Ramage And The Rebels r-9

by Dudley Pope

  And this tacking. Just look now: La Creole is towing them straight towards the shore! Mama mia, if she gets into stays on the next tack offshore well all end up on the beach. And you can be sure the Calypso will bilge herself on the only rocks along a mile of sand and spring some planks, so all we'll hear for the next couple of days will be the clanking of the chain pump and the creak of our own muscles. Every man will have to take his turn - in this heat too, when it is too hot to think, let alone pump. And the Dutch cavalry will come galloping along and start sniping at us. Then they'll bring up artillery and the Calypso will not be able to fire back because shell be heeled to seaward and all her guns on the landward side will be pointing up in the air. Accidente, what a mess, and all because Uncle Nicholas didn't - then, to his surprise, he saw they were still a mile from the beach, the Creole towing steadily, and the French frigate still hove - to. The way his imagination ran away with him ... if Uncle Nicholas had the slightest idea, he'd send him back to Aunt Gianna!

  Ramage looked at his watch. Five minutes to go. There were nearly two hundred men waiting on the Calypso's lower - deck, which must be like an oven.

  'Carry on, Mr Aitken!' he said, 'I'm just going below for a few minutes.'

  He clattered down the companionway, noting yet again the comfort of the trousers: going up or down steps in breeches always caused an uncomfortable tightness across the knees. He made his way forward to the messdecks, where the men waited. Not only was it appallingly hot but it was smelly. There was the sickly stench of bilgewater, the last gallons that no pumps could ever clear, and the smell of which was usually cleared away by the downdraught of the sails. At anchor the water settled, but now, with the ship rolling under tow and no sails set, the effect was like stirring up a stagnant pond on a hot, windless day.

  The men were grouped round the ladders with their officers. Wagstaffe, the cheery Londoner, was obviously keeping his men amused; he had a good fund of stories and could mimic Stafford's Cockney accent. Baker, the burly young third lieutenant from Bungay, in Suffolk, was quiet; the chance of him telling a funny story to amuse his men was remote, but they all seemed to like him. And finally, of the sea officers, the fourth lieutenant, young Peter Kenton. His shortness and red hair made him conspicuous, and because his heavily freckled face was usually peeling from sunburn, he seemed younger than his twenty - one years. His men looked contented, while Rennick and his Marines were a compact mass of pipeclay.

  All of them fell silent as soon as they saw Ramage, a silence not caused by awe but because they were obviously expecting him to say something. He had not intended to do more than show himself, but rows of expectant faces made him climb a couple of rungs of a ladder up to the main hatch so that he could be seen by all the men.

  'While you fellows are resting down here,' he said, and they all gave murmurs of mock protest, 'we have been busy on deck. We have the captain of the French frigate on board as a guest - of the Marines, who I hope have him in irons in the gunroom - and the Calypso is being towed by La Creole, as you know, to save you all the effort of sail handling on a hot day.'

  The laughter showed that the men liked this teasing, simple as it was, but time was passing and he was anxious to get back on deck. 'At the moment the French frigate is hove - to astern. Within an hour I hope we shall have captured her. You'll get your orders. Speed is what will matter. Speed will mean success. It'll also be your best protection. In the meantime La Perle- that's the name of the French frigate - is quite convinced we are La Creole's prize. Well, well see. We know how much Their Lordships reckon French frigates are worth in prize money and we know the deductions for damage, so we'll be gentle with La Perle.' With that the men cheered him and he swung up the ladder into the bright sunlight. In the past few months each of the men had earned a considerable amount of prize money - from ships including the Calypso and La Creole- and they obviously liked the idea. Each of them was now entitled to more prize money than he could earn in wages in twenty years at sea. Curiously enough it did not seem to affect their attitude to life - or death, rather. A man with several score guineas due to him, enough to go home and set up a little business which would keep him comfortably into a prosperous old age, might well be more anxious than usual to stay alive; he might show some reluctance when going into action. Wasn't it Frederick the Great who berated his tardy Prussian guards with: 'Dogs, would you live for ever?' A sensible man's answer, Ramage reflected, would be an uncompromising yes, but fortunately the Navy (and the Army too!) comprised men born without an excessively strong sense of self - preservation.

  On deck once again the sun's glare was harsh and it took him a moment or two to adjust his eyes. Curacao seemed startlingly near but automatically he checked: he could see the beach clearly so it was less than three miles; he could see a shrub the height of a man growing at the back of the beach but not quite distinguish the colours of the flowers growing on it - so it was between two miles (colours indistinguishable) and one (colours distinguishable). Call it a mile and a half. On this course, making an angle to the coast, La Creole had two miles to sail before she ran up on the beach, followed by the Calypso nearly one hundred fathoms, or two hundred yards, astern. La Perle was still hove - to and he could make out her main rigging, so she was a mile away: the Calypso and La Creole by tacking, were in effect sailing along the tangent of a circle of which La Perle was the centre.

  As he walked to the quarterdeck Ramage began rubbing the scar over his eyebrow. He knew he had gone below to see the men because the tension of remaining on deck was getting too much: he hated the split - second timing on which the next part of his plan depended, the split - second timing which depended not on the hands of a watch but on his own judgement And through making that speech - the mouthings of bravado - he bad probably wrecked everything by starting the second part of the plan two or three minutes late. But stay calm, he told himself: if you try to rush people they just make silly mistakes.

  'Orsini - hoist La Perle's pendant number!'

  His voice was so calm that he surprised himself, but he could afford it because earlier he had made the boy check the flags. Now the midshipman and his two seamen hoisted them smartly.

  number fifty - six of the French code."

  'Aye aye, sir.' As the boy and the seamen hoisted Paolo repeated: '"Ship indicated shall take disabled vessel in tow, the course to be steered to be made known in the next signal."' 'Very well,' Ramage said. 'Let me know when she acknowledges.'

  But even before he finished speaking three telescopes were trained on La Perle: Aitken was standing with his back to the quarterdeck rail, balancing himself on the balls of his feet against the Calypso's gentle roll, Southwick was watching with the complacency of a prosperous farmer inspecting a ripe field of corn, half of which had already fallen before the reapers' scythes and with the weather set fair, and Paolo had snatched up a telescope with the speed of a conjurer producing an out - of - season apple from the rector's hat.

  Even Ramage could see without a telescope as La Perle answered. They had the flag already bent,' Southwick commented.

  'Now, Orsini, hoist the signal for north - east, and make sure it is acknowledged.'

  Aitken and Southwick walked over to join Ramage, who had remained by the binnacle, which for the moment was shaded by the furled mizentopsail.

  'I'm glad I'm not that French first lieutenant,' Aitken said to no one in particular.

  'Why not?' Ramage was surprised at the Scotsman's gloomy tone.

  'Well, sir, he's been ordered to take us in tow, but how is he to get the cable from La Creole! By the time he gets up here the schooner will be nearly on this coral reef running parallel with the beach. There'll be hardly any room for him to manoeuvre. If he stays too far off he could hit the reef; if he gets too close to the Calypso he runs the risk of hitting La Creole. But somehow he has to get that cable secured on board!'

  'You've forgotten two other things.'

  'What, sir?' Now Aitken was surprised.

  'F
irst, he thinks his own captain is watching every move from this quarterdeck, with another senior officer beside him. Second, he's sure his whole future depends on what he does.'

  'Aye,' Southwick said with a prodigious sniff, 'and he knows how easily he could get all three ships caught up in such a mass of tangled yards that we all end up on that reef like three battered tankards in an alehouse brawl.'

  Two and a half pints,' Ramage said dryly. 'Yes, I'm glad I'm not that Frenchman. In fact I can't see how he can do it.'

  Aitken and Southwick both swung round to stare at him. The skin of Aitken's face had suddenly gone taut, and South - wick ran a hand through his flowing white hair, and licked his lips uneasily. 'But you - you've just given him the order, sir,' Southwick said nervously.

  'Yes, though I'd sooner give it than receive it.'

  'I ... well, sir, should I get an anchor cleared away for letting go, sir?'

  'Won't help much, Mr Southwick. It's deep right up to the reef, so by the time the anchor's beginning to get a bite we'd be on the coral. Staghorn, isn't it? Dreadful stuff. . .'

  'Could we hoist out the boats ready to tow if necessary, sir?' Aitken ventured, still watching Ramage closely.

  'No,' Ramage said lugubriously, 'we shouldn't envy that poor French first lieutenant.' He turned to Jackson, who was holding up a cutlass: 'Ah yes, slide it in.' He settled the leather belt more comfortably across his shoulder. 'And the pistols, thank you.' He took the pair from the American and clipped them on to the waistbelt of his trousers.

  Orsini called excitedly: 'La Perle's acknowledged the signal giving the course, sir. She took long enough.'

  'Hoping we'd made a mistake, no doubt, and would annul it,' Aitken commented as he turned to look at the frigate. 'But she's slipping along now. But that fellow hasn't made up his mind whether to approach us on the windward or leeward side.' He looked at Ramage, who nodded as though the subject of La Perle no longer interested him.

  'I wonder what the devil all that smoke and musketry was yesterday,' Ramage said. 'And the captain of La Perle was so anxious to get to Amsterdam.'

  'Was he, sir?' Aitken said in surprise.

  'Oh yes, no bridegroom was more anxious to get to the church on time than Captain Duroc.'

  Ramage felt hot and he felt a fraud. Standing under this scorching sun, which was now directly overhead so that you had to lean forward slightly to see your own shadow, the deck was so hot that the wood could be a stove top curling the leather of the soles of your shoes. Nor was the wind doing very much to cool anything: the Calypso was making only two knots and the wind barely had the energy to lift itself over the rolls of hammocks piled in the bulwark nettings to blow across the deck. The glare from the sea, from the sails, and from the near - white sand of the beach, gave the impression of heat, even though its only real effect was to make you screw up your eyes so that you peered out on this tropical oven through slits, like a short - sighted Oriental.

  And the fraud: that was a different thing altogether. Aitken and Southwick had suddenly looked at each other and then they had laughed: the captain, they thought, was playing a neat joke on them, pretending he did not know what would happen when La Perle arrived to carry out her orders. They were sure the captain had a trick hidden away, a trick which would solve everything and leave them with La Perle as a prize.

  The fraud arose because he had no trick ready, and if Aitken and Southwick gave the matter any thought, they would know it was impossible to have one waiting. He had explained yesterday the only plan he had was the one which would get La Perle's captain on board, leaving the ship - he hoped - in the hands of less experienced officers. Well, that plan had been executed; Captain Duroc, no doubt sadder and wiser, was now sitting below in irons, with Marines guarding him.

  What happened next depended entirely on what La Perle's first lieutenant did. Given that he tried to carry out the order to take over the tow of the Calypso, how would he approach? How would he get that heavy cable from La Creole and secure it on board and take up the tow? Would be come up to starboard, on the windward side, or on the larboard side, which had the advantage of being to leeward but the disadvantage of being the land side, reducing the available room to the stretch between the long reef and the Calypso! Ironically the anonymous French lieutenant now had the advantage; that much Ramage admitted. The Frenchman knew what he was going to do, but Ramage knew nothing. It was a game of chess - mat's what neither Southwick nor Aitken realized. At this stage of this particular game, your move depended on your opponent's move; it was a response. You hoped that your opponent moved a piece which allowed you to checkmate in one move, but there was always the danger that you would be the one who was checkmated.

  La Perle was beating up fast in the Calypso's wake and Ramage stared at her. The three masts were in line. She could pass one side or the other at the very last moment. Suddenly he realized why she looked a little strange: all her guns had just been run in and the gun ports closed. The French lieutenant had - wisely from his point of view and fortunately from Ramage's - done it presumably because he wanted his men ready to handle sails and secure that cable; as far as he was concerned there was no fighting to be done; simply a problem of salvage.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Lieutenant de vaisseau Jean - Pierre Bazin bitterly regretted the day he had ever gone to sea. As a boy growing up in Lyon, where the placid River Saone joined the turbulent Rhone after its race through the mountains, he had watched the Saone passing within a hundred yards of his home in one of the narrow streets in the shadow of the cathedral. He had also walked the other way, to the Fort de Lovasse. He had walked up to the Fort scores of times, hundreds in fact, to watch the soldiers drilling, the bands playing, men marching and countermarching to the beat of a drum. But soldiering had never excited him; the pressed uniforms, the polished buttons, the pipeclayed belts (for this was before the Revolution) had seemed a lot of unnecessary work every day, especially to a boy who was for ever accounting to his mother for the latest holes in breeches and boots.

  In contrast the rivers had captured his imagination. Along the Saone men sat on the banks or stood among the rushes, fishing from dawn to dusk, with a sleep in the middle of the day when the sun was high (as it was now, but never reaching such an altitude or heat, of course). Horses had plodded along the banks of the Saone, towing barges and disturbing the pecheurs. The barges were usually painted in gay colours and carried cargoes from places which seemed as distant to a young boy as China: from Tournus and Chalon, and towns on the Saone's tributaries, like Dijon and Dole.

  Then, as a change from the placid Saone, he would walk across the bridge and past the arsenal and watch the Rhone which, in spring, as the ice and snow melted up in the Swiss mountains, was a torrent. The water sluicing past, noisy over the rocks along the banks and cold, gave the impression of movement and travel; starting from way beyond Lac Leman it passed Geneve and twisted and turned to Lyon; then, always rushing onwards, it began its great surge to the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean - the cradle of civilization, the route to ancient Greece and Tyre and Nineveh, or even to Corsica, where Columbus was born at Calvi, no matter what those blackguards in Genoa claimed. Born within the walls of the Citadel, he was, and a credit to the island - to the whole of France, indeed.

  Anyway, the quiet Saone and the racing Rhone (except occasionally in simmer when it almost dried up, usually after a winter of only very light snow in Switzerland, and barge traffic was stopped for weeks on end) had given him the idea that they represented the two extremes of the sea, the smooth and the rough. So at the age of fifteen he had packed a bag, said goodbye to his widowed mother, travelled by barge down the Rhone to Avignon, and then ridden by cart (for the price of helping the carter with his train of four horses) to Toulon, where he had joined the French Navy. It was slavery, even in port it meant fourteen hours' work a day while the officers spent their time on shore . . .

  By the time the Revolution came he was an able seaman, a nimble topman and, t
hanks to his mother's patient teaching, one of the few seamen who could read and write. Read well enough, fortunately, to understand the revolutionary pamphlets and help persuade the other seamen of the necessity of disposing of several royalist officers for whom the men had an absurd loyalty. For all this work the Revolutionary Council had made him a lieutenant, and he had long since learned that the Rhone at its wildest had as much similarity to the sea as - well, the grande rade of Toulon to a puddle.

  More recently, he remembered the excitement when La Perle had been at anchor in Martinique, at Fort de France, as Fort Royal was now called, and Captain Duroc had finally noticed the royalist sympathies of the frigate's first lieutenant, that braggart from Gascony. Denunciation, trial and execution had taken only a few days, and Citoyen Jean - Pierre Bazin, the second lieutenant, had suddenly found himself promoted: at thirty he was second in command of this great frigate.

  The journey from the house in the shadow of the cathedral in Lyon to walking the quarterdeck of La Perle, frigate, as the man next only to the captain had taken but fifteen years. That showed the opportunity which the Revolution gave to men of character and leadership. Captain Duroc, for example, had been the boatswain of an old xebec trading from Sete to Marseille when the Revolution began.

  Now, though, Captain Duroc was on board that damnable prize frigate being towed quite competently towards Amsterdam. And he, Jean - Pierre Bazin, had been left in command of La Perle for the first time. At the beginning, that had been far from daunting; with the foretopsail backed the ship had stayed hove - to, like a gull resting on the water. The captain's boat had been rowed briskly to the prize frigate, Duroc had gone on board, the boat had been hauled round to tow astern: all what one would expect, because whoever was on board the prize was obviously senior to Captain Duroc. One would have expected the captain to return in, say, fifteen minutes, half an hour at the most, and La Perle would then continue on her way to Amsterdam: the captain had made enough fuss about the rush to get there.