At moondown he dons those clothes, assumes his “private,” “true” imposture of Napoleon, modified by what little he has seen and learned on the island. He conceals himself in the Longwood gardens, in the vague hope that Rousseau or Chauvin might wander by and be impressed into service. The hour arrives; no one is about except the regular British sentries. Feeling more nakedly foolhardy than at any moment since that night a quarter-century past when he donned Joel Barlow’s clothes and rode out to a certain Algerian headland, to enter a certain dark carriage, Andrew works through the cypresses and privet, past the sentries, toward where le Maure and Lafitte await. Can he perhaps feign detection, mimic several alarmed voices, simulate the thrash of two servants fleeing, bring the sentries running, and then stumble as if dazed into the rendezvous? Faute de mieux, he gathers himself to it…
And somewhile later woke half-tranced, knowing neither where I was nor how I came there! Bloodsworth Island? 1812? Husht urgent voices all about, in a medley of accents: French, Corsican, Italian, German, English, St. Helenish, even Yankee! A thunder of surf, & the damp rock under me, bespoke that ledge we had barely fetcht up on two months past. I guesst I had either swoon’d again, as at New Orleans & Fort Bowyer, or been knockt senseless by “friend” or “foe,” & carry’d down that terrific cliff. I heard Jean’s voice, unalarm’d, giving orders to le Maure & the fishermen. Who was that German? That New Englander? Was that a British female whisper’d?
He conceals regaining consciousness in hopes of making out his situation; permits himself to be rowed like a dead man for hours out to sea, hoisted easily over a shoulder he recognizes as le Maure’s, and put to bed in a familiar aft cabin of the Jean Blanque—but nothing he can overhear tells him what he craves to know. Now there is a lantern-light to peek by: he sees Lafitte tête-à-tête with a cloaked stranger; whispers are exchanged, papers, a small pouch or box? They examine a map. They agree. The stranger leaves; Lafitte also; one can hear orders given on deck, sail made. The schooner swings about and settles under way.
Andrew considers the possibilities. His ruse has perhaps been anticipated by Lafitte, by the U.S. Secret Service, by Metternich, the British, the French. They know he is Andrew Cook, but see fit to support his imposture? Or they don’t know; the imposture has for the moment succeeded! In the first case he must be candid with Lafitte or lose what trust after all remains; in the second, such candor might be fatal — and both suppositions could be incorrect. Should he pretend to be a willing Napoleon? An outraged, resentful one? An unperturbed Andrew Cook?
He feels his way carefully: “wakes” as if uncertain himself who and where he is; is greeted politely but ambiguously by Jean’s body-servant, by Lafitte himself, whose ironical courtesies fit either hypothesis. On deck the Baratarians receive him as the ailing Bonaparte he pretends to be, but are under obvious and sensible orders not to address him by any name. With Jean, in private, he hazards maintaining that imposture, and is puzzled: the man’s half-mocking deference suits neither the belief that he has rescued his emperor nor the knowledge that his erstwhile comrade has deceived him. He begins to suspect that Lafitte believes him to be neither Napoleon Bonaparte nor Andrew Cook, but the impostor alleged to have been substituted for Napoleon in January 1820—and that this state of affairs is for some reason acceptable to him!
But he cannot be certain, and so the voyage proceeds in an extraordinary equivocality, every gesture and remark a potential test, or sign. Where are they bound? “To America.” And to where in America? “To that place arranged for Your Majesty by his friends there.” Andrew is greatly encouraged to be presented after all, however ironically, with the agreed-upon ultimatum: to live incognito under Joseph’s protection (Lafitte does not say “your brother’s”) or, as General Bonaparte (Lafitte says neither “as yourself” nor “as the Emperor Napoleon I”), to lead a movement organized by American Bonapartists “both exiled and native, of great wealth and influence.”
He will choose, Andrew declares, when he has spoken to Joseph and the movement’s leaders and heard more details. Meanwhile it is surely best to remain incognito, if only officially, even between themselves.
Jean smiles. “I shall call you Baron Castine.”
Andrew smiles the same smile. “That is a name I know. It will quite do.”
Then he takes a great gamble. In a tone he hopes appropriate to whatever might be Lafitte’s understanding of him, he observes that no matter what fate awaits him in America, it is unlikely he will see again the land of his birth or, as it were, the theater of his life’s first cycle (the phrase is Andrew’s). Though he has a brother in America, the rest of his family are elsewhere. He does not expect to see his wife again; as for his son, that is too delicate a matter to venture upon at present. And his brothers and sisters are too various, either in their loyalty or in their good judgment, to place overmuch faith in just now. (Andrew speaks in these epithets rather than in proper names, watching Jean’s face.) But his mother, he declares, while less ill than himself, is old and cannot be expected either to live a great while longer or to undertake a transatlantic voyage. He would therefore like to pay her a call — incognito, if necessary — and bid her a last farewell before commencing his new career.
Lafiite seem’d genuinely astonisht, & without apparent guile demanded, Did I really propose a voyage into European waters under the flag of Cartagena? I took heart & breath, & told him (with just enough smile to cover my tracks), I was sure that a vessel & captain able to spirit Napoleon Bonaparte from St. Helena were able to sail him thro the Pillars of Hercules, pass him within sight of Corsica, whisk him straight up the Tiber, and land him on the steps of the Palazzo Rinuccini. That he could, if he did not trust me, keep me every moment in his view, & impose what conditions and disguises seem’d to him advisable. But that I was resolved to have a last word with my mother ere I was fetcht to my next destiny. He appear’d to consider. I made bold to enquire at once whether he was under someone’s orders to the contrary, or regarded my proposal as too audacious…
The fact is, Lafitte then acknowledges, his men have been at sea for above half a year without shore liberty, and a vessel in the Jean Blanque’s trade never lacks for alternative colors, name boards, and registry papers. But can it be true that “Baron Castine” has nothing in mind beyond bidding his mother adieu?
Not quite, I reply’d, in as level a tone as I could manage: I hoped also to have a word with her confessor. I heard him mutter: Nom de Dieu!
No more is said. Their watering stop in the Cape Verde Islands is noncommittal, a reasonable jumping-off place to either the Caribbean or the Mediterranean. But their course thence, to Andrew’s great joy, is north, not west; before long they raise the Canaries, then Madeira. By April’s end they have traversed the Strait of Bonifacio between Sardinia and Corsica (“I dofft my hat, & look’d toward Ajaccio, & said nothing…”) and are anchored in the marshy mouth of the Tiber, off ancient Ostia. Only then, writes Andrew, I went to Lafitte & thankt him. He responded, as quizzical as ever, I was welcome, for the excursion & for his company. Which latter he trusted I would not object to, as his life depended upon my safe delivery to America. This was the 1st clear acknowledgment that he was not his own man — tho he may have invoked it by way of excusing his close surveillance.