Ramage's Devil r-13

by Dudley Pope

  'You wait until there's rough weather. Going to windward in a blow and that cot will swing comfortably, while a fixed bed tosses you out.'

  'How do I get out of it, anyway?'

  'You don't; you're marooned!'

  'Do you want to get some sleep?' she offered, sitting up with her tawny hair tousled, naked because she had only the clothes she had worn in the fishing boat. The lantern light seemed to gild her and he turned away quickly, reassuring her and telling her to stay in the cot. Stay in the cot, he thought to himself, or the captain will not concentrate on his charts ...

  He put the lantern on the hook in the beam just forward of the desk. The charts were rolled and stowed vertically in a rack fitted on one side of the desk. Checking what charts were there meant removing each one and partly unrolling it. He sat at the desk and made a start. English Channel, western section, including the Scilly Islands; English Channel, eastern section, including the mouth of the Thames and the Medway. North Sea ... in four sections. Ireland, the southern half. The Channel Islands. St Malo to Ouessant (the French spelling and the detail showed it was probably copied from a captured one). Ushant to Brest and south to Douarnenez... Those were probably the charts for her last patrol... Half a dozen more left. North Atlantic, southern section...

  Ramage unrolled it. It covered from the southwestern corner of Spain to the eastern side of the West Indian islands, and down to the Equator, yet giving very little detail of the South American coast. There was Trinidad - which anyway could be identified by its shape. No reference to Cayenne, though; it must be about there, just a kink in the ink line of the coast, north of Brazil.

  He looked at the remaining charts. A French one of the islands of St Barthélemy, St Martin (with the southern half owned by the Dutch and given its Dutch name, St Maarten), Anguilla and well to the north, just a speck, Sombrero. Then another two of the group just to the southward, Nevis and St Christopher. And two more, St Eustatius and Saba. A detailed chart of Plymouth ... and Falmouth ... and, finally, the Texel, showing the northwestern corner of the Netherlands.

  All in all, Ramage thought wryly, he was no better off than he would be with a blank sheet of paper and his memory; in fact he was going to have to draw up a chart or two for himself. For the moment, though he had to try to put himself in the French captain's place.

  When sailing from Europe to the West Indies or the northern part of South America, the trick was to pick up the Trade winds as soon as possible without getting becalmed in the Doldrums. Which meant sailing where you could be reasonably sure of finding steady winds. Every captain and every master had his own invisible signpost in the Atlantic; a sign which said 'Turn southwest here; this is where the northeast Trade winds begin.'

  For Ramage it was 25° North latitude, 25° West longitude. And - he took a pencil from the desk drawer and a crumpled sheet of paper which he smoothed out enough to make it usable.

  According to the copied French chart, St Louis church in the centre of Brest, just north of the Château, was 48° 23' 22" North, 4° 29' 27" West. That, within a mile, was where L'Espoir had sailed from, and she was bound first to the magic spot, 25° North, 25° West. Which ... was ... about ... yes, roughly seventeen hundred miles to the south-southwest.

  Then, from the magic point it was to Cayenne ... about ... another 2,000 miles, steering southwest by west. Say 4,000 miles altogether, and let no one think that steering southwest by west from the magic point would bring him or his ship to Cayenne: he would probably start running out of the Trades by the time he reached 12° North; from then on he would be trying to fight his way south against a foul current which ran northwest along the coast of Brazil. Caught in the right place, it helped; but if the wind played about, whiffling round the compass (which it could do in those latitudes) then the current would sweep the helpless ship up towards the islands - towards Barbados, for example, where the British commander-in-chief was probably lying at anchor in Carlisle Bay.

  Ramage looked at his brief calculations again and then screwed them up.

  Sarah asked: 'When do you think we shall be in Plymouth if this weather holds, dearest?'

  'In about three months.'

  'No, seriously. Our families will be worrying.'

  'I expect the Rockleys will be worrying about you, but mine will make a wrong guess and give a sigh of relief that I am safely locked up in a French prison while they will expect you to be lodging with a respectable French family.'

  'Is that how it would have been, normally?'

  He shrugged his shoulders. 'I should think so. Anyway, my parents will not be worrying, and I'm sure as soon as they get the word they will be calling on your people.'

  'But we'll be back in London before then, won't we?'

  He was sure she suspected the idea that was popping in and out of his mind like an importunate beggar.

  She said, in a flat voice: 'It would be madness to go after L'Espoir. You'll lose the Murex and everyone on board. A scout's job is to raise the alarm, dearest. Losing everything won't help Jean-Jacques, but getting help will...'

  He nodded and was startled when she said: 'You took so long to make up your mind.'

  She was making it easier for him, and he took the opportunity as gracefully as possible. 'I needed to give it a lot of thought.'

  She sat up in the cot, swung her legs out on to the deck and holding one end firmly stood up. She walked over to him and, standing to one side, gently held his head against her naked body. 'You had two choices, dearest, Cayenne or Plymouth. Two choices. But you know as well as I do there was really only one that you could take.'

  'Yes, but...'

  'But in the same circumstances another captain would have had only one choice: he would have gone to Plymouth!'

  He nuzzled against her, his unshaven face rasping slightly on her warm skin, his chin pressing gently against her breasts. 'I suppose most other captains wouldn't have to choose because they do not usually meet people like Jean-Jacques.'

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ramage had just gone on deck after Swan called that they could now sight Ushant, and the deck lookouts had been sent aloft when both men heard the hail.

  'Deck here!'

  'Foremost lookout, sir: sail ho! Two sail!'

  'Where away?'

  'Two points on the starboard bow, sir, frigates I reckon.'

  'Very well, keep a sharp lookout.'

  Swan turned to Ramage, saw that he was already looking over the bow, and heard him cursing. 'Those blasted mutineers - I wish they'd left us the bring-'em-near. Even a nightglass!'

  'They must have spotted us ten minutes ago, probably more. They'll recognize the rig...'

  'And guess we're the Murex - perhaps sailing under the French flag?'

  Ramage shook his head. News did not travel that fast. 'I doubt if the Admiralty yet know anything about the mutiny. In a day or two they'll read about it in the Moniteur, half a page of French bombast about oppressed English seamen fighting for their liberté, fraternité and égalité. '

  'Yes,' Swan said bitterly, 'at the price of treason and making sure that fifteen of their shipmates go into a French prison.'

  'That's what is meant by fraternité,' Ramage said laconically.

  'That westernmost frigate has tacked,' commented Phillips, who had come on deck when he heard the hail.

  'And the other one is bearing away a point or so,' Ramage noted. 'They're taking no chances. If we try to make a bolt for it, one can catch us to windward and the other to leeward.'

  'But they recognize our rig,' Swan protested. 'The French don't have any brigs like this one!'

  'They had one briefly, until last night,' Ramage said. 'Remember, in wartime all sails are hostile until they prove themselves otherwise. I presume we still have a set of signal flags.'

  'Yes, sir,' Swan said and took the hint. 'I'll have our pendant numbers bent on ready.'

  'Deck there!' Once again the lookout was shouting from the masthead, the pitch of his voice rising with exci
tement.

  'Deck here,' Swan called back.

  'More sail, sir, just beyond those frigates. Must be a couple of dozen, I reckon, and some of them seventy-fours and bigger.'

  'Count 'em, blast it!' Swan shouted. 'Divide 'em up and count 'em.'

  Ramage counted the days since the declaration of war. Yes, it might be. Indeed, if there were ships of the line it had to be, so there would be an admiral. Which meant so much explaining to be done; so much persuading to be done.

  'Deck there, foremasthead here ... I'm counting as we lift up on the swell waves, sir ... Looks like at least six o' the line - one of 'em bigger'n a seventy-four - and seven frigates, including the first two.'

  'Very well,' Swan said. 'Report if you sight more.' He turned to Ramage. 'Well, sir, can't be French and I don't think they're Spanish.'

  'No, it'll be the Channel Fleet coming out to blockade Brest again ... Well, they've had eighteen months' rest, but winter will soon be here.'

  Phillips gave a dry laugh. 'The equinoctial gales will be along ... then they'll dream of being "Close up with the Black Rocks with an easterly wind"!'

  Both Ramage and Swan laughed, but both were thankful they were not serving in the blockading fleet. The Black Rocks ... The description really stood for the twenty-five or thirty miles from the island of Ushant in the north to the Île de Sein in the south and, covering the entrance to Brest rather than the Rocks themselves, must make up the most iron-bound coast in the world: for almost every day of the year it was a lee shore wide open to the full fury of the Atlantic.

  Yet by a quirk of nature the ships of the Royal Navy, forced to blockade Brest, were fortunate. The French fleet could leave Brest only with an easterly wind. A strong wind with much west in it left them unable to beat out of the Gullet and meant that they were also blockaded by nature.

  The blockading British fleet's line-of-battle ships could stay twenty, thirty or even forty miles out to sea, so that they had plenty of room when the westerly Atlantic gales turned into storms lasting a week ... A captain with his ship under storm canvas could pull down his newly-tarred sou'wester and curse that he had ever chosen the Navy, but apart from keeping station on the admiral if possible (it never was in a full storm) it was more miserable than dangerous.

  As a precaution a line of frigates, each within sight of the other, linked the fleet with the French coast. But with west in the wind the admiral could be sure that nature was his ally, keeping the French penned in. France was in fact unlucky because the perfidious English had along their Channel coast large and sheltered harbours which they could enter whatever the weather - Plymouth, Dartmouth, Falmouth, Portsmouth and the area inside the Isle of Wight, Dover and the Thames estuary.

  The French were plagued with much higher tides and all their main Channel harbours - Calais, Havre de Grâce, Cherbourg and Boulogne - were artificial. The first of any size which was natural was Brest - which, as the Admiralty stated it - was 'outside Channel limits'.

  So a west wind kept the French penned in; but the situation changed immediately the windvane on the church of St Louis de Brest swung round: an east wind tried to blow the blockading Royal Navy out to sea and gave the French a fair wind for slipping out of the Gullet while the blockaders beat back again to close the door.

  Indeed, as Ramage knew from experience, that is why the blockading fleet had the frigates - as soon as the wind turned east the British frigates moved close up to the Black Rocks: close in with the Black Rocks, a couple of miles seaward of Pointe St Mathieu. They were, he reflected, a suitable name for rocks when you were commanding a frigate on a dark night in an easterly gale and peering with salt-sore and weary eyes for a sight of the white collars of breaking seas that would enable you to give hasty helm and sail orders to save the ship.

  'Close up with the Black Rocks with an easterly wind' - words written on most midshipmen's hearts, and worthy of being carved on many a captain's tombstone, Ramage thought wryly. Still, it was worse for the admirals - they might have to spend a couple of years out here, shifting their flag from ship to ship while captains and seamen had a brief rest when they returned to Plymouth for water, provisions or repairs. The wear and tear on masts, spars and cordage keeping a close blockade off somewhere like Brest was beyond belief.

  With her courses furled, the Murex was lying hove-to, her backed foretopsail trying to push her bow one way and maintopsail to turn it the other and the pair of them leaving the brig in a state of equilibrium, rising and falling on the swell waves like a resting seagull.

  'The cutter is ready to be hoisted out, sir,' Swan reported. 'Two of the Frenchmen, seeing how short-handed we are, volunteered as boat's crew. Six men should be enough in this wind and sea.'

  Ramage nodded. 'Someone is standing by to help Bridges with the flags?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'And you can guess what the first signal will be.'

  'I think so, sir,' Swan said with a grin.

  The two frigates, one approaching from the north and the other from the northeast, were a fine sight: both had all plain sail set to the royals and Ramage guessed the one to the northeast was commanded by the senior of the two captains - the other was deliberately letting her reach the brig first.

  Sarah, standing beside him and wearing her hastily repaired dress, said quietly as she watched the frigates: 'Should I go below, out of sight?'

  'Most certainly not!' Ramage said. 'I'm anxious to show off my new bride! No,' he added, 'we have no signal book and very few men, so we want these fellows to guess at once that something's wrong. We don't want them to rush past hoisting a string of flag signals giving silly orders we can't read.'

  'Can they give you orders?'

  'Yes, if they are senior. If they were made post before me, in other words.'

  'If their names are above yours in the List of the Navy? How will you know that, without looking them up in Mr Swan's copy as soon as you are introduced?'

  Ramage grinned complacently. 'I know the names of the thirty or so lieutenants who were above me in my year, and all those in the two preceding years, so it's not too difficult!'

  'What do you think will happen now? I was just beginning to look forward to the idea of getting back to London.'

  'I don't know. It might be difficult to persuade the Admiral that fifty French Royalists being transported have any importance.'

  'Who will the admiral be?'

  'I don't know. Lord St Vincent commanded the Channel Fleet until the change of government saw him made First Lord. Now the war has started again, who knows...'

  'Perhaps Lord Nelson. You know him, so it shouldn't be too difficult...'

  'Perhaps, but I doubt it. After Copenhagen, I don't think the public - which means the politicians - would want to see him doing blockade duty. You don't have to be a brilliant tactician to blockade Brest.'

  'No, but you need to be a brilliant tactician if the French fleet sails from Brest and you have to stop it!'

  She was sharp-witted and wide awake. Ramage had to admit that, and said: 'You're right, and from what we saw in Brest, that admiral over there' - he nodded towards the British ships of the line beating up towards Ushant - 'will have to stay awake.'

  The French coast was beginning to drop below the horizon: the coast of gaunt, high cliffs was now little more than a thick pencil line on the eastern horizon.

  Sarah gestured towards it: 'I think our honeymoon is officially at an end now. Have you enjoyed it, dearest?'

  'If honeymoons are always as exciting as this, I think I will get married more often!'

  She wrinkled her nose at him. 'I didn't care much for the company, but I enjoyed seeing France.'

  'Ah, yes, the French way of life. One of the most complex of life's puzzles: how can such selfish people create such an interesting atmosphere? It must be a quirk of the weather,' he added teasingly. 'Take away the wine and the cheese and what do you have left?'

  'Lots of gendarmes at the barrières!'

  Swan coughed as
he approached. 'The easternmost frigate, sir: she's hoisted the Union at the mizen topmasthead and our pendant.'

  'Very well, acknowledge and hoist out the cutter.'

  'Aye, aye, sir.' Swan paused a moment, looking embarrassed.

  'Well?' Ramage said, eyebrows raised. 'Say it!'

  'I was wondering, sir, if you'd sooner wear breeches - I have a spare pair left which would fit.'

  'No - they'll have to put up with a sans-culotte. They're good French fisherman's trousers, and this smock - why it smells more of potatoes than fish!'

  A slatting of canvas made Ramage glance up to see the frigate tacking to the northwest. He guessed she would stand on for a mile or so, tack again until she was half a mile to windward of the Murex, and then heave-to.

  'They've not heard about the mutiny,' Ramage said loudly and both Swan and Sarah swung round.

  'They haven't, sir? How can you be sure?'

  'Guns,' Ramage said laconically. 'Neither ship has her guns run out. Not the way you'd approach a mutinous ship.'

  And probably all her captain wants to know, so he can make a signal to the admiral and show that he is awake, is what ships we have sighted recently in the area, because we look as though we are on a regular patrol.

  The Murex's cutter was hoisted out, Ramage was on board and the men bending their backs to the oars by the time the frigate had hove-to. At the last moment Swan had shouted down that she was the Blanche; that the lookout had been able to read her name on her transom and one of the seamen had recognized her.

  Fifteen minutes later the cutter was alongside; the Blanche's seamen caught the painter the first time it was thrown (by Auguste, Ramage noted) but missed the sternfast, but even before the officer of the deck began shouting Ramage had jumped for the battens and was scrambling up the side.

  At the top, the moment he stepped on deck, a lieutenant stood in front of him.

  'Stand aside, blast you: your captain is the first up!'

  The senior officer was always the last in and the first out of a boat, and instead of the expected young lieutenant falling over his sword and with his hat awry, here was a man dressed more like a fisherman!