Ramage & The Freebooters

by Pope, Dudley

  ‘Dozens of ’em,’ Southwick growled. ‘Thought they were rocks for a moment! Can’t make out what they are, even with the glass.’

  Ramage called to the lookout who reported that they stretched diagonally across the brig’s bow from the larboard beam.

  ‘Back the foretops’l, Mr Southwick!’

  Within moments of Southwick’s bellows the foretopsail yard was being braced round and the sheets trimmed again so the wind blew on to the forward side, trying to push the brig astern in opposition to the maintopsail trying to thrust her ahead. The opposing forces, balancing each other, stopped the ship within a few yards of the line of objects.

  By then Ramage was on the fo’c’sle with the night-glass jammed to his eye. He snapped it shut and went aft to tell Southwick.

  ‘Casks and sacks – the Jorum’s ahead of us and to windward and has dumped some of her cargo.’

  ‘She got up here faster than I expected!’ Southwick exclaimed.

  ‘I told you these schooners were slippery. Let’s get under way again!’

  Southwick shouted the orders which set the men bracing the foretopsail yard round again and the sail filled with a bang. Almost at once the brig stopped pitching gently, and the splashing as her stem and counter alternately slapped down on to the waves gave way to the steady sluicing of water as she gathered speed.

  But more than ten minutes passed before Ramage was certain he had identified the mountain peaks that let them identify the few bonfires on shore as the village of Gouyave, while it took a timed run of fifteen minutes to establish their exact position and discover they were half a mile inshore of the rendezvous. By that time Ramage had the ship cleared for action and the carronades run out, using only the depleted crew.

  Southwick’s cursing at their slowness was interrupted by a hail from the lookout on the starboard bow: ‘Sail ho! A point on the larboard bow, sir; about a couple of cables distant.’

  ‘Very well,’ Southwick acknowledged, jumping up on to a carronade with an alacrity which belied his age and bulk.

  ‘No sail set, sir: seems to be just lying there!’ the man added.

  Again Southwick acknowledged and Ramage said: ‘Remember to check why the larboard lookout didn’t sight it,’ and warned, ‘Make sure there’s nothing else around.’

  The chances of a trap were slight. But it wasn’t until all the lookouts spaced round the ship reported nothing else in sight that Ramage ordered Southwick to heave-to a cable’s distance to windward of the schooner.

  For the past hour the two boarding parties had been kept below, the ship being sailed and cleared for action with the reduced crew. Now Ramage told Appleby to assemble the first party aft. While that was being done, he went down to his cabin, put on his coat, stuffed the two pistols into the top of his breeches, slung a cutlass belt over his shoulder and jammed his hat on his head.

  As he took a last look round the cabin he saw a strip of white cloth lying on his desk. Cursing his memory he threw his hat on to the settee and tied the strip round his head. Hell, his forehead felt sore; God knows how many times he had rubbed the scar this evening, like a baby sucking its thumb.

  Up on deck he found the men grouped aft by the taffrail with Appleby bending over the binnacle light reading out their names from a sheet of paper. Finally, the last of the men answered and Appleby reported: ‘All sixteen men present, sir.’

  Sixteen? Ramage was puzzled for a moment, then realized the other four were already in the schooner.

  And where the devil was the schooner now? He turned and saw her black shape close by to leeward. Even as he looked Southwick hailed it through the speaking trumpet.

  ‘What ship?’

  ‘The Jorum schooner, Mr Southwick, sir, lying to and awaiting orders.’

  Ramage almost sighed with relief: Jackson’s voice and answering in the prearranged manner.

  ‘Ready for the boarding party?’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘No more’n twenty, sir, and even then it’ll be a tight fit.’

  Southwick swore and from below Ramage heard yells of disappointment from the other twenty men standing by.

  ‘All right, Jackson, I’m sending ’em over now.’

  Ramage noted Southwick’s confident ‘I’. They’d already agreed that the Master took command from the moment the Triton hove-to near the schooner.

  The jolly boat which had been towing astern was hauled alongside and ten of the boarding party were ferried over to the schooner. When it returned for the rest Ramage moved over to the ladder and, as soon as the last of the men disappeared over the side, reached out to shake Southwick’s hand.

  ‘Best o’ luck sir: hope to see you back on board very soon!’

  ‘Thanks, Southwick. If not, go round St Lucia and just steer east – you can’t miss Barbados; but even if you do, you’ll soon sight Africa!’

  Southwick gave a full-bellied laugh and the men in the boat joined in.

  A few minutes later Ramage was scrambling up the lee side of the schooner, followed by the boarders, to be greeted by her captain, a young white man who introduced himself as James Gorton.

  ‘All of Mr Rondin’s instructions have been carried out, sir,’ he reported. ‘But I daren’t jettison any more cargo to make extra room or we’ll be floating so light the privateers’d get suspicious.’

  ‘But we can get twenty men in the hold?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Not much room and it stinks o’ molasses and is running alive with cockroaches. No rats though – well, not many.’

  Ramage saw that the canvas hatch cover had been rolled back and several of the wooden beams covering the hatch had been lifted off. From the hold there was the faint glow of a lantern.

  ‘Right,’ Ramage said crisply. ‘Let’s get my men below out of the way. Come on, boarders – down you go. Careful with those grenades and false-fires!’

  The men moved silently across the narrow deck from the bulwark.

  ‘Jackson?’

  ‘Here, sir!’

  Ramage moved forward, followed by the American, to be out of earshot of the schooner’s crew, who were gathered around Gorton at the hatch.

  ‘Did everything go off all right?’

  ‘Perfectly, sir. Found Fetch’s hut without any tacking back and forth. He was getting drunk with rum.’

  ‘Tie him up?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘There was a fight of it. We left him for dead.’

  But Ramage knew Jackson too well: the American’s voice was too glib, too well rehearsed. It was the true story, but not the whole one.

  ‘You mean Maxton killed him.’

  ‘Well, that’s about the size of it, sir. Can’t say I blame him. Never came across such an evil man in my life.’

  Ramage sensed that Jackson, who had fought and killed many times, was shuddering at the memory of it.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, we got to his hut. All round were these horrible dolls with evil faces. Some were made of cloth wrapped round bones – human bones, I swear, shins, thighs and arms. And he had beads and things laid out in circles on the ground, and squares and diamonds. Well, we crept up and then dashed into the hut.’

  ‘How could you see?’

  ‘Bonfire burning – the hut’s just a three-sided shelter with a thatched roof. He was just crouching there on his haunches, drinking from a gourd, and when he saw us he asked what we were doing. Maxton – I didn’t get time to speak – said he’d come to cut him. That’s the word they use for attacking anyone with a knife–’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Ramage interrupted impatiently.

  ‘Well, this fellow started cussing him and saying he’d strike him dead and set the loogaroos, or some such thing, on to his family. Maxton said something I didn’t understand – defying him, I reckoned – and this fellow said he’d already set the loogaroos on scores of families; and as for white men – he said this to me – well,
when Fedding was ruling the island–’

  ‘Fédon,’ Ramage corrected. ‘The Frenchman who led the rebellion a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Well, when Fédon was alive he’d eaten a white man a day – Fetch, that is – and he knew a wicked white man had sent us now. Maxton asked him what if a white man had, and Fetch picked up a piece of wood – a Y-shaped stick with hair and beads tied to it, and pointed it at me (he’d guessed I was the leader) and said he was going to put the loogaroos on me and my master that very minute. Well, that did it for Maxton: it was so fast I couldn’t see exactly what happened, except that suddenly Fetch was falling over backwards and Maxton’s knife was in his throat.’

  ‘What about the tom-tom?’

  ‘Ah, that went off a treat,’ Jackson said proudly, glad to change the subject. ‘We found Fetch’s and used that in the end. I thumped away, and three or four minutes after I’d finished we heard another one over to the north begin to beat out the same tune. That was the seven-thirty signal, sir.’

  ‘Good,’ Ramage said. ‘How was Maxton after that?’

  ‘Funny you should ask that, sir. Very quiet the whole time after the Fetch business. No laughing or joking; hardly answered questions or anything. But he didn’t miss anything. Heard the tom-tom before any of us. He was – well, sort of all taut, like a backstay in a gale of wind.’

  ‘Very well. Now you’d better get below with the rest of them. You did a very good job, the four of you.’

  Jackson grunted. ‘Tell you the truth sir, I don’t know why someone didn’t do in that fellow Fetch a long time ago.’

  Ramage found Gorton aft, standing by the schooner’s heavy tiller.

  ‘I think we might get under way, if you’re ready,’ Ramage said politely, careful to indicate he knew he was a passenger – for the time being anyway.

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ Gorton answered smartly, and shouted for hands to man the halyards.

  The crispness of the ‘Aye aye, sir!’ told Ramage that, while Gorton might not be a deserter from the King’s service, he’d certainly spent some of his life in the King’s ships. Well, deserter or not, it probably meant the man wouldn’t get in a panic at the smell of burnt powder…

  The men grunted in unison as they swigged on the halyards, the blocks squeaking as the ropes rendered through them, and the big heavy gaff of the mainsail slowly climbed up the mast, followed a minute or two later by a headsail, and then the big foresail.

  As the Jorum gathered way Gorton leaned hard against the tiller, obviously waiting for his men – they couldn’t number more than a dozen – to trim the sheets before anyone relieved him. Ramage moved over and helped push.

  ‘Bit short-handed, sir,’ Gorton apologized, ‘but it’s hard to get anyone to sign on these days, the way things are. All these scallywags are getting four times the normal wage. All except me, that is.’

  Ramage grunted sympathetically. ‘Reliable men, though?’

  ‘Oh yes – they aren’t the Jorum’s regular crew: Mr Rondin told me to pick the best I could find. And I did: my own neck depends on ’em, as well as yours!’

  Two men came out of the darkness and Gorton told them to take the helm, giving them a course to steer.

  ‘P’raps you’d like to step down into my cuddy, sir? T’aint no bigger’n a dog kennel, but we can talk there.’

  Ramage looked back at the Triton, now receding on the schooner’s larboard quarter. He hoped Southwick didn’t try to shadow too closely and scare off the privateers; on the other hand he didn’t want him to let the brig off so far to leeward it’d take hours to get up to windward again when he saw the rockets.

  ‘Yes,’ Ramage said absently, ‘we’d better just run over the plan.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Standing on deck and looking down into the hold, Ramage marvelled at the adaptability of seamen. The twenty Tritons were crammed into a space not much bigger than that needed by a bosun’s mate to swing a cat-o’-nine-tails, and all of them were asleep. Some were lying in the valley formed by two casks of molasses stowed side by side; others were curled up on sacks; at least three, bothered by the fetid heat, were standing up, propped only by the protruding ends of sacks, just below the gap where two of the hatch boards had been pulled to one side to let in fresh air and light.

  The sun was hot: beating down on the deck overhead, it must be making the underside of the thick planking like the inside of an oven. Cockroaches as long as a man’s little finger roamed across casks, sacks and sleeping men with an easy nonchalance; the tiny fruit flies swarmed thickly like puffs of black smoke. The stench seemed less strong now, presumably because his nostrils had become used to it – numbed, more likely.

  For the hundredth time Ramage cursed the two small open boats which stayed a few hundred yards up to windward of the schooner. At daybreak they had borne down on the schooner and then luffed up, keeping station on her as if she was a flagship and they the two frigates. Each boat carried four men, all of them sitting out along the windward side acting as human ballast.

  Although the boats’ sails were made of flour bags – using Gorton’s old and battered telescope Ramage was able to read the miller’s names painted on them – they skimmed across the sea like flying fish, rising up the crests, swooping down into the troughs, and occasionally one of the men would bend down and bail vigorously for a few minutes, using half a calabash husk.

  Because of the boats Ramage dare not let the boarding party on deck. He allowed two men to come up at a time after warning Gorton to get two of his own men out of sight: one of the things that interested the boats was undoubtedly how many there were in the Jorum’s crew.

  In a stiff breeze lasting through the night the Jorum had swiftly dropped Grenada astern and long before noon Bequia was abeam and, an hour later, the southern end of St Vincent. Ramage was sleeping in Gorton’s cuddy when the schooner captain woke him to report two boats from Bequia had now joined while the first pair were bearing up, sailing hard on the wind and apparently bound for the southern end of St Vincent.

  ‘Reckon they’re going to report there?’ Gorton asked.

  Ramage nodded sleepily. ‘I wonder where the new chaps will be relieved… Is the Triton in sight?’

  ‘Made out her royals once or twice over to the south-west, but they wouldn’t have seen her from the boats. Even if they had, she’s so far down to leeward no one’d think she was bound our way.’

  ‘Thanks, Gorton: pass the word if anything else turns up.’

  With that Ramage turned over and fell asleep.

  He woke again and realized, with a guilty start, it was late afternoon. Then, remembering he’d had no sleep the previous night and was unlikely to get any tonight, he stretched out in the narrow bunk and dozed off again. The sun was setting when he woke again, hungry and thirsty.

  Hurriedly he pulled on his coat and went on deck to find Gorton sitting on the hatch talking to Jackson. A couple of the Jorums were squatting out of sight behind the bulwarks, while two Tritons paced up and down. The two little boats were still out on the starboard bow.

  Ramage was about to excuse himself but decided against it just as Gorton said: ‘Glad you had a good sleep, sir: expect you’ll need all your energy for tonight!’

  ‘Yes. I see our friends are still with us.’

  ‘Aye, I’ve been tempted to have a bit o’ target practice with ’em – you see my massive guns.’

  He gestured to the small brass guns mounted in swivels which fitted on top of the bulwarks and fired one-pound shot.

  Ramage thought for a moment. Would the fact the Jorum hadn’t fired at them make the men in the boat suspicious?

  ‘Do they often keep up with you like this?’

  ‘Sometimes, sir. Normally just one boat, and never for more than a couple of hours. They’re usually fishing and try to sell us anything they catch. We often buy, too – don’t get much luck towing a line ourselves.’

  ‘So they wouldn’t be expecting you to fire at ’em to keep away
?’

  ‘Why of course not! Oh, I see what you mean. No sir, but these two’ll know we are wondering what the devil they’re doing it for.’

  Ramage rubbed his chin and the rasping irritated him.

  ‘If you’d like to borrow my razor,’ Gorton said, ‘there’s a basin and a jug of water in the cuddy.’

  There was just enough light left for Ramage to shave; by the time he had finished washing it was almost dark, but even as he reached for his coat Gorton called: ‘The boats are bearing up!’

  In a few moments Ramage was standing with him at the bulwark. Now just grey smudges with the sails foreshortened, the boats were hiding towards the twin peaks of the Pitons at the south-western end of St Lucia. From this distance both mountains looked like large bungs from casks upended on the horizon.

  It was half past six, and Ramage motioned to Gorton to pass the telescope. Slowly he swept the horizon from the tip of St Vincent to the south and then right across the wide channel northward to the Pitons. Apart from the departing boats there was nothing in sight and he searched along the coast of St Lucia over on the starboard bow. There was no sign of other boats coming out to relieve the pair which were fast disappearing, their shapes merging into the land.

  That could only mean they knew all they needed to know. And, more significant, that nothing the schooner did now could affect the privateersmen’s plans. And in turn that meant they would attack within a few hours; probably soon after nightfall. The trap was set; the Jorum was in it; the only question was when it would be sprung by the freebooters.

  Swinging the telescope round to the south-west, Ramage searched for and then finally sighted the Triton’s royals; two narrow strips of sail – the rest of the ship was below the curvature of the Earth – lit by the last rays of the sun which was already well below the horizon. Southwick was being sensible. Instead of keeping abeam of the schooner he was staying well back on her larboard quarter and, Ramage guessed, as night fell he’d haul his wind and beat up towards the coast, unseen in the darkness, and with a bit of luck he would be able to lay the island’s capital and main port of Castries on one tack, whereas if he was dead to leeward he would have to make several tacks.