Ramage And The Rebels r-9

by Dudley Pope

  Ramage decided to make one more tack across Sint Anna Baai, passing two miles off Waterfort and Riffort to wake up the gunners and perhaps provoke them into firing. This raiding of the bars was useful because although the Calypso had nothing to fear from shore guns at that range it was usually too close for them to resist firing. Careful observation of the puffs of smoke could reveal how many guns a fort had, and if they had not been fired for a long time they could sometimes do their owners considerable harm: a wooden carriage with hidden rot could send a gun barrel weighing a couple of tons spinning away in a shower of smoke and flame like a carelessly - thrown stick. Roundshot painted too frequently or neglected and rusted invariably ended up larger than they should be, like swollen grapefruit, and they could stick in the bore, with the gunners left unsure whether or not to fire the gun to clear it in case the barrel blew apart Tacking back and forth in front of the forts and just outside their effective range was as good a way of teasing the enemy as any and always pleased the ship's company.

  Taking the ship in closer than intended was also a way of ensuring smart sail handling, Ramage mused. Lucky shooting which took away a mast or yard when fifty other shot had missed altogether seemed to happen more frequently at long range than close in. And many ships sailing in boldly with a nice fresh breeze to intimidate a shore battery had been lost when the wind suddenly vanished, leaving them becalmed, a stationary target and an artilleryman's dream.

  He lifted his telescope for one more look at the town - from this angle he could see the third side of Riffort on Otrabanda. Beyond it, on Punda, there was a curious movement round the flagpole at Government House. In fact the big Dutch flag was being lowered. He looked at the flags on the two forts, but they were still flying. Yet - yes, there were several men round the bases of each flagpole.

  Now a bundle was going up the flagpole at Government House and breaking out to stream in the wind - a plain white flag. Another was being run up to replace the Dutch flag on the fort at Punda. And now a third was being hoisted at Riffort.

  A white flag, the flag of truce? Well, there was no question about its meaning; everyone treated it as a truce flag, the signal for a parley. But here, in Amsterdam, with ten French privateers safely anchored inside the two forts guarding the entrance? What could Aitken suddenly exclaimed as he saw the flags; then the lookout at the foremast hailed the quarterdeck. In a few moments the whole ship was buzzing with comment and speculation. Southwick, quite inevitably, sniffed and announced that it was a trick; that the Calypso, with La Perle hardly out of sight, should not get caught on her own bait They can see we've a good breeze out here and there's probably a dead patch close in under their guns that we don't know about and where we'd be becalmed,' he announced. 'It's no good trusting mynheer, he's a cunning fellow. Drives a hard bargain - and fights hard, too.'

  Ramage walked over to the binnacle and looked at the compass card. The wind was due east; with the yards braced sharp the Calypso could lay north - north - east, almost direct for Amsterdam. A bow - on approach gave the Dutch gunners the smallest target and made it harder to estimate - or guess - the range, because calculating the speed of an approaching ship was difficult. More important, the wind allowing him a direct approach also gave him a choice of direction if he needed to escape: ease sheets and bear away to the west or tack and bear away if he preferred the east.

  A quiet order to Baker, who was the officer of the deck, had the Marine drummer beating his ruffles, which sent the men to quarters. A second order had the coxswain watching the compass and the men at the wheel as they brought the ship round three points to starboard.

  By the time the trucks began rumbling as the guns were run out, the Calypso was headed for the channel separating the two halves of the town. In the distant days of peace, Ramage reflected, the Calypso would be preparing to fire a salute to 'the place', as the Regulations and Instructions termed it. He checked the compass and noted the Calypso's bow was now heading a fraction to the north of north - north - east, although the men at the wheel were on course.

  Watch for the current, Mr Baker, it seems to be westgoing and quite strong, perhaps a couple of knots.'

  It did not really matter because the Calypso most certainly was not going up the channel, but young lieutenants are supposed to be quick to note currents. In many Caribbean ports a few degrees to one side or other of the course meant you would hit a rock waiting alone and unmarked for the careless mariner. Many rocks were named on charts after the ships that had hit and sunk beside them. It was the kind of enduring fame, Ramage thought, that he would gladly avoid.

  Southwick had put down his quadrant and looked up after consulting a volume of tables. 'We're a mile and three - quarters off the forts, sir.'

  'Very well, Mr Southwick.'

  Ramage opened his telescope once again, careful to set it at the focusing mark he had filed on the brass tube, and looked at the forts. There were a few people standing on the walls. Although it was impossible to be sure at this distance, they seemed to be watching rather than preparing for action. From their point of view the Calypso was approaching fast (they had an excellent view of her bow - wave, which must look like a white moustache), and one would expect even the most controlled of battery commanders to open fire at a mile if he meant to be unfriendly. At the speed the Calypso was making, she'd be a mile off in about seven minutes.

  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 nags 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 I Aloft with your telescope and tell me what that boat is doing in the channel.'

  While Paolo bolted for the shrouds both Aitken and South - wick trained their telescopes forward, having to move across the quarterdeck to find a place where their view was not obscured by the bowsprit, jibboom 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 tw
o 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: well 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 foretopsail 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 foretopsail 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 foretopsail sheets, tacks and braces were properly settled. 'I can see that the men sitting in the stern - sheets 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 light weight cloth, but no tailor in London could visualize the oven - like tropical heat - that was the regular lament of naval and army officers posted abroad.

  Shirt, stock, swordbelt, 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 Curacao. 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 hun
dreds 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 mis 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 roost 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.