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  In memory of my grandmother Kimi Kawabata, who also loved maps

  A good Land fall is when we fall just with our reckoning, if otherwise a bad Land fall.

  —Captain John Smith, A Sea Grammar (1627)

  Exultation is the going

  Of an inland soul to sea,

  Past the houses—past the headlands—

  Into deep Eternity—

  Bred as we, among the mountains,

  Can the sailor understand

  The divine intoxication

  Of the first league out from land?

  —Emily Dickinson

  A man finds his shipwrecks,

  tells himself the necessary stories.

  —Stephen Dunn, “Odysseus’s Secret,” Different Hours

  PROLOGUE: GALLEY STOVES

  Port of Brest, Spring 1785

  No one knew what to make of the new galley stoves when they arrived. There were two—one for each ship—and they came by boat, first for the Boussole and then for the Astrolabe, disassembled into their cumbersome components and accompanied by a foul-mouthed shipyard locksmith charged with installing them.

  “What is this?” the men asked as they watched the boats approach and again as they hauled the heavy iron pieces on board and laid them out on their decks.

  The men had other questions too, questions that had gone unanswered: Where is this expedition going? For what purpose? And for how long? But this time, the captain of the Boussole, Jean-François de Galaup de Lapérouse, called down from the quarterdeck: “It’s an English galley stove. A gift from the minister of marine.” He laughed while the men grumbled about bringing English contrivances aboard, then instructed the head carpenter to keep an eye on the installation. “Make sure that locksmith doesn’t damage my ship,” he said.

  The captain of the Astrolabe, Paul-Antoine-Marie Fleuriot, Viscount de Langle, didn’t laugh. He clambered down from the quarterdeck, signaled wordlessly to his own head carpenter to join him, and followed the locksmith and the stove parts as they made their laborious way below. He endured the locksmith’s epithet-laced bungling for two hours before dismissing the man and overseeing the rest of the installation himself.

  Only a few months earlier, the Boussole and the Astrolabe had been humble naval storeships moving lumber or cordage from one known port on the Atlantic to another. Now they had been assigned to the mysterious expedition, reclassed as frigates, and given new, more respectable names. But they still had a storeship’s dimensions, and the English stoves, no doubt designed for ships of the line, barely fit. On both vessels, men swore as they bashed toes and knees and foreheads into iron legs and doors and knobs.

  They wanted to blame the locksmith, but the head carpenter on the Astrolabe reminded his shipmates that the blame lay with the minister of marine, who, from the comfort and opulence of the Hôtel de La Marine in Paris, had purchased two stoves he’d never laid eyes on for two ships he’d also never laid eyes on. This satisfied some of the men, who preferred blaming a distant aristocrat to a local man, and disappointed others, who’d looked forward to knocking the locksmith about the next time they had shore leave.

  The head carpenter on the Boussole, an analytical man, added that he believed the stoves to be evidence of the expedition’s importance. “The farther away the man making the decisions,” he said, “the grander the mission.” This pleased some of his shipmates, who imagined a long campaign that involved adventure, promotion, and money—but worried others, who imagined all those things too but preferred expeditions that brought them safely home after not too long away.

  “Maybe it’s war again,” one of the men suggested.

  “With who?” a shipmate asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  “We’re not warships.”

  “Every ship in the Royale is a warship in time of war.”

  “But we’re not in time of war.”

  “Maybe we’re about to be, is what I’m saying.”

  Monsieur de Lapérouse happened to overhear this exchange and stopped before the men, whose names he couldn’t recall. Everyone on board was new to the ship, including him. “No one’s going to war,” he said. “What made you say that?”

  The assembled men looked at one another, then back at their captain, then back at one another, till one of them said, “On account of the minister’s stoves, sir.”

  “The stoves?” the captain said. “Do you think hostile Englishmen might be hidden inside, ready to jump out in the night to take over our ships?”

  “No, sir,” they replied. Only one crew member, a petty officer who’d read the Aeneid as a boy, dared chuckle at the captain’s reference.

  As for the stoves themselves, they performed well—quite well—when only one person at a time used them. But when Monsieur de Lapérouse ordered a test in which every possible use of the stove was performed simultaneously, the results were deplorable. Add to the ship’s cook the officers’ cook and the captain’s cook and the ship’s baker and the expedition’s chemist, and bread emerged from the oven burned on top and uncooked in the middle, pots boiled over or not at all, the alembic installed to desalinate seawater consumed far too much wood for the dribbles of fresh water it produced, and the chemist, rather belatedly, said he thought it quite lucky the galleys hadn’t caught fire.

  Monsieur de Lapérouse made light of the problem before the men, calling their new stove the “English baron.” “It’s fat, eats more than it should, and sits around all day smoking,” he quipped. But urgent-looking missives carried by harried-looking messengers came and went from his cabin, suggesting that remote—and hence, important—discussions were taking place.

  Meanwhile, on the Astrolabe, Monsieur de Langle had his carpenters remove their equally troublesome stove and replace it with a smaller traditional French stove. He then modified it himself to fit a new distilling device designed in Paris by Monsieur de Lavoisier, the famous chemist, and proposed redoing the test. He took the precaution of moving the Astrolabe to a less populated part of the harbor. (“In case we explode,” one waggish crewman explained to Langle’s cook, a thin, anxious individual who flinched thereafter at every sound from the galley stove.) The captain, undaunted, ordered up a large pot of peas, two loaves of fresh bread, a partridge for a captain’s dinner, a pitcher of distilled seawater, and, for good measure, the heating up of some liquid-filled flasks as if for a science experiment.

  Midafternoon, a skiff from the Astrolabe pulled up alongside the Boussole, where Lapérouse and his men awaited the results. “Well?” the captain demanded when one of Langle’s lieutenants climbed aboard. The young officer presented a package that contained a still-steaming loaf of bread and a note. Let us inform the minister that his stoves may be suited to an English sailor’s lifestyle, but not to a Frenchman’s, it said.

  “How do you know what it said?” one of the Astrolabe’s carpenters demanded of the assistant carpenter from the Boussole when he related th
is part of the story. “You can’t read.”

  “Because the commander read the note out loud and we all laughed, he loudest of all,” the young man replied. “And I can read, I’ll have you know.”

  It was the following night, and they were at a watering hole in Brest favored by seamen. With Monsieur de Langle’s design successfully implemented on both ships, the two captains had given their carpenters the evening off.

  “So who says your Monsieur de Lapérouse is the expedition’s commander?” another man from the Astrolabe retorted.

  At this, the men from the Boussole burst into laughter. Of course their captain was in command—he was in daily communication with the minister, and Monsieur de Langle answered to him, not the other way around—had they not noticed? But their captain was a viscount, the Astrolabe’s carpenters said. Surely that still meant something. The debate threatened to become unfriendly till they spied a junior officer from the Astrolabe walking by and persuaded him to come in and settle the argument. The young officer diplomatically refrained from mentioning either captain by name and simply confirmed that, yes, the Boussole was to be the flagship and the Astrolabe her consort. By declining the drinks offered him by the Boussole’s men and instead treating the whole table to several jugs of the establishment’s better wine, he also maintained harmony with his own shipmates and restored good cheer to the entire group.

  “Can you also tell us where the expedition’s going?” one of the men asked.

  “That I’m not allowed to say,” the officer said before heading out.

  Rowing back to their ships that night, the carpenters found their way lit by an enormous full moon sinking into the ocean beyond the port. It cast a wide white ribbon of light across the water like a beacon. “One almost wants to row out forever,” one man said, and they all felt it—that strange pull of the sublime inviting them into the unknown, into oblivion. But they were practical men who could recognize a poetic impulse without acting on it. Tomorrow would bring another round of orders and dilemmas that demanded their attention and good sense. So they parted company from one another and from the beckoning light and returned to their ships.

  ONE

  ITEMS FOR EXCHANGE

  London, April 1785

  Plausibility

  He always forgets how unpleasant the crossing from Calais is. He’s never once made the trip without encountering inclement weather, contrary winds and tides, unexplained delays, seasick fellow travelers, surly packet captains, or dishonest boatmen waiting to extort the passengers ashore. This time it’s all of the above. By the time he reaches Dover, he has, of course, missed the stagecoach to London. He spends the night at the Ship Hotel, where he endures a hard, flea-ridden bed and a neighbor with a wet, defeated cough.

  It’s not an auspicious start to the journey. But Paul-Mérault de Monneron is not given to superstition. The next day brings springlike weather, a passable meal from the hotel kitchen, the stagecoach ready to leave on time, and an unsmiling but efficient coachman who gives the correct change. The only other passenger inside the coach is a man Monneron recognizes from the packet; the poor man had been gray-skinned with nausea most of the way from France. “Well, I daresay we are being compensated for yesterday’s horrors,” the man says. Monneron nods politely, although he doesn’t agree. For him, the universe is not given to compensating one for past miseries any more than it exacts payment for one’s successes. But he is not immune to the pleasures of a smooth ride on a lovely day. The Kentish countryside, or such of it as he can see through the coach window, is charming. Once he points out the window at a large bird, white-breasted with black and white wings, perched atop a post. “Please—what do you call that?” he asks. “I do not know the word in English.”

  The man leans over. “That would be an osprey, I think,” he says.

  “Osprey.” It’s rare that he learns a word in English he finds nicer than its counterpart in French. But “osprey” is undoubtedly lovelier than “balbuzard.”

  The brief exchange leads inevitably to an inquiry about Monneron’s trip to London. Almost everything he says by way of reply is true: That he’s a naval engineer, that he’s leaving soon for the South Seas, that he’s going to London to make some purchases for the voyage, that he was tasked with the errand because he speaks English—“Not that my English is so good,” he adds, to which the man says, “Nonsense! You’ve hardly any accent at all.” But part of Monneron’s account is not true: that he’s in England at the behest of a Spanish merchant, Don Inigo Alvarez, with whom he’ll be sailing to the South Seas. Monneron will be sailing with neither Spaniards nor merchants. There is, in fact, no Don Inigo.

  It’s a French naval expedition he represents, a voyage of exploration meant to compete with the accomplishments of the late Captain Cook, a voyage that is supposed to be secret until it departs. This excursion to London is not just a shopping trip for books and instruments. He’s supposed to find out the latest on antiscorbutics—scurvy-prevention measures—and on what items work best for trading with natives in the South Seas. For this he needs to find someone who sailed with Cook—someone both knowledgeable and willing to talk.

  This is the first time he’s tried the Don Inigo story on anyone. He’s surprised by the fluency and ease with which he spouts the commingled lies and truths. He hadn’t liked the idea of traveling under a pretext—had, in fact, challenged the need for secrecy at all, and when the minister of marine dismissed his query with an impatient wave of his beruffled hand, had considered turning the mission down. Considered it, but not seriously or for very long. There was no question of jeopardizing his place on the expedition. He would have stood on his head before the court of Versailles if required. Still, when the Spanish merchant ruse was first concocted, he’d burst out laughing. “Don Inigo Alvarez?” he’d cried. “It’s like something out of a play.” But the minister held firm: “People are inclined to believe what they hear,” he said. “Speak with assurance, and no one will question you.” So far, at least, he has proved right: Monneron’s companion nods, interested, impressed, and apparently convinced.

  Five Nights’ Advance

  The stagecoach arrives in London the following evening, and Monneron secures lodgings with a Mrs. Towe, recommended to him by his brother Louis, who often travels to London on business. The house smells unaccountably of stale cider, but it meets Monneron’s most basic requirements—clean bed, convenient location, quiet landlady—and a couple of unusual ones—first, the absence of other lodgers, and second, a windowless storage room to which only he and Mrs. Towe will have a key.

  Before going to sleep, he calculates his expenses since landing in Dover: a night’s stay and meals at the Ship Hotel, then sixteen shillings and eight pence for the stagecoach, plus the fee for his baggage and a tip for the driver, not to mention a half crown for every meal and one night’s lodging en route, and now, five nights paid in advance to Mrs. Towe. He’s spent almost all of the English currency the minister gave him before he left. His first task the next day will be to go to the bank. So far he’s had few choices about his expenditures, but now that he’s in London, he’ll be faced with myriad decisions, most of which will involve money. He can’t spend too much, of course. But it might be worse to spend too little. He doesn’t wish to squander the ministry’s faith in him, of course. Above all, he doesn’t wish to disappoint Monsieur de Lapérouse, the commander of the expedition. Staring up at Mrs. Towe’s water-stained ceiling, Monneron reflects that there’s still time to appoint another engineer—and plenty of ambitious young men of good family eager to take his place.

  Costume

  He wakes early, consumes without enjoyment Mrs. Towe’s weak tea and cold toast, then faces the delicate task of getting dressed. For the past three days he’s been hidden under an overcoat and top boots, but now he’ll be entering establishments and homes, making impressions, gathering information. He doesn’t wish to call attention to himself by looking too French, too naval, too fashionable, or not fashi
onable enough. Louis has advised him to dress more soberly than a gentleman his age in Paris might, but Monneron’s not sure what that means. With all his years at sea, he’s quite used to dressing himself—in uniform. Civilian clothes are another matter altogether. In the end, he puts on the plainest linen shirt he owns and a pair of ribbed white stockings, and over them a suit he’s borrowed from Antoine, another brother who is the same height as he. The waistcoat, breeches, and frock coat are all of the same, dark-blue woven silk—even the buttons are covered. Then he dons wig, shoes, and overcoat, in that order. He hesitates before picking up the thin, tasseled cane that Louis had pressed him to take instead of his sword. “Don’t carry a sword or a hat,” his brother had told him. “They will mark you as a Frenchman and an effeminate.”

  On his way out, Monneron appraises himself in the smoky mirror in Mrs. Towe’s entrance hall. He looks like a Frenchman who is trying not to look French, he thinks. And he hates the cane. What an absurd country, in which wearing a sword makes one effeminate but carrying a beribboned walking stick does not.

  Letters

  He steps out into the fetid, fog-drizzled streets and makes his way to the Bank of England, where he exchanges letters of credit for more cash than he’s ever seen in one place, much less carried upon his person. He’s grateful for Antoine’s tailor, who’s adopted the innovation of interior pockets in frock coats. It’s a place to stow the money. Still, he hurries into a cab, afraid the smell of so many bank bills will attract every pickpocket in London, and asks to be taken to an address on Oxford Street.

  Monneron has another letter with him that morning—a letter of introduction to John Webber, a painter who was the official artist on Cook’s last voyage. Monneron would have preferred an introduction to officers who’d served with Cook, but according to the minister, most of the officers who aren’t dead are at sea, and of the small number who are neither dead nor at sea, two live too far outside London and the others are too highly placed to approach without arousing suspicion. “What about Cook’s naturalists?” Monsieur de Lapérouse had asked. “Can’t we approach one of them?” No, the minister said. Solander was dead. The Forsters were both in Prussia. Only Sir Joseph Banks, the famous naturalist from the first Cook expedition, was still alive and in London, but he was now president of the Royal Society and close to both the Admiralty and the king. “Don’t underestimate the usefulness of an artist as a source,” the minister said. Monneron and Lapérouse had exchanged a glance, neither man convinced. What would a draughtsman know of antiscorbutics or appropriate items for exchange?