to flip, spilling hundreds of men into cold water.
Other sailors were dragging down skiffs that could be used as lifeboats. Napoleon ran for one. Was he mad?
Roustan, turban soaked and mustache streaming, tried to restrain the emperor, who shook him off. “We must get them out of that!” With surprising agility he leaped into a lifeboat like a hurdler clearing a fence, stunning the sailors with his sudden appearance and famous hat. “Row, row, to rescue those soldiers!” I leaped aboard, too, not thinking of anything but to try to save lives. I’m a better swimmer than most. Roustan stood helplessly on shore. He couldn’t swim at all.
We made perhaps twenty yards before a huge comber crashed down on our lifeboat, filling it with water. We foundered. The water was just as freezing as when Catherine and I landed near Biville, and I felt the familiar sting of salt in my nostrils as our craft went under. As we sank we were buffeted by surf. I reached to grab Bonaparte’s coat collar.
I could have had revenge in that instant. Hold Napoleon under the sea, punch his gut to make him suck in water, and an emperor’s death would be blamed on his own folly and obstinacy, with no risk to my family or me. I might even wrangle a medal by pretending I’d attempted a rescue instead.
Yet I couldn’t bring myself to do it, which suggests I would make a poor assassin. Murder wasn’t my style. When lightning turned the sea surface into a golden mirror and showed which way was up, I hauled the ruler of France with me. Napoleon had the swimming skills of a Corsican boy. We broke for air, gasping.
“The damned coat,” he choked. We sank with its weight. I helped pull his arms free of the sleeves and it fell away. Then I seized his uniform jacket and kicked upward again, breaking to the surface. The surf, fortunately, pounded us toward land.
One moment we were alone, struggling against drowning, and the next twenty pairs of arms reached to drag Napoleon onto shore. I was left to my own devices, which was just as well since the rescuers were half trampling their emperor in their zeal to save him. I staggered out of the water and numbly fell upon the beach to spit and gasp. Hundreds of other capsized men were also crawling from the waves, while scores of drowned bodies floated like driftwood logs.
It was the disastrous landing at Alexandria all over again.
For several minutes Napoleon stood bent, with his hands on his knees, sucking great shuddering breaths as chaos continued around him. A blanket was thrown across his shoulders. Someone handed him a flask of brandy. He took a swig, coughed, and straightened. His hat had disappeared, the sea pasting his thinning hair to his forehead. He looked out at the Channel with grim fury. Then he snapped an order. “Fires for the survivors.”
Any normal ruler would have retreated to his bedroom at that point. Bonaparte did not. He began striding up and down the sand, shouting commands, and erected order in his wake. A more systematic rescue was organized. Some of the hundreds of dead, their faces bleached of color and eyes wide from the drowning, were dragged out of sight. Beach fires flared and shivering survivors huddled around them. As night fell the bonfires helped orient the helmsmen, and most of the boats eventually made it back to shore intact. Twenty did not, however. The waves pounded them to fragments.
Bonaparte spotted me, gave a nod of acknowledgment, and offered me his flask. The brandy was welcome heat.
“Go to your wife, American. You’ve witnessed enough catastrophe for one evening.”
“And Your Majesty?”
“A soaking for my body. A worse pounding for my pride. Go.”
So I did, but then he called after me.
“Gage? Thank you for saving my life. The ledger of accounts between us is getting complicated, is it not?”
“More than you know.”
“And more to come. We’ll talk soon.”
I learned later that Napoleon didn’t leave the beach until dawn, his clothes crusted with sand, salt, and bonfire smoke. Sunrise revealed horror. The smashed remains of the capsized boats and drowned corpses marked the high-tide line.
By official French count, fifty men needlessly drowned. Duhèsme told me privately the toll was actually two hundred, and the British would publish accounts claiming twice that. And this had been a summer storm in a harbor! What would happen to these elite legions when they tried to row across the