the skulking skills necessary. And your French companion there has strength.”
“I didn’t accomplish a thing. Pasques is helping out of desperation.”
“That’s because you didn’t have the aid of modern science, except for sympathetic ink. Now American ingenuity is on your side. We live in an age of invention and experimentation, and you’ve been chosen by fate to pioneer its wonders.”
Smith, who’d been rowed over from the flagship to witness our launching, seconded this endorsement by pumping my hand. “This time you have the chance to crush the entire invasion and write Nelson about how you did it, Gage. He’ll be wild with jealousy.” Smith and Nelson respected each other as warriors but were inevitable rivals for public acclaim. Nelson thought Smith a flamboyant and impractical dreamer, while Smith thought Nelson vain and annoyingly lucky, even though the admiral had lost an eye, a limb, his marriage, and any ounce of fat he’d once possessed.
“And why aren’t you paddling, Robert?” I asked the inventor.
“I’m the bow and you’re the arrow, Ethan. The quickest way back to Astiza is through the French fleet.” He pointed, as if I didn’t know which direction my renewed enemy was. “Start your lethal clockwork for love.”
So Pasques straddled one pontoon to prove himself to English service, and I straddled the other to end the damned war. If the invasion scheme could be foiled, Napoleon somehow toppled, Catherine captured, and peace returned, I could find my family without interference.
“Are you ready, Pasques?”
“More than you know, my friend.”
Once we got under way we said not a word, knowing how sound can carry across water. I pointed at a particularly promising dark shape, Pasques nodded, and we aimed our awkward craft at the warship’s anchor cable, which curved from its bow down into the dark sea. The French ships were anchored bow to stern to form a wall of cannon-studded wood. French land batteries flanked each side.
Our first problem was that the tide threatened to carry us past the intended anchor hawser, and only by digging in my paddle to pivot our ungainly craft at the last moment did I manage to snag the rope. Our stern kept swinging, so Pasques, who remained a poor swimmer, had to slide himself carefully forward to grasp the weedy cable in his big paws, holding us so we didn’t drift down on the enemy ship. I glanced up at the looming bluff of its bow. There was a knob up there that might be a sentry’s head, but no alarm was given. It was a cloudy night, and we were blotted out against a sea of ink. Or so I hoped.
It was eerie to rest there a moment. I could hear the creak of tackle, the mutter of French voices, and the slap of waves against hulls. I took quiet breaths as if it might make a difference. We hung just under the stern of the next ship in line, its stern windows a great bank of mullioned glass and the top of its rudder like the fin of a whale.
The rope to attach the torpedo to the ship’s cable was at the front of our contraption, so Pasques tied it off while I pried off a cover and set the timer.
“Have you set the fuse?” he whispered.
“It’s ticking.”
We had three minutes to escape.
When we pulled the pins to release each hull from the torpedo, they squealed.
“Qui est là?” a lookout challenged.
Our catamaran came apart. The torpedo floated by itself. In theory, the line at its nose was just long enough to let it drift down on the ship. We backed with our paddles, my pontoon accidentally banging the explosive-filled coffer and making me wince. This was not as easy as it looked on Fulton’s diagrams.
A lantern lit. “Anglais!”
There was a boom, and a foretop blunderbuss erupted, spraying an ark of musket balls at the shadow we made. Waterspouts sprang all around us, some bullets pinging off our lead-covered hulls.
“Merde,” Pasques muttered.
Miraculously, we’d not been hit, but we were in it now. Shouts and bells sounded up and down the French line. Gunport doors lifted like lion mouths, and muzzles trundled forward to aim at British ships that couldn’t be seen yet. Muskets fired blindly into the dark, the stabs of light trying to find us. I dared not shout to my companion, but he was digging his paddle into the water as furiously as I was, both of us driving our separated pontoons that were as maneuverable as soggy logs. It