Ramage & the Rebels

by Dudley Pope

  Now Aitken was officer of the deck; Wagstaffe, Baker and Kenton were standing by their divisions of guns. Paolo Orsini (wearing a seaman’s cutlass as well as that wretched little dirk, Ramage was glad to see) was waiting, telescope in one hand and the signal book in the other. Southwick, his usual burly self, was at the starboard side of the quarterdeck rail, using his quadrant, quite convinced that the Dutch were up to some trick but obviously unperturbed at the prospect.

  The Master turned and said casually: “A mile off the fort on Otrabanda, sir.”

  “Very well, Mr Southwick.”

  A mile … why the devil was he going in so close? Ramage felt a sudden chill. Just because the Dutch had hoisted flags of truce, he had taken the Calypso almost into the port; yet the Dutch could just as easily lower the white flags, suddenly rehoist the Dutch colours in their place, and open fire—and quite fairly claim it was all a ruse de guerre. After all, he’d just done it himself to La Perle …

  Yet his telescope still showed men standing on the walls of the fort at Otrabanda. And at Punda. But—what was going on there now, on the Punda side of the channel?

  “Mr Orsini, hurry! Aloft with your telescope and tell me what that boat is doing in the channel.”

  While Paolo bolted for the shrouds both Aitken and Southwick trained their telescopes forward, having to move across the quarterdeck to find a place where their view was not obscured by the bowsprit, jib-boom or rigging.

  “It looks like a boat the size of our gig, sir,” Aitken reported. “Pulling perhaps six oars a side. And they are in a hurry!”

  Ramage left Aitken to keep an eye on the boat: the Calypso was approaching the port so fast now that if there was going to be any treachery it would happen in the next few moments. The first warning would be those men vanishing from the walls of the forts: they would have their eardrums burst if they stayed there while the Dutch guns fired. If they vanished from the battlements, the Calypso would immediately tack out again: they would be his danger signal.

  “The boat’s hoisting a mast, or something, sir,” Aitken said, his voice showing uncertainty. “It’s bigger than an oar but seems too short for a mast. And I can’t think why they’d step a mast now: it would have been easier to do it alongside the quay.”

  The Calypso was almost gliding now as she came in with the land, which was flat enough not to interrupt the wind but formed a lee from the swell waves, so the sea was almost flat. Suddenly, just as Aitken reported he could not make out what was going on in the boat because he could not get a clear view, an excited Paolo hailed from high up in the mainmast. “A boat is pulling out towards us, sir … Twelve oars … Only one or two people in the sternsheets … Now they’re holding up a white cloth on an oar … they’re waving it, sir …”

  Ramage noted the men on the battlements had not moved and called to the First Lieutenant: “Back the fore-topsail, Mr Aitken: we’ll heave-to and let the boat come out to us.”

  “We’re three-quarters of a mile off the forts, sir,” Southwick reported as Aitken shouted the orders which sent men running to haul on the braces, swinging the fore-topsail yard round so that the wind was blowing on the forward side of the sail, pressing it against the mast.

  The Calypso slowly came to a stop. With the wind thrusting on the forward side of the fore-topsail and trying to push the bow off to leeward and the rest of the sails trying to push her round to windward, the frigate was in a state of equilibrium, with the waves passing beneath her as though she was a sitting gull having a rest.

  Flags of truce at the flagpoles, an open boat rowing out from Punda and waving a flag of truce … It was unlikely to be a trap; Ramage felt reasonably sure of that much. The men were still on the battlements and the boat needed to cover only a few more hundred yards before the Calypso could blow her out of the water with a round of grape or canister. It could still be a trap: sacrificing a dozen men in a boat would be nothing compared with the capture of an enemy frigate, but he did not think the Dutch mind worked like that. Nor was the boat a necessary part of any deception: the Calypso was already heading in to investigate before the boat left the quay.

  “It looks as if we are going to have visitors, sir,” Aitken commented, looking through his telescope as soon as he was satisfied that the fore-topsail sheets, tacks and braces were properly settled. “I can see that the men sitting in the sternsheets of yon boat are wearing a deal of gold braid.”

  Ramage glanced down at his own coat. It was faded, but no more than one would expect; his breeches were clean and so were his stockings. His shoes had lost their polish in the salt air but the gold buckles gleamed. He was wearing his third best hat. All quite sufficient for entertaining enemy officers who chose to pay unexpected calls, and only the cutlass looked out of place. He preferred a seaman’s cutlass to his own sword, even if it was a fine example of the sword cutler’s art: Mr Prater of Charing Cross, who made it, would be upset if he knew that Lord Ramage usually went into action with a cutlass like any of his seamen, leaving his fine sword in its scabbard on the rack in his cabin.

  Now, however, was a time when courtesy (custom, anyway) demanded that he go down to his cabin and put on the sword. When dealing with one’s own people, clothes rarely counted (except when paying official calls on officers like Admiral Foxe-Foote, who was the sort of man who never paid his own tailor but was very fussy what his officers wore); but foreign dignitaries set great store by braid, buttons and buckles, and the lack of a few inches of gold braid could easily give the wrong impression of the rank or worth of the wearer.

  As he acknowledged the Marine sentry’s salute, the door of his cabin opened and his steward stood there, a cheerful expression on his face.

  “I have fresh stock and stockings and your uniform ready, sir.” “What on earth for, Silkin?”

  “Why, to meet the deputation, sir!”

  “Deputation? It’s probably the mayor’s brother who owns a bumboat business and wants to sell us limes, or some worn-out goats. Or, from the look of the island, wanting to know if we’ll sell them some water.”

  By now Ramage had reached his sleeping cabin and Silkin, like an Arab carpet vendor displaying his wares, was holding up clean breeches, and nodding towards stockings, shirt and stock. They looked cool. The stock he was wearing was tied a little too tightly and, damp with perspiration, chafing the skin and rasping, particularly on a patch by his adam’s apple which he had not shaved very well. He looked down at his stockings. There were black marks on the inside of the left ankle where he had accidentally caught it with his right shoe.

  The boat had a long way to row, even though the wind and sea were on its quarter, and Ramage knew that it needed no effort to change, either, with the ship hove-to; the roll was almost imperceptible and she was not pitching. In fact it was an invitingly refreshing prospect: the cabin was cool because a breeze had been sweeping through it while the ship was under way. Changing his clothes also delayed him having to go back to the heat and glare on deck …

  He sat down on a chair and kicked off his shoes, getting immediate relief because his feet were swollen. The size of shoe that fitted in the early morning and evening was much too small when the midday heat made feet swell and throb. Feet and head: the glare of the sun made your eyes want to pop, and the heat, even coming through a hat, seemed to fry your brain.

  He stripped off his clothes and pulled on the fresh garments. For a brief couple of minutes the stockings were cool; then he pulled on the breeches. The tailor had sworn it was a lightweight cloth, but no tailor in London could visualize the ovenlike tropical heat—that was the regular lament of naval and army officers posted abroad.

  Shirt, stock, sword-belt, jacket … even the sword and scabbard seemed cool. Silkin had fresh shoes and Ramage slid his feet into them (if an admiral had been approaching, they would have been high boots). Now Silkin held out his hat after giving it a ritual brushing with his sleeve to make the nap lie in the same direction. Ramage nodded and left the cabin, irritated
that Silkin had in fact manoeuvred him into changing, yet feeling all the fresher for it.

  On deck, blinking in the glare, he saw Aitken by the binnacle looking at him anxiously.

  “There are three men in the sternsheets of the boat, sir. Two are wearing uniforms I don’t recognize. Could be the Dutch army, I suppose. But the one not wearing uniform is much older than the others who, as far as I can make out at this distance, are both wearing aiguillettes, as though they’re his aides.”

  Ramage grunted, more because he was still irritated by Silkin than the fact that a trio of foreign officials were coming out to the ship. “Perhaps Britain has signed a peace treaty with the Dutch,” Ramage said. “They might have just received the news and realized we couldn’t know …”

  One of the most potentially dangerous situations facing the captain of one of the King’s ships patrolling in waters distant from commanders-in-chief or the Admiralty was that war would break out—or a peace treaty be signed—with another country whose colonies heard about it first. Britain could have been at peace with the Netherlands when a ship left Jamaica for a routine patrol of three months which included a visit to Curaçao. But a Dutch frigate might arrive at the island to report that war now existed (and a British ship get to Jamaica with the same news). So that the only person completely in ignorance that his erstwhile friends were now his enemies would be the British captain on his long patrol. He might be lucky in accidentally meeting a merchant ship and hearing the news, but merchant ships were usually the last to know, and in consequence were often captured. He might also make the discovery after anchoring in Amsterdam and finding his ship seized. Equally a war existing when he sailed might now be over.

  All this would explain that boat, which was now only three or four hundred yards away, and it was the only explanation that made any sense. The Dutch did not have scores of British prisoners for whom they would want to arrange an exchange. And—he was pleased with himself for the deduction—it would explain the ten privateers anchored and looking abandoned: if the Netherlands had just signed a peace treaty with Britain, she would now be neutral or an ally. In either case these French privateers would not be able to use Amsterdam as a base. They would have been seized or interned. It was so obvious that he was almost angry with himself for not having thought of it the first time the Calypso passed Amsterdam. Yet the first time—only yesterday, he realized—there had been no flags of truce. Nor was there a ship in the port now—not that he could see, anyway—that could have brought the news while the Calypso had been up at the western end of the island dealing with La Perle.

  He turned to Aitken: “Side-ropes are rigged? Sideboys ready?”

  “Yes, sir,” Aitken said patiently, making a note, like hundreds of first lieutenants before him, that when he became a captain he would not interfere in routine affairs. Of course the visitors, as they climbed the battens forming a ladder up the ship’s side, would be able to grip a rope in each hand for support. Boys would be stationed at various points down the battens, holding the ropes out and away from the ship’s side, making it easier for a climber to hold on.

  Ramage watched the boat and considered the position. Supposing it was in fact peace with the Netherlands—the Batavian Republic, as it was now called. The Calypso would be the first ship to arrive after it, and no doubt Ramage and his officers would be entertained by the Governor to celebrate. In return, the Calypso—Ramage, rather—would have to give a dinner. Or, better still, a small ball. Dancing on the quarterdeck with awning rigged and lanterns in the rigging—women loved it. The true romance of the sea, one of them had once said at a ball he had attended in a flagship. Soft lights from lanthorns (which, if you inspected them closely, contained sooty and smelly candles), the atmosphere of a ship of war (comprising mostly an unpleasant odour from the bilges, but sometimes this could be drowned by a shrewd captain who, a few hours before the ball began, had the rigging near the quarterdeck liberally soaked with Stockholm tar, which was the smell most landlubbers associated with ships), and the sight of the shiny black guns and the roundshot in racks nearby (producing girlish shrieks, though none of the visitors ever stopped to think that the roundshot represented death and destruction)—all this provided an atmosphere of seduction far more potent than the most carefully prepared boudoir.

  It was hard to understand but it was a fact. Any officer with designs on a woman’s virtue was more likely to be successful if he could get her on board one of the King’s ships for a couple of hours than he would be in a couple of hours of her company in an elegant drawing-room. Stockholm tar was, apparently, more romantic than the perfume of roses; the faint smell of a ship o’ war’s bilge outbid any pomander filled with all the aromatic spices specially mixed by a knowing Cupid or procurer. The train of thought which took him from the sight of a boat bearing foreign army officers to thoughts of seduction on the quarterdeck showed him that he had been at sea too long …

  Now Aitken was at the entry port, leaning out and giving orders. Seamen forward were taking a boat’s painter; more men farther aft were throwing down a line to be used as a sternfast. As he walked slowly forward Ramage hoped that, whoever the visitors were, they spoke English or had brought a translator with them: he did not speak a word of Dutch. Or perhaps one of them spoke French (or even Spanish, a hangover from Spain’s long occupation). The Netherlands, he admitted, was a country about which he knew very little; in fact, like most Royal Navy officers, his knowledge was limited to a healthy respect for the Dutch both as seamen and fighters.

  A black shako with a red, white and blue cockade and a small peak (too small to keep the sun out of the wearer’s eyes), a blue tailcoat which had each side of the tail turned back and buttoned to show a white lining, a high collar with white piping round the edge, white epaulets with two red stripes along them, aiguillettes, blue breeches, high brown boots—and no sword. Ramage watched as the young officer scrambled up the last few steps and stepped on to the gangway. There he stopped, obviously a stranger to ships. Then he saw Aitken and, recognizing him as an officer, was about to speak, but the First Lieutenant gestured towards Ramage.

  As the officer walked a few steps towards him Ramage saw another head at the break in the bulwark. The fat man was sending his aides on ahead!

  “You are the Captain, sir?”

  The English was good, slightly guttural.

  As Ramage nodded the young Dutch officer came smartly to attention and saluted, giving his name, which Ramage did not catch as he returned the salute. By now the second officer had arrived and took the place of the first, who stepped two paces to his left and said something in Dutch which resulted in another smart salute. Ramage gave his own name but cursed himself for failing to catch the second officer’s name, though it sounded something like Lausser.

  The second officer, a little older than the first and obviously his senior, said carefully: “Captain Ramage, we come under a flag of truce, and His Excellency Governor van Someren wishes to pay you a visit.”

  “Where is Governor van Someren?” Ramage asked, wondering about the plump man still down in the boat.

  “He is waiting,” the Dutch officer said warily. “He wishes to be assured that you will observe the flag of truce.”

  “You have my assurance,” Ramage said formally. “The truce will of course end once your boat is safely back in Amsterdam.”

  “That is agreeable, sir. If you will excuse me for a minute.” He did not move until Ramage, for a moment expecting him to turn away at once, nodded his approval. With that the officer walked to the break in the bulwark and called down something in rapid Dutch, and then waited.

  The two highest sideboys holding out the manropes were obviously taking a strain; then a stocky man with high cheekbones and widely-spaced blue eyes with thin white eyebrows was stepping on board. His face was shaded by a straw hat; he wore a mustard-coloured coat and matching breeches with highly-polished brown knee-boots. His skin was tanned; he was used to the Tropics. He was not nervous, b
ut he was not entirely at ease either: he had obviously come to ask for something.

  That was as much as Ramage could absorb before the officer had led him over to Ramage and said: “Governor, may I introduce Captain Ramage of His Britannic Majesty’s Navy. Captain Ramage, I have the honour to present His Excellency the Governor of Curaçao and the representative here of the Batavian Republic, Citizen Gottlieb van Someren.”

  Protocol demanded a salute and Ramage gave it. Governor van Someren removed his hat and gave a deep bow, but not before Ramage noted the flicker of annoyance which had shown round his eyes when his aide introduced him as “Citizen.” No doubt when the House of Nassau ruled the Netherlands—until February of 1793, in other words—van Someren had been one of the Dutch nobility. Since then he had managed to keep his head on his shoulders while the occupying French renamed his country the Republic of the United Provinces and then, more recently, the Batavian Republic. Now, anyway, in public and in front of strangers, he had to be “citoyen.”

  Now what? The Governor replaced his hat but the two aides were still rigidly at attention. Did the Governor speak English? Whatever it was, he was more likely to speak freely if he did not have witnesses of his own nation.

  “Should we go below, Your Excellency? My cabin is cool.”

  “Very well, very well,” van Someren said thankfully.

  Ramage signalled to Aitken and said with an apparent casualness that he knew the Scot would immediately understand: “Perhaps you would be kind enough to show these two gentlemen round the ship, and then provide them with refreshment.” Then, before either of them could demur, he said to the Governor: “If Your Excellency would follow me …”

  Down in the cabin, van Someren sank into the single armchair with a sigh of relief, though Ramage was not sure whether the relief came from getting the weight off swollen feet or boarding the Calypso without incident.