The Baltic Prize

Chapter 44

‘An American, I told you,’ Kydd said uncomfortably.

The master of Dobre Miasto regarded him steadily. ‘So?’

‘My orders are to carry him close to Konigsberg and, where we may not, find a passage for him into the port.’

‘In my ship.’

‘If you will.’

‘I don’t take passengers.’

‘An inconvenience, sir, I’ll agree, but your helpful attitude I’m sure will be noticed by the boarding officer charged with examining for contraband.’

‘I see. He keeps mumchance about coming from a British ship?’ the master growled aggressively. ‘I mean, he allows he’s been nowhere near anything that smells English.’

‘He will understand, I’m sure.’

Delivered to the merchant ship, Dillon was dressed for the part. Spectacled, he wore a shabby clerical black round-brimmed hat and affected an apologetic air, tripping over the boat’s thwarts and ending in a tangle of feet among the amused crew.

He presented himself to the master. ‘I do admire to be in your fine bark, sir,’ he burbled. ‘So fine, so fine.’

‘Just stay out of my way, Mr Yankee.’

‘I will, sir! I will.’

In hours the coast firmed ahead. A land with a king and people but conquered and under the heel of the French. Dillon shivered – with excitement or trepidation he couldn’t tell but it helped that he’d been there before, although under very different circumstances, and knew what to expect.

On deck seamen coiled lines and prepared for docking.

As if absorbed, he stood on the diminutive after-deck, watching, as the squat fortress of Pillau passed before the final approach to the ancient Prussian city.

‘The French are here, I believe?’ he essayed at the hard-eyed master.

‘The bastards are.’

Dillon shuddered. ‘I don’t reckon on them folks,’ he said, with feeling.

‘You won’t see much of ’em if you do just as I says. All they wants is to choke off English trade, both ways, and they makes sure the local crew do it for ’em.’

A pilot cutter came into view, at the masthead a red and white pennant. The pilot came on board, gruff and broad. With him were two officials and an armed guard. Without a word the master went below with them.

‘Oh dear,’ Dillon said to the mate, who had taken over the conn. ‘I’m so worried! Supposing there’s trouble with the papers and-’

‘There won’t be,’ the mate said tightly.

In a remarkably short time the master and the officials reappeared, blank-faced, and stood by the wheel as the ship drew abreast of the wharf and took in sail. Lines were flung out and Dobre hauled in to lay alongside.

With a rumble of wooden wheels, the brow went out, the officials stepped ashore, and the ship readied for discharging.

Dillon had minutes only. He hurried down the companionway aft into the saloon – and still there, on the table, not yet put away, he spied the pack of documents that were the ship’s papers. Having worked with Kydd, he was by now a fair judge of the quality and significance of such – what Admiralty clerks termed ‘fair’ or ‘colourable’ for true or false papers – and these simply looked and felt too good. Neat, pristine sheets beautifully printed and filled in, they showing no sign of the wear of weeks at sea and different ports.

Hurriedly, he leafed through them and noted their comprehensiveness: a Prussian flag vessel, here was the basic bill of lading and manifest but with it were an unusual bonded voyage oath of compliance and a debenture certificate for drawback goods signed by the consul in Le Havre. A bottomry bond entered at Hamburg and the ship’s registry, a clutch of affirmations and certificates – there were the equipage and other documents required by the French. It looked so faultless and-

The door was thrown open. ‘What are you doing with those?’ snapped the master, snatching the papers up.

‘Oh, er, I’ve never seen anythin’ so complicated in all ma life,’ Dillon said, with a laugh. ‘Saw ’em here and thought t’ take a peek. Are these your ship’s records, sir?’

‘None of your business. Now you go ashore, voyage is over, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Don’t forget what I told you to say.’

‘I won’t!’ Dillon said fervently, and left.

On deck he fussed with his baggage by the brow while taking the opportunity to look about him. The main hatch was off but searchers were going into the hold equipped with hooks and gauges. These would be the rummaging crew and it looked as if they were in earnest. So the papers were not preventing a full examination.

Down on the wharf, five bored sentries in the blue and grey of Prussia lined a loose passage to a dockside office where the crew were being examined, and he was directed to join them. This was a far more rigorous business than any taking place in England but he knew what they were after. Evidence. Anything that could show that Dobre Miasto was in contravention of the five articles of Bonaparte’s Milan Decree of several months ago: that the vessel had in some way had contact with Great Britain, however small. According to the articles, it could be as instantly condemning as an innocent entry in the log-book or as trivial as a label on goods in the hold that was written in English. If this was found, the ship was deemed ‘de-nationalised’ and therefore liable for immediate confiscation by the port authorities.

He was seeing at first-hand the lengths Bonaparte was prepared to go to in enforcing it.

Reluctantly he went over the brow and down to join the gaggle of men outside the office. ‘What’s to do, friend?’ he asked one, a gangly youth, who shook his head in incomprehension.

He repeated it in deliberately poor Low German.

‘They asks us questions. Hope to trap us.’

‘What sort of questions?’

‘If we sailed from Rostock, how many lighthouse can you see from the sea? What’s your favourite tavern there? If we answer wrong they know we didn’t sail from there.’

‘I see.’

‘Fools! Our master, he signs crew from there, they know all this,’ he added scornfully.

‘A smart fellow.’

‘You has to be, these days. And have long pockets.’

‘For bribes.’

The youth frowned and looked around distrustfully. ‘You offer to the wrong one, it’s finish for you,’ he said darkly.

‘The Prussians don’t like the French,’ Dillon pursued. ‘How do they feel about making their law work?’

‘They hate the French,’ spat the youth. ‘And the law means we don’t get the fancy goods from England the ladies want.’

‘Then if-’

‘Herr Dillon?’ An officious Prussian held a paper and was demanding attention.

‘Dillon? I guess that’s me,’ he said in English, and stepped forward.

‘Come!’

He followed the bulky figure into the last office, where the man sat at the desk, puffing with exertion.

‘Passenger?’ The passenger list was in front of the man, and as Dillon was the only entry, he could only agree.

‘Papers?’

Dillon took out his carefully prepared letters of introduction and passed them across.

The man’s face hardened. ‘What’s this?’

‘Why, they’re my letters of-’

‘Passport?’

‘It was stolen. Some jackanapes in Bergen who-’

‘Passport?’

Dillon’s heart contracted. To be taken up just when he … Then he realised what was going on. The fat Prussian’s features were as hard and unforgiving as before but in a tell-tale gesture his hand was out. ‘Oh, yes, I may have mislaid it.’ He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and came out with a few thaler, which he absent-mindedly laid out before him. There was no change in the unblinking expression. More joined them – it was fourteen thaler to the Koln mark, he remembered and rounded it up, looked at the man enquiringly.

There was no change of expression as the Prussian slid the coins across and put them away. Then a fractional easing and a jerking of the thumb over his shoulder – Dillon was through.