by Dudley Pope
“Unless they bite a hook,” Louis said.
“Ah, no, they’re biting the bait, not the hook.”
“They cannot have so much sense: a meal hanging from a line is obviously bait.”
“Yes,” Auguste agreed sarcastically, “sensible fish eat only from a plate.”
Ramage led them to the avenue of plane trees lining the quay but told Auguste to lead them on to the boat: a sentry might become suspicious of the leader of a group of fishermen who seemed uncertain which was his boat.
He dropped back to walk with Sarah who, careful to act the role of the obedient fisherman’s wife, even though it was late at night, had followed the menfolk.
“Feeling nervous?”
“No, not nervous. At the moment I’m thankful not to be smelling potatoes but not sure”—she rattled the bucket—”if sliced fish is a welcome change. Do you enjoy fishing?”
“This is my first experience,” Ramage admitted. “I let the men tow a hook when they want, because fish makes a welcome change from salt horse. But towing a line from a rowing boat, or casting with a rod along a river bank—no.”
“You’ve no patience, that’s why,” she said.
He was saved from admitting that by Auguste stopping above a boat moored stern to the quay. “Well, my friends,” he said loudly, “I hope your muscles are all working smoothly. Now, someone haul in the sternfast so that I can jump in and slack the anchor rope: then we can get her alongside and put our gear on board.”
The boat’s stern was four or five feet from the dock and Louis went down the narrow stone steps to untie the sternfast from a ring that slid up and down a metal rod let into the vertical face of the quay, allowing for the rise and fall of the tide. He cursed as he nearly slipped on the green weed.
“Farmers,” Auguste’s brother commented unexpectedly. “That’s what we are, farmers going out for a night’s fishing.”
No one answered as he went down to help Louis, then called up to Auguste: “All is ready for the real fishermen to board.”
It took five minutes of hauling, pushing and banter for the four Frenchmen to get on board and hold the boat alongside the steps for Sarah and Ramage to climb in. The lantern set down on one of the thwarts revealed the inside of a hull which seemed to have been painted with dried fish scales and decorated with the sun-dried heads, tails and fins of past catches. The worst of the smell was for the moment masked by the sewage running into the Penfeld river from a large pipe a few feet upstream from the steps.
With Sarah seated on a thwart, the wooden bucket of bait on her knees, Ramage and Auguste counted up the oars. Four, held down by a chain wound round them and secured by a padlock. “I have the key, here,” Auguste said in answer to an unspoken question. “Now, I want you two, Louis and Albert, to stand in front of the lantern: cast a shadow over the bow.”
Ramage saw a pile of fishing lines and a coil of rope, and as soon as the lantern light was shadowed he saw Auguste pulling them aside and for a moment a flash of steel reflected a sudden bright star.
“They’re here,” Auguste muttered. “Six cutlasses … two, three large daggers … five pistols—no, six … a bag of shot … flask of powder, and another of priming powder … You said no muskets.”
It was a remark which sounded like a reproach.
“Believe me,” Ramage said, “muskets are too clumsy for boarding a ship. If they’re loaded, there’s always the danger of the lock catching on clothing so the musket fires just when you’re trying to be quiet. A pistol tucked in the top of the trousers—that is enough. Anyway, cutlasses or knives tonight: no shots except in an emergency.”
“But we can carry pistols?” Auguste asked anxiously.
“Yes, of course,” Ramage assured him. “Now, let’s get away from here and start fishing nearer the Murex. Bottle fishing—none of you ever heard of that, eh?”
Both Auguste and Gilbert repeated the phrase, which certainly lost something in translation. “No, never ‘bottle fishing,’” Auguste finally admitted. “For what kind of fish?”
Ramage laughed and explained. “In the West Indies, smuggling is even more common than in the Channel, only out there it is called ‘bottle fishing’ when it involves liquor.”
“What is it when it is silk for ladies?” Auguste asked slyly.
“No need to smuggle silk out there: no customs or excise on that,” Ramage said.
Auguste unlocked the padlock and unwound the chain securing the oars. “We are ready,” he said. “The fish are waiting for us.”
The men took up their places on the rowing thwarts, leaving Sarah to sit at the aftermost one. They would use a tiller to avoid having to give orders to the oarsmen.
Auguste boated his oar and then scrambled forward to the bow to begin hauling in the weed-covered rope and the anchor while his brother cast off the sternfast, leaving it dangling from its ring on the quay wall. Would the boat ever return to use it again? Ramage thought not.
Gilbert tentatively pulled at his oar and nearly fell backwards off the thwart as the blade scooped air instead of digging into water.
“Don’t let go of the oar,” Auguste snapped. “Dip the blade deeply and just try and keep time with the rest of us.”
“I know how to do it.” Gilbert’s voice had a determined ring. “I’m out of practice.”
“And the palms of your hands will soon be sore,” Auguste added unsympathetically.
“I can see the Murex,” Sarah murmured. “She’s in line with the western end of the château.”
“Ah, a woman who knows the points of a compass,” Albert said.
The oars creaked, the thwarts creaked from the men’s weight and their exertions, and as Ramage crouched he was sure his spine was beginning to creak too. The smell of last week’s fish was now almost overwhelming and seemed to be soaking into his clothes. Then he could just see the western edge of the château, stark and black against the lower stars. The only lights over there were from a high window and a few gun loops, vertical slots that, because of the thickness of the wall and the changing bearing, soon cut off the light from the lanterns inside.
Sarah put her bucket down beside the lantern as Ramage said: “We are at the meeting point of the Penfeld and Le Goulet.”
“Stop rowing, men,” Auguste said, and then announced formally: “Your fishing captain now hands over to your fighting captain.”
Ramage laughed with the rest of them and looked forward at the Murex brig. She was a good half mile away and it was still slack water, with the ships heading in different directions. A frog’s view of models on a pond. For a few moments the familiar shape of the brig once again brought back memories of the Triton. He remembered her best at anchor in some West Indian bay during a tropical night when her masts and yards cut sharp lines in a star-littered sky. Up here in northern latitudes fewer stars were visible, for reasons he could never understand, and they were not nearly so bright, as though the atmosphere was always more hazy.
To fish or not to fish? He looked slowly round the horizon. No other boats were following them out of the Penfeld; the nearest ships to the Murex were half a dozen frigates and ships of the line at least half a mile beyond. Various boats moved under oars (and he could see one under sail making poor progress because of the light wind) taking officers and men out to the ships. None had that purposeful, marching sentry movement of a guard-boat: the war, he guessed, was too new for the French to have started regular patrols in the Roads, and anyway lookouts along the coast (at Pointe St Mathieu, for instance) would most likely have reported that the English had not yet resumed the blockade; that no English ships were on the coast.
He coughed to attract their attention and as a way of accepting the transition announced by Auguste. “I think madame can throw that bait over the side; she must be tired of the smell.”
A clatter showed Sarah had not waited to hear if anyone disagreed.
“Good, now let’s get our oars on board, before someone lets go and we lose a qua
rter of our speed. Auguste, can you issue the weapons you have hidden up there?”
The Frenchman scrambled forward, fumbled for a minute or two, and then stood up again, clutching several objects.
“Cutlasses,” he said. “Here, Gilbert, take a couple before they slip from my arms. Ah, and one for you, Captain, and one for me. I shall put mine under my thwart. Careful with your feet when you sit down again, Gilbert.”
With that he bent down and burrowed under the coils of lines again. “Four knives …” his voice was muffled as he dropped them behind him, “… and the pistols.”
“You have six, I believe,” Ramage said. “We’ll have one for madame.”
“Of course!” Auguste said. “I remember Gilbert telling me she is a fine shot. I shall load it for her myself. Now …” he pulled the coil of lines to one side, “… ah, the flask of powder … and the priming powder … and the box of balls and wads. Here, Gilbert, pass things aft, starting with the knives.”
For the next five minutes the men were busy checking the flints, flipping them to make sure they gave a good spark, but hiding them under a piece of cloth to conceal their unmistakable flashing. Then they loaded the pistols, putting them on half-cock.
Louis and the two brothers were wearing high fishermen’s boots and slid their knives down into them. Ramage and Gilbert wore shoes and so had to tuck the knives into the waistband of their trousers. Ramage was thankful the cutlasses had come with belts, but decided against slipping his over his right shoulder and instead pushed it under the thwart.
“You were right about muskets being too bulky, Captain,” Auguste commented. “With knife, pistol and cutlass, I have all the weapons I can handle.”
“Yes—but everyone remember: use the pistol only to save your life: shots might arouse the sentries in another ship, or alarm a passing boat.”
“Is madame content with her pistol?” Auguste inquired. Sarah said: “Yes, it is much like the English Sea Service pistol: clumsy and heavy!”
“Yes, but remember how roughly the sailors treat them,” Auguste said, beating Ramage to it, “and when you’ve fired, you can always throw it at the next target.”
By now, Ramage was having second thoughts about his original plan. If a sentry challenged, they could probably gain several important seconds by innocently protesting that they were fishermen; seconds which could be converted into yards, and a closer approach.
“Auguste, what would you be using out here—a seine or long lines?”
Auguste thought for a few moments. “Long lines, I think.”
He guessed what Ramage had in mind and added: “One could use either, and I doubt if a sentry would know anyway! And it won’t matter that we have no bait!”
Although they were not rowing, and there was very little wind, the château was slowly drawing astern and the western bank where the Penfeld ran into Le Goulet was now closer, showing the direction the boat was drifting.
“The ebb has started,” Ramage said. “The rest of us can start rowing again while Auguste puts over some lines.” He moved into the fisherman’s seat.
Sarah took the tiller and gave occasional directions to the four oarsmen as Auguste struggled with the lines. “Hold up the lantern, madame,” he said finally, “otherwise I shall be the only fish these lines catch.”
“You need only two or three,” Ramage said. “No one will notice.”
“That’s true,” Auguste said and put over one and then another, feeding out the lines expertly. “Shall I sit aft and pretend to watch?”
“As long as you have your cutlass and knife ready under the thwart,” Ramage said. “In fact you can take over as coxswain from madame, and start by giving me a distance.”
Sarah quickly pointed out the Murex to the Frenchman, who exclaimed: “Why, we are close! Much closer than I thought!”
“That’s the ebb taking us down.” Ramage then glanced over his shoulder and was also startled to find the brig now only about five hundred yards away: already her masts and yards were standing stark against the stars like winter trees with geometrically precise branches. “Auguste, we’ll row past at about a pistol shot and then, if nothing happens, turn under her bow and even closer under her stern and then if we still see no one, board this side.”
Sarah suddenly murmured in English: “Nicholas, I am frightened. The Murex looks more like a house full of ghosts.”
“I’d prefer ghosts to French matelots,” he said lightly, while Gilbert, who had understood, gave a reassuring laugh.
“How are you going to get on board?” she asked, reverting to French. She undid the knot of scarf round her head, took it off and shook her hair free.
“I don’t know at the moment,” Ramage said, his sentences punctuated as he leaned forward and then stretched back with each oar stroke. “There might be a ladder hanging over the side or a rope. Otherwise, it’ll probably be a scramble up the side.”
Sarah was silent for a moment and then said quietly in English: “There’s a light on deck. A lantern, I think. It gets hidden as rigging and things get in the way.”
“Speak in French,” Ramage said, trying to hide his disappointment. “We don’t want our friends to think we have any secrets.” He turned away towards them and repeated Sarah’s report.
“A warm night, so they’re drinking on deck,” Auguste commented. “It would be natural. That cabin we saw—the ‘gunroom’ I think you called it, Captain—was very small. It would get very hot down there.”
Ramage saw his ideas being thrown aside like men caught on deck by a blast of grapeshot. Five Frenchmen up on the Murex’s deck drinking with weapons to hand, and two more guarding the prisoners below, would be more than a match for the five of them down in the rowing boat: the matelots would have the advantage of height, as well as numbers. But despair, fear, alarm—all were contagious, so Ramage laughed. “It’ll soon be hot on deck for them too!”
They continued rowing in the darkness at the speed set by Auguste, with an occasional “left” and “right.” Auguste said he was not using the seamen’s terms because not all of them understood them and anyway, facing aft, they would only get muddled.
“We are two ship’s lengths from her,” Auguste muttered. “How close before we begin our turn to pass?”
“One,” Ramage said. That would be thirty yards, or so. Close enough for Ramage to see what was happening on deck; close enough for any French seaman to see a fishing-boat passing. Or perhaps to show whether or not rum fumes would allow French matelots to see that far.
“No lights showing at the stern—what does that mean?” asked Auguste.
“They’re not using the captain’s cabin.”
Sarah said: “There are several men on deck sitting round the lantern—do you see them, Auguste?”
The Frenchman grunted and then counted aloud as an explanation why he had said nothing. “… three, four … five. Two missing. Are they guarding the prisoners?”
“They could be fetching more rum or lying drunk on the deck,” Louis said. “Perhaps we should row round for another hour and keep counting. As soon as seven have fallen down drunk, we can board!”
Ramage only just managed to stop himself making the usual joke about one Englishman being equal to three Frenchmen. These men, apart from not being trained seamen, were good: they had the right spirit and they hated the régime. Do not, he told himself, underestimate hate: it drives men to show the kind of bravery they never thought themselves capable of, yet it can just as easily warp their judgement.
“She’s close on our bow—we’re just beginning our run down her starboard side,” Auguste reported to Ramage, his voice punctuated by the creaking of the four oars, the slap of the oar blades in the water, and hiss of the stem as the boat drove on.
“Ho! Ohé, that boat!” The hail from the Murex’s deck was definite: the voice was sober. “Answer!” Ramage told Auguste, whose voice carried better and had a local accent.
“Ho yourself!” Auguste shouted back. �
��I don’t like rosbifs shouting at me.” His voice sounded genuinely offended.
“We’re not rosbifs!” the voice answered indignantly. “We are honest Frenchmen guarding the rosbifs.”
“You speak French like a rosbif,” Auguste said sourly.
“Watch your tongue: I come from Besançon. Now, why do you fish so close to us?”
“Ha!” Auguste called back contemptuously. “So you think you own the whole sea, eh? Why, you are even standing on the deck of a rosbif ship, not a good French ship.”
“Answer: why do you fish so close?” This time it was another, harsher voice: Ramage thought he recognized it as belonging to the bosun.
“To catch fish!” exclaimed Auguste. “You’re no seaman if you can’t see that!”
“What do you mean? I’m the bosun; I command this ship!”
“For the time being,” Auguste said contemptuously. “But you’ve not yet learned that fish always gather round a ship at anchor. They feed off all the weed and things growing on the bottom. They like the shade on a sunny day—”
“And from the light of the moon too, I suppose. Afraid it will drive them mad, eh?”
“And they like to eat the scraps you all throw over the side. Salt beef and salt pork may not seem very tasty to you, but to a fish it is a banquet.”
By now the boat was within a few yards of the Murex’s side.
“To save all this rowing, with my back giving me trouble again,” Ramage said in a lugubrious voice, “can’t we fish from your decks? Then our hooks go where the fish are thickest.”
The bosun answered quickly. “Yes—but you have to give us a quarter of your catch!”
“You’re a hard man,” Ramage complained. “Five wives and eleven children depend on what we catch.”
“You should have thought of that before you got married,” the bosun sneered. “A quarter of your catch and I’ll let you on board.”
“Oh very well,” Ramage said grudgingly, and Auguste, in an appropriately officious voice, gave the orders to the men at the oars which brought the boat alongside.