by Dudley Pope
'Cutlasses,' he said. 'Here, Gilbert, take a couple before they slip from my arms. Ah, and one for you, captain, and one for me. I shall put mine under my thwart. Careful with your feet when you sit down again, Gilbert.'
With that he bent down and burrowed under the coils of lines again. 'Four knives...' his voice was muffled as he dropped them behind him, '.. and the pistols.'
'You have six, I believe,' Ramage said. 'We'll have one for madame.'
'Of course!' Auguste said. 'I remember Gilbert telling me she is a fine shot. I shall load it for her myself. Now...' he pulled the coil of lines to one side, '... ah, the flask of powder... and the priming powder ... and the box of balls and wads. Here, Gilbert, pass things aft, starting with the knives.'
For the next five minutes the men were busy checking the flints, flipping them to make sure they gave a good spark, but hiding them under a piece of cloth to conceal their unmistakable flashing. Then they loaded the pistols, putting them on half-cock.
Louis and the two brothers were wearing high fishermen's boots and slid their knives down into them. Ramage and Gilbert wore shoes and so had to tuck the knives into the waistband of their trousers. Ramage was thankful the cutlasses had come with belts, but decided against slipping his over his right shoulder and instead pushed it under the thwart.
'You were right about muskets being too bulky, captain,' Auguste commented. 'With knife, pistol and cutlass, I have all the weapons I can handle.'
'Yes - but everyone remember: use the pistol only to save your life: shots might arouse the sentries in another ship, or alarm a passing boat.'
'Is madame content with her pistol?' Auguste inquired.
Sarah said: 'Yes, it is much like the English Sea Service pistol: clumsy and heavy!'
'Yes, but remember how roughly the sailors treat them,' Auguste said, beating Ramage to it, 'and when you've fired, you can always throw it at the next target.'
By now, Ramage was having second thoughts about his original plan. If a sentry challenged, they could probably gain several important seconds by innocently protesting that they were fishermen; seconds which could be converted into yards, and a closer approach.
'Auguste, what would you be using out here - a seine or long lines?'
Auguste thought for a few moments. 'Long lines, I think.'
He guessed what Ramage had in mind and added: 'One could use either, and I doubt if a sentry would know anyway! And it won't matter that we have no bait!'
Although they were not rowing, and there was very little wind, the Château was slowly drawing astern and the western bank where the Penfeld ran into Le Goulet was now closer, showing the direction the boat was drifting.
'The ebb has started,' Ramage said. 'The rest of us can start rowing again while Auguste puts over some lines.' He moved into the fisherman's seat.
Sarah took the tiller and gave occasional directions to the four oarsmen as Auguste struggled with the lines. 'Hold up the lantern, madame,' he said finally, 'otherwise I shall be the only fish these lines catch.'
'You need only two or three,' Ramage said. 'No one will notice.'
'That's true,' Auguste said and put over one and then another, feeding out the lines expertly. 'Shall I sit aft and pretend to watch?'
'As long as you have your cutlass and knife ready under the thwart,' Ramage said. 'In fact you can take over as coxswain from madame, and start by giving me a distance.'
Sarah quickly pointed out the Murex to the Frenchman, who exclaimed: 'Why, we are close! Much closer than I thought!'
'That's the ebb taking us down. ' Ramage then glanced over his shoulder and was also startled to find the brig now only about five hundred yards away: already her masts and yards were standing stark against the stars like winter trees with geometrically precise branches. 'Auguste, we'll row past at about a pistol shot and then, if nothing happens, turn under her bow and even closer under her stern and then if we still see no one, board this side.'
Sarah suddenly murmured in English: 'Nicholas, I am frightened. The Murex looks more like a house full of ghosts.'
'I'd prefer ghosts to French matelots,' he said lightly, while Gilbert, who had understood, gave a reassuring laugh.
'How are you going to get on board?' she asked reverting to French. She undid the knot of scarf round her head, took it off and shook her hair free.
'I don't know at the moment,' Ramage said, his sentences punctuated as he leaned forward and then stretched back with each oar stroke. 'There might be a ladder hanging over the side, or a rope. Otherwise, it'll probably be a scramble up the side.'
Sarah was silent for a moment and then said quietly in English: 'There's a light on deck. A lantern, I think. It gets hidden as rigging and things get in the way.'
'Speak in French,' Ramage said, trying to hide his disappointment. 'We don't want our friends to think we have any secrets.' He turned away towards them and repeated Sarah's report.
'A warm night, so they're drinking on deck,' Auguste commented. 'It would be natural. That cabin we saw - the "gunroom" I think you called it, captain - was very small. It would get very hot down there.'
Ramage saw his ideas being thrown aside like men caught on deck by a blast of grapeshot. Five Frenchmen up on the Murex's deck drinking with weapons to hand, and two more guarding the prisoners below, would be more than a match for the five of them down in the rowing boat: the matelots would have the advantage of height, as well as numbers. But despair, fear, alarm - all were contagious, so Ramage laughed. 'It'll soon be hot on deck for them too!'
They continued rowing in the darkness at the speed set by Auguste, with an occasional 'left' and 'right'. Auguste said he was not using the seamen's terms because not all of them understood them and anyway, facing aft, they would only get muddled.
'We are two ship's lengths from her,' Auguste muttered. 'How close before we begin our turn to pass?'
'One,' Ramage said. That would be thirty yards, or so. Close enough for Ramage to see what was happening on deck; close enough for any French seaman to see a fishing boat passing. Or perhaps to show whether or not rum fumes would allow French matelots to see that far.
'No lights showing at the stern - what does.that mean?' asked Auguste.
'They're not using the captain's cabin.'
Sarah said: 'There are several men on deck sitting round the lantern - do you see them, Auguste?'
The Frenchman grunted and then counted aloud as an explanation why he had said nothing. '... three, four ... five. Two missing. Are they guarding the prisoners?'
'They could be fetching more rum or lying drunk on the deck,' Louis said. 'Perhaps we should row round for another hour and keep counting. As soon as seven have fallen down drunk, we can board!'
Ramage only just managed to stop himself making the usual joke about one Englishman being equal to three Frenchmen. These men, apart from not being trained seamen, were good: they had the right spirit and they hated the régime. Do not, he told himself, underestimate hate: it drives men to show the kind of bravery they never thought themselves capable of, yet it can just as easily warp their judgement.
'She's close on our bow - we're just beginning our run down her starboard side,' Auguste reported to Ramage, his voice punctuated by the creaking of the four oars, the slap of the oar blades in the water, and hiss of the stem as the boat drove on.
'Ho! Ohé, that boat!' The hail from the Murex's deck was definite: the voice was sober. 'Answer!' Ramage told Auguste, whose voice carried better and had a local accent.
'Ho yourself!' Auguste shouted back. 'I don't like rosbifs shouting at me.' His voice sounded genuinely offended.
'We're not rosbifs!'the voice answered indignantly. 'We are honest Frenchmen guarding the rosbifs.'
'You speak French like a rosbif,' Auguste said sourly.
'Watch your tongue: I come from Besançon. Now, why do you fish so close to us?'
'Ha!' Auguste called back contemptuously. 'So you think you own the whole sea, eh? Why, you are
even standing on the deck of a rosbif ship, not a good French ship.'
'Answer: why do you fish so close?' This time it was another, harsher voice: Ramage thought he recognized it as belonging to the bosun.
'To catch fish!' exclaimed Auguste. 'You're no seaman if you can't see that!'
'What do you mean? I'm the bosun; I command this ship!'
'For the time being,' Auguste said contemptuously. 'But you've not yet learned that fish always gather round a ship at anchor. They feed off all the weed and things growing on the bottom. They like the shade on a sunny day -'
'And from the light of the moon too, I suppose. Afraid it will drive them mad, eh?'
'And they like to eat the scraps you all throw over the side. Salt beef and salt pork may not seem very tasty to you, but to a fish it is a banquet.'
By now the boat was within a few yards of the Murex's side.
'To save all this rowing, with my back giving me trouble again,' Ramage said in a lugubrious voice, 'can't we fish from your decks? Then our hooks go down where the fish are thickest.'
The bosun answered quickly. 'Yes - but you have to give us a quarter of your catch!'
'You're a hard man,' Ramage complained. 'Five wives and eleven children depend on what we catch.'
'You should have thought of that before you got married,' the bosun sneered. 'A quarter of your catch and I'll let you on board.'
'Oh very well,' Ramage said grudgingly, and Auguste, in an appropriately officious voice, gave the orders to the men at the oars which brought the boat alongside.
Ramage murmured: 'Pistols if you can hide them; otherwise just knives.'
'The bait bucket,' Sarah whispered. 'Put the pistols in the bait bucket and I'll carry it with my scarf on top.'
Louis called up to the bosun: 'I'm coming on board with the painter while they coil our fishing lines.' He touched Ramage to get his approval.
Ramage turned to Sarah. 'You go after Louis and flirt with the bosun. I'll bring the bucket and give it to you to hold as soon as I can.'
He glanced up and saw that none of the French guards were looking over the rail. Swiftly he pushed a knife and its sheath down the inside of his trousers and made sure the belt was tight enough to hold it. It was a pity that the cutlasses would have to be left under the thwarts, but Gilbert and Albert were putting the loaded pistols into the bucket with the deftness of fishwives packing sprats. Sprat - improbably, he remembered, it was the same word in both English and French.
'Your scarf, madame,' Gilbert whispered, and Ramage said loudly, 'Now are we ready? Gilbert - supposing you go up, and then you and Louis can help the lady at the top.'
As soon as Gilbert started climbing the battens fitted like thin steps up the Murex's side, Sarah began cursing, using words which would be familiar to a fisherman's wife but which Ramage was startled to find that she not only knew but used as though they were commonplace.
'Such steps - why no rope ladder? In this skirt? Do the rosbifs never have women on board? It's fortunate I wear no corset. Look the other way, you lechers; I am tucking my skirt in my belt.'
She grabbed the hem of her skirt and Ramage glimpsed long slim legs as she tucked in the cloth. 'This will occupy their thoughts!' she murmured to Ramage, and before he had time to reply she had grabbed the highest batten she could reach and started climbing.
'Forgive me, captain,' Auguste murmured to Ramage, and then called in a raucous voice to Louis and Gilbert on the Murex's deck: 'Why you went aloft too soon! From here one sees la citoyenne quite differently!'
'Keep your eyes down, you old dog,' Ramage said hotly in what he hoped was the correct tone for an aggrieved husband, but he found himself continuing to watch Sarah's progress. A young woman's legs in the moonlight: certainly they did not help concentration. And since the sight made his own throat tighten he could guess the effect on Auguste.
A jab in the ribs from the bucket and a casual, 'Your turn, and tell Louis and Gilbert to stand by to take the lines,' came from Auguste.
The lines! He had forgotten all about the fishing lines. The prospect of fishermen arriving without them was only slightly less absurd than the idea of a Royal Navy post-captain on his honeymoon climbing up the side of a surrendered brig holding a bait bucket filled with loaded pistols concealed by his wife's headscarf.
He slung the greasy rope handle of the wooden pail over his left arm and began the climb. Usually sideboys held out sideropes for the captain, and the first lieutenant waited on deck ready to give a smart salute. This time there would be a surly French bosun ...
The bucket slid down his arm and hit the ship's side with a thud. Ramage's heart seemed to stop beating for a moment, but the pistols did not make a metallic clunk and anyway, he thought sheepishly, there's no one up there watching me. But as he slid the handle back to the crook of his elbow he saw that now there was: not the bosun but the man who presumably was the sentry.
Ramage's head came level with the deck, and in the moonlight he saw Sarah a few feet away, talking to the bosun. Amidships and sitting on forms round the grating, on which stood a lantern and a wicker-covered demijohn of rum, several seamen were watching idly.
As soon as the bosun saw Ramage he left Sarah and came over. 'You came with the potatoes,' he said, his voice only slightly slurred by the rum. He had not shaved for several days or washed - it seemed to Ramage for even longer. His jersey and trousers had the greasy and rumpled look that showed he usually slept 'all standing', the British seaman's phrase for sleeping fully clothed.
'A quarter of your catch, eh? That is agreed?'
'Yes, of course,' Ramage said, continuing to walk towards Sarah so that the bosun had to follow. 'Let's hope we get a good catch. My dear,' he said to Sarah, 'here is the bait bucket: look after it while we sort out the lines.'
He held the bucket low so that as she took it she would not reveal its weight by letting it drop a few inches, and at the same moment Ramage turned to the bosun to divert his attention and said querulously: 'Never get a good catch with a full or new moon, you know. Moonlight seems to frighten the fish, or put them off food.'
'A quarter, though,' the bosun muttered as Sarah took the bucket and turned aft, saying in the voice of a dutiful wife that she would help bait the hooks as soon as they brought the lines.
By now Albert was on board and hauling up fishing lines from a cursing Auguste, who was putting on a noisy and effective act of being afraid of being caught on the hooks.
Louis and Gilbert came up to help and Ramage, seizing the opportunity of gathering all his men close to the bucket so they could collect their pistols, called: 'Hoist up all the lines - we have more room to untangle them on this ship's deck. Look, there's plenty of space aft there.'
Ramage walked along the gangway and, noting that the only lantern on deck was on the grating, giving the drinkers enough light to see when their glasses were nearly empty, shouted down to Auguste: 'Merde! Hurry up or it'll be dawn!'
The bosun watched. 'You'll catch yourself on those hooks,' he sneered.
'Then you won't get a quarter,' Gilbert said.
'We'll see,' the bosun said, and Ramage tried to decide whether or not he imagined a curious inflexion in the voice. Finally he decided that it was just the man's local accent combined with a normal sneering and bullying manner.
As soon as the lines were all on board, the four Frenchmen, led by Ramage, carried them aft to where Sarah waited. The light was poor and confusing, a muddling blend of faint moonlight and a weak yellow glow - an artist would call it a wash - from the lantern on the grating.
The bosun, Ramage noted thankfully, had remained at the gangway, and the sentry had gone back to rejoin his three fellow seamen sitting and sprawling on the forms. So the sentry had a musket - he had left it propped against the edge of the coaming - and Ramage saw there were two more within reach of the other sailors.
As Ramage busied himself with the fishing lines close to the taffrail, he managed to indicate to the men that he wan
ted them working with their backs to the bosun so that Sarah could give them their pistols. As the men moved casually into position Ramage suddenly thought of the fourteen Britons being held as prisoners somewhere below and the captain imprisoned by rheumatism. Eleven seamen, the master and two lieutenants - they would be in irons, probably somewhere forward on the lowerdeck.
Tonight the Murex brig, he thought grimly, certainly holds an odd collection of people, ranging from the daughter of a marquis to seven French sailors loyal to the Revolution, a post-captain in the Royal Navy, and a rheumatic lieutenant, and four Frenchmen who, although perhaps not entirely Royalist, were certainly against the First Consul.
When the ingredients were mixed together, he mused as he saw Sarah dip into the bucket and give Auguste a pistol, it would be like mixing charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre, each in themselves harmless but in the right proportion forming gunpowder and needing only a spark -
'Step back from those fishing lines!'
The bosun's sudden bellow paralysed the five men.
'Woman! Come over here!'
Rape, Ramage thought: the bosun and his men intend to rape Sarah. And only Auguste has a pistol: the bosun shouted before Sarah had time to give out the others.
'Oh, lieutenant!' Sarah said, her voice apparently trembling with fear. 'What do you want me for?'
'Ah, no, not for that yet,' the bosun boomed, although the regret at any delay was obvious in his voice. 'You'll make a good hostage against the behaviour of your husband and his friends.'
Ramage saw that the bosun was aiming a musket at them. The other men were now laughing but still sprawled on the forms, two of them holding mugs in their hands.
Ramage said: 'What are we supposed to do? We are poor fishermen. You gave us permission to fish.'
'Ah yes, but you do not keep yourself informed, citizen. From midnight, patrols are searching all the streets and houses of Brest to find more seamen. A thousand more. The First Consul needs many more men for all these ships,' he said, waving a hand towards the main anchorage. 'We received orders during the day to see if any of the British prisoners in this ship want to volunteer - and then tonight the five of you row past...'