felt like Napoleon’s entire navy and army were trying to take a bead on us.
The clockwork kept ticking.
Paddling as furiously as a Canadian voyageur, I seemed barely to budge a pontoon sheathed in metal and as easy to steer as a mule. I cursed that we hadn’t time to try this in England before our attack. The tide was carrying us down the French line even as we strove to work away from it. Our saving grace was that the current was so swift that the blind shooting was throwing up spouts of water well behind us now.
For an instant, I allowed myself hope. Maybe the crazy scheme would really work! I’d be a hero, Pasques would have a new country, and the British would send us on to look for Astiza, Harry, and a medieval artifact.
And then the Frenchman looked over his shoulder.
“The torpedo is following.”
I wrenched around. The bomb had somehow come loose from the anchor cable and was drifting merrily in our wake, almost keeping pace despite our furious paddling. It was only a hundred feet behind, as persistent as a duckling.
Ticking remorselessly.
“We need them to sink it!” I shouted in English. “Here! Shoot here!” I made a splash with my paddle.
“Imbecile!” my companion cried.
Cannon blasts erupted, the suck of their trajectory almost tipping me over. As a professional gambler, I was calculating that the torpedo was longer than my narrow silhouette and that such odds meant a cannonball might sink it before hitting me. There were slaps as several balls skipped off the waves. The French cannon flashes were answered by British ones. Both fleets lit up.
Sweet mother. We were caught in a crossfire.
I looked back. The torpedo was trailing as doggedly as a pet, a hundred and fifty feet back now but still drifting at a good clip. Huge plumes of water erupted around us. Lanterns and torches were being lit in the camps of Boulogne. I could hear bugles, bells, and the rumble of drums.
We’d got things off to a rousing start, but not in the way intended.
Then the torpedo blew up.
The ocean erupted. The explosion was gigantic, a geyser of water shooting upward as high as the French mastheads. The concussion sent out a clout of air that knocked both Pasques and me into the sea.
“Ethan!” The buffalo could barely float.
I could have abandoned him right then and struck out for the British, but that’s not my character. I’d recruited him to this madness and felt responsible for his carcass. So I swam in the policeman’s direction and found him thrashing, his pontoon lost in the dark. First Catherine Marceau, then the emperor, and now a floundering ox! I was becoming a regular Channel lifeguard. I came in behind so Pasques wouldn’t drown me with his flailing, reached across his shoulder to grasp his thick chest, and pulled him to me. I shouted in his ear. “I’ve got you! Lie still and I’ll float you!”
He kicked and thrashed instinctively. I half choked him. “Still, or you drown us both!” Finally, he quieted, floating sluggishly. Splashes continued to erupt all around us, metal screaming. Gunports flamed. Now what? The torpedo wasted, the French line intact, and the English fleet and Johnstone’s mothership half a mile of cold swimming away. If steering the catamaran had been awkward, towing Pasques was like dragging a barge.
The night was growing brighter. An ominous squadron of flaming English fireships bore down to engulf the French, but we’d failed to blast the hole they were intended to drift through. Flaming chips flew off the burning vessels as French cannonballs battered them. One, then two, began to sink. Behind, a flotilla of sloops, ketches, luggers, and longboats was sending up a barrage of Congreve rockets that drew scarlet arcs across the night. They were beautiful things, climbing into the sky and then scything down toward the French fleet like meteors. Hundreds of cannons were thumping in reply from the French shore. I could feel the beat of their blasts through the water.
The pontoons we’d been straddling had disappeared.
There was nothing we could do but swim for the French side. Maybe we could somehow slip by and sneak away on shore?
As we came between bow and stern of two thundering warships, Pasques waved his arm and exhaustedly shouted for help in French.
A péniche drifted to us, its crowd of anxious soldiers pointing their guns. My French companion reached and grasped its side. An officer peered at us.