by Dudley Pope
Why should an artist want to spend his days on another ship? Presumably to visit someone. Who? Presumably a woman—he was a presentable, handsome and lively young man. But the only unattached woman—Ramage still did not know whether she was married or unmarried—was Sarah. Was Wilkins seeing Sarah?
The first time he thought about it he felt sick with jealousy: his throat seemed to knot, his arm hurt and he clenched his fists. Various of Wilkins’s remarks took on different meanings; the devil had wheedled Aitken into providing him with transport. And—he finally admitted to himself—perhaps Wilkins was seeing her quite openly: he would have no inkling of Ramage’s feelings for her, so he could not be accused of being deceitful. Well, perhaps not deceitful, but he was hardly being open about it.
Then, going hot with embarrassment, he recalled that Sarah and her mother visited the Calypso daily, sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon, and always during these visits, which often lasted a couple of hours, Wilkins was over on board the East Indiaman.
Well, what was the fellow doing? Certainly he had done some good paintings of Trinidade and its flora and fauna. The fact was that the island lacked much interest, and Wilkins had concentrated on the shore and the sea lapping it. He had done a series of remarkable oils showing in detail the main seashells, introducing Ramage to a new world of colour and beauty he had never dreamed of. In fact one of the main reasons he was impatient to be able to walk properly was that he wanted to join Wilkins, who had been swimming and diving on the reefs and among the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs, collecting even more shells. The after part of the ship reeked with the smell of turpentine because so many of his canvases were propped up drying. Anyone visiting the frigate, Southwick had commented, would think her rigging was being treated with turpentine, not Stockholm tar.
Bowen had long since agreed that Ramage’s leg was not broken: the swelling was caused by the bruising of the muscle. Finally he agreed to remove the bandages and look at the limb again. Bowen was a firm believer in covering a wound and leaving it alone for as long as possible. Uncovering it and exposing it to the noxious vapours in the air, he maintained, was the root cause of gangrene.
Sarah and her mother arrived an hour after Bowen had inspected the leg and pronounced it sufficiently recovered to be without bandages, providing Ramage kept it covered with a silk stocking and was careful not to bang it. The cutlass wound on the arm, inspected at the same time, was healing well—entirely due, in Bowen’s opinion, to the prompt cleansing by Lady Sarah the moment Ramage had emerged from the sea.
The Marchioness enjoyed her daily visits to the Calypso; it was, she told Southwick, a most pleasant way of chaperoning her daughter. She and Southwick and Bowen formed a little coterie at the after end of the quarterdeck, under the awning. Ramage’s one armchair was always brought up for the Marchioness, and the Master and Surgeon would, as soon as she raised her eyebrows and regretted there were no seats for them, produce canvas-backed chairs, and sit round her.
Sarah and Ramage, in the meantime, would stroll back and forth across the quarterdeck, and occasionally along the main-deck and on to the fo’c’s’le, while talking of a dozen subjects. All too often, Ramage found himself making comparisons with Gianna. It was quite unintended, and he remembered vividly the first time. Somehow the subject of music had come up and they began discussing composers. Sarah mentioned her favourites and they were Ramage’s, and he was relieved because although Gianna did not dislike music she was oblivious to it. Now here was a woman with whom he could—for a brief while, anyway—discuss this symphony and that, each of them humming sections and then arguing, or playing the game of naming a piece, with the all too frequent answer from Ramage with his acknowledged bad memory: “I know it well enough but can’t remember the name.”
After music there were books and authors, and the game of completing quotations. Sarah or Ramage would give the first few words and the other had to complete it and name the source. Shakespeare was the favourite; they agreed that Lear was the least favourite of his plays. She knew far more poetry than he, but was anxious to teach him.
The walking about the deck soon restored the muscle in his right leg, and he was able to stop using the cane. Then David Williams and Walter White, the two surveyors, asked to see him and reported they had finished all the field work for their survey and the draughtsmen had now completed their first draught. The final drawings, White said, would be done in London, “because it is impossible to do a good job in the Tropics.”
“Why not?” inquired a puzzled Ramage. “We’re not rolling or anything.”
“No, sir, it’s the heat and the ink: it dries so quickly on the pen that they can’t draw a line more than six inches long. It means the line starts off black but turns grey after a couple of inches … Makes the drawing look very patchy, sir.”
Martin and Orsini completed their soundings of the possible anchorages and Ramage took the Calypso out for three days to run a few lines of soundings round the island, up to two miles offshore. The frigate had only just anchored again, an hour before noon, when a boat came over from the Earl of Dodsworth with a letter. It was from the Master, Hungerford, and was a formal invitation. The Master of the Earl of Dodsworth and his guests requested the pleasure of the company of Captain Ramage and his officers to dinner tomorrow at half past one o’clock.
When Sarah and her mother paid a visit later, they were vague about it: there was nothing special about the occasion, as far as they knew; simply that Hungerford understood that Captain Ramage was now recovered enough to be able to visit the Earl of Dodsworth, and was now looking forward to entertaining the officers of the Calypso. Starting, Sarah had suggested, what would presumably become a regular social exchange between the two ships during the long voyage back to England.
Ramage was thankful that his arm had healed enough for him to leave off the sling: he had become thoroughly exasperated with having Silkin cut up his food, and then having to eat everything one-handed. Even breaking a piece of bread was a major effort using only one hand. He still needed the sling by the time evening came, when tiring muscles made the arm throb like a bad headache.
Wagstaffe insisted on remaining on board as the officer of the deck while the rest of them went off to the Earl of Dodsworth, and Ramage was thankful to accept his offer. The Second Lieutenant pointed out that he had not taken part in any of the captures, and obviously the passengers on board the East Indiaman were going to be expressing their thanks.
It was another beautiful day: the sun hot and bright, sea and sky the usual startling blue, and Ramage and his officers were rowed over to the Earl of Dodsworth in the Calypso’s launch to find the John Company ship’s deck splendidly cool. More awnings had been stretched so that no sun touched the deck between the mainmast and the taffrail, and more canvas had been laid on the quarterdeck like a huge carpet. Many chairs were scattered about and two large tables bore decanters, jugs and glasses.
Ramage was met at the gangway by Hungerford, who turned to greet Aitken while the Marquis of Rockley stepped forward.
“Ah, Ramage, it’s good to see you well again. I’ve been receiving daily reports from my wife and daughter, but nothing beats seeing you with my own eyes.”
“I’ve been a trouble to a number of people,” Ramage said apologetically. “The leg business was particularly annoying. Getting slashed across the arm by a cutlass is one thing, but being blown across one’s own quarterdeck in an armchair seems almost like carelessness!”
The Marquis laughed and, taking Ramage’s arm, led him towards the other passengers waiting on the quarterdeck. “To tell you the truth,” he murmured, “the two women have loved every minute of your convalescence. They’ve never had their very own wounded hero to fuss and worry over!”
Those Army uniforms: their owner had never been wounded, nor did he rate the description of a hero! Who the devil was he?
Ramage kissed the Marchioness’s hand and answered her inquiries about his health.
He turned to Sarah and, knowing every passenger was watching, kissed her hand with the expected politeness, and then turned to accompany the Marquis and walk round, talking to the other passengers, all of whom he had met the day before he’d swum to the Heliotrope, and all of whom now wanted to hear from his own lips every detail of everything that had happened since.
Was his Lordship sure that the wicked leaders of the pirates had been killed when the Lynx exploded? Was he certain that none could have escaped and swum ashore? Was there the slightest chance of them meeting another pirate ship on the voyage home? Would the privateersmen imprisoned in the Calypso be hanged when they reached England?
One woman, and Ramage recalled she was a Mrs Donaldson, proclaimed loudly that the pirates held in the Calypso should be tried before the ship sailed from Trinidade and hanged from gibbets erected along the small beach, their bodies left hanging in chains as a warning to any more pirates who might visit the island after the Calypso had gone.
Several of the passengers—Mrs Donaldson among them, Ramage noticed—were happily drinking and keeping the stewards busy fetching fresh glasses. Soon Aitken, Kenton, Martin, Southwick and Paolo were mingling with the passengers, and quite naturally Ramage and the Rockley family became separated as the new faces attracted attention among a group of people who had been together for many weeks, from the time the Earl of Dodsworth had left Calcutta, making her way down the muddy Hoogly river to the sea.
The Marquis was anxious to hear more details from Ramage about the recent treaty with Bonaparte, and again expressed his doubts. The French, he declared, were determined to have India, and Bonaparte was prepared to play a waiting game. However, once he heard that his own views were shared by Ramage and that many powerful figures in London, including the Earl of Blazey and most other admirals in the Navy List except St Vincent, felt the same, he let the subject drop.
The Marchioness said, out of the blue: “I’ve been telling Sarah that she must make more use of her parasol: her face is getting quite brown; quite unbecoming, in my view.”
Sarah smiled impishly. “Well, let us hear your view, Captain.”
Ramage felt his own face turning red beneath the suntan because he had been encouraging Sarah to lose the cream colour on her cheeks, and let the skin turn golden in the sun. Indeed, most nights he had gone to sleep imagining her whole body a golden brown, and he suspected that Sarah had guessed.
He looked up to find the Marquis chuckling. “Poor fellow, you are in a fix! Do you upset the mother or the daughter?—the problem most young men face sooner or later! Well, I’ll add my pennorth by saying I think she looks beautiful whether peaches and cream or golden, and I see that Captain Hungerford wants us to lead the way down to the saloon!”
He was thankful for the Marquis’s intervention, and then saw that the Marchioness was smiling and as she passed close she whispered: “Don’t think you’ll always escape as easily: I am a golden dragon, the highest rank of the species!”
Ramage was surprised and pleased to see Wilkins among the guests. He was very well dressed and obviously quite at home among the passengers.
Hungerford led the way down the companion-way and directed the Calypsos to their seats. The master of the Earl of Dodsworth sat at the centre of his table, his back to the sternlights, with the Marquis on his right and the Marchioness to his left. Aitken was on the Marquis’s right, Southwick at the Marchioness’s left, with a woman passenger separating Martin from Aitken and Orsini from Southwick. Strictly speaking, Southwick as a warrant officer was junior to Martin, but Southwick clearly was one of the Marchioness’s favourites.
Ramage found himself seated exactly opposite Captain Hungerford, with Sarah on his right and Bowen beyond her. On his left was another woman passenger who, had Sarah and her mother remained in India, would have been the most beautiful woman on board the Earl of Dodsworth, and she seemed to accept her secondary role with good grace, seating herself as Ramage slid her chair with an ease that most women would envy and a softly breathed warning to Ramage not to hurt his arm.
As soon as everyone was seated, Hungerford rose and took a deep breath. “My lords, ladies and gentlemen: I have three tasks before we begin this dinner. First, for the benefit of our guests, our bill of fare. Pease soup, as you who have voyaged with us so far know very well, is a speciality of this ship and I dare claim it as unique. We have legs of mutton, and can only apologize that it isn’t lamb, but our ewes proved barren. There are fowls for those who like white meat, hogs’ puddings, hams, duck, pork and mutton pies—” he paused to consult a list “—corned round of beef, mutton chops and potatoes, removed by plum pudding. And port wine, sherry, gin, rum and of course porter and spruce beer.”
Ramage glanced at his officers. Martin and Orsini were glassy-eyed with the prospect and Aitken was obviously hearing John Knox inveighing against gluttony and preparing to ignore him. Southwick had that comfortable smile one associated with Friar Tuck, and was surreptitiously undoing a button of his coat.
Captain Hungerford continued: “So much for what is to be placed before us. I now welcome our guests, only three of whom are known to the majority of you.” With the skill of a man who for years had known that one of the most important tasks of a John Company master was to make the passengers feel comfortable, he then introduced the Calypsos, starting with Ramage and ending with a confident Orsini.
“These are the men to whom we owe first our lives and second our freedom. I believe Captain Ramage (incidentally he does not use his title, so I am being neither familiar nor disrespectful), first boarded this ship in a rather unusual way, and the second time was very very unorthodox—” he paused while the passengers laughed and then cheered and clapped “—so it is my pleasure on behalf of all who voyage in the Earl of Dodsworth, to give you our thanks.”
Ramage was aware of some scraping and scuffling behind him, particularly puzzling because some of the passengers were deliberately not looking in that direction while four or five others’ curiosity was winning. Aitken, Southwick and his other officers facing into the saloon were openly staring.
He felt Sarah’s hand clasp his beneath the tablecloth and press it (reassuringly? sympathetically? affectionately? It was impossible to tell, and a moment later it was withdrawn). Then Captain Hungerford, unable to restrain a grin, said: “If those seated at the other side of this table will turn and face in the direction I am looking …”
Stewards appeared from nowhere to turn the chairs, and as soon as a puzzled Ramage sat down again, facing the length of the saloon with a table to the left and another to the right, he saw in the space between them Wilkins’s easel, the one the carpenter had made for him. A green baize cloth covered whatever canvas was on it.
Hungerford said: “Lady Sarah …” and she stood up, as though to perform a role for which she had been prepared, and walked to the easel, standing to one side. “It gives us all great pleasure,” Hungerford continued, “to ask you, Captain Ramage, if you will accept this as a small token of our gratitude. It will show you something which, I am told, you did not actually see for yourself. If you will go up to the easel …”
She was waiting by the easel and watching him, and the look in her eyes seemed to be giving him some secret message he dare not believe. When he was within three or four paces of the easel she leaned across and removed the cloth with the grace of a provocative dancer, and he found himself on the Calypso’s quarterdeck watching the Lynx exploding in a great ball of fire. The painting was so real that in the instant of surprise he nearly flung his arms over his face to protect his eyes from the bulging flame. He looked away and caught her eyes and knew he had not been mistaken those few moments earlier, but there was so much confusion: the Calypso’s guns spewing smoke and flame, the Lynx exploding, Sarah’s face so close, and—
Quickly he stepped back, bewildered, and almost at once he saw Wilkins and realized that the artist had given him a few moments in which he could pull himself together. Two steps and he was grasping
Wilkins’s hand, congratulating him, and there was a sudden uproar of cheering, clapping and the clinking of knives tapping glasses. Then they were all shouting “Speech, speech, speech!” and he turned back to explain to her that for a moment the ball of fire had blotted out everything, and her eyes said yes, she knew, but noblesse oblige, and if it helped she loved him, and one day he would know all about that military uniform …
He turned back towards Hungerford. “I don’t know what to say.” He stopped and everyone in the cabin realized that he was simply speaking his thoughts aloud. “The beginning was just like that, then it all went black …”
Suddenly he swallowed, stood straight because the deckhead in the saloon was high, and with what seemed to many of the passengers an easy nonchalance, bowed and said: “On behalf of myself and every man in the Calypso, I thank you for commissioning, and Alexander Wilkins for recording on canvas, this instant in our lives. I shall always treasure it, and it will hang in my family’s house in London so that when in future any of my Calypsos want to come and look at it again, or any of you good people, you have only to knock on the door. I cannot guarantee that I shall always be there because, as you know, I am in the King’s sea service, and I fear the present peace will be brief …”
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE TWO surveyors came to his cabin next morning with the draft of the new chart of Trinidade and its waters.
With Southwick’s help they had determined the exact latitude, and the longitude as close as the Calypso’s chronometer would allow. Their task, though, was simple enough. White unrolled the parchment and pointed to the numbers representing heights on land and depths in the water.
“We have to name the hills, bays and headlands … We’d like you to choose the first ones, sir! At least, one or two bays have been named already, but …”