Ramage's Devil

by Dudley Pope

  As they jogged along the Paris road into Brest, Ramage spotted the masts of ships in the port. Some were obviously ships of the line and most, he commented to Sarah, had their yards crossed with sails bent on. The French seamen had been busy since the two of them had spent the afternoon at Pointe St Mathieu.

  The five gendarmes lounging at the Porte de Landerneau, the gate to the port, were too concerned with baiting a gaunt priest perched on an ancient donkey to pay much attention to three respectable citizens in a gig, obviously bound for the market.

  The road ahead was straight but the buildings on each side were neglected. No door or window had seen a paintbrush for years; the few buildings that years ago had been whitewashed now seemed to be suffering from a curious leprosy.

  “This leads straight down to the Place de la Liberté and the town hall,” Gilbert had explained in French. “Just beyond that is the Hôtel du Commandant de la Marine. Then we carry on past it along the Rue de Siam to the river. While we jog along the Boulevard de la Marine you’ll have a good view of the river as it meets Le Goulet, with the arsenal opposite. Then to the Esplanade du Château. There we’ll stop for a glass of wine under the trees and you can inspect the château.”

  He laughed to himself and then added: “From the Esplanade it is only two minutes’ walk to the Rue du Bois d’Amour … in the evenings the young folk dawdle under the trees there and look down Le Goulet at the ships and perhaps dream of visiting the mysterious East.”

  “But now, the young men have to be careful the press-gangs don’t take them off to the men o’ war,” Ramage said dryly.

  “Yes, I keep forgetting the war. Look,” he said absently, “we are just passing the cemetery. The largest I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Ramage said in a mock serious voice. “For the moment I have no plans to visit it.”

  Gilbert finally turned the gig into the open market-place, a paved square, and told Ramage and Sarah to alight. Sarah looked at the stalls while Gilbert secured the horse and groaned. “Potatoes … a few cabbages … more potatoes … a few dozen parsnips … Louis may be right about the soil at Finisterre!”

  There were about twenty stalls, wooden shacks with tables in front of which the sellers spread their wares and gossiped.

  Gilbert said: “We’ll walk to the end stall; I have a friend there.”

  Despite the lack of variety, the sellers were cheerful, shouting to each other and haggling noisily with the dozen or so buyers walking along the line of tables. The man at the end stall proved to be one Ramage would normally have avoided without a moment’s thought. His face was thin and a wide scar led across his left cheek, a white slash against suntanned skin. His hair was unfashionably long and tied behind in a queue. He wore a fisherman’s smock which seemed almost rigid from frequent coatings of red ochre, which certainly made it waterproof and, Ramage thought ironically, probably bulletproof too.

  He shook hands with Gilbert, who said: “I am not introducing you to my friends because—to onlookers—we all know each other well.”

  The Frenchman immediately shook Ramage’s hand in the casual form of greeting taking place all over the market as friends met each other for the first time in the day, and he gave a perfunctory bow to Sarah, saying softly: “The Revolution does not allow me to kiss your hand, which is sad.”

  “Now,” Gilbert said, “I shall inspect your potatoes, which are small and old and shrivelled and no one but a fool would buy, and ask you what is happening in the Roads.”

  “Ah, very busy. The potatoes I have here on display are small and old because I have already sold twenty sacks to the men from the Hôtel du Commandant de la Marine, who were here early. Paying cash, they are. They tried buying against notes de crédit on the navy, but suddenly no one in the market had any potatoes, except what were on these tables.”

  “Why the navy’s sudden need for potatoes?”

  “You’ve heard about the English mutineers? Yes, well, you know the English exist on potatoes. All the mutineers are now billeted in the château and demanding potatoes. On board their brig there are still prisoners and their guards, demanding potatoes—it seems the ones they have are mildewed. And that frigate over there, L’Espoir, is leaving for Cayenne with déportés, and they want more potatoes …”

  “Who had your sacks?” Ramage asked.

  “Nobody yet. They paid extra to have them delivered—it seems that with so many ships being prepared for sea, with the war starting, they’re short of boats. So I pay a friend of mine a few livres to use his boat and the navy pays me many livres!”

  Ramage thought a moment. “Are you going to carry all the sacks on your own?”

  “I was hoping my nephew would help me when he’s finished milking.”

  Ramage glanced at Gilbert then at the man. “Two of us could help you now.”

  The Frenchman pulled at his nose. “How much?”

  Ramage smiled as he said: “Our services would be free.” He looked at Gilbert, seeking his approval. “We could carry the potatoes down to the jetty in the gig.”

  Gilbert nodded enthusiastically. “Then Janine can look after it while we go out to the Murex.”

  “The loyal men who are prisoners of war in the English ship do not speak French,” the man said pointedly.

  “If I needed to speak to them, it would be in whispers.”

  The man nodded. “It would have to be,” he said. “Much discretion is needed.”

  Gilbert walked away from the tiller and took a rope thrown down from the Murex’s deck. As he turned it up on a kevil he shouted forward at Ramage in well-simulated anger: “Hurry up! Not so tight—you’ll jam our bow into the Englishman. We want to lie alongside her, not butt her like a goat!”

  “Yes, citizen,” Ramage called aft in a remorse-laden voice. “These ships, I am used to a cart with wheels …”

  Several French seamen lining the Murex’s bulwarks roared with laughter and in a glance Ramage counted them. Seven, and the fellow at the end, probably the bosun, had been giving orders. Was that all the French guard, seven men? It seemed likely, though he would soon know.

  “Here,” a voice called down in French and the tail of another rope curled down. “Secure that somewhere there as a spring.”

  He saw that Gilbert was already making up another rope as a spring, so that the fishing-boat was held securely against the brig. A glance aloft then showed that some British seamen, prisoners, were working slowly and obviously resentfully under the shouts and gesticulations of a French bosun, who was becoming more and more exasperated that he could not make himself understood as he tried to get them to rig a staytackle to hoist the sacks of potatoes on board.

  Again Ramage counted. More than a dozen prisoners, though some of the men reeving the rope through the blocks were officers. Obviously the French guards were practising égalité.

  Another shout from the Murex’s deck brought a stream of curses from Gilbert and the vegetable seller (Ramage had established his name was Auguste), and something landed with a thump on the deck beside him. It was a heavy rope net.

  “Spread it out flat on the deck, then put two sacks in the middle,” the bosun shouted. “Hurry up, or this ship will never sail!”

  Ramage hurried with the net and found it easy to make the job last twice as long as necessary while appearing to work with ferocious energy. While he was untangling the thick mesh he slowly inspected the Murex.

  She had been out of the dockyard for only a few weeks: that much had been obvious as the fishing-boat had approached because the brig was rolling at anchor enough to show that her copper sheathing was new, each overlapping edge of a sheet helping make a mosaic still bright and still puckered where the hammers driving home the flat-headed sheathing nails had dented the metal.

  Her hull, a dark grey with a white strake, showed that her captain was a wealthy man: he had been prepared to pay for the paint himself, because the dockyard’s meagre ration was black. Some captains who wanted a par
ticularly smart ship paid for the gold leaf to line out the name on the transom, and pick up decorations on the capstan head. The captain of the Murex was one of them.

  With the net spread out on the only flat part of the fishing-boat’s deck, the tiny fo’c’s’le, Ramage climbed down into the little fish hold and hauled a couple of sacks up to the coaming. The stench was appalling: whoever had to eat these potatoes would think they had been grown in Billingsgate fish market.

  Auguste’s lopsided face appeared over the edge of the coaming. “You are doing well,” he muttered. “A clumsier oaf straight from the farm never set foot in a fishing-boat.”

  “How many guards, do you reckon?”

  “Seven, but we’ll know for sure when we get on board.”

  “Can we manage that?” Ramage asked.

  “The knot I shall use to secure the net for the staytackle hook is almost impossible to undo—and I am an impatient man! Here, sling up that sack!”

  Gilbert arrived to help haul the first two sacks to the net, and the two Frenchmen gathered up the four corners. Auguste produced a short length of rope to secure them together while Ramage played the simpleton with the dangling end of the staytackle, using it to swing on until one of the French guards quickly slacked it so that Ramage suddenly dropped to the deck with a yell of alarm. That established his position as far as the French guards were concerned: he was the buffoon, the man who fell down hatches and on to whose head sacks of potatoes dropped.

  Auguste knotted the corners of the net, took the staytackle and hooked it on, and shouted up to the Murex’s deck to start hauling. There was a delay: the French guards were not going to haul sacks of potatoes aloft, but Ramage saw equally clearly that their British prisoners, tailing on to the tackle, would have the French bosun demented by the time the last sack was on board.

  “Don’t stand under the net,” he warned Auguste and Gilbert, and a moment later the net and two sacks came crashing down on the deck again, making the little fishing-boat shudder as it caught the forestay a glancing blow and set the mast shuddering.

  Auguste sent up a stream of curses and warned the French bosun that he, the commandant of the port, the navy, and the Minister of Marine himself would all be responsible for any damage done to the boat. A moment later the bosun was swearing in French at the British seamen, who were swearing back in the accents of London, the West Country and Scotland. One man, they were protesting, had tripped and brought the rest of them down, but the French bosun, not understanding a word, was threatening them with the lash, the noose, the guillotine and prison, and as he ran out of ideas, Auguste restated his warning, adding that it was not worth losing a fishing-boat for the profit on a few sacks of potatoes.

  Finally, amid more shouting than Ramage had thought possible from so few men, the net and its sacks were slowly rehoisted and hauled on board the Murex. A run-amok choir, Ramage thought, well primed with rum, could not do better.

  Auguste gestured to Ramage and the two men scrambled up the brig’s side, followed by Gilbert. The bosun and two French seamen were crouched over the net, struggling to undo Auguste’s knot. Ramage and Gilbert were by chance within four or five feet of the British seamen who had been hauling on the tackle.

  As all the French guards hurried to help the almost apoplectic bosun undo the knot, Ramage hissed at the nearest man, who from his creased and torn uniform must be one of the brig’s lieutenants: “Quickly—don’t show surprise and keep your voice down: I am Captain Ramage. How many loyal men are there on board?”

  The lieutenant paused and then knelt as if adjusting the buckle of his shoe. “Captain, two lieutenants, master, eleven seamen.”

  “And French guards?”

  “Seven. They keep half of us in the bilboes while half are free.”

  “Who commands?”

  “Lieutenant Rumsie.”

  “Where do the French keep you?”

  “At night all of us are kept in irons in the manger.”

  “The guards?”

  “Two sit with muskets, the rest sleep in our cabins and use the gunroom.”

  Gilbert suddenly called to Auguste, asking if he needed help with the knot, and Ramage realized that a French seaman with a musket was walking along the deck towards them, not suspicious but simply patrolling where the prisoners were working.

  Ramage decided there was time for one last question.

  “Are the mutineers coming back on board?”

  “No, and the French are asking Paris what to do with us prisoners and keeping us on board until they hear.”

  With that the net opened, the two sacks were hauled clear, and the perspiring bosun signalled to the Britons to hoist again.

  Auguste scrambled back on board the fishing-boat, followed by Gilbert and Ramage, who once again climbed down into the fish hold as the two Frenchmen unhooked the net and spread it on the deck again.

  As they came to the coaming to lift out the sacks, Auguste muttered: “Did you find out anything?”

  “From the English, yes.”

  “What do you want to know from the bosun?”

  “Are they taking the job of guarding very seriously?”

  “I can tell you that without asking. It is a holiday—they have jars of rum in the gunroom and one of them was boasting to me that most of them stay drunk all day and sleep it off at night. The bosun is so drunk at the moment he sees two nets, four knots and eight sacks each time we hoist.”

  “Good, then just find out how long they expect—here, you’d better hoist up this sack while I get the other ready.”

  When Auguste’s head appeared at the coaming again Ramage finished the question: “—expect to be guarding these men and what the French navy intend doing with the Murex.”

  “Very well. The bosun will probably invite us all below for a drink anyway, when we’ve finished loading.”

  It was clear no one was really in a hurry: Auguste tied the net with his special knot and then as soon as the sacks were swayed on board he climbed up to help untie it.

  Gilbert and Ramage went on board each time, casually sitting on the breech of a gun close to the prisoners so that Ramage could continue talking to the lieutenant, who had recovered from his surprise sufficiently to have questions of his own.

  “Why are you here, sir?”

  “Caught in France when the war began again. Trying to avoid capture. Are the rest of your men loyal?”

  “They don’t want to be prisoners of the French,” the lieutenant said carefully.

  “Where’s the captain?”

  “He’s under guard in the master’s cabin. Sick, I believe.”

  “What’s his trouble?”

  “Rheumatic pains. He can hardly move.”

  The net was being hoisted over the side and the three of them climbed down into the fishing-boat once again.

  Auguste leaped over the coaming to grasp a sack and said: “Trouble with the English captain.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Rheumatic pains. Makes him bad-tempered. Bullied the men and most mutinied.”

  “How long do the prisoners stay on board?”

  “Who knows? They won’t be short of potatoes, anyway,” Auguste said.

  As soon as the last sacks were pulled off the net, the French bosun mopped his forehead with a dirty piece of cloth and mumbled drunkenly: “English rum—we all deserve some. Follow me.” He stumbled aft and went cautiously down the companion-way to the gunroom.

  Ramage felt he was walking back in time: the Murex was almost identical with his second command, the Triton brig. There was more fancy work covering handrails, all of it well scrubbed until a few days ago, and the captain must have an obsession for turk’s heads: the knots were neat but there was one on every spoke of the wheel, whereas usually there was only one on the spoke which was uppermost with the rudder amidships.

  The brasswork was dulling now because it had not been polished with brick dust for several days, presumably since the mutiny. The deck was
reasonably clean but unscrubbed, stained here and there by the French seamen who chewed tobacco.

  He followed the others down the companion-way. The gunroom was stuffy because the French did not believe in keeping skylights open. Why did they not use the captain’s cabin? Probably not enough chairs: brigs were sparsely furnished and the gunroom made a better centre for meals and card playing. It was a rectangular open space formed by a row of cabins on each side. The cabins were little more than boxes made of canvas stretched across light wooden frames, and the only substantial parts were the doors. Over the top of each door was painted the rank of its normal occupant—the lieutenants, marine officer, master and surgeon.

  The table filling the centre of the gunroom was filthy now, spattered with dried soup, crumbs and crusts of bread and dark stains of red wine. The racks above several of the doors had once held the occupants’ telescopes and swords, but were now empty—the first Frenchmen to board the mutinous ship must have done well, probably relieving the mutineers of their loot before they were taken on shore.

  The bosun gestured to everyone to sit on the two forms beside the table, on which stood a large wicker-covered rum jar whose fumes filled the gunroom.

  The bosun and three guards. Four in all, and he had counted seven, a figure confirmed by the lieutenant. So now three Frenchmen were guarding the prisoners. There was a muffled groan from one of the cabins and Auguste, Gilbert and Ramage all looked inquiringly at the bosun, who grinned.

  “The English captain. His rheumatism is bad. Saves us guarding him because he can’t move.”

  Gilbert reached for a battered metal mug and the bosun took the hint, lifting the rum jar and beginning to pour into a sorry collection of mugs. A French seaman said: “One of the mutineers spoke some French, and before he was taken to the château he told me the captain had been in his cot since the day after they sailed.”

  “Why did they mutiny?”

  “The rheumatism made the captain bad-tempered, so this rosbif said. He used to order many floggings. Hurting other people seemed to ease his own pain. He should have tried this,” the seaman said, lifting his mug of rum. “But they said he did not drink. Prayed a lot, though it didn’t seem to ease his problems.” The man gave a dry laugh. “In fact praying seems to have brought him many troubles!”