“Because it is alike to having a dragon in one’s house, I presume?”
“It may well be, but it is so-named because the soldiers are dragoons.”
“They are indeed a rough bunch of fellows, by reputation.”
“They are. Louis is not worried about the peasants rebelling - they are too starved to fight - nor the aristocrats - they are too few - but the middle people, the bourgeois, could be trouble, the merchants, artisans, tradespeople. If he billeted the common soldiery on such a fellow that would be seen as terrible, and the aristos might think ‘will it next be us?’. If he billeted cavalry they would not gleefully hump the fellow’s wife and daughters, having a dozen mistresses already, and they would not drink his cellar dry because it would not contain a single bottle of vintage Montrachet, probably they would instead contract the fellow to make them a suite of dining-room furniture. So it is the dragoons he sends; the townspeople can pretend they are civilised like the cavalry, and turn their faces away, yet they behave as cruelly as reivers.”
“Stupid men will often believe that their spite is cleverness,” said Blue Peter.
“Louis is indeed a stupid man. Soon his idiot’s pride will bring all Europe to war.”
They stood against the taffrail in silence for a while, watching the sails snap and vibrate in the wind, and the red-and-grey-clad foremast jacks in the rigging trimming them.
“Tell me, Captain,” said Blue Peter, “when did you buy the Dutch clothes?”
“Oh, about four months ago,” said Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges, smiling.
Insane, deluded, or not, thought Blue Peter, his plan has been deeply laid. Where is he taking us, on his monster-chase?
CHAPTER THE SIXTH,
or A Close Shave.
“As we are a-pretendin’ to be nice peaceable Dutch persons,” bellowed Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges, “it behooves yuz to learn yerselves a few words o’ the lingo.” He tapped the blackboard. “First word, o’ course, be ‘please’, because we are polite Dutch persons, and that word is alstublieft, which is short for als het U belieft, meanin’ ‘if it you pleases ‘. Now you say it ... alstublieft.”
The crew, assembled in the waist and in the rigging, mumbled ‘alstublieft’ as best they could. There was little wind, and the sails hung, flapping occasionally when a stray cat’s-paw of breeze caught them.
“Pay attention, shipmates,” bellowed the Captain. “We are in the Gulf of Gabes, an’ so we are in the waters o’ the corsairs of Barbary, who are a parcel o’ nasty buggers, and no mistake. Pirates they may be - and indeed they pays fees to use the ports o’ the Spanish main - but they are not members o’ the Free Brotherhood o’ the Coasts, curse ‘em, and they would surely take us prize as soon as look at us. Iffen they did that they would sell us all at the slave-market and we’d spend the rest o’ our miserable lives pulling the oar of a galley.”
The Captain paused for breath, and to run his cold grey eyes over the faces of the buccaneers.
“However, I knows that the admiral o’ the Algerine fleet, Suleyman Reis, is actually a Dutchman, name of Salomo de Veenboer!”
There was a mutter of surprise from the crew.
“Strange, ain’t it, mateys?” said the Captain, “but it be true. He was taken into slavery himself, but worked his way up through cunning and brutality, an’ now he’s the donanma komutani, which is to say admiral o’ the fleet. He has recently squeezed the Dutch East India Company into givin’ him much gold to let their ships be, an’ some say he do yearn to go home, to the country o’ his birth, and wishes to be seen in a favourable light, and so we be pretendin’ to be Hollanders to take advantage o’ his present benevolence to them. All this’ll be for naught if yuz cannot learn yerselves a few words o’ the lingo. Think o’ the galley-oar iffen yuz finds yer minds wandering, and how many times ye has to pull it every day! Now says it again, you lubbers!”
“Alstublieft!” roared the crew.
“The next word is ‘thankyou’, or ‘thank’ee’, which is dank U wel or bedankt ...”
This notion of the Captain’s to bludgeon the crew into obedience with words works wondrously well, thought Blue Peter Ceshwayoo, but I pray that he does not over-use it. If he ever intends to give them lectures in the appreciation of water-colours I shall try and stop him. The sun was hot on his neck, and the still air oppressive, the sky a blue bowl from horizon to horizon. The Captain was still bellowing.
“ ... the Dutch for ‘no’ is nee, or neen in some parts. ‘Yes’ is ja. After me ...”
There was a shout from the mainmast top. Blue Peter was jerked from a reverie about a plump Dutch lady he had once seen in a painting. The look-out at the main-top was pointing.
“Lesson over!” roared the Captain. “Do any of yuz lubbers speak any Dutch at all?” A few hands went up. “Yer must stay on deck, then. Enough crew in the rigging to trim sail iffen the wind stiffens, the rest o’ yuz below. Cutlasses and guns ready. Cannon loaded and primed, but not run out. And be as quiet as little mice below, d’yuz hear me? As quiet as little mice!”
“Do you intend adopting Lord Mondegreen’s stratagem of concealing the crew below decks?” said Blue Peter.
“Well, I do have the advantage that my crew will come up when I call them,” said the Captain, “but I would rather convince any corsairs that we are a Dutch ship, and so not their prey. Peter, go and attend to your guns, then come back on deck. Your great size and fine uniform may impress them if we parley.”
“I have no Dutch, Captain.”
“Well then, look shy and mumble. I must go up and see for myself.” The Captain strode from the quarterdeck and jumped up onto the ratlines. Blue Peter was briefly obstructed by the ship’s carpenter wrestling the blackboard and easel down the companionway before he could get to the gundeck. The gun-crews were already loading and ramming the cannons, the gun-locks were out of their wooden boxes and fixed to the touch-holes, while the rest of the crew armed themselves in silence broken only by muttered curses and the clink of metal.
When Blue Peter returned on deck Captain Greybagges was climbing down from the shrouds.
“It is Algerines, blast ‘em. A galley. With no wind we cannot even bring the guns to bear. If I launch a longboat to swing her round, then we don’t look much like a peaceable Dutch ship that has its protection paid for. I shall have to brazen it out, Peter, unless a wind comes.”
No wind came, and the galley came closer, until Blue Peter could see the massed corsairs on its deck and the glint of the bright sun on their scimitars and breastplates. The oars of the galley moved as one, like the wings of a bird, as it manoevred to approach the frigate from the prow, out of the line of fire of her broadside guns. There is something odd about those Algerines, thought Blue Peter, but I cannot place what it is exactly.
When the galley bumped gently into the becalmed frigate, its low rakish silhouette sliding easily