by Dudley Pope
“You had trouble?” Hart asked casually.
“Oh yes. Our chronometer is not very accurate.” He was careful not to look at Southwick as he added: “Fortunately one can run the westing down.”
Hart said quickly in Spanish to Tomás: “They had to run their westing down to find this place.”
Tomás said nothing and Ramage said innocently to Hart: “You did not say what you were going to do with your prizes.”
“No, I didn’t. It now depends on you, to some extent.”
Ramage thought quickly, and then yawned, delicately picking fluff from his coat. “Oh, does it? It’s not really my responsibility, you know. After all, you’re the privateer. Well, the war’s over now, so I suppose your letter of marque has expired, or whatever it does when a war ends. But your prizes are your affair—after all, even if the war was still on, they’d still be no concern of mine.”
“I’m glad to hear you say it,” Hart said.
“Oh indeed,” Ramage said, as though politely delighted that Hart agreed. “I have my orders from the Admiralty and I really can’t get involved in anything else—not without orders from their Lordships.”
“Might one ask if your orders will keep you here for long?” Hart asked cautiously.
Ramage shook his head and resumed the search for fluff on his coat. “There’s no secret about my orders: I’ve come here to survey the island, map it, and make a chart of the anchorages.”
“Why? Are the Admiralty going to start using it?”
“Use it?” Ramage said scornfully. “I doubt it! Who the devil could find it! Anyway, it’s a long way to anywhere else. No, Ascension is good enough for the Cape and John Company ships.”
“Why the sudden interest in Trinidade, then?”
“It’s not a sudden interest in Trinidade,” Ramage said, with another yawn. “The war is over, but the Admiralty have to keep a certain number of ships in commission, especially frigates. So they are sending several of them off to survey various unusual places. I expect one has gone to St Paul Rocks and another to Fernando de Noronha, for example. And probably Ascension; the charts for them are terrible, I know.”
“So how—” Hart was interrupted by Tomás asking what was being discussed. Hart told him that Ramage was not concerned about the privateer; that he wanted to avoid any responsibility, and that he was only concerned with carrying out his orders, to survey Trinidade.
“How long does he plan to be here?”
“I’ll ask him.”
“You had better tell him why he cannot interfere with the prizes.”
“But he does not intend to anyway.”
“If he is going to be here long,” Tomás said, obviously controlling his impatience with Hart, “it is only a matter of time before someone from one of the prizes raises the alarm. Anyway, this Ramage will expect to be invited to dinner by the other masters. When no invitations come, even he will get suspicious—if he can stay awake long enough.”
Ramage managed to keep his face blank at this unwitting praise for his acting. But what on earth was Tomás talking about?
“How long do you reckon on staying here, then?” Hart asked.
Ramage held out his hands, palms uppermost, in a gesture well understood by all Latins. “Who knows? How big is the island, how long will my surveyors and draughtsmen take with their maps? How long will my lieutenants take with their soundings? Two months, four, six? Blessed if I know. I should think you’ll be long gone before we’ve finished.”
Hart nodded, but was obviously puzzled how to carry out the important part of Tomás’s instructions.
“Captain Ramage,” he said, a more formal note in his voice. “About these prizes of ours …”
Ramage raised an eyebrow. “Your affair, my dear chap. If you take prizes that’s your responsibility. The courts decide, as you know. You might have trouble over those two British ships, of course—unless they’d been captured by the French, and you recaptured them. But I’m not the judge and I’m sure you know all about the Prize Act.”
“Oh yes, don’t worry your head about that, sir,” Hart said, a confidential note in his voice. “No, what I was going to explain is that of course we have prize crews on board each of the ships.”
“Oh yes, I assumed that.”
“Yes, and our men have orders,” Hart said casually but there was no mistaking the warning, “to kill all the passengers the minute they see there’s any danger of losing a ship.”
“What, if the prize crew run a ship on a reef, they murder the passengers? Hardly seems just, I must say.”
Hart clucked like a disappointed schoolteacher. “No, no, no sir, not that sort of danger. I mean if they saw there was any chance of their ships being recaptured …”
“Can’t see who’d try to do that,” Ramage said, obviously puzzled. “After all, the war is over. Why, that’d be an act of piracy, surely?”
A contented smile spread over Hart’s face. “Why, of course, sir, that’s exactly what it would be, and that is why our prize crews have those orders; we have to be on our guard against piracy.”
Again Ramage looked puzzled, scratching his head with one hand and tugging at the knee of his breeches with the other. “Yes, but I can’t see how killing the passengers keeps pirates away.”
“Oh, I see what you mean, Captain, but if you just think of it as insurance, you’ll understand.”
“Ah yes, just insurance. Very wise too: never sail underinsured, somebody once told me. ‘Beware of barratry by master and crew and pay the premiums promptly’—that was what he said, and it’s wise advice, don’t you think?”
“Indeed it is,” Hart patiently agreed, “and we have the officers and men staying in a camp on shore.” He turned to Tomás, saying in Spanish: “I have told him about the hostages and he sees nothing wrong about us having prizes. He might be a brave man—he must be, to have his reputation—but he’s a fool. He’s swallowed our story like a pike taking a minnow. So we can wait for our friends with more prizes, and then we can all sail in one convoy, leaving this pudding to finish his survey.”
“Good, so now be helpful: tell him where to get fresh water. Then he will not be suspicious.”
Hart waved away the idea. “It is not necessary, Tomás. He is not short of water, or he would have asked us about rivers and springs. No, believe me, I understand these people. We say goodbye now and go.”
“Lead the way and say the right things then,” Tomás said, and anyone listening but unable to speak Spanish would not have realized that the big black had been giving orders.
Fifteen minutes later Southwick was sitting in the armchair, Aitken leaned back on the settee with his hat beside him, and Ramage sat at the desk, looking far removed from the vague, hesitant and languid individual who had talked to the privateersmen.
“What was the flag of truce all about?” Southwick asked.
Ramage looked at Aitken, who shook his head. “I think they thought we might have known what they were doing,” Ramage said. “The sight of one of the King’s ships sailing into the bay must have startled them. But as we didn’t have our port-lids up and guns run out, they were puzzled too. By coming out under a flag of truce, perhaps they thought they were safeguarding their own necks.”
“I couldn’t understand the Spanish parts, sir,” Aitken said, “but why did Hart take so much trouble to translate for that black while ignoring the other two?”
“The black is the leader,” Ramage said. “He’s the deep one; ten times the brains of Hart.”
Southwick gave a deep sniff and Ramage guessed that he was impressed by the black’s shrewdness. “What was his name? Thomas?”
“The Spanish version. Hart speaks reasonably good Spanish and good French.”
“Comes from the West Country,” Southwick commented. “Bristol, I reckon.”
“Probably, because he said the Lynx hailed from there,” Aitken said. “Mind you, it’s a fake name, I’ll be bound.”
Ramage let the tw
o men gossip for a few more minutes because, having just had a shock when they did not expect it, they needed some idle talk to let their thoughts settle. Then the questions would come poking up, like fish in a stream looking for flies. Finally Aitken coughed and both Southwick and Ramage looked at him.
“When that fellow Hart said that their prize crews had orders to kill the passengers if the ships were in danger, sir, what did he mean?”
Ramage’s face hardened and his brown eyes seemed more sunken than ever, his high cheekbones becoming more pronounced and his narrow nose more beak-like.
“We were being warned. Hart was telling us that they have armed men in each merchant ship, guarding the passengers, who are in fact hostages. He said the officers and men are on shore ‘in a camp.’ That means there are a dozen or more hostages in each vessel, and if we make any attempt to recapture any of the ships or attack the Lynx, they’ll simply massacre the hostages.”
“Stalemate,” Southwick said crossly.
“I wish it was,” Ramage said. “At the moment the privateers hold the pistol at our heads. We can do nothing. That devil Tomás has probably given orders that if we so much as wave a musket, all the hostages get their throats cut. Remember, a privateer carries a large number of men solely to provide crews for the prizes. I doubt if the Lynx needs even one man from an original crew to sail a ship, so the officers and men could be thrown over the side. I’ve no idea if they’ll bother to ransom the hostages—they might think it too much effort and risk for too little profit.
“They’ll sell each ship and cargo for cash to unscrupulous owners anxious to increase their fleets. Paint out the old name, line in a new, hoist fresh colours and no one will ever guess that’s a ship which apparently vanished while the war was on.”
Southwick nodded admiringly. “Privateers in wartime and pirates in peace. More profitable in peacetime—they’re not at the mercy of the Admiralty court judge’s valuation of a prize: they get the full market value with no deductions for agents, court fees and bribes. And, being pirates, they can disregard a ship’s colours—look at the ones they’ve got out there: French, Dutch and British. No Spanish, though; perhaps this fellow Tomás draws the line at that!”
Ramage shook his head. “That man has no loyalty to anything. There are no Spanish simply because there are so few Spanish ships at sea. Wait until the Lynx’s sister ship comes in—she may have picked up a Don.”
“Well, what are we going to do?” Southwick asked angrily. “We can’t just look at these devils knowing that the ships are prisons for the passengers.”
“We can send the men to quarters and weigh and sink the Lynx. Mind you, you wouldn’t have the bars in the capstan or the port-lids raised before every hostage would be dead,” Ramage said quietly.
Aitken said: “What do you propose, sir?”
“Let’s wait a few days and just watch. We’ll put the surveyors on shore each day, and you can send off Martin and Orsini in boats to take soundings and start that chart. Get the privateersmen accustomed to seeing our boats bustling about—but keep away from the prizes. Not obviously; just don’t let any boat pass within hail.”
Southwick sniffed doubtfully, because he was not a man to play a waiting game, and the privateer had provoked him. “How long do we wait, sir?”
“‘Wait’ is not the correct word. We ‘observe’—like one of Aitken’s poachers hiding in a clump of trees for a day or two before shooting one of the laird’s deer. I want a detailed watch kept on the ships day and night: one man for each ship. Note what boats come and go, men leaving and arriving, stores, what work is done, the guards and where they are and how often they’re changed, what the passengers do and how many … I want some good men who can write given this job. Jackson and people like that.”
“Bowen gets bored, sir,” Southwick commented. “Just the sort of thing he’d like doing.”
“Very well, but they must keep out of sight: I don’t want the privateersmen to realize we are keeping a special watch on them. But of course they might try to board us!”
“Do you think they’ll try?” Aitken sounded hopeful.
“It probably depends on whether or not brother Tomás believed my play-acting. He’ll have about a hundred men in the Lynx, and he can guard the hostages with 25. Would he risk trying to capture a frigate with 75 men … ?”
“You would,” Southwick said.
“Only if I had no choice! But I don’t think Tomás feels trapped: I’m sure he believes having the hostages is enough insurance.”
“Plus having a sleepy and vague captain commanding the frigate,” Southwick said. “Your performance would have convinced me—and I speak English! The way you tried to avoid any responsibility: Hart was delighted with that! Little does he know how many times First Lords and admirals have lost their tempers and accused you of taking too much responsibility!”
“Being sleepy and vague gave me a little time to think,” Ramage admitted. “I was sitting here expecting the pompous master of one of the John Company ships to invite me to dinner to make conversation with his tedious passengers. Instead Aitken brings in a quartet of the most improbable scoundrels with a story that almost beggars the imagination!”
Aitken grinned and stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, sir. I think I’ll go and arrange the first watch of lookouts: I’d like to take each man and ‘introduce’ him to his ship. We had better start a log for each ship, so that in a day or so we will know how many are on board, who are prisoners and who guards.”
Ramage opened a drawer of his desk and took out a polished mahogany case. As he opened it, Southwick grinned. “The Marchesa would like to see you getting those pistols out and loading them, sir: it’s a long time since she bought them for you.”
“The day I was made post,” Ramage recalled, “we went to Bond Street with my father. In fact I remember the Admiral and I waiting in the gunsmith while the Marchesa was in another shop buying lace. Then she came in and bought pistols!”
“Impasse.” Ramage crossed out the words and wrote “checkmate.” Then he ran a line through “mate”: it was certainly “check” as far as Tomás and Jebediah Hart were concerned, but not checkmate: Ramage guessed he still had a move—if only he could see what it was.
The privateersmen—curious how he avoided thinking of them as pirates: perhaps because it seemed absurd in these modern times to realize that pirates still existed—had five ships and nearly fifty passengers as hostages. Neither Hart nor Tomás had threatened the safety of the ships’ companies, who would number about two hundred and fifty.
Very well, he had written down a single word describing the situation, but what did he know, or guess? First, there were two privateers, the Lynx and another which was still out looking for more victims and which was due back in “a few days.”
Where would the prizes be taken? Unless cargoes and hulls could be sold, there was no point in capturing the merchant ships. Well, obviously not to British, Dutch or French ports, judging from the nationality of the present victims. Tomás was Spanish-speaking; the nearest ports—conveniently to leeward, as well—were Portuguese in Brazil or Spanish to the south-west.
Ramage wrote “Prizes sold in River Plate ports?” That gave him a choice of Montevideo or Buenos Aires. The River Plate, nearly a hundred miles wide, was a busy area; the Spanish merchants there would always need ships. Particularly now, he realized. The war had meant that many, if not most, of the merchant ships trading in that area, and occasionally making a bolt for Spain to sell hides and bring back manufactured goods (what the Jonathan traders called “notions”), had been captured by the Royal Navy. They were not restored to their owners by the absurd treaty, so Spanish shipowners would be looking round for suitable replacement vessels to buy. And they must be in a hurry, because every merchant along the banks of the River Plate would be anxious to ship something to somewhere else: goods made a profit only when they moved to the market-place; stored in warehouses they cost money. Nor was that an original
thought: it had been pointed out to him several years ago by Sidney Yorke, the young man who owned a small fleet of merchant ships.
Anyway, that answered the question of what happened to the ships. What about the hostages? The ships’ officers would not be worth anything; they would probably be killed or, with the crews of the ships, put on shore at one of the remoter Brazilian ports. But how was a ransom demand for the hostages going to be sent on to those able (and willing) to pay? A message for the hostages’ respective governments could be put on board homeward-bound ships, naming the prices and where the money should be paid over—somewhere like Madrid, or Cadiz, he presumed.
Yet compared with the value of the ships, the problems of collecting ransom entailed a great deal of work for very little profit, quite apart from the delays involved. Governments or relatives would want assurances that the hostages would be handed over safely. Neither Hart nor Tomás seemed the kind of man for that sort of work.
Ramage wrote “Fate of hostages?”, and then added: “Murdered or released without ransom?” He guessed that Tomás would vote for murder and Hart for release. Which of the two men really was the leader?
Then he wrote down the question whose answer he hardly dared to think about: “What is the consequence of the Calypso’s arrival?”
The privateers had been quick to act. Obviously they had a lookout on the island who had spotted the Calypso on the eastern horizon, but the speed with which they arranged the hostages and made their plans showed that the Lynx was commanded by a decisive captain, not an argumentative committee of privateersmen. Tomás or Hart? He needed to know because one of them would murder without hesitation.
The final question was: “Can they blackmail me into leaving with the Calypso?”