All four men had estimated separately how many soldiers or cavalry the prames could carry and agreed on two hundred infantry with arms and baggage, or fifty horses and cavalrymen and a platoon of infantry, with all their rations, ammunition and forage.
There were sixteen prames altogether, though many were not rigged, and forty-one sloops, which were smaller and more weatherly, and would be crowded with a hundred men and their supplies and weapons. The most numerous vessels were the gunboats, sixty-one of them, but less than a score had masts and mounted the 24-pounder gun for which each of them was pierced. Like the sloops, they could probably carry a hundred men with stores and ammunition. There were fifteen large river barges, normally towed by horses. Presumably they were to be towed over by frigates.
One dock was filled with a variety of different craft: more than a hundred caiques (which could carry less than fifty men and were more suitable for carrying cattle or horses); thirty or so corvettes carrying about the same; and more than half a dozen different types of fishing-boat, their varied shapes showing they had come from such widely spaced ports as those on the shallow north coast of Holland, with its treacherous sandbanks, to the Breton coast, where fishing was in deep water with rough Atlantic seas. The hatches of the fishing-boats were so small and smelly - Ramage could detect the stench from five hundred yards to leeward of the nearest one - that they could not be used for troops, who would be seasick long before the craft cast off from the dock, let alone reached a mile offshore. The largest of them looked capable of carrying twenty horses with saddles, while the smallest might manage five. But alone in the flotilla, the fishing-boats could go to sea in almost any weather and be sure of reaching their destination.
It was curious how hard it was to relate totals written on paper with what you saw afloat: walking round the quays, it seemed Bonaparte had assembled a large flotilla, with the whole port seemingly full. Then when you wrote down the totals for the various types on a sheet of paper, it reduced in size. But this was only the Boulogne section: there would be many more in Calais, and perhaps as many again in all the small fishing ports. And he had no idea yet how many more were building - not just here in Boulogne, but at the other shipyards up and down the coast.
As they walked to the café, Ramage recalled the phrase Louis had used when he pointed out the first of the vessels - Bonaparte's flotilla de grande espèce, which was certainly a grand enough title. They reached the café and found a few workmen at one table, noisily drinking onion soup and pausing only to break pieces from small loaves of black bread. Ramage sat down at the largest empty table and gestured to the others to leave a chair for Louis. One look at the patron showed why Louis had chosen this particular café: unwashed, unshaven, the man was grossly fat, with the slack face and bloodshot eyes of a perpetual drunkard, and when he lurched over to take Ramage's order of soup for all of them he obviously did not trust his own eyes to focus.
'For how many?' he asked.
'For five,' Ramage said and a moment later Louis joined them, settling back in the chair facing Ramage, who saw that he had shaved and combed his hair since they last met. The Frenchman noticed the glance and grinned. 'I thought I had better tidy myself up, so that I look like a carpenter too! Tell me,' he asked quietly, 'is it an emergency.'
Ramage shook his head. 'Not an emergency, but a change of plan -' He broke off as the owner arrived with plates, spoons and a large jug of soup, all of which he dumped in the middle of the table. He fished around in the large pocket in front of his apron and produced a loaf of black bread, which he put down beside Ramage and lurched back to the bar at the far end of the room.
Rossi poured soup into the plates and passed them round while Jackson produced a large knife and sliced up the bread.
As soon as they were all bent over their plates Ramage described, between spoonsful of soup, the Corporal's description of the lovelorn lieutenant and his weekly ride to Paris with the Admiral's dispatches. At the end of the story Louis was silent for several moments and then, picking up the jug to see if any more soup remained, he gave a prodigious belch. He sat back in his chair looking to his right, away from the group of workmen at the other table, and apparently bored or daydreaming. But Ramage noticed that no lip-reader could watch his mouth.
'So you wish to sample the food at the Hotel de la Poste at Amiens . . .' It was a statement, not a question, and Ramage waited as Louis mulled over the problems involved. '. . . Carpenters won't do - Amiens is the centre for velvet, and that sort of thing. And priests, too,' he added maliciously, 'with the largest cathedral in Europe. Priests are great travellers now, since the First Consul and the Pope signed the Concordat - always going to see the bishop. Not so long ago they were being hunted down by the enfants de terreur and their churches and cathedrals robbed and pillaged. Fashions change,' he commented. 'Passports will be needed, and different clothes. I shall want some money to pay for all this.'
'Of course,' Ramage said. 'And I need to be in Amiens by Friday night, so that I can spend Saturday arranging things at the hotel. The others could arrive on Saturday, if that would make it any easier.'
'It might be better to split into two parties of two,' Louis said, obviously thinking aloud. 'Two priests, two weavers, two masons . . . people travel in pairs. Four creates suspicion. Let me think about it. I'll see you in your room at ten o'clock tonight.' He called to the patron for wine and asked quietly: 'You had an interesting walk round the port?'
'Very interesting,' Ramage said, 'and a little frightening. Even the vessels completed so far could carry an army across the Channel . . .’
'They could' the Frenchman said evenly, 'though whether they will is another matter. Would you bet on a week or more of easterly winds?'
'Not if I was a Bonaparte, but the odds seem shorter when you look at it from the British point of view.'
Louis shrugged his shoulders. 'Appear to shorten my friend, but an east wind is still an east wind, and this flotilla of sheep needs moonlight also or they'll all get lost. You have seen those prames?They need a gale of wind under them to make any progress..."
'If only half of them arrive on the Kentish beaches,' Ramage said, 'they might not take the country, but the devastation ...'
Louis reached up and took the carafe of wine from the patron and reminded him they needed glasses.
'Yes, there would be much devastation. Indeed,' he grinned broadly, 'it would upset the contraband trade for a long time, too, which is one of the reasons why we are helping you. To tell you the truth, I'm beginning to enjoy it; running contraband three or four nights a week becomes boring.'
Ramage raised his eyebrows. 'I should have thought boredom was the last thing that troubled you.'
'Don't misunderstand me; a boring voyage means a safe one, and I have no wish to return home with wild stories of narrow escapes. We make a profit because we sail as regularly as the packetboat did before the war. But it is still boring!'
The patron arrived with the glasses, which Ramage saw were even dirtier than the windows at the Corporal's inn. He reached for the bottle and poured wine for them all and lifted his glass to Louis. 'War sees some strange alliances - here is to this one.'