Under false colours

Dutch customs officer who stood warily watching them.

'Oh, they made a fuss, but ...' Gilham shrugged and disdained to finish the sentence. Drinkwater smiled.

'Are your men still game?'

'Certainly. Why should they not be? They are being well paid for a little inconvenience. They were more discontented lying at anchor in that detestable anchorage.'

Drinkwater envied Gilham the cold, unemotional approach of a man whose life was guided by the simplistic principles of profit and loss.

'Every man has his price, they say,' Drinkwater said.

'And it is a very accurate saw, sir,' added Gilham, cocking an appraising eye at the mysterious 'captain' Littlewood had informed him was a personage of some importance.

'You sound as though you have done this sort of thing before, Captain.'

'I am told,' Gilham replied obliquely, 'that best Bohea is available for guests at the Tuileries and Malmaison.'

'As is cognac at the Court of St James ... hullo, our friend stirs.'

Both men watched the uncanny sight of a large gaffed mainsail hauled aloft from an unseen deck as the Dutch customs cutter got under way. The long masthead pendant with its Imperial device trailed out in the light north-westerly wind. Littlewood joined them and in silence they observed the manoeuvre. After a few minutes they heard the splash of an anchor and the rumble of cable, then the mainsail disappeared again. The Dutch cutter was anchored closer to the two British merchant ships.

'When this seasmoke burns off,' Gilham said, 'you'll see her guns run out.'

'That ain't a matter of immutable law, Captain Gilham,' Drinkwater remarked lightly, 'but it's a damned sound judgement.'

A few minutes later, arriving as weirdly as Gilham had done, the senior Dutch customs officer clambered back over the Galliwasp's rail. Seeing Gilham he frowned and addressed a few curt words to the tired junior he had left to stand guard the previous night. The younger man said something in reply, then shrugged.

The senior officer crossed the deck, his face angry. He asked Gilham a question and the younger officer translated.

'He say vy do you come this scheep?'

'To talk with my friends,' said Gilham, his expression truculent. 'How do we know you won't cheat us?'

The junior of the two Dutchmen shrugged again and relayed the message. The exchange reversed itself.

'It is verboten you make talk.'

It was Gilham's turn to shrug. 'I do not understand.'

Again the pantomime of translation. This time there was a longer exchange, then: 'Vy do you come here to Brunsbuttel?'

'We told you last night,' Gilham said sharply, his self-appointment as spokesman lent force by his very real frustration. 'Because I have been waiting at Helgoland for seven months to discharge my cargo.' He held up his fingers to emphasize the period. 'Now the British Government tell me it is not wanted. I have no money. I must pay my crew. I have the expenses of my ship. I have a wife. I have sons.' He punched the air with his index finger, advancing on the unfortunate Dutchman until his fingertip tapped the blue-coated breast, physically ramming at him the cogency of the simple sentences. 'Now I come to sell to the Hamburgers what the British Government does not want. Tell that to your chief, and tell him that he does not tell me what I must and must not do. I am master of the Ocean and by heaven, I'll not be pushed around by you, or him!'

Drinkwater watched the Dutchmen; one quailed visibly under Gilham's onslaught, the other's face darkened as he understood the import of Gilham's speech. As his junior turned to explain, he was brushed aside. Gilham found himself under attack. The senior officer exploded into a tirade of invective in which God, swine and the English were recognizably called upon.

The senior douanier did not wait for this to be translated for his audience, but turned on his heel and went over the Galliwasp's rail in a swirl of his cloak. His colleague began to stammer out an explanation but ceased as Gilham touched his arm.

'Never mind, my friend,' he said, impishly smiling, 'we understand.'

The customs officer stood nonplussed, then shrugging dismissively shouted something to his seamen and followed his commander over the side. A moment later another young officer climbed aboard.

'The king is dead, long live the king,' Gilham said drily.

'Well, I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what happens now,' Littlewood remarked. 'I wonder if there's fog in the outer estuary?'

By noon the visibility had improved and in the crisp, cold air, they could see the light tower at Cuxhaven and beyond it, the gaunt outline of the Kugelbacke beacon. Closer, the green river bank to the north and the white painted houses and spired kirk of Brunsbuttel spread out along the Ditmarsch shore. Closer still, the low, black hull of the Dutch cutter swum out of the dissipating mist.

'Looks as innocent as a swimhead barge, don't she,' said Littlewood as they studied her sharply raked bow.

'Not with those black muzzles pointing at us,' said Gilham.

'How d'you rate your own people if it came to a fire fight?' asked Drinkwater in a low voice.

'They don't have any practice,' replied Littlewood, 'though they'd be game enough.'

'Well, gentlemen,' said Gilham resolutely, 'if you're contemplating a private war, I'm returning to the Ocean. As I said to that squarehead, I've an interest in survival, never having rated glory very highly. Besides,' he added as he whistled for his boat's crew, 'it's dinner time.'

Littlewood and Drinkwater, who dined later, stood in silence for a while, curiously sweeping their glasses along the shoreline. The pastoral tranquillity of the scene was far from the blasts of war they were discussing. Cattle grazed the water-meadows and they could see the red flash of a shawl where a girl was tending poultry on the foreshore.

'Boat putting off from the Dutchman.' Munsden's report made them turn their telescopes on the cutter. Both of their recent visitors were leaving, bound for the beach where a horseman rode down to meet them.

In the sunshine they could see a green uniform topped by a plumed shako.

'French officer of chasseurs,' said Drinkwater, holding the figure in his Dollond pocket-glass.

'I can see some more of them, look, behind the large cottage to the left of the church ...'

Drinkwater swung his glass to where Littlewood was indicating. He could see mounting figures pulling out of what he presumed were their horse-lines.

'I wonder why he never asked for our papers,' pondered Littlewood as the two men watched the Dutchmen leap ashore and confer with the French officer.

'I think we annoyed him too much and he was frustrated by not being able to speak to us directly. Gilham upset him and I suspect he's reporting us to his superiors. He's got us under his guns and he may be under some constraint, being a Dutchman.'

'There are some fiercely republican Dutchmen,' Littlewood said.

'Yes, I know.'

'I wonder what lingo they speak between each other?' Littlewood mused as they watched the French officer jerk his horse's head round.

'God knows,' said Drinkwater.

The French officer apparently shouted an order and four troopers, the men that had just mounted up, broke away from the horse-lines and rode after him as he set off eastwards at a canter.

'Odd that he needs an escort,' said Littlewood, lowering his glass and wiping his eye. 'Matter of waiting now,' he added.

They were compelled to wait two days before they learned of any reaction in Hamburg. Early on the morning of the first of these, however, a cloudy morning with the wind backed into the south-west, the horizon