“There are so many errors in what you just said it makes my head hurt. Besides, I think it was Peter O’Toole who made the wisecrack about the smoke-filled rooms. And if I remember right, it was ‘a pint of bitters,’ not a mug of beer.”
“Um. Yeah, that makes sense. I figure that’s why he stuck with Elizabeth Taylor so long. Sure, she’s too hefty, but she’s English like he is. Or maybe they’re Welsh.”
Jeff stifled a groan. He started to snarl something, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned his head and saw one of the fishermen who’d agreed to accompany them on this harebrained scheme.
“Push it now, ha?” the man asked, nervously. He gestured toward the torpedo.
Jeff didn’t blame him for being nervous. A hundred pounds of black powder perched just a few feet away would make anybody nervous. The fact that the bomb was designed to be set off by a weird American triggering device was guaranteed to make any Dutchman twice as nervous.
That’s just ’cause he doesn’t understand how it works. I do—which is why I’m twice as nervous as he is.
He felt a powerful urge himself to order the spar holding the torpedo to be run out to its maximum extension. But he restrained it. That extra few feet of distance wouldn’t really help that much, in the event of an accidental explosion. Not Jeff and Jimmy, anyway, right in the bow of the boat. And lowering it into the water now, when they had no idea where their target was, would just be foolish.
He shook his head firmly. “Must wait until—” He groped for the words for diversionary attack for a moment. Not long, though. The sophisticated terminology was hopelessly beyond the rudimentary Dutch-German pidgin he was speaking.
“Other sailors,” he managed, pointing off somewhere into the darkness to port. “Must wait them.”
The Dutch sailor grimaced, but didn’t press the point. Instead, he scurried back to the men laboring at the oars. Jeff suspected he’d been sent forward as their emissary. The crew manning the boat was a volunteer force, patched together from a few fishermen, seething at the destruction of their livelihood, and the boldest of the city’s apprentices who’d joined the Committee of Correspondence Gretchen had set up in Amsterdam over the past two weeks.
“And that’s another thing,” Jeff muttered, dragging off his glasses and drying them—well, smearing the water into fresh patterns, anyway—before he jammed them back onto his nose. “In the history books, at least the screwballs pulling off this stunt all spoke the same language.”
Jimmy combined a shrug with a shiver. The rain was cold. Naturally.
“What we got. They volunteered. More than you can say for those civic militia assholes.”
Jeff didn’t say anything. In truth, Jimmy’s sour characterization of the civic militia wasn’t really fair. Not, at least, as applied to the soldiers themselves. The problem was that the militia’s officers were drawn mostly from the city’s burghers and master craftsmen. And, like most such, were not inclined toward approving harebrained schemes.
Which is probably why they managed to get rich in the first place. No fools, they.
The only official authority Jeff had managed to convince to come in on the project was two captains of the Dutch navy. What was left of the navy, that is. In their case, both were not even regular officers. Their ships were armed merchantmen, some of the few which had managed to escape the destruction at Dunkirk. Truth to tell, Jeff didn’t much like either one of them. Angry men—even nasty, he suspected. But, under the circumstances, their choleric temperaments had been turned toward the Spaniards. Which was good enough for the purpose.
Suddenly, to port, he saw flashes of light that splintered in the droplets on his glasses. They were followed, moments later, by the rolling sound of cannon fire. The sound was muted, partly by the rain and partly by the fact that the cannons involved weren’t any larger than nine-pounders. But it was all Jeff needed.
The Spanish fleet in the Zuider Zee was anchored just far enough from Amsterdam to be out of range of the city’s heavy artillery, but close enough to blockade the port. Under those circumstances, they were bound to be on guard against a cutting-out expedition. Judging from what he’d seen since the fleet arrived, the Spaniards would have four launches out on patrol, serving as a picket line.