It was an upside-down sort of psychology, to someone with Mike's temperament. But…
"Different strokes for different folks," he muttered.
Baumgartner turned his head slightly. "What was that, Prime Minister? I'm afraid I didn't catch it."
"Ah, never mind, Captain. Just talking to myself."
"Okay, everybody!" Harry hollered. "Take battle stations! We'll be coming in sight of Sheerness any minute now!"
Melissa stared at Rita.
Rita stared at Harry.
"Hey, Captain!" Rita hollered. "Could you puh-leese explain a little more clearly exactly what 'battle stations' consists of? Y'know-for us women and kids?"
Harry gave her a quick grin. "Mostly, it means you keep your heads below the gunwales-or whatever you call 'em, on a barge like this-and get ready to jump overboard first, if she starts to sink."
"Sink," said Melissa. She leaned over the rail and looked at the waters of the Thames. "How deep is it here, anyway?"
"Got no idea, Ms. Mailey," replied Harry. "Look at it this way. There's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that this barge is probably heavy enough to absorb one or two rounds from whatever guns they've got on whatever ships they've got stationed at the dockyard. The bad news is that one or two rounds is about the limit, too. If Rita's brother ain't there in time to take out them warships, we're screwed."
Several of the Warder women were looking worried, now. "None of us can swim very well, Lady Mailey," said Patricia Hayes. "The children, not at all." She gave the distant shore of the river an apprehensive glance. "That's a far ways."
In point of fact, Melissa knew, if the barge sank then even very good swimmers would face a real challenge. They were now well into the estuary of the Thames, and you couldn't really call it a "river" any longer. It was more like a small bay. At a guess, although she wasn't particularly good at estimating distances, they were at least a mile from land.
"Right," said Rita, suddenly moving purposefully. "Let's set about rigging up some sort of rafts. Or flotation devices, at least. Harry, I suppose it'd be too much to ask if you brought life vests with you, amongst all that other stuff you somehow managed to smuggle into England."
"No, sorry." Harry's smile contained as much in the way of apology as that of a crocodile, admitting that, no, it hadn't thought to bring napkin rings to the feast. "We pretty much concentrated on stuff that goes bang and boom, y'know."
"Don't remind me," muttered Melissa, who was also rising from her seated position, though much more awkwardly than Rita. The combination of the adrenaline from the escape and the hours they'd spent since, crammed into a barge, had left her feeling every day of fifty-nine years old.
On the bright side, if you chose to look at it that way, the fact that they'd made their escape from the Tower at dawn meant that it was no later than midafternoon once they reached the estuary. So at least they weren't fumbling in the dark.
The flip side of that, of course, was that any enemy warships lying in wait at Sheerness wouldn't be fumbling in the dark, either.
One or two rounds, and down she goes. Melissa wondered how long it took a warship to fire two rounds from whatever cannons they carried. She wasn't about to ask, however, since she was darkly certain that whatever the answer was, it would be extremely depressing.
"And there's Sheerness," murmured Captain Baumgartner. He brought up his eyeglass. "Now let's see how many ships they've got that aren't still at anchor."
To Rita's surprise, Thomas Wentworth came to give her some assistance. That was the first thing she'd seen him do since the barge left the Tower except stare off into whatever inner space he'd gotten lost in.
True, he wasn't much help. Whatever skills the former chief minister of England's government possessed-a great many, of course-they clearly didn't include being a handyman. Not that it made much of a difference. Rita soon realized that the "flotation devices" she was jury-rigging out of whatever odds-and-ends she could find on the barge weren't going to be of much use beyond whatever psychological solace they brought to the Warder folks. She wouldn't have trusted these things in a swimming pool, back up-time. If they went into the water, most of them were going to drown, it was as simple as that.
Still, she was glad to see some spirit come back to the man. Now that it was all over, and especially with the sharp contrast that Sir Francis Windebank and his mercenary goons had provided during the final period, she looked back upon Wentworth's role in those long months of captivity and remembered simply his invariant courtesy and graciousness.
"I'm afraid it's not much," Wentworth said to her quietly, once they were done.
"No, it isn't. On the other hand, I don't think we'll need to find out, either."
He cocked an eyebrow at her. "You've that much confidence in your navy?"
Rita chuckled. "Not exactly. It's just that I grew up with my brother, you know. We're talking about a guy who, for a stretch there in his teens, used to hot-wire cars in Fairmont or Clarksburg and go joy-riding about every month with his buddies. Never got caught once, even though every cop in Marion County knew damn good and well who the culprit was."
Wentworth frowned, obviously trying to extract the gist from the indecipherable terms. "A successful petty criminal, you're saying?"
"Well… technically. But since he always returned the cars in perfect condition, with a full tank of gas-sometimes, he'd even give them a wash in the process-nobody really cared that much."
"Ah." After a moment, the earl of Strafford smiled. That was the first smile she'd seen on his face all day. "I see. A successful politician, in the making."
"Yeah, you could put it that way. The point is, I really don't think he's likely to screw up."
A sudden shout came from the bow. From Sherrilyn, obviously. That feminine shriek of glee was quite unmistakable.
She turned her head to look. Sherrilyn was perched rather precariously, pointing at something ahead of them in the distance. "Eat your heart out, Harry! Now-any second now, they've already got the guns run out-you're going to hear a real pick-up line!"
Maybe two seconds later, Rita heard the distant sound of cannons being fired.
"Now you lads!" roared Baumgartner. "Smartly, y'hear!"
The captain was bringing the Achates around so that it would be able to fire a full broadside at the nearest of the three Royal Navy ships that were moving to intercept it, instead of just the lead carronade on a pivot mount. Even someone as nautically-challenged as Mike Stearns could see that the timberclad's paddle-wheel design that had made it such a tub on the open sea now gave it an enormous advantage over the three sailing vessels facing it. Where their captains had to maneuver in the estuary by contending with the complex cross-forces of tide and current and wind, Baumgartner simply had to give his helmsman an order.
Within seconds, the broadside was fired. Only one of the three English ships was in position to do the same-and it was out of range. The broadside of the Achates was fired at the lead enemy ship, which was still trying to come into position.
It helped, of course, that the disparity in ordnance was so tremendous. The biggest guns on those English ships would be culverins, firing eighteen-pound round shot. Most of the guns, and perhaps all of them, would be no bigger than twelve-pounders. And they were going up against the Achates, whose four-foot thick wooden walls would shrug off their fire, while it replied with explosive rounds fired from sixty-eight pound carronades. There were just six of them, on a broadside-but six was plenty.