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She worked her way round the poop-deck rail toward Joha
“I heard no cock crow,” answered Joha
“Because you were crowing at the same moment.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Vomiting,” she explained. “But a cock did crow, distinctly, over there.” She waved vaguely to starboard.
Joha
A cow mooed.
“The cock-crow could have a second meaning as well,” Caroline pointed out, “no less troubling than the first: namely, that the fog is lifting.” She had to raise her voice and lean closer to Joha
“Yes,” said Joha
“At other moments during the execution of the present Plan I have had occasion to question whether it had been well-wrought; and yet troubles resolved, and we got this far,” Joha
“Poor Jean-Jacques. As out of place here as a rooster.”
“If we could have galloped to Hanover, I would have so arranged it,” he admitted. “But it is not for you to show concern for me in this pass.”
“If we are overhauled, I shall put on the black sash that says I am in this country incognito,” Caroline said. “Somewhere on yonder brig must be an officer, a man of breeding, who shall know what it means.”
“The incognito worked for Sophie when she would go to visit Liselotte in the halcyon days of Versailles,” Joha
“What does that mean? You shall claim that you kidnapped me and brought me to London against my will?”
“Something like that.”
“It is foolish. I will simply deny that I am who I am.”
The discussion went on thus, tediously, circularly, and without result, even as the skipper Ursel was carrying on a parallel exchange with the captain of the Royal Navy brig. By signal-flags, the brig ordered Sophia to allow herself to be overhauled. Sophia affected not to see, then, not to understand, the message; the brig stiffened it with a ca
In the end exhaustion caught up with Ursel. Or perhaps he had simply been outmaneuvered by the brig, which late in the morning began to draw within firing range of Sophia, and seemed as if she might be trying to get into position to fire a broadside. Forced suddenly to choose between ca
“Well, I know nothing of Admiralty law,” said Caroline, “but this looks more ocean than river to me. I say we are on the high seas, minding our own business.”
“We are aground,” Joha
“Then we were on the high seas minding our own business,” Caroline said, “when along came that nasty brig and forced us to run aground. It is an act of piracy.”
Joha
“We were on a pleasure cruise out of Antwerp when it happened,” Caroline went on.
“What, and just happened to cross the North Sea by accident?”
“Blown off course in the night by that unusual easterly wind. Happens all the time. Come, don’t be difficult! Last night in London you said I must do deeds beyond your scope. Re-writing history is a royal prerogative, is it not?”