by Hunter, Seth
For a moment Nathan considered going higher but a gleam of common sense penetrated the fogged particles of his brain and then the lookout went swarming lithely up the ratlines to a higher level like one of McLeish’s hominidae, leaving him in sole possession. He stood, swaying slightly with the rhythm of the ship, his arm hooked into the shrouds, and looked down at the deck. It seemed further away than usual. He looked up at the stars. They seemed strangely close. And all in the wrong place. But of course, it was the latitude, the unfamiliar equatorial latitude. He should know them, though, if he put his mind to it.
He was much impressed by Sir Isaac Newton’s opinion that the planets were rocks hurled out from the sun: blobs of liquid fire that had cooled over the millennia and were now held in place by the balance between their own momentum and the magnetism that pulled them back. Doomed to circle in a perpetual orbit, neither going forward nor going back. Like mortal beings compelled to seek their own destiny but held back by their origins, their loyalties, their sense of belonging … their love.
A quick burst of light caught his eye. A comet or fiery meteor? A falling star? Gone, already. What did it mean—if anything? Vainglorious though it was, it was not hard to believe that it had some personal meaning: that someone or something was trying to communicate with him. Waving. Perhaps he should wave back. The crew would love that. First a tyrant and then a lunatic who climbs to the top of the mast and waves at the stars.
There were those who would say it was a portent of disaster. Or that someone great had died. But did you have to be great for the heavens to acknowledge your passing? Were there not enough stars even for the insignificant? Or were they entirely indifferent to the fate of men and of nations, mere inanimate lumps of rock or liquid fire, hurtling through the heavens in obedience to the laws of gravity? Just as the rushing sea was indifferent to the fate of those that sailed upon it. People prayed. They lit candles before plaster saints. Deliver us, Oh Lord, we pray thee from the perils of the sea … Did it make the slightest bit of difference? If he let go of this slender lifeline he would fall to the deck below and he would die.
Would a star fall from the heavens to mark his passing?
What had happened when Sara died?
Had she ceased to exist the moment the blade sliced through her slender neck? A terrible image of the guillotine on the Place du Trône … Of Sara climbing the steps to the scaffold, her hair shorn to the neck, her chemise torn to the breast and the terror in her eyes … Seized by the greedy hands of the executioners and borne down on to a bloody plank, wet with the blood of those that had gone before her, and slid under that terrible blade.
How could it have happened? Why could he not prevent it?
And what had happened next—apart from the executioner holding up her head to show to the crowd … ? Was she in Heaven or Hell? Or projected into the vast crowded infinity of the universe? Transported to one of those distant glimmering specks of light?
Or nowhere.
She had once told him about her homeland in Provence. He could hear her now, a whisper on the wind … There is a little town called Tourrettes. Near where we lived in Provence. I used to go there as a child. To the market with my father. Tourrettes-les-Vence. A walled town on top of a hill. It is very beautiful. I used to love going to Tourrettes. There is a café in the square where I drank lemonade and ate the little cakes—made of oranges—and watched the people coming to market.
If he ever lost her, she had said, that is where he would find her. In Tourrettes, drinking lemonade and eating little cakes made of oranges and waiting for him there.
And that is where he saw her in his imagination as he gazed up at the stars. Bleary now from the tears in his eyes.
The first captain we had was a tyrant who flogged us half to death; the second climbed into the rigging at night and gazed at the stars and cried.
He let go of the shroud and stood, balanced on the swaying platform as the ship rolled. If it was in the stars that he should fall, then fall he would. And if it was not …
He threw out his hand as he felt himself fall—and grabbed the rope.
As all drowning men do.
CHAPTER 9
The Big Liar
THE UNICORN MOVED like a ghost ship through the amber haze shrouding the waters of the Mexican Gulf, under a full press of sail but the wind so light, the sea so calm, she seemed almost to glide over its silken surface with scarcely a ripple to mark her passing. The men standing by the guns and the lookouts double posted at the tops, so like Pym’s report of her last, fateful visit to these shores that even Nathan, who had not been there, felt an eerie sense of history repeating itself.
They were sailing parallel with the coast of West Florida and on a course that should bring them in sight of Ship Island within the hour, according to the master, Mr. Baker, who went on to undermine the force of this prediction by muttering, “If it were not for this blasted fog” in an anxious voice while peering over the rail in the direction in which he clearly hoped the island would materialise.
Nathan had to trust to the master’s judgement—though he had taken his own readings and checked them with Tully and pored over the chart countless times in the privacy of his cabin. He was far more informed on the topography of the region than had been the case during his original briefing at the Admiralty but it was hard to make much sense of it, for the simple reason that the sea and the land did not observe the simple rules of nature and keep to their respective spheres as they did in every sensible part of the world. It was impossible at times to know where the one ended and the other began for the coast was cluttered with a myriad of offshore islands while the mainland itself, if it was mainland, was riddled by hundreds of rivers and creeks and inlets, many of them containing even more islands so that the entire region resembled a giant jigsaw with pieces that did not quite fit. A Devil’s Jigsaw. It was a region that might have been better left to the swamp creatures and those Indian tribes that had long made their home here and doubtless they would have been left in peace had it not been for the existence of New Orleans.
The key not only to the Caribbean and the Floridas—but to the vast hinterland of North America west of the Mississippi: Nathan recalled the words of Lord Chatham in the boardroom of the Admiralty. But for all its importance, New Orleans was as perplexing as the region it inhabited.
The port occupied a narrow strip of land between a river and a lake: the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain. Yet for all the water surrounding it, it was a damnable place to reach by boat. There were two main routes: the front door upriver from the Delta, and the back door by way of the Rigolets and the lake. Both were hazardous and slow, being afflicted with shallow waters, dangerous currents and shifting sandbanks. A fleet of small barges and rafts was required to convey cargoes between the port and the larger seagoing merchantmen waiting offshore, either at Chandeleur Island off the Delta or Ship Island off the Rigolets.
A French national ship such as the Virginie—or indeed a well-armed privateer—had only to wait at either of these locations to snap up a score of rich prizes—or cause the trade to dry up altogether, whilst enjoying ample opportunity of communicating with the Cajuns on the mainland.
Which was why Nathan had taken the precaution of clearing the ship for action and drumming the men to quarters—though it smacked of the same nervous apprehension as had possessed his hapless predecessor. The next few hours could very well see the long-awaited encounter between the Virginie and the Unicorn. Nathan only wished he could be more confident of the outcome.
There were other causes for concern. The waters off the coast shoaled rapidly, even several miles out from the shore, and the depth varied dramatically so that he was obliged to maintain a seaman in the chains to cast the lead at frequent intervals for fear of running aground. And with the wind blowing from the southwest, as at present, there was a great danger of becoming embayed though for this reason their approach had been timed to coincide with the ebb which should help to carry them
offshore.
And then there was this wretched haze: an opaque crystal ball shot through with sunlight, revealing nothing. As the Unicorn glided slowly onward Nathan had the impression that the heavy, liquid air parted before them and then closed after, drawing them in towards whatever menace lay in the hidden waters ahead.
“Land ho!”
A shout from the lookout in the foretop and it took all Nathan’s self-control not to rush to the rail, as he would almost certainly have done on the Speedwell.
“Ten points off the starboard bow.”
Slowly, painfully slowly to his straining vision, it emerged, not so much land as a denser patch of haze lying low in the sea to the northwest.
“Ship Island,” said the master at his shoulder, as much relief as satisfaction in his voice. But how could he be sure, with not a single identifiable feature to mark it out from its neighbours? There was only one chart of the region available to them: drawn by the Swiss engineer Des Barres for the British Navy during the American War. It showed Ship Island as a thin strip of land, five miles long, a few hundred yards wide and shaped like an eel with a projection near the head that could have been its gills. Otherwise it was quite without character. Little more than a sandbank composed of fine white quartz eroded from granite in the Appalachian Mountains carried seaward by the rivers and creeks and dumped a few miles offshore. But there was a good anchorage at its western end—at least according to the chart—with four fathoms of water before the shoals began and the land and the sea began to play their tricks.
They crept closer to the island and a few sketchy details emerged: the white sand, the waving grasses bleached almost the same colour by the sun, great flocks of seabirds along the shore, even a clump of brushwood here and there on the higher ground towards the middle. But nothing else, no sign of human presence now or in the past.
They followed this desolate shoreline for several miles until at length they sighted a small hill, or large dune, on its westward point. And at last a trace of human activity in the few crude shacks that huddled in its lee—and a wooden jetty with a flagpole but no flag.
This was presumably where the Unicorn had encountered the Spanish official on her previous visit but there was no sign of him now or any of his fellows.
More to the point, there was no sign of the Virginie.
“Let us come about,” Nathan instructed Pym, “and try our luck at the Candle Isles.”
But before they could begin the manoeuvre there was a shout of “Sail ho!” from the foretop and Nathan’s heart missed a beat as he peered in the direction of the lookout’s outstretched arm.
But he was pointing dead ahead. It could not possibly be the Virginie, not from that direction, with scarcely enough water to float a barge. Then Nathan saw the pale triangle of sail and heard the sharp intake of breath from Pym at his side.
It was the cutter, emerging from the haze into which she had vanished over three months earlier with their doomed captain and his mutinous crew.
“It cannot be,” murmured Pym.
Nor was it.
As the vessel bore down on them they saw that though it resembled the cutter in size and rig it was a much broader vessel with a blunt, rounded bow, not unlike a Dutch barge but with the Spanish flag flying from her stern.
“Mr. Imlay,” Nathan called over to his “political adviser” who was lounging against the rail on the far side of the quarterdeck, “perhaps you would be so good as to help us with your excellent Spanish and bid them come alongside.”
“Let us heave to,” he instructed Pym in a quieter voice, “and see if they have any news for us.”
They did. And it was not good.
“The Spanish fort on the Rigolets is under siege,” Imlay declared flatly. “He says it was attacked three days ago by Cajun rebels. They are armed with heavy cannon and mortars. The fort is low on powder and shot and he does not think it can hold out for much longer. Two days at the most.”
“He” was the young Spanish officer who had come aboard from the sailing barge and who now sat in Nathan’s cabin peering hopefully if uncomprehendingly at them with his large brown eyes. His name was Antonio de Escavar, Imlay had reported, and he was an aide to the Governor-General, Baron Carondelet.
Nathan studied the map open on the table before him.
The Rigolets. The Gutter. The back door into New Orleans. The fort was on Coquilles Island at the western end of the channel where it entered the lake, less than twenty miles from their present position. There was no way they could take the Unicorn into the Rigolets, but it was entirely possible that they could reach it in the ship’s boats.
Again, that sense of history repeating itself: of following in the footsteps of his ill-fated predecessor.
“Does he know how many cannon the rebels have—and where they are sited?” he asked Imlay.
A lengthy exchange. Nathan curbed his impatience. He found it extremely frustrating to depend on Imlay as an interpreter but Escavar spoke no English and very little French.
“He says they have eight cannon on Coquilles Island itself and four more on the far side of the Rigolets covering both approaches to the fort.”
“Twelve cannon? How in God’s name did they come by twelve cannon?” But he thought he knew the answer already and indeed, after putting it to the Spaniard, Imlay confirmed it.
“He says they were landed on the coast by a French warship.”
“The Virginie?”
“It would appear likely.”
“Ask him if he knows where she is now.”
It took a while. “He says that after landing the guns and the men she headed south towards the Delta.”
“How does he know that?”
“He says they have a spy among the Cajuns who told them of the plan. When the French take the fort they will attack New Orleans and the Virginie will stop any help from coming up river.”
Nathan’s frown deepened.
“So the Governor knew of the plan but did nothing to try to prevent it?”
Imlay put this to Escavar. It seemed to require several supplementary questions. “He says the Governor is trapped in the fort,” Imlay reported at length. “Apparently he was on a tour of inspection and he was interrogating this informer of his when they were attacked.”
Nathan shook his head.
“Do you believe all this?”
Imlay shrugged. “I don’t know why he should be making it up,” he said.
Nathan glanced once more at the map.
The Mississippi emerged into the Gulf of Mexico about a hundred miles south of their present position. They had been making barely two knots with the wind on their larboard quarter. Beating against it would take them at least two days, probably three.
“Two days, he thinks, before it falls?”
“Two days at most. The governor has given up hope of saving the fort but will hold out as long as possible. He sent Escavar to alert the Captain-General in Cuba in the hope that he would send ships and soldiers in time to save New Orleans.”
“And how did Escavar get out?”
“He slipped out at night with two Indian guides—the men who came aboard with him. They led him through the swamp to where they had concealed a canoe. When they reached the coast they found the goelette—the fishing boat. He was hoping to find a ship to take him to Cuba.”
Nathan studied the man thoughtfully. He looked as if he had been through a swamp. He spoke. Imlay translated.
“He wants to know if we will take him there. He says there is not a moment to lose.”
But Nathan was shaking his head. “Our job is to find the Virginie,” he insisted.
“And what about the fort?”
Nathan showed his irritation. “What can we do? We cannot send the ship’s boats through the Rigolets, not with cannon covering the approaches. I cannot sacrifice half the ship’s company for an obscure Spanish fort.”
Imlay spoke with rare gravity.
“If the fort were to be taken—and
the Governor-General of Louisiana with it—it would be a great encouragement to the rebels. Others would join them. New Orleans would be next. And if New Orleans falls …” He spread his arms as if the consequence of such a calamity must be apparent to even one of Nathan’s limited perception. But in case it were not he added, “Such a victory would resound through the Americas. It would be seen as a victory not only for the French but for the forces of Revolution. It would encourage many others to rise up against their colonial masters. And in Europe, it would appear as if the French were irresistible. The Spanish would almost certainly sue for peace. They might even join the French in a war against the British.”
“So what would you have me do?”
“ Well, we can at least send word to New Orleans.”