"Yes, by all means. I should most enjoy a visit. Finally."
Princess Kristina arrived not long after they did. With Caroline Platzer in tow.
"Blind men," Ludwig Guenther repeated.
Chapter 41
The mouth of the Elbe
"Here they come!"
Anatole du Bouvard looked up sharply at the lookout's shout, and his stomach tightened. Despite everything, he'd rather hoped this moment would never come. Of course, what he'd hoped and what he'd expected had been two quite different things.
He dumped the cup of hot broth he'd been drinking onto the ground beside the fire, tossed the cup to the cook, and headed for the lookout's position on the river bank.
"There," the lookout said, pointing upstream, and du Bouvard grimaced.
"I see them," he acknowledged.
He gazed at the oncoming shapes for several seconds, then inhaled deeply and looked over his shoulder.
"Get them ready, Léandre," he called gruffly.
Léandre Olier, du Bouvard's second-in-command, waved in acknowledgment and turned his attention to the two men who had "volunteered" for their part in this mission.
For several seconds, du Bouvard watched those volunteers donning the equipment from the future for which the cardinal's agents had paid so dearly. Then he turned back to the river and shook his head.
Madness, he thought. This entire idea is madness.
Not that he'd felt any particular inclination to point that out when he received his orders. The fact that they'd come directly from Richelieu himself had been more than sufficient to depress any foolish temptation in that direction. Still . . .
It wasn't the concept itself he objected to. That had an undeniable elegance, especially given what the Americans had done to the League of Ostend's fleet off Luebeck. And using equipment purchased from some of the arrogant "up-timers" themselves only added to the notion's appeal. But however du Bouvard might feel about that, there were certain practical objections which the cardinal appeared to have failed to consider.
More likely, he considered them and simply decided to go ahead, anyway. After all, what does he lose if we fail? The cardinal's calculations were seldom encumbered by any preoccupation with the survival of his tools. On the other hand, the rewards for those tools could be substantial when—and if—they succeeded.
He refocused his attention on his targets. The big ships, the "ironclads" and the "timberclads," moved steadily downstream towards him, following behind two much smaller vessels. Those would be the "motorboats" the spies had reported, and he frowned at the way they wove back and forth, sweeping their bigger consorts' line of advance. There were several musket-armed infantry (at least, he hoped they were musketeers and not equipped with some of the deadly up-time firearms) in each of them, and they appeared to be unpleasantly alert.
Well, there was nothing he could do about that, and he returned his attention to the rest of the American fleet.
The "ironclads" were impressive. They moved smoothly, without any fuss or bother, and despite their slab-sided appearance, they possessed a certain low-slung elegance. The three stubbier vessels following behind them—the "timberclads"—were another matter. They were much higher in proportion to their length, with massive superstructures dominating their after ends, and they looked undeniably clumsier.
That would be the "paddle wheels," he thought, looking at the high, straight-sided housings. The spies' reports had made it abundantly clear that the timberclads and ironclads had different means of movement. Personally, du Bouvard found it much easier to visualize how the "paddle wheels" must work. After all, he'd seen plenty of waterwheels in his time, and the principle was obviously the same, even if the mechanics were reversed. This notion of ships that moved by squirting water out of their asses, though . . . that he found difficult to wrap his mind around.
Also unlike the ironclads, the timberclads' tall smokestacks belched dense, black smoke that was visible for miles. It should have made them look even more threatening, like some sort of smoke- and fire-breathing dragons, but it didn't work that way. Instead, the very lack of any visible, dramatic signs of what made them move only made the ironclads more ominous by comparison.
Someone stepped up beside him, and he glanced to his right.
"Well?" he said.
"They're ready," Olier told him with a grunt. The taciturn Breton's eyes were on the oncoming vessels, and he shook his head. "Not that I think it's going to do much good," he added.
"Only one way to find out," du Bouvard replied.