Ramage & The Freebooters

by Pope, Dudley

  ‘My compliments to Mr Southwick, Jackson, and if it’s convenient to leave Mr Appleby at the conn, tell him I’d like to see him. By the way, where’s Harris?’

  ‘Stafford’s guarding him, sir. In the wardroom – forward, he can’t overhear anything.’

  Southwick was soon sitting by the table, blinking in the light of the lantern, and quickly Ramage related the position.

  As soon as he’d finished, Southwick looked up at Jackson and said with such sincerity that his massive tactlessness was not noticed. ‘You might be a Jonathan, m’lad, but you’re a credit to the Service!’

  ‘I agree,’ Ramage interposed, ‘but for the moment we have problems.’

  ‘Problems maybe,’ Southwick said breezily, ‘but no mutiny!’

  ‘But problems all the same. Dyson and Brookland are mutineers pure and simple. Court martial and sentence of death. Jackson, Stafford, Maxton, Rossi and either you or me required as witnesses. It’d have to be at Plymouth and that means a delay of – well, three or four days, and we can’t be sure there aren’t more mutineers there who’d stop us sailing again. And then there’s Harris–’

  ‘But Harris didn’t–’ Jackson interjected but Ramage raised a hand to silence him.

  ‘Harris knew there was going to be a mutiny; he knew they were planning to take the ship tonight. He didn’t come and warn me or Mr Southwick. Remember the wording of that particular Article of War, Jackson?’

  The American nodded gloomily.

  ‘And so does Harris, because I reminded him. In fact I repeated the precise wording.’

  ‘Does that mean all three have to swing, sir?’

  ‘Of course, if they were brought to trial.’

  ‘But…’

  Both Jackson and Southwick said the word together and stopped.

  ‘Go on, Mr Southwick,’ Ramage said.

  ‘I was only going to say that although the Articles of War have to be observed, sir, I can’t help feeling that Harris is – well, a special case.’

  ‘Any more than Dyson, who has a wife and several children starving on his wretched pay which hasn’t been increased for one and a half centuries? And what about Brookland – has he a family? Neither can read or write; but Harris can.’

  Ramage’s voice was cold and both Jackson and Southwick could not hide their dismay. Finally Jackson said: ‘I’m presuming a lot when I shouldn’t, sir, and I know that things like being with you when you rescued the Marchesa don’t–’

  Curious to know what Jackson was going to say, Ramage eased the atmosphere by interjecting, ‘When we rescued the Marchesa. But spit it out, Jackson, without all this backing and filling!’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Well, sir, I can’t help thinking that whatever the legal rights and wrongs of what Harris did, he meant well and the Tritons respect him.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Well sir, we’ve still got a divided ship’s company. The Kathleens are sticking together and so are the Tritons. You can tell the Kathleens they’re Tritons now and they’ll accept it because it comes from you. But without Harris there won’t be anyone the Tritons trust that can persuade them.’

  ‘Since when do seamen need to be persuaded, Jackson? Discipline, Jackson, backed up by the cat and the Articles of War.’

  Southwick looked up as though he was hearing ghostly voices; Jackson looked away as if ashamed to hear Ramage speak so brutally. Then both men looked sheepish as Ramage laughed.

  ‘The trouble is, neither of you listen. You asked me if they’d be hanged and I said – I remember the exact words – “Of course, if they were brought to trial”.’

  ‘Ah, “if”,’ Southwick said, making an attempt to hide his relief: for a few moments he thought the captain had been so frightened of the near-mutiny that he was going to react viciously. He’d seen it in other captains and it was understandable but unforgivable because, Southwick reasoned, you were punishing other men for your own shortcomings. Even a twinge of fear, let alone a touch of cowardice, was a grave shortcoming in Southwick’s code.

  ‘Exactly. But, Jackson, as the spokesman for the non-mutinous half of the ship’s company, tell me this: are you suggesting that these two men who actually planned to mutiny tonight and take the ship back to Spithead should escape punishment? That Harris, who failed to report it to me, should escape punishment?’

  ‘Oh no, sir!’ Jackson exclaimed, realizing there’d be no hanging. ‘No sir – that’d wreck discipline. No sir, just that hanging’s – well…’

  ‘A bit final. But obviously you have another idea.’

  Jackson looked startled. ‘How did you guess, sir?’

  ‘Because I’m paying for the rum. Two bottles, remember? Plus whatever the surgeon drank.’

  Ramage described Jackson’s idea and then asked: ‘Am I far wrong?’

  ‘No – that’s about it, sir,’ the American grinned ruefully.

  ‘But afterwards,’ Ramage added, ‘Dyson and Brookland will be kept under an arrest and put on board the next homeward-bound ship we meet.’

  ‘That’s wise, sir,’ Southwick said. ‘But you’ll keep Harris?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll keep Harris; but what good he’ll be after a flogging I don’t know. He’s intelligent and sensitive. If I flog him I ruin him. If I don’t flog him, I ruin the discipline in the ship and if the Admiralty heard of it, I’d be put on the beach for the rest of my life. I’m damned if I do and twice damned if I don’t.’

  Jackson began to understand why the captain appeared to have lost some of his usual zest. It’d be the first flogging he’d ever ordered, and Jackson understood him well enough to know that although it’d scar a seaman’s back it’d scar the captain’s soul.

  ‘Sir,’ said Jackson cautiously, ‘I think if you’d let me talk to Harris before he – well, before he gets his “medicine”, I’d make him understand. And perhaps he could be given a dozen or so less?’

  ‘How, without making the rest of the ship’s company suspicious – or sympathetic towards Dyson and Brookland?’

  ‘Well, perhaps Dyson and Brookland could sort of aggravate their offences. Like fighting, sir. They’re both blacked up a bit.’

  ‘“Blacked up”?’

  ‘Got black eyes – look as though they’ve been fighting. We could improve that by the morning, too, and clean up Harris a bit.’

  ‘Jackson, obviously you believe in justice, but you like to have a thumb pressed down on one side of the scales.’

  The three men were standing before him. The corporal of Marines was to his right and six Marines, muskets on their shoulders, stood behind the prisoners, who were frightened, the fear showing through their bleary, drink-filmed eyes.

  As the sun broke through a cloud he noticed all three men had to squint: their heads were throbbing from the effect of the rum, and the bright light following much violent movement as they were hustled up on deck from the total darkness of the breadroom must be agonizing.

  He looked at them slowly and then, glancing round the ship, noted that most of the seamen on deck were Tritons. Jackson and his men were out of sight.

  Southwick walked from behind him with the cook, who had a plaster covering a cut on his head and stood to the left of the prisoners.

  ‘Well, Mr Southwick, what have you to report?’

  ‘I was going to the breadroom with the cook to survey the bread, sir. I opened the door and when the cook went in he found these three men inside, almost insensible from drink. The whole place stank of rum. Two empty bottles there.’

  Ramage suddenly realized he’d made a mistake. The breadroom door had been locked from the outside. Had the cook realized the significance or even noticed it? Southwick obviously had from the way he’d phrased his description.

  ‘How did they get the rum?’

  ‘Can’t say, sir. They won’t say either.’

  ‘Why are those two men’ – he pointed at Dyson and Brookland – ‘so bloodstained? Have they been fighting? And all of them
are soaking wet.’

  ‘Yes, sir. From all accounts they had a fight when they got drunk. Then when I called for some seamen to get ’em up on deck to sober ’em up under the wash-deck pump, they started fighting the seamen. Dyson and Brookland, that is.’

  Ramage knew too much to ask how and why the fighting started. It wasn’t justice; but it wasn’t injustice either. Whatever was done to these men wasn’t as bad as having them tried by court martial, knowing they’d be hanged.

  ‘Harris, what have you got to say for yourself?’

  Ramage sensed a sudden tension round him then realized every Triton was straining to hear Harris’ reply. They must all know he was against the mutiny; they knew he and Dyson and Brookland had been missing for most of the night. And now they must be mightily puzzled to find that Harris and the two men supposed to be leading them to mutiny had spent the night swilling rum in the breadroom.

  ‘Nothing, sir: I’m sorry sir, I was just drinking.’

  ‘Just drinking…’ Ramage mustered a convincing sneer. ‘A dozen lashes for you, my lad: that’ll clear the rum out of your system. Take him away!’

  The corporal – who acted as the ship’s master-at-arms, a title which a century before meant just that but now indicated he was the ship’s policeman – barked at two Marines and Harris was marched below.

  Dyson and Brookland remained standing in an ever widening pool of water. Southwick had made a reasonably good job of sobering them up. They weren’t still completely drunk, yet they weren’t quite sober.

  ‘Brookland, you’re the senior man. What were you doing?’

  ‘Just drinking, sir.’

  ‘What happened then, a bottle get up and hit you?’

  He heard the Tritons trying to restrain their laughter. It was working…so far. There’d been no gasp when he’d sentenced Harris.

  ‘Come on, man, I asked you a question.’

  ‘Don’t rightly recall, sir. I was fighting someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Slushy, I think. But he wasn’t in a Marine’s uniform. Then there was the cook. And the Master. Lots of Marines.’

  ‘You fought them all?’

  ‘Oh no, sir,’ the man exclaimed. ‘No, I mean that when I was fighting I… I’m sorry, sir, I don’t really remember what happened, except I was fighting Slushy.’

  ‘Dyson – what have you to say for yourself?’

  Dyson shook his head and nearly toppled over. Straightening himself up with an effort he tried to focus his eyes on Ramage.

  ‘Fightin’, sir. Brookland and me. My fault, sir. I think I ’ad a fight with a Marine, too. I ’it the cook with an empty bottle.’

  ‘Oh – now why did you do that?’

  ‘Don’t get on with him too well,’ Dyson said with drunken honesty. ‘Wasn’t a pre…pre-medulitated attackle. I mean I didn’t…’

  ‘You hit him on the spur of the moment?’

  ‘That’s it, sir,’ Dyson said gratefully.

  ‘Very well, two dozen lashes for each of you. Now get them below, Corporal; they make the quarterdeck look untidy.’

  As the corporal bustled and shouted, the remaining Marines stamping and wheeling amid small clouds of pipeclay, Ramage walked aft to the taffrail and watched the Triton’s wake.

  Guilt, he thought to himself, was a matter of circumstances, necessity and degree. He had just flouted the Admiralty by charging the men with drunkenness instead of conspiracy to mutiny; he’d then flouted the Admiralty again in ordering them to be given what was, in fact, an almost dangerously light sentence. But officially no captain, whether of a tiny brig or a 74-gun ship of the line, could punish a man with more than a dozen lashes. If the crime warranted more than a dozen, then officially the man had to be brought to trial before a court martial, who could order more – as many lashes as they thought fit (there was no limit – 500 was a common sentence for desertion) or even hanging. But it was an order most captains ignored.

  Some ignored it for the men’s own good – better break a rule and give a man a swift couple of dozen than bring him before a court martial which might take a couple of months to assemble and then decide to make an example of him (or be fed up with a succession of petty cases) and sentence him to a hundred lashes.

  But Ramage had no illusions about other captains who broke the rule because they enjoyed seeing men flogged. A few years ago there was the case of Captain Bligh; now there was talk of a captain out in the West Indies, Hugh Pigot, son of old Admiral Pigot, who gloated when he saw the tails of a cat laying open a man’s bare back. For a moment Ramage almost envied him: better perhaps to be able to gloat than stand there with your stomach empty because you knew you’d be sick if you ate anything, and breathing deeply and standing on your toes to stop yourself fainting. And hating the circumstances which forced you to have a man flogged.

  But Ramage recognized the symptoms of self-pity and told himself: I was given command of a ship knowing what it entails. I have to fill in forms by the dozen for the Admiralty, the Navy Board, the Board of Ordnance, the Sick and Hurt Board… I have to take unwilling and often stupid men and train them, and keep them well-fed and as fit as possible despite bad food and often appalling conditions.

  I have to lead ’em and punish ’em when necessary. Sometimes when going into action I have to give orders which will certainly kill one, a dozen or all of them. I am – if I do the job properly – their teacher and leader, judge and jury. Yes, and father-confessor and friend as well.

  As far as the Admiralty are concerned, whether I succeed or not has little to do with my promotion; where that’s concerned it’s more important to have influence in Parliament! The surest way to quick promotion is to be closely related to someone worth five votes to the government in the House of Commons… But whether the system is good or bad, it is the system; neither I nor anyone else can change it, whether–

  ‘Deck there!’

  The shout was from the lookout at the foremast and Southwick, snatching up the speaking trumpet, bellowed a reply.

  The man shouted back: ‘Land, sir. A headland I think, two points on the starboard bow; can just see it in the haze.’

  Southwick acknowledged, looked around for Appleby and demanded: ‘Would you recognize the Lizard if you saw it?’

  ‘Yes sir, I’ve seen it several times.’

  ‘Good. Take the “bring ’em near” and get aloft.’

  Ramage idly watched him scurry forward and begin the long climb up the ratlines. The Lizard…

  The blue-grey smudge on the starboard quarter began slowly to fade and drop below the horizon, and Ramage watched the bosun’s mate sitting on the coaming of the main hatch. Every movement the man made irritated him; everything about him was irritating.

  Evan Evans was a tall and almost painfully thin Welshman who viewed the world, when he was sober, with doleful disapproval. However, his enormous nose – it looked like a purple cucumber stuck on as a joke – had an uncanny instinct for pointing into a tot of rum, and he had been one of the most popular of the Kathleen’s petty officers.

  But Evans was now making up three cat-o’-nine-tails for the flogging tomorrow morning.

  It was a tradition – perhaps there’d been an Admiralty order, though Ramage had never seen it – that a man was never flogged on the day the captain pronounced the sentence: always the next.

  No doubt the seamen thought it was to give the sentenced men time to work up a dread of the punishment facing them; but Ramage knew that, by tradition anyway, it was to give the captain time for second thoughts in case he had acted too harshly in the heat of the moment. And, curiously enough, the delay was doubly to the men’s advantage. If those to be flogged were popular then many of their shipmates illicitly hoarded their most valued possession, their morning and evening tots of rum, so that (if it could not be smuggled to the prisoners to drink before being marched on deck) they had something to deaden the pain after the punishment. If the punishment was given the same day as the sentence there�
��d be no time for hoarding.

  Evan Evans was working slowly and steadily; there was a dreadful fascination in watching him which, Ramage noticed, everyone else shared: not a seaman walked past without glancing at him. But the man worked methodically, oblivious to stares and, because of his rating, immune from unpleasant comments.

  Beside him on the deck were three pieces of thick rope, each a couple of feet long and an inch in diameter. They were for the handles. From a coil of braided line Evans had already cut twenty-seven pieces, each just over two feet long and a quarter of an inch in diameter. They would form the tails.

  As Ramage paced miserably up and down the weather side of the quarterdeck, pausing occasionally to glance at the set of the sails and check the course the helmsmen were steering, Evans went on with his work. He picked up one length of thick rope and put it across his knees. From the brim of his tarred hat he took a sailmaker’s needle and threaded it with twine.

  With a slowness that did not hide his deftness, he made a sailmaker’s whipping at one end of the rope, preventing the strands coming undone. After whipping an end of each of the other two thick pieces he put them down on the deck again. Then he patiently whipped one end of each of the twenty-seven tails.

  The Lizard was still a smudge on the horizon when he dropped the last one on the deck and stuck the needle back in his hat. He held one of the handles between his knees, the whipped end hanging down, the other end conveniently placed to work on. Unlaying the three strands of the rope for a couple of inches, he took one of the tails and worked the un-whipped end between the unlaid strands of the rope in the fashion of a long splice. Holding it in place with one hand he did the same with another, then a third and fourth until all nine had been spliced into the handle.

  Retrieving the needle from his hat and rethreading it, he ran a few stitches through each tail where it was spliced into the rope, which then had one whipping put over the end and another an inch farther down. There’d be no chance of the tails pulling out.

  After inspecting it carefully he put the cat down on the deck and took up a roll of red baize material. Measuring the handle against the material, he used an enormous pair of sailmaker’s scissors to cut off a strip just long and wide enough to wrap right round it. With all the care of a seamstress making a ball dress for her most important customer, he then wrapped the material round the handle like a stocking, joining it by stitching a seam along the entire length. With the thread cut and the needle stuck back in his hat he held up the finished cat.