Probably most captains of the King's ships were often in this same predicament - especially, he told himself, if they were married. Yet if you had a wife, and perhaps children, you thought of them whether they were in a house in the quiet countryside or if the wife was waiting nearby in a rowing boat: in one instance you were worrying about her being widowed and the children made fatherless; in the other you were worrying about her safety. Either way, you were worrying; either way you were preoccupied. So perhaps Earl St Vincent was right when he said that if an officer married, he was lost to the Service...
Sarah and the four men waiting in the hut clearly expected to start off at once. He took out his watch. Yes, by now the French guards would have soaked up enough rum to ensure they were befuddled, if not in a stupefied sleep.
He gestured towards the lantern and told Gilbert: 'Bring it with you, otherwise all of us stumbling along in the dark will arouse suspicion. Now, have we the fishing lines? Ah,' he nodded as Auguste and his brother held up coils of thin line. 'And bait?' Sarah rattled the bucket she was carrying.
Two gendarmes passed them on their way to the jetty and one said cheerfully: 'Good fishing. It's a calm night!'
'Too calm,' Auguste answered dourly. 'The fish prefer some wind to ruffle the water.'
Once the gendarmes had passed, Auguste explained: 'Fishermen always grumble. I don't think the fish care about the waves; they have enough sense to stay below them.'
'Unless they bite a hook,' Louis said.
'Ah, no, they're biting the bait, not the hook.'
'They cannot have so much sense: a meal hanging from a line is obviously bait.'
'Yes,' Auguste agreed sarcastically, 'sensible fish eat only from a plate.'
Ramage led them to the avenue of plane trees lining the quay but told Auguste to lead them on to the boat: a sentry might become suspicious of the leader of a group of fishermen who seemed uncertain which was his boat.
He dropped back to walk with Sarah who, careful to act the role of the obedient fisherman's wife, even though it was late at night, had followed the menfolk.
'Feeling nervous?'
'No, not nervous. At the moment I'm thankful not to be smelling potatoes but not sure' - she rattled the bucket - 'if sliced fish is a welcome change. Do you enjoy fishing?'
'This is my first experience,' Ramage admitted. 'I let the men tow a hook when they want, because fish makes a welcome change from salt horse. But towing a line from a rowing boat, or casting with a rod along a river bank - no.'
'You've no patience, that's why,' she said.
He was saved from admitting that by Auguste stopping above a boat moored stern to the quay. 'Well, my friends,' he said loudly, 'I hope your muscles are all working smoothly. Now, someone haul in the sternfast so that I can jump in and slack the anchor rope: then we can get her alongside and put our gear on board.'
The boat's stern was four or five feet from the dock and Louis went down the narrow stone steps to untie the sternfast from a ring that slid up and down a metal rod let into the vertical face of the quay, allowing for the rise and fall of the tide. He cursed as he nearly slipped on the green weed.
'Farmers,' Auguste's brother commented unexpectedly. "That's what we are, farmers going out for a night's fishing.'
No one answered as he went down to help Louis, then called up to Auguste: 'All is ready for the real fishermen to step on board.'
It took five minutes of hauling, pushing and banter for the four Frenchmen to get on board and hold the boat alongside the steps for Sarah and Ramage to climb in. The lantern set down on one of the thwarts revealed the inside of a hull which seemed to have been painted with dried fish scales and decorated with the sun-dried heads, tails and fins of past catches. The worst of the smell was for the moment masked by the sewage running into the Penfeld river from a large pipe a few feet upstream from the steps.
With Sarah seated on a thwart, the wooden bucket of bait on her knees, Ramage and Auguste counted up the oars. Four, held down by a chain wound round them and secured by a padlock. 'I have the key, here,' Auguste said in answer to an unspoken question. 'Now, I want you two, Louis and Albert, to stand in front of the lantern: cast a shadow over the bow.'
Ramage saw a pile of fishing lines and a coil of rope, and as soon as the lantern light was shadowed he saw Auguste pulling them aside and for a moment a flash of steel reflected a bright star.
'They're here,' Auguste muttered. 'Six cutlasses ... two, three large daggers ... five pistols - no, six... a bag of shot... flask of powder, and another of priming powder... You said no muskets.'
It was a remark which sounded like a reproach.
'Believe me,' Ramage said, 'muskets are too clumsy for boarding a ship. If they're loaded, there's always the danger of the lock catching on clothing so the musket fires just when you're trying to be quiet. A pistol tucked in the top of the trousers - that is enough. Anyway, cutlasses or knives tonight: no shots except in an emergency.'
'But we can carry pistols?' Auguste asked anxiously.
'Yes, of course,' Ramage assured him. 'Now, let's get away from here and start fishing nearer the Murex. Bottle fishing - none of you ever heard of that, eh?'
Both Auguste and Gilbert repeated the phrase, which certainly lost something in translation. 'No, never "bottle fishing",' Auguste finally admitted. 'For what kind of fish?'
Ramage laughed and explained. 'In the West Indies, smuggling is even more common than in the Channel, only out there it is called "bottle fishing" when it involves liquor.'
'What is it when it is silk for ladies?' Auguste asked slyly.
'No need to smuggle silk out there: no customs or excise on that,' Ramage said.
Auguste unlocked the padlock and unwound the chain securing the oars. 'We are ready,' he said. 'The fish are waiting for us.'
The men took up their places on the rowing thwarts, leaving Sarah to sit at the aftermost one. They would use a tiller to avoid having to give orders to the oarsmen.
Auguste boated his oar and then scrambled forward to the bow to begin hauling in the weed-covered rope and the anchor while his brother cast off the sternfast, leaving it dangling from its ring on the quay wall. Would the boat ever return to use it again? Ramage thought not.
Gilbert tentatively pulled at his oar and nearly fell backwards off the thwart as the blade scooped air instead of digging into water.
'Don't let go of the oar,' Auguste snapped. 'Dip the blade deeply and just try and keep time with the rest of us.'
'I know how to do it.' Gilbert's voice had a determined ring. 'I'm out of practice.'
'And the palms of your hands will soon be sore,' Auguste added unsympathetically.
'I can see the Murex,' Sarah murmured. 'She's in line with the western end of the Château.'
'Ah, a woman who knows the points of a compass,' Albert said.
The oars creaked, the thwarts creaked from the men's weight and their exertions, and as Ramage crouched he was sure his spine was beginning to creak too. The smell of last week's fish was now almost overwhelming and seemed to be soaking into his clothes. Then he could just see the western edge of the Château, stark and black against the lower stars. The only lights over there were from a high window and a few gun loops, vertical slots that, because of the thickness of the wall and the changing bearing, soon cut off the light from the lanterns inside.