by Dudley Pope
'Headsail sheets, there!'
The men knew what to do; that much was obvious in the way the sails had been set. So now he need give only brief orders which took care of the trimming.
'Braces! Altogether now, haul! Now the sheets!'
A glance ahead showed the brig now steady on the other tack.
'Mr Swan,' Ramage said quietly, walking over to the wheel, 'I think you can get another point or two to windward...'
He watched the luff of the mainsail and then the leech.
'And another couple of spokes?'
Swan turned the wheel two more spokes but his movements lacked certainty: he was clearly nervous.
'Come now, Mr Swan,' Ramage said, a sharper note in his voice. 'I don't expect to have to give the first lieutenant compass courses to steer to windward. Now look'ee, you can lay the Pointe des Espagnols - that's the headland on your larboard bow.'
With that he turned away and said to Sarah, 'Can you see L'Espoir over there at anchor? I think she's gone: sailed while we were having our trouble with the bosun.'
She turned and looked over the larboard quarter at all the ships moonlit against the black line of low cliffs with the town of Plougastel in the distance. Unused to allowing for a change in bearings she took two or three minutes before finally reporting: 'No, she's not there. But she can only be...'
'Yes,' Ramage said, 'half an hour or so,' and noted it was time to tack again: the brig was moving along well and the ebb was helping hurry them seaward. He went over to Swan and gave him the new heading for when they had gone about.
'Follow the cliff along from Brest. You see the village of Portzic? Now, just beyond that next headland - you see the building? That's Fort de Delec. You should be able to lay it, but if a messenger has reached them they'll open fire. And just beyond, on top of the cliff, is the Lion Battery. If the fort and battery begin firing at us, we'll tack over to the other side.'
There was no need to tell Swan that on the other tack they would be heading for the Cornouaille Battery on the Camaret peninsula, and if the fire from that became hot enough to force them to tack northwestward again back to the Pointe St Mathieu side, they would be steering for the next fort, at Mengam, with three isolated and large rocks also waiting in the fairway for them...
The Murex went about perfectly: the headsails slapped across as the bow came round and were swiftly sheeted in; both topsails were braced sharp up on the larboard tack; Swan moved the wheel back and forth three or four spokes and then reported: 'I can lay a bit to windward of the Lion Battery, sir.'
Already the Château was dropping astern fast and Ramage watched the irregular shape of Fort de Delec. Distance was always hard to estimate in the darkness, but a mile? At night an object usually seemed closer - so to the French gunners the Murex would seem to be just within range. Just? Well within range, and Sarah murmured: 'I imagine Frenchmen staring along the barrels of guns...'
It seemed to be tempting fate to make a reassuring comment, and anyway she was not frightened. 'If they're going to open fire, it'll be in the next two or three minutes,' he said.
She held his arm in an unexpected gesture, and he was startled to find she was trembling. 'Will it look bad if I go below if they start shooting?'
He gripped her hand. 'Of course not. But it will be more frightening.'
'More frightening? I don't understand.'
'Dearest, if you stay on deck and see where the shot fall, you'll see there's no danger. If you go below you'll be waiting for the next shot to come through the deck and knock your head off!'
'I feel cold and shaky all of a sudden,' she said. 'Not frightened exactly. Apprehensive, perhaps.'
'When you shoot a man with a pistol you usually feel shaky afterwards,' Ramage said dryly, and added: 'I feel cold and shaky every time after I've been in action. I think everyone does.'
He looked up at Fort de Delec again. He felt he could see down the muzzles of the guns. Yes, there was the straight line of the walls; there were the embrasures. The moon had risen high enough now that he knew he would see the antlike movement of people if the guns were being loaded and trained round. It was a confounded nuisance commanding a ship which had no nightglass and no telescopes. No log or muster book for that matter - the telescopes had presumably been looted, and all the ship's papers would have been taken away by the French authorities. And charts - well, the only relevant one he had glanced at by lantern light just before getting under way, 'A Draught of the Road and Harbour of Brest with the adjacent Coast', must have been copied from a captured French one, but even then gave only one line of soundings from the town of Brest right along the Gullet, stopping as it reached the first of the three rocks, Mengam, and the man at the lead could be calling out twenty fathoms amidships as the bow hit the rock.
Another couple of minutes and they would tack again and then he wanted plenty of lookouts. With luck he would be able to leave Mengam safely to one side so that on the next tack to the northwest he could pass close to the last of the three rocks, which was in fact a small reef appropriately named Les Fillettes.
The Cornouaille Battery was silent, but that was to be expected: a boat would have to be sent over to the Camaret peninsula to raise the alarm, although they would pick it up from the other forts. This next tack would bring them within range of Fort de Mengam. Was the fort named after its silent ally in the middle of the Gullet, or the other way about?
He lifted the speaking trumpet as Sarah murmured: 'Anyone raising the alarm at these forts and batteries would use the same road we rode along that afternoon from Pointe St Mathieu.'
'Now my dear, you can understand my interest in the number of guns each of them mounted.'
'You didn't explain,' she said.
'I'm always interested in French forts. I hardly expected we'd be sailing out in these circumstances!'
She shivered and turned to look back at the town and harbour. 'No, you were hoping eventually to sail your own ship in, on some wild escapade.'
'Yes,' he admitted, 'one never ignores a chance to learn about an enemy, but I prefer having my wife beside me!'
'You are being more polite than a new husband needs to be: I am a nuisance!'
He began shouting orders through the speaking trumpet and once again the Murex's bow swung across the eye of the wind to the southwest: once again straining men hauled at the sheets and braces to trim the topsails. If only he could set the courses as well; then with more than double the amount of canvas drawing the brig would be out of the Gullet and into the Atlantic, passing the Pointe St Mathieu to starboard and the shoals to larboard off the Camaret peninsula, like a stoat after a rabbit.
He walked up to the mainmast, partly to leave Swan on his own and help him gain a confidence which had probably been badly battered by the mutiny, and partly to place extra lookouts. He called for Auguste, Albert and Louis.
'You know the Mengam?' he asked.
'Yes, captain, I was just coming to warn you: it is very near.'
'And the one beyond, and then Les Fillettes?'
'Yes, I know them all; I have fished around them dozens of times. In fact the Mengam is fine on the bow. You - yes, you can see it. Look ...'
He stood beside Ramage, who saw they would pass clear and instructed the three Frenchmen to watch for other rocks. He walked aft to point it out to Swan, who seemed to have benefited from being left alone at the wheel. He had more life in him; he said, in the first time he had spoken except in answer to a question: 'I thought it'd be the batteries we'd be dodging, sir, not the rocks.'
Ramage then remembered that the Murex had been brought in while it was still daylight. 'You were able to watch the scenery as you came in?'
'No choice, sir: we - those who had not mutinied - were all penned up on the fo'c'sle.'
'What about the mutineers?'
Swan laughed at the memory. 'Well, the French who came on board drove them all below. You see, sir, I was the only person in the ship who spoke any French, so when the Fr
ench boarded us and asked why we were flying a white flag, I said some of the men had "misbehaved".'
'So they thought we - the officers and the loyal ship's company - were bringing the ship in and handing her over, and the mutineers had been trying to stop us. So for a couple of hours or so the mutineers were knocked around - until we anchored off Brest and English-speaking Frenchmen came out!'
Ramage calculated that they would be clear of the Gullet on the next tack, and Sarah joined him as he walked forward to pick up the speaking trumpet. As he gave the first orders for the tack which would turn the Murex to the northwest, Auguste came up and pointed ahead.
'Sir, Les Fillettes are ahead. You will pass clear when you tack.'
'Thank you, Auguste. Ah yes, I see them.'
There was no reason to point them out to Swan, who was now giving the appearance of enjoying himself. The moonlight was strong enough to give a clear picture of the deck, and as they tacked the men were quicker at freeing a rope or making it fast on cleat, kevil or belaying pin.
Now Swan was steadying the ship on the new tack as sheets and braces were trimmed, and as Ramage put the speaking trumpet down beside one of the guns and gave a contented sigh, Sarah said: 'We're almost out of this beastly river. Is that -?'
'Pointe St Mathieu? Yes. It seems a long while ago...'
'In some ways. Certainly, as we sat up there in the sun and looked out across here and up towards Ushant, I never expected to be sailing out of the Iroise in the dead of night. Yet' - she paused, and he was not sure if she was choosing her words carefully or deciding whether or not to say it - 'yet the way you looked out at the Black Rocks, and Ushant, and across this estuary to the Camaret peninsula - you were recording it, not looking at it like a visitor. You were noting it down in the pilot book in your head, ready for use when the war started again. Our ride back to Jean-Jacques' - you were more interested in the forts and batteries than anything else!'
'No,' he protested mildly, 'I saw as much beauty as you did. I just made a note of the things that might be trying to kill me one day, like the guns in the batteries and forts.'
'But has all that really helped you now - as we sail out?'
'Oh yes, although I was gambling that the commandant of the port, or the commander of the artillery, or the commander of the garrisons, would all disagree about whose responsibility it was to warn the forts.'
'Do you have to gamble when you're on your honeymoon?'
He squeezed her arm. 'It's better for the family fortunes to gamble with roundshot rather than dice!'
Sarah laughed and nodded. 'Yes, I suppose so: if a roundshot knocks her husband's head off, at least his widow has the estate. But if he gambles at backgammon tables she has a husband with a head, but no bed to sleep in!'
Ramage stood at the taffrail of the Murex in the darkness and mentally drew a cross on an imaginary chart to represent the brig's position. She was now clearing the gulf of the Iroise, which stretched from the high cliffs and ruined abbey of Pointe St Mathieu over there to starboard across to the Camaret peninsula to larboard.
Ahead was the Atlantic, and the English Channel was to the north, round Ushant, which stood like a sentry off the northwestern tip of France. The Bay of Biscay, with Spain and Portugal beyond, was to the south. Astern, to everyone's relief, was Brest, and about 300 miles due east of it was Paris.
So that was it: from here, a tack out to the northwestward for the rest of the night and then dawn would reveal Ushant to the northeast, so that he could then bear away. He then had a choice: either he could run with a soldier's wind to the Channel Islands to get more men (having the advantage of a short voyage with such a small ship's company), or he could stretch north (perhaps nor'nor'east, he had not looked at the chart yet) for Falmouth or Plymouth.
The advantage of either port was that once he reported and handed over the Murex, he and Sarah could post to London or go over to the family home at St Kew, not far from either port. On second thoughts London would be better: their Lordships would certainly need written reports, and it would do no harm to be available when Lord St Vincent read them, concerning both his escape and the size and readiness of the French fleet in Brest, and the Murex episode.
Anyway, the Murex was now making a good six or seven knots; the courses had been set once they were safely out in the estuary and drawing well. A couple of seamen at the wheel were keeping the ship sailing fast, with Swan occasionally peering down at one or the other of the dimly lit compasses in the binnacle, his confidence restored.
Sarah was asleep down in the captain's cabin; Ramage himself was weary but warm at last, thanks to Sarah finding a heavy cloak in the captain's cabin and bringing it up to him. Dawn was not far off and the sky was clear with the moon still bright, although there was now a chill greyness that seemed to be trying to edge aside the black of night. The Murex was not just butting wind waves with her weather bow and scattering them in spray that drifted across like a scotch mist, salting the lips and making the eyes sore: now she was lifting over Atlantic swells that were born somewhere out in the deep ocean.
Very well, he told himself, the time had come to make the decision so that the moment daylight revealed Ushant on the horizon, he could give Swan the new course, for Falmouth, Plymouth or the Channel Islands.
Or southwestward, to start a 4,000-mile voyage to Cayenne, without orders, without much chance of success, to try to rescue Jean-Jacques and the other fifty or so people declared enemies of the French Republic?
He walked back and forth beside the taffrail and then stood looking astern at the Murex's curling wake. There was one thing in the brig's favour. One thing in his favour, he corrected himself (there was no point in trying to shift the responsibility on to the poor Murex). Yes, the one thing in his favour was that he knew he was only a few hours behind L'Espoir. As a frigate she was much bigger, but more important she had fifty extra people on board, all of whom had to be kept under guard. So the frigate would be carrying extra men, seamen or soldiers, to make up the guard. Twenty-five? Extra in the sense that they were in addition to the normal ship's company. Whoa, not so fast; she was armed enflûte, so she would have only the guns on the upperdeck, say half a dozen 12-pounders. And that - being armed en flûte - meant she needed only sufficient men to fight six or eight guns, not the thirty or so which had been removed to make room for the prisoners. Against that, the French in Brest were very short of seamen: that had been the last piece of information given out by that wretched bosun before Sarah shot him. The Commandant de l'Armée navale de Brest would certainly favour fighting ships at the expense of transports like L'Espoir.
Yet the French were in a hurry to get these prisoners on their way to Cayenne before the British re-established their standing blockade of Brest, which would otherwise have made the capture of L'Espoir a distinct possibility. In turn that could also mean that these fifty prisoners were of considerable importance: people that Bonaparte wanted out of France at any cost and incarcerated in Devil's Island.
So apart from the importance of Jean-Jacques - which from the Royalist point of view was considerable - what about the others? What value would the British government put on them? In other words, if Captain Ramage acting without orders attempted with a brig and a dozen or so men a task for which a fully-manned frigate would not be too much, and succeeded, what then? Pats on the head, a page in the London Gazette, a column or so in the next issue of the Naval Chronicle, the grudging but heavily-qualified approval of the First Lord.
But if Captain Ramage failed in this self-appointed role of rescuer riding a (borrowed) white horse, what then? Well, the resulting court-martial would make the trial establishing his father as a scapegoat for the government look like a hunt cancelled because of heavily frozen ground. At best, Captain Ramage would spend the rest of his life on half-pay. At worst? Well, at least being cashiered with the disgrace of being 'rendered incapable of further service in his Majesty's Naval Service'.
Yet it really boiled down to ignor
ing the Admiralty. By chance he had been able to recapture a British brig from the enemy, and without his activity the Murex would have been added to the French Navy. That was where the chance ended. Did he owe it to Jean-Jacques to try to rescue him? A debt of honour? That was using a rather high-flown phrase, but supposing Ramage had been seized and taken off to some improbable prison, and Jean-Jacques had escaped and knew where he was? Jean-Jacques would attempt a rescue. That was all there was to it, really, although the Admiralty would certainly not agree.
To make an enormous dog-leg course to call at Plymouth to get provisions, men and water would wreck everything because it would probably mean that a couple of frigates would be sent in his place, and a vital week lost - at least a week; more if there was bad weather. It would take a couple of days to convince the port admiral at Plymouth of the importance of such a rescue and pass a message to the Admiralty (though with the new telegraph, Plymouth could send a signal to London and get a reply in a few hours), then watering and provisioning the frigates would take another day or so ... By the time they were clear of the Chops of the Channel (and perhaps driven back by a westerly storm or gale) L'Espoir would be a third of the way to Cayenne; a third of the way to the Île du Diable. At this moment, though, the Murex brig was only a matter of hours behind her. Yet without enough men to do any good and perhaps short of provisions and water. But no more than fifty miles ... If L'Espoir had careless or apathetic officers of the deck, poorly set sails and inattentive men at the wheel, plus the feeling that once clear of Brest they were safe from the Royal Navy, the smaller Murex, sailed hard, would be able to make up the gap.
'I'm going below for half an hour,' he told Swan. 'Report when you can see Ushant.'
Sarah was awake, unused to the swinging cot, which was little more than a large hammock with a shallow, open-topped frame fitted in it, like a box in a net bag.
'I preferred going to and from India,' she said teasingly. 'A proper bed is more comfortable.'