'Never mind, Mr Frey. Word of an insolent British cutter in the offing will circulate the waterfront before dark and they have at least saved us from the attentions of those gentlemen.'
Drinkwater indicated a small hill which overlooked the final approach to the entrance. It mounted a battery, and at least two officers, conspicuous in their bell-topped shakos, could be seen regarding them through telescopes.
'Stand by those swivels then,' Drinkwater said, and Frey called to his men to blow on their matches.
'I want you to tack in the very entrance and fire both guns to loo'ard as you do so.'
Frey called his men to stand by the sheets and runners. They were drawing close to the jetties now, and were being watched by at least one man who stood at the extremity of the seaward jetty beneath the lighthouse.
The stream of the tide bypassed the entrance itself but ran fast across it, swirling dangerously round the abutment of the seaward jetty now opening on their port bow. 'Watch the tidal set on that jetty, Mr Frey.'
'Aye sir, I have it...' Frey grunted with the effort.
'Ready about and down helm!' Frey called, and Kestrel turned on her heel and came up into the wind with a great shaking of her sails. The wind was getting up as the men ran away with the starboard runner falls and let fly those to port. The two crumps of the swivel guns echoed back from the wooden piles of the jetty, then Kestrel lay over on the starboard tack and stood to the westward. On Kestrel's port quarter the two French luggers sailed blithely into Calais and on her starboard beam the piles of the extremity of the seaward jetty suddenly loomed above them. Drinkwater looked up. The man was still there, staring at them, with the lighthouse rising behind him.
Drinkwater raised his hat again and, with a grin, called out 'Bonsoir, M'sieur!' But the man made no move of acknowledgement beyond spitting to leeward. 'An expectorating Bonapartist,' Drinkwater remarked, jamming his hat back on his head.
Frey gave a laugh of nervous relief. He had nearly been caught out by the tide carrying him against the jetty-head. Panache was one thing, but it had seemed for one anxious moment dangerously close to disaster!
As if to chastise them for their impudence, two shot plunged into the sea off their port beam. Looking astern, Frey and Drinkwater caught sight of the smoke dispersing from the muzzles of the cannon in the battery.
'Well, I think we have made our presence known, Mr Frey,' Drinkwater said.
They stood away to the north-west as darkness closed in and when they had hauled sufficiently offshore, Frey hove to. Leaving the deck to the boatswain, the two officers went below to dine.
'Well, I don't know what we will achieve tomorrow, but I think we should be off Blanc Nez again by about five o'clock ...'
'That will give us the tide in our favour again,' Frey added enthusiastically, sipping at his wine as Jago came in with a steaming suet pudding. 'By God, Jago, that looks good!' 'Bon appetit, they says hereabouts I think, sir.' Drinkwater looked up sharply. 'You don't speak French do you, Jago?'
'Mais oui, M'sieur. I speak it well enough to pass among the French without their suspecting I am English.'
'And how did you acquire that skill, may I ask?' 'Well, sir, 'tis how I learned to cook, too. You see, sir, I was a boy shippin' out of Maldon in ninety-eight with my old pa. We was, er, fishin' like,' he winked, looking at Drinkwater and then at Frey, 'if you gets my meanin', sir ...'
'You mean you were smuggling?' 'Good God, no sir. I was a mere lad ...' 'Then your father was smuggling.'
'Not quite, sir. We was actually fishing off the Kentish Knock when up comes this big cutter, flying British colours, and lies to just upwind and floats a boat down to us. Imagine our surprise when over the side comes this Frog officer, all beplumed and covered in gold. He wants the skipper, that's me dad, to take a packet into Maldon and to hand it over to a man at an address he gave him. I think he gave Pa some fancy passwords and such like. To make sure of it, he took me out of the boat and carried me off with him ...' Jago shrugged. 'Sommat happened to the boat, I remember she was leakin' awful and there was some bad weather blew up next day. Anyway there I was dumped on a small farm near Abbeville. The farmer was an invalid soldier and I learned the place was often used by strange men who were passin' back and forth across the Channel. They avoided bein' seen in Calais or Boulogne but weren't far away when the time came for 'em to ship out. That's how I speak French, sir.'
'Fascinating, Jago. You must have been released at the Peace then.'
'That's right, sir. One day I was put aboard the Dover packet with three golden sovereigns in me pocket and told to go home. Me old widdered mother thought me the answer to her prayers.'
'You seem to be the answer to ours,' Frey said, picking up knife and fork.
'Oh yes, sorry, sirs. Don't you let me spoil your suppers.'
'What an odd tale,' Frey said with his mouth full.
'Yes, indeed.'
They were off Blanc Nez at dawn, and to the southward, running up from Boulogne, was a brig-sloop. 'British or French, I wonder?' Drinkwater asked as he came on deck in answer to Frey's summons.
'It doesn't much matter, sir, since we don't have the signal book aboard. If you've no objection, I suggest we run straight up and keep ahead of him.'
'Very well. With the wind the way it is this morning, if he's French we can escape to windward,' Drinkwater replied, for the breeze had veered a point or two into the north-north-west. 'We should have the legs of him.'
A few moments later it was clear that the brig-sloop had seen them and had decided to give chase, for she was setting studding sails with a speed that bespoke British nationality. However, they were already running along the sandy shore to the west of Calais, impelled by the hurrying tide, the hands busy loading the swivels and joking amongst themselves. A few moments later, as the sun rose above a low bank of cloud over the fields of France, the red ensign went aloft once more.
This morning there were no fishing-boats to mask them, nor did the earliness of the hour render them invisible to the vigilant eyes of the French gunners. As they ranged up towards the entrance of Calais harbour, shot plunged into the sea around them, raising tall columns of water on either beam.
But the speed of the tide under them combined with the swiftness of the cutter to frustrate the French artillery. The nearest they got to hitting Kestrel was to soak her decks with water. There were some early morning net fishermen on the seaward jetty whose gear dropped over into the water, but they took scant notice of the British cutter. Years of war and blockade had inured them to such things and they were quite indifferent to the presence of a British ship so close to home.
When they had tacked off the breakwaters and stood back to the westwards, they found that the French gunners in the battery had shifted their attention to the brig-sloop. As they went about, the commander of the brig-sloop, seeing that the cutter was not French and running for shelter in to Calais, also tacked, frustrating the French gunners. Both vessels now stood clear of the coast, with Kestrel overhauling the brig.
Drinkwater closed his glass with a snap. 'Adder, mounting eighteen guns,' he announced. As they surged up under the brig's quarter, Drinkwater saw her young commander at the starboard hance raise his speaking-trumpet.
'Cutter, 'hoy, what ship? You are not answering the private signal!'