal was immediately visible—a wide arch at the back of the cove, in the base of the cliff, where there was no beach between the cliff face and the breakers. At the moment, the sea almost filled it, but flickering light from within revealed the shape of the cave mouth and lit the waters directly before it.

The Ladies clustered together in the lee of a large boulder, and examined the prospect.

“Very clever, indeed,” said Miss Rendlesham. “One cannot walk to this beach, nor see that light from the water, I would wager. Even night fishers would miss this.”

“It poses a problem for us, though. Clearly there is a well-lit cave in the cliffs, and we would be visible even if we could get in. But I don’t think we can get in through that arch, with the waters flooding it so high,” said Jane.

“It is probably always flooded to some extent.” Mrs. Otley was re-braiding her soaked hair, it having come nearly all the way down in their rigorous swim; she peered a little sideways as she bent her neck to reach the braid. “There appears to be a continuation of this bay itself, under the cliff. A subterranean harbor, if you will. No wonder Mr. Pickett has based his operation here!”

“So if we get through the arch, what are we likely to see, Erato?” asked Jane.

She thought. “A cave. Probably with a fairly high ceiling, as the workers would need to walk about and breathe. But the water probably fills most of it, like a tank. When they leave or enter, the gun platform doubtless does so under the water.”

“When I watched it from above,” said Herbertina, “there was only a wake to be seen. The gun rose afterward. I think Erato is correct, ladies; and that means we cannot come at it until it leaves the cave.”

Miss Rendlesham looked out over the waters of the cove, rising and falling smoothly over the kelp. “I cannot think they go quickly when they leave. Else they would tangle themselves dreadfully. I think they probably go with caution through that web out there, where we could slip like seals. We could come at them as soon as they leave the lamplight of the cave, in fact.”

This was decided, after some further examination of the area, as the best plan. It was not far at all from where they sat hidden to the entrance of the cave; one of them could have crossed the entire cove in five minutes or so, even breast-stroking through the kelp.

Accordingly, they set to keeping watch on the arch for movement. While the submarine moved swiftly in open water, it must proceed slowly when it first made its entrances into the world. The little cove had cast up a quantity of driftwood all along the shingle where they sat—it made for a good low fire behind their boulder, where they could rest and warm themselves, yet watch the long slit of lamplight from the cave without being themselves detected.

Maude sent the pre-arranged signal that let Mrs. Corvey know they were in position; no answer came for quite some time, whereby they assumed she was in company and could not respond. Before Maude was worried enough to try again, though, the confirming chirp sounded from inside her corset. Maude promptly sent a
Query
signal, but no questions were sent, nor any intelligence on Mrs. Corvey’s end of the business. Whatever was happening on board the
Sceptre,
it was close enough to normal to leave Mrs.
Corvey unworried.

In point of fact, while Mrs. Corvey
was
relatively unworried, things were not at all normal on board the
Sceptre
:
unless Mr. Pickett habitually took out crews entirely composed of untested landsmen. The majority of his crew was ill at present, some of them so violently as to be incapacitated; indeed, none of them was operating at peak efficiency.

There was not a man among them that could go aloft, save at a creeping pace like a sloth clinging to a branch. Only one other man aboard, aside from Mr. Pickett, could manage the tiller without puking, so sensitive had they all become to the movement of the sea. The cannon shot that had roused the dinner party had occurred when one of the gunners setting up beside the stern guns had been overcome by vertigo, and dropped his punk into the touch-hole.

There was a definite air of hysteria on deck, unbecoming to a prize-winning racing vessel—let alone a nascent war ship. Lady Beatrice and Mrs. Corvey had come up on deck when the shouting grew louder and yet Pickett did not reappear; they now stood in the shelter of the companionway, watching as the crew and captain raced in a frenzy from one untended demand to another on the rolling vessel.

“How amazing. I wonder what she gave them?” said Lady Beatrice.

“Lightly poisoned plum duff. I must be certain she understands there’s to be none of this spontaneous mischief in
my
house,” said Mrs. Corvey.

“Oh, I am certain this is a response to a special provocation,” said Lady Beatrice. “And it must be admitted it is useful for us.”

“As long as we can get home again.”

Though the crew was much diminished in effectiveness, they did manage to re-establish the
Sceptre
’s
course, once Mr. Picket took over the tiller once more. The spotter in the bows, though he leaned at an acute angle clasping his belly unhappily, reported at length that he saw the expected signal light on the shore. They steered for it.

At a distance, of course, two lights close together may appear as one to the traveler on the sea. And it must be admitted, the lookout was not at his most observant; he was in acute discomfort, quite aside from having to bend over the rail and vomit at intervals. It was therefore not apparent to the advancing
Sceptre
that she was, in fact, steering for the fire lit to warm her enemies as they waited in ambush on the shore.

It was hearing, not sight, that first alerted the Ladies to the imminent departure of the gun platform: a hollow clanging and echo of orders called out. Thus warned, the shadow that occluded the arch was obvious—but the Ladies were already in the water and making their way as nimbly as a pack of seals on an intercept course.

The submarine apparently needed to make a straight line departure for the open sea. There was hardly room in the little cove for any maneuvering, in any event, and bearing from side to side would inevitably tangle the vessel in the kelp. This was fortunate for the approaching marauders—they could mark the approaching wake of the submarine along the line of reflected light from the cave mouth itself, and swim out at an angle to meet it. The craft itself was only a shadow in the water, invisible save where agitation broke the glittering surface of the waves into many golden mirrors.

They had hoped and intended to encounter it at the surface when the gun barrel arose, as that would have made actually securing contact with it much easier. It continued underwater as it drove through the kelp bed, though, and they would surely have lost it—slow though its initial progress was—had not Miss Rendlesham managed to dive below the surge and get a bight of rope about the vessel’s stubby mast.

Warm bubbles were streaming out of it into the cold water all around her, which almost startled her off, but she had considerable practice in getting ropes around bulky moving objects. Mrs. Otley, close behind her, was equally as expert in quick knots. Between the two of them they had secured a tow line within seconds of meeting the hidden prey. All six of the Ladies seized the trailing rope, and found themselves being borne along on the surface of the sea like so many beads on a string.

There was a dreadful long moment when they were being towed along at considerable risk of being dragged underwater. It felt as though they had harnessed a kelpie and were about to be summarily drowned for their troubles. Almost at once, however, the slack on their rope increased and the gun platform rose under them. Miss Rendlesham and Mrs. Otley, being closest to the base of the rope, were actually carried into the air to lie sprawled on the hull of the thing.