The Launching of Roger Brook (71 page)

To his intense annoyance he saw that the harbour was almost empty and standing out to sea a cluster of about fifteen vessels. It could only be the fishing-fleet, and must have sailed about an hour before.

As he approached the quay he saw that a couple of longshoremen were in the process of loading fresh vegetables on to a two-masted barque. To reach it he had to pass the customs office and, on the notice board outside it, he caught sight of another of those damnable placards offering one thousand
louis
for his capture, dead or alive.

The sight of it almost unnerved him and caused him to turn tail; but he realised that by this time there would be one of them posted up on every quayside from Dunkirk to Brest and that if he was to get away at all he must, sooner or later, chance recognition in endeavouring to secure a passage. He knew that by far his safest course would have been to go into hiding for a few weeks; but that was impossible, unless he were prepared to give up his attempt to prevent the seizure of the Dutch ports, and that, nothing would have induced him to do.

Bracing himself for the encounter he slouched up to the bigger of the two longshoremen, and asked in mangled French and English when the barque was due to sail, and whither she was bound.

‘She’ll sail on the night tide, round four of the morning,’ the man replied. ‘That is, if the weather holds; but it’s none too promising and the fishing-fleet has put out for a few hours only because it’s been weather-bound these past two days. The barque is carrying a mixed cargo to Falmouth.’

Roger pretended not to fully understand and while the man repeated the information for him more slowly he was thinking: ‘Falmouth is a devilish long way from London and I have already been three days on my journey. The crossing will take the best part of two days, and from Cornwall to London thirty hours at least. Allowing for unforeseen delays ’tis unlikely that I’ll get to Whitehall before the morning of the 5th of September. That will leave the Cabinet a margin of only four clear days in which to act. Still, better that than no chance at all, and I suppose I’ll be lucky if I can induce the Captain to take me.’

Having thanked the man he inquired the Captain’s name
and, on being told that it was Rapenot, he walked with a rolling gait up the gang-plank.

Captain Rapenot was in his cabin. He proved to be a tall, grizzled fellow with gold rings in his ears and a hook in place of a left arm. He looked up from his bills of lading and greeted Roger with a none-too-friendly stare.

To maintain his rôle of seaman, Roger opened the conversation by asking if he could do with an extra hand.

The captain shook his grizzled head. ‘No. I’ve a full crew for this trip; and you’re an Englishman, aren’t you?’

On Roger admitting it, he went on gruffly: ‘I’ve no love for the English. ’Twas a round shot from an English frigate that took off my left arm, so I never take on an English hand unless I’m forced to. Get you gone!’

Seeing his chance slipping Roger broke into a swift, garbled version of his story. Then he urged that the war had been over for nearly five years and that malice for ills inflicted in it should not be allowed to rankle for so long; and finally, producing his purse, offered to pay for his passage.

‘How much have you there?’ asked Captain Rapenot, in a slightly mollified tone.

‘Seven
louis
and a few odd
francs
,’ replied Roger in the atrocious French that he was using. ‘I can ill afford to part with my savings, but I’ll give you five
louis
.’

‘Nay; but I’ll take you for the seven.’

‘Then I’d land near penniless,’ Roger protested. ‘Make it six?’

‘Seven, and not a
sou
less,’ insisted the Captain.

‘If I agree will you give me a cabin to myself, and treat me as a passenger?’

‘Yes. I’ll do that. I’m not shipping a third mate, so you can have his cabin, and feed at my table. You must pay me the money now, though. I’ll not risk your skipping ship when we reach port.’

So the harsh bargain was struck. With great reluctance Roger counted out the coins on the table, knowing; that if anything prevented the barque from sailing it was highly unlikely that he would be able to induce the avaricious Captain to give them back; and that he would then find himself in the most desperate straits that any man can be—a fugitive without resources.

Having swept up the money and thrust it into his pocket,
Rapenot took him along a narrow passage under the low poop, kicked open a door exposing a cubby hole three-quarters of which was occupied by a bunk, and left him.

Roger’s relief at having secured a passage was only equalled by his anxiety to see the barque leave port. Each hour up to nightfall seemed as long as a day, and those that followed scarcely less so. He had nothing with which to occupy himself and while, on the one hand, he feared to show his face to more people than was positively necessary, on the other he felt that as long as daylight lasted to shut himself up in his miserable little cabin might arouse suspicion.

From hanging about the extremities of the ship in a seemingly endless ordeal of waiting he had only one respite. At six o’clock he was summoned aft to sup with the Captain and the two mates. The first officer was a taciturn Norman and the second a short, black-bearded Marseillais. Both of them obviously went in dread of the hook-armed Rapenot, so the meal was not a convivial one.

At midnight Roger thought of turning in; but he knew that he would not be able to sleep until the ship was well on her way, so he remained up and spent the remaining hours pacing the deck. As he did so he was in constant anxiety about the weather, knowing that if it showed signs of deteriorating Rapenot would not sail. It seemed to him that the wind was freshening a little but, to his overwhelming relief, shortly before four o’clock the bosun piped all hands to their stations.

St. Valery was only a little harbour, so ships of even the barque’s moderate size were infrequent visitors to it, and it took nearly an hour of careful manoeuvring before she was clear of the bar; but by five o’clock her sails were set and she was feeling the swell of the sea. At last Roger was able to go to his narrow cabin and, worn out with anxiety, flung himself down fully dressed on the bunk to sleep.

He slept till nearly midday and, when he woke, his first conscious thought was that they were in for a bad crossing. The ship was rolling with a nasty twist and rain was splattering on the porthole. Getting up he lurched along to the filthy wash-place, freshened himself up as well as he could, then made his way to the main cabin, which also served as the officers’ dining-room.

The Captain and the second mate were just sitting down
to their midday meal, and both appeared to be in an evil temper. It transpired that the barque would not have sailed the previous night had she not already been overdue at Falmouth, and now Rapenot was regretting his decision. Roger remained silent and pretended not to understand most of what was said. He was thanking all his gods that some perishable cargo had forced Rapenot to sail against his better judgment and felt that he, personally, would not mind if the ship made the voyage on her beam ends, provided only that she landed him in England. But he was destined to feel very differently about it before many hours were gone.

During the early part of the afternoon he could think of little else than the miracle of his preservation through the past few days, and his ruminations on his escape from death at the hands of de Caylus, being seized by the de Rochambeaux, or captured by M. de Crosne’s agents, did much to stifle his awareness of the increased heaving of the deck. But as the day wore on sail after sail was lowered, until with bare masts and the wind howling through the naked rigging the barque was driving before the storm.

As the wave-crests grew higher the horizon became ever more limited, so that by dusk the ship seemed to be the centre of a tiny world apart and utterly isolated in a cauldron of foaming, boiling waters.

Roger had imagined himself to be a good sailor; but now he knew that he was not. As he clung to a stanchion for support he was desperately sick. Miserable, and furious at his lack of control over himself, he crawled to his cabin; but worse was to follow for, although he had unloaded his midday meal, he found that he continued to strain and vomit in bouts of soul-shattering nausea.

The next twenty-four hours proved a worse nightmare than anything he could conceivably have conjured up in his wildest imagination, and he was not even left alone in his agony. At some time in the early hours of the following morning Captain Rapenot kicked open the door of his cabin and called on him to lend a hand manning the pumps as the forward hatch cover had been torn off by the gale and every wave that now hit the ship was slopping over into the hold.

It was not from any lack of willingness to help, but from exhaustion, that Roger remained deaf to the Captain’s
shouts and continued to lay inert. But his condition did not save him. Asking him what kind of a sailor he pretended to be, Rapenot came at him with a curse and, lifting a length of rope with a spliced Turk’s-head at the end of it, he struck him half a dozen savage blows about the legs and body.

With a moan, Roger struggled to his feet and strove to ward off further punishment; but in his present state he was no match for the brutal Captain, who, still beating him about the back and shoulders, drove him forward along the slanting deck.

While he laboured with his last strength at the pumps the water swirled terrifyingly round his knees, and his anguish was such that he genuinely wished that the ship would founder, so that he might escape his torment in death. How long he stuck it he never knew, but he must have collapsed and been carried back to his cabin for, when he was next conscious of his surroundings, he found himself sprawled on his bunk again.

All day the storm continued and twice, during it, Rapenot mercilessly drove him out to do further spells at the pumps. But before he started on his third spell one of the crew gave him a mug of black coffee laced with brandy, which he managed to keep down, and after that he felt better.

The storm had eased and as he churned the iron handles of the creaking pump with three stalwart
matelots
his sense of humour came back to him. It crossed his mind how incongruous it was that the elegant M. de Chevalier de Breuc, whose name must by now be the talk of Versailles as the conqueror in single combat of the redoubtable Comte de Caylus, should find himself being kicked around like a galley-slave. He also had another thought. It was, how incredibly right he had been in refusing to go to sea; since, if it could be like this at the beginning of September, it must hold the torments of the seventh hell for those who had to face it during the icy months of winter.

That night he was called on no further and slept right through till eleven o’clock next morning. When he awoke, to his surprise, he felt none too bad and soon discovered that he was hungry. On going out on deck he saw that the sea had gone down and that the barque was now riding on an oily swell under half sail. One glance across the slippery green waters showed him, too, that they were in sight of
land. His heart leapt with the knowledge that it must be England.

Eight bells sounded soon afterwards, so he went in to the main cabin. The black-bearded Marseillais was there, and while they waited for Rapenot to appear, so that the service of the meal could begin, he gave Roger the situation. The sou’-wester had driven them many miles off their course and they were now beating west along the coast of Sussex.

Roger had again temporarily lost count of time but a swift check up told him that today was Sunday the 3rd. To his consternation he realised that it would be six full days that night since he had left Paris, yet, owing to the storm he was no nearer to reaching London than he had been when at St. Valéry, and it would now be the seventh before he could get his precious paper to Whitehall. Even if the Cabinet acted instantly it seemed highly improbable that they would be able to get instructions to the British Minister at The Hague in time for him to make a bid to stop the revolt planned for the tenth.

Rapenot came in and, while they were eating, made some sarcastic references to Roger’s poor showing as a seaman, but he took refuge in his avowed scant knowledge of French and pretended not to understand. And he was much too perturbed about the delay, which now threatened to wreck the object of his journey, to care.

When he went out on deck again all sail was set and, owing to the configuration of the coast, the barque was now considerably nearer to it than she had been in the morning. By two o’clock she was off the eastern end of the Isle of Wight and Roger was picking out familiar beauty spots with a futile longing for wings with which to reach them. Yet it was not until they were passing St. Catherine’s Point, at the southern extremity of the island, that he was suddenly seized with a brilliant idea. Why should he not get Captain Rapenot to turn into the bay to the west of the island, lower a boat, and put him ashore.

The instant the idea came to him he realised that the advantages it offered were immense. From Lymington he could, at a push, ride to London overnight, and give the Cabinet a clear six days in which to make their intentions known with regard to the United Provinces. More, if he landed at Falmouth, it would be with only a few
francs
in his pocket. He knew no one here and might suffer the most infuriating delays and difficulties in raising the money or credit necessary before he could even set out for London. Whereas Lymington was his home. His mother was certain to have a few guineas in the house that she could lend him. He could borrow a horse from the stables and be off within the hour. To land there would make all the difference between success and failure.

Then his mind flashed to Rapenot. The grizzled, hook-armed Captain was a surly devil and about as disobliging as any man could be. There seemed only one way to get round him, which was to buy his complaisance, and Roger’s pockets were near empty. Suddenly he thought again of de Caylus’s ring. That ought to do the trick.