The Surgeon's Apprentice by John Biggins

Author:John Biggins [Biggins, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonanova Editions
Published: 2021-01-18T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Even though he must dip into his own pocket to pay for it, Cornelis Adriaenszoon Loodgieter liked to keep high state aboard his vessel, regarding it as an eminently worthwhile investment in his career as a sea officer of the Dutch Republic to build up his credit and acquaintance and keep himself au courant with events in the great wide world outside the Dunkirk blockade squadron. So whenever a ship dropped anchor near by to repair a broken mast or staunch a leak he would send across a note presenting his compliments and inviting her skipper to dine with him that evening. Some were Dutch men-of-war arriving amid a great flutter of bunting and cannon salutes, or straggling East India ships on the last leg of their weary seven- or eight-month voyage home from Batavia and detained in the Dover Straits by contrary winds. But most were Danes or Hamburgers or Swedes, who as neutrals had little to fear from the Dunkirk privateers. One such was a French vessel of three or four hundred tons bound from Nantes to Copenhagen with a cargo of wine and captained by a Huguenot from La Rochelle, a client of the Duke of Soubise currently in rebellion against the French King, and therefore with a most lively and personal concern to make friends with his Dutch fellow Calvinists.

They dined pleasantly in the great cabin, the windows open to the evening breeze, as Frans and his fellow musicians played sweet airs for them.

“Of course, my dear captain,” the Frenchman said as he took another slice of plum tart (made with fresh plums generously sent over by himself earlier in the day), “things cannot continue thus for ever.”

“Forgive me, monsieur, but to us here off Dunkirk it often seems that things will continue like this for ever, and that perhaps time itself has stopped like a broken clock. Even the weather seems in abeyance of late: September already, and still neither a cloud in the sky nor the merest puff of a west wind. This cursed easterly blows off the land day after day and keeps us on our guard at all hours against the Dunkirkers drifting fireships towards us, or coming out and boarding us.”

“Indeed. And likewise the conjunction of the planets breeds pestilence. I heard at Dover that the plague still rages in London and that King Charles and his Parliament remain at Oxford, which greatly impedes the conduct of business and delays the whole war with Spain.”

“Excuse me monsieur, but what do you mean, ‘delays the war with Spain’? There is war with Spain already, which is why we are here.”

“I meant, that there will soon be war between Spain and England also. Young King Charles and Milord Buckingham” (he pronounced it “Bouquinquant”) “both yearn for a war to prove themselves great captains, and likewise the gentlemen in Parliament rail against the King Philip and the Pope and the Jesuits as they did when they were young fellows in Queen Elizabeth’s day,

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