‘He will not forget me,’ he said firmly. ‘Even now he will be preparing a fleet to come after us and revictual and supply us. But you see that I am in a hurry. I cannot wait. The French in the citadel of St Martin must starve and surrender at once. Otherwise we will beat them to it. We will starve and surrender even though we are supposed to be laying siege to them.’

‘I’ll plan something,’ John promised.

There were no tents for the men nor for the poorer officers; no-one in England had thought that the expedition would need tents. John laid his soldier’s pack on the ground beside the other men, heeled in his new gillyflower in his little nursery bed, and then set about planning his blockade of St Martin.

Within an hour or two he had his drawing of ships’ timbers and a couple of spare masts chained together. The senior shipwright and John supervised the throwing of the wood in the water and watched the sailors leaning out from little boats and struggling to chain them together.

‘Those were our spare masts and timbers to repair the ships,’ the shipwright observed dourly. ‘Better pray we don’t lose a mast on the way home.’

‘We can’t go home until the citadel falls,’ John reasoned. ‘First things first.’

‘And have you heard when they will come to relieve us?’ the shipwright asked. ‘The lads were saying that a great fleet is coming behind us, now that the king knows that the duke has been successful, now they know that we are at war.’

‘It will come soon,’ John said, with more confidence than he felt. ‘My lord told me that the king had promised it.’

John was right about the fragility of the timber barrier. The high wind blowing over their camp in the next week warned him of the storm that was coming. He crawled out of his makeshift shelter and looked out to sea. In the darkness he could see nothing. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Buckingham, sleepless too.

‘Will your blockade hold?’

‘Not if this wind keeps up,’ Tradescant replied. ‘I am sorry, my lord.’

He could feel the warmth of Buckingham’s breath as he leaned forward to be heard above the storm.

‘Don’t ask for pardon, John,’ he said. ‘You warned me of the danger and I told you of the need. But at first light tomorrow get out there and build me another barrier. I must have St Martin cut off.’