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There was no changing Barnes’s mind. Daniel had committed a grave error by instilling Barnes with Hope first, then trying to make him afraid. If a want of hope made men desperate, a surfeit of it made them stupid in a wholly other way. Hope was tricky business, it seemed, and ought to be managed by someone with more experience of it than Daniel.
They were accosted by a lone musket-shot from shore. The captain ordered his seamen to slacken the canvas until they were only just making head-way. A skiff had pushed off from the indistinct shore of the Isle of Grain. News of it rapidly penetrated the quarterdeck and brought Charles White and Sir Isaac Newton up to the poop.
In a few minutes the skiff came alongside them, carrying a lieutenant of the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards. It had been commandeered from a local fisherman and his boy, who did all the work. They were not so much put out by this turn of events, as incredulous.
The lieutenant brought a cargo of words, and unloaded it with no small pride on the poop deck. These words were accepted as valuable military intelligence by all present save Daniel, who construed them only as additional tricks put in their way by Jack the Coiner.
The gist of it was that a brilliant success had been achieved. The dragoons had galloped over the Yantlet Creek bridge half an hour ahead of schedule, and posted a platoon there to hold it. The rest of the company had made for that stretch of shore-line nearest Shive Tor, and posted a lookout on St. James’s Church. This was built on the nearest thing the Isle of Grain had to a hill, and looked straight out across the tide flats. There the command post had been established. Most of the company was now deployed below it, at the high tide line, ready either to intercept any counterfeiters fleeing from the Tor on foot, or to mount a charge across the flats and storm the building. All of which had been noted by the inmates of the Tor, who had burned a few documents (or so it could be guessed from interpreting smoke) and then tried to escape by water.
Moored on the seaward side of the Tor, in the dredged cha
Having concluded this narration, the lieutenant awaited orders. Now, Mr. Charles White, who was quite obviously the master of this expedition, had the good form to look expectantly at Barnes, giving him leave to utter the command.
Barnes considered it for a long time-to the shock, then irritation, of Charles White and Isaac Newton both. Finally he shrugged and gave orders. This lieutenant was to be rowed back to shore, where he was to order an advance across the tidal flats to Shive Tor. Atalanta was to raise sail and pursue the fleeing whaler, pausing only to drop its longboat at the mouth of the Tor’s dredged cha
These orders produced intense activity from all except Charles White, who responded with a sigh of mock relief and a roll of the eyes: what had taken Colonel Barnes so long? Precious seconds had been wasted as he pondered what was obvious!
Barnes had turned his back on White immediately after giving the command. He thumped over to Daniel.
“You’re correct,” Barnes said. “It’s-what did your friend call it? A lay.”
“What brings this change of mind, Colonel Barnes?”
“The fact that I had no decision to make. An imbecile could have given those orders.” He glanced over at White. “And one almost did.”
“Is it your intention to remain aboard, or to go to the Tor in the longboat?”
“A peg-leg’s no use in muck,” Barnes said.
“Daniel, I should benefit from your assistance at the Tor,” a
Barnes pondered for a moment.
“On the other hand,” he said, “I could always hop about on one foot.”
Lieutenant’s Lodging, the Tower of London
LATE AFTERNOON
BY THE TIME HE GOT up to the late lieutenant’s bedchamber, no fewer than four grappling-irons were already lodged in the sills of its open windows. As he approached, a fifth erupted through a sash, and flying glass nearly accounted for his remaining eye. He spun away, backed to the window, thrust his hand out into the breeze, and skated it back and forth until he heard an answering cheer from below.
Sixteen months ago, MacIan had been arrested for a violation of the Stabbing Act. The stabbee had been an Englishman: a Whig who had mocked him in a coffee-house, pretending that he could not understand a word the Scotsman was saying. The Prosecutor had been the Whig’s widow: a more formidable opponent. By dint of various co
It was a different world out here. The only thing he had an eye for at first was doings on the river: not the easiest page for a one-eyed man to read, given the number and variety of ships strewn over the Pool. As a boy he had thought ships wonders. As a veteran he saw them differently, each vessel a coagulated Motive, a frozen Deed.
His eye soon picked out the triangular sails of a sloop, and a blue French naval ba
Within the Moat and on the Wharf, at this moment, should be seventy-two private soldiers, four corporals, four sergeants, two drums and a single lieutenant, that being a single Company, and the minimum complement deemed necessary to guard the place.