by Dudley Pope
Ramage murmured: “Pistols if you can hide them; otherwise just knives.”
“The bait bucket,” Sarah whispered. “Put the pistols in the bait bucket and I’ll carry it with my scarf on top.”
Louis called up to the bosun: “I’m coming on board with the painter while they coil our fishing lines.” He touched Ramage to get his approval.
Ramage turned to Sarah. “You go after Louis and flirt with the bosun. I’ll bring the bucket and give it to you to hold as soon as I can.”
He glanced up and saw that none of the French guards were looking over the rail. Swiftly he pushed a knife and its sheath down the inside of his trousers and made sure the belt was tight enough to hold it. It was a pity that the cutlasses would have to be left under the thwarts, but Gilbert and Albert were putting the loaded pistols into the bucket with the deftness of fishwives packing sprats. Sprat—improbably, he remembered, it was the same word in both English and French.
“Your scarf, madame,” Gilbert whispered, and Ramage said loudly, “Now are we ready? Gilbert—supposing you go up, and then you and Louis can help the lady at the top.”
As soon as Gilbert started climbing the battens fitted like thin steps up the Murex’s side, Sarah began cursing, using words which would be familiar to a fisherman’s wife but which Ramage was startled to find that she not only knew but used as though they were commonplace.
“Such steps—why no rope ladder? In this skirt? Do the rosbifs never have women on board? It’s fortunate I wear no corset. Look away, you lechers; I am tucking my skirt in my belt.”
She grabbed the hem of her skirt and Ramage glimpsed long slim legs as she tucked in the cloth. “This will occupy their thoughts!” she murmured to Ramage, and before he had time to reply she had grabbed the highest batten she could reach and started climbing.
“Forgive me, Captain,” Auguste murmured to Ramage, and then called in a raucous voice to Louis and Gilbert on the Murex’s deck: “Why you went aloft too soon! From here one sees la citoyenne quite differently!”
“Keep your eyes down, you old dog,” Ramage said hotly in what he hoped was the correct tone for an aggrieved husband, but he found himself continuing to watch Sarah’s progress. A young woman’s legs in the moonlight: certainly they did not help concentration. And since the sight made his own throat tighten he could guess the effect on Auguste.
A jab in the ribs from the bucket and a casual, “Your turn, and tell Louis and Gilbert to stand by to take the lines,” came from Auguste.
The lines! He had forgotten all about the fishing lines. The prospect of fishermen arriving without them was only slightly less absurd than the idea of a Royal Navy post captain on his honeymoon climbing up the side of a surrendered brig holding a bait bucket filled with loaded pistols concealed by his wife’s headscarf.
He slung the greasy rope handle of the wooden pail over his left arm and began the climb. Usually sideboys held out sideropes for the captain, and the first lieutenant waited on deck ready to give a smart salute. This time there would be a surly French bosun …
The bucket slid down his arm and hit the ship’s side with a thud. Ramage’s heart seemed to stop beating for a moment, but the pistols did not make a metallic clunk and anyway, he thought sheepishly, there’s no one up there watching me. But as he slid the handle back to the crook of his elbow he saw that now there was: not the bosun but the man who presumably was the sentry.
Ramage’s head came level with the deck, and in the moonlight he saw Sarah a few feet away, talking to the bosun. Amidships and sitting on forms round the grating, on which stood a lantern and a wicker-covered demijohn of rum, several seamen were watching idly.
As soon as the bosun saw Ramage he left Sarah and came over. “You came with the potatoes,” he said, his voice only slightly slurred by the rum. He had not shaved for several days or washed—it seemed to Ramage for even longer. His jersey and trousers had the greasy and rumpled look that showed he usually slept “all standing,” the British seaman’s phrase for sleeping fully clothed.
“A quarter of your catch, eh? That is agreed?”
“Yes, of course,” Ramage said, continuing to walk towards Sarah so that the bosun had to follow. “Let’s hope we get a good catch. My dear,” he said to Sarah, “here is the bait bucket: look after it while we sort out the lines.”
He held the bucket low so that as she took it she would not reveal its weight by letting it drop a few inches, and at the same moment Ramage turned to the bosun to divert his attention and said querulously: “Never get a good catch with a full or new moon, you know. Moonlight seems to frighten the fish, or put them off food.”
“A quarter, though,” the bosun muttered as Sarah took the bucket and turned aft, saying in the voice of a dutiful wife that she would help bait the hooks as soon as they brought the lines.
By now Albert was on board and hauling up fishing lines from a cursing Auguste, who was putting on a noisy and effective act of being afraid of being caught on the hooks.
Louis and Gilbert came up to help and Ramage, seizing the opportunity of gathering all his men close to the bucket so they could collect their pistols, called: “Hoist up all the lines—we have more room to untangle them on this ship’s deck. Look, there’s plenty of space aft there.”
Ramage walked along the gangway and, noting that the only lantern on deck was on the grating, giving the drinkers enough light to see when their glasses were nearly empty, shouted down to Auguste: “Merde! Hurry up or it’ll be dawn!”
The bosun watched. “You’ll catch yourself on those hooks,” he sneered.
“Then you won’t get a quarter,” Gilbert said.
“We’ll see,” the bosun said, and Ramage tried to decide whether or not he imagined a curious inflexion in the voice. Finally he decided that it was just the man’s local accent combined with a normal sneering and bullying manner.
As soon as the lines were all on board, the four Frenchmen, led by Ramage, carried them aft to where Sarah waited. The light was poor and confusing, a muddling blend of faint moonlight and a weak yellow glow—an artist would call it a wash—from the lantern on the grating.
The bosun, Ramage noted thankfully, had remained at the gangway, and the sentry had gone back to rejoin his three fellow seamen sitting and sprawling on the forms. So the sentry had a musket—he had left it propped against the edge of the coaming—and Ramage saw there were two more within reach of the other sailors.
As Ramage busied himself with the fishing lines close to the taffrail, he managed to indicate to the men that he wanted them working with their backs to the bosun so that Sarah could give them their pistols. As the men moved casually into position Ramage suddenly thought of the fourteen Britons being held as prisoners somewhere below and the captain imprisoned by rheumatism. Eleven seamen, the master and two lieutenants—they would be in irons, probably somewhere forward on the lower deck.
Tonight the Murex brig, he thought grimly, certainly holds an odd collection of people, ranging from the daughter of a marquis to seven French sailors loyal to the Revolution, a post captain in the Royal Navy, and a rheumatic lieutenant, and four Frenchmen who, although perhaps not entirely Royalist, were certainly against the First Consul.
When the ingredients were mixed together, he mused as he saw Sarah dip into the bucket and give Auguste a pistol, it would be like mixing charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre, each in themselves harmless but in the right proportion forming gunpowder and needing only a spark—
“Step back from those fishing lines!”
The bosun’s sudden bellow paralysed the five men. “Woman! Come over here!”
Rape, Ramage thought: the bosun and his men intend to rape Sarah. And only Auguste has a pistol: the bosun shouted before Sarah had time to give out the others.
“Oh, lieutenant!” Sarah said, her voice apparently trembling with fear. “What do you want me for?”
“Ah, no, not for that yet,” the bosun boomed, although the regret at any delay was
obvious in his voice. “You’ll make a good hostage against the behaviour of your husband and his friends.”
Ramage saw that the bosun was aiming a musket at them. The other men were now laughing but still sprawled on the forms, two of them holding mugs in their hands.
Ramage said: “What are we supposed to do? We are poor fishermen. You gave us permission to fish.”
“Ah yes, but you do not keep yourself informed, citizen. From midnight, patrols are searching all the streets and houses of Brest to find more seamen. A thousand more. The First Consul needs many more men for all these ships,” he said, waving a hand towards the main anchorage. “We received orders during the day to see if any of the British prisoners in this ship want to volunteer—and then tonight the five of you row past …”
“My poor husband!” Sarah moaned, but Ramage noticed she still clutched the bucket to her, like a mother clasping her child.
Ramage took two steps towards her but the bosun snarled: “Halt—another step and I shoot you dead.” He glanced over his shoulder at his men. “To arms, citizens! Cover them with your muskets.”
There was a clatter as one of the forms tipped over, and Ramage saw the men pick up their muskets and cock them. Five muskets … He had not seen the others lying on the deck beyond the coaming.
Now the bosun was getting excited by the nearness of Sarah. “Ah yes, the fisherman’s wife! Well, take a good took at him, my dear, because you’ll not see him again for a long time. A very long time. Ever again, perhaps, if the English fight like they did before.”
Ramage took another step forward but the bosun swung the barrel of the musket. “Stand still. We’ll be taking you below in a minute.”
With that he turned to Sarah. “Yes, look well at your man.” Then, with a sudden movement of one hand he ripped away the front of Sarah’s dress and as her breasts shone in the moonlight he screamed at Ramage: “Look! Look, you fish pedlar—you won’t see her again for a very long time. But”—he paused, staring wide-eyed and slack-mouthed at Sarah as she tried to clutch her dress closed with one hand, the other still holding the bucket—“I’ll look after her for you, won’t I, my dear?”
He reached across and pulled Sarah’s hand away so that the torn dress again gaped open. “Look after these wretches,” the bosun ordered his men. “Now,” he said to Sarah, almost slobbering the words, “you come down to my cabin!”
“No,” she said, calmly and clearly, “and you put the musket down on the deck and order your men to come over one at a time and put their muskets beside it!”
The bosun stood, jaw dropped in surprise and then gave a harsh, ugly laugh.
“Be careful,” Sarah warned. “Your life is in danger.” Her voice was cold but the bosun was too excited to notice.
“Oh, she has spirit, this one!” he exclaimed.
“No,” Sarah said, taking a step forward, “a pistol.”
A moment later the bosun pulled in his bulging stomach as the muzzle of Sarah’s pistol jabbed it.
“You would never dare! Ho!” He half turned to his men and called over his shoulder: “Watch me pull this hen off her nest!” He reached out and grabbed Sarah’s dress again.
Ramage saw the men beginning to move, uncertain what was happening because Sarah’s hand holding the pistol was hidden from them by the bosun’s bulky body. Suddenly there was a bright flash and bang and a scream from the bosun, who staggered back three steps and then collapsed on the deck.
“Seize her, seize her!” one of the matelots screamed and then, as Sarah made a sudden movement and said something to the quartet that Ramage did not hear, the man shouted urgently: “No! Don’t move! The cow has another pistol! Don’t shoot, citoyenne—it was all in jest!”
By now Ramage was running towards the bucket, a hand groping for a pistol and cocking it as he kept an eye on the four matelots. In one almost continuous movement he was moving towards them with the pistol aimed. Behind him he could hear the thudding feet and then the clicking of locks as the pistols were cocked.
“My wife has dealt with the bosun. Unless you all put your muskets down I shall shoot you—the man nearest the mainmast. My friends—ah, here they are—will shoot the rest of you.”
He said to Auguste conversationally: “I have the man on the right in my sights. The next is for you. Then Gilbert and then Louis.”
The four matelots seemed frozen by the speed of events. “Muskets down on the deck,” Ramage reminded them.
Sarah said with the same calm: “Shoot one of them, to encourage the others!”
The matelots heard her and hastily put the guns down on the deck. “Collect them up, Gilbert and Albert. Now you,” he gestured to the nearest man, “come here.”
As the matelot reluctantly walked the few feet, outlined against the brighter light thrown by the lantern and clearly expecting to be shot, Ramage wrenched his knife from its sheath and held it in his left hand.
“Closer,” he ordered. “Come on, stand close to me, my friend!”
The matelot was a plump, pleasant-looking man with a chubby face, but now his brow was soaked in perspiration as though water was dribbling from his hair; his eyes jerked from pistol to knife and his tongue ran round his lips as though chasing an elusive word.
“Closer,” Ramage said as the man stopped a couple of paces away. Then, as he shuffled forward a step, Ramage’s knife curving towards him flashed briefly in the lantern light and several people gasped and Sarah dropped the now empty bucket with a crash and tried to muffle a scream.
The matelot swayed, vacant expression on his face, waiting for the pain to start, and everyone expected blood to spurt because clearly Ramage’s knife had just eviscerated the man.
Instead his trousers fell down in a heap round his ankles.
“Next time it won’t be your trousers,” Ramage said. “Now, where are the keys to free the prisoners?”
The sailor stood, speechless and paralysed by fear.
Ramage prodded him with the pistol, forcing him to take a step back. The man had enough presence of mind to step out of his trousers and Sarah picked them up, checked if they had a pocket, and finding they had not, walked to the ship’s side and threw them into the sea.
“It doesn’t make up for my torn dress,” she said to no one in particular, “but it is very satisfying!”
Auguste had taken command of his brother, Louis and Gilbert, and had them lined up with the muskets covering the other matelots. Auguste picked up the lantern and then, as an afterthought, put it down again, took the big bottle of rum and tossed it over the bulwark. “Madame has the right idea,” he said, “no one gets fighting drunk without spirits to drink and,” he added slyly, “no man is a hero without his trousers.”
With that he took out his knife and cut the belts of the other three matelots, leaving them standing with their trousers round their ankles. “Forgive me, madame,” he said to Sarah, “but I am following your husband’s example.”
“I am a married woman,” she said demurely.
“What a wife,” one of the matelots muttered. “She uses a pistol like a filleting knife.”
“I need another lantern,” Ramage said to Gilbert. “Will you get ours up from the boat? Take Louis with you and bring the cutlasses too. This fellow,” he tapped the sailor on the head with the flat of the knife, “will suffer if his friends misbehave while you are gone.”
As soon as Gilbert and Louis returned with the lantern and cutlasses, Ramage commented: “Time is short: that shot may bring over inquisitive people.” To the trouserless seaman, who seemed to be the senior of the survivors, he said: “Now we free the British prisoners. If you want to live to an old age, you will help.”
The matelot haltingly explained that the irons had only four bars running through them, secured by four padlocks, and the four keys were on a hook in the cabin the bosun had been using. Suddenly Ramage remembered the other two guards. Where were they?
Ramage sent Gilbert with his lantern down the companion-way
into the gunroom ahead of the matelot and himself. The lantern lit the steps and showed the matelot’s movements clearly. Since the stroke that had cut his belt and lost him his trousers, it was clear that the man feared the blade more than the pistol, which surprised Ramage. Perhaps the wretched matelot’s imagination conjured up a more horrifying picture of what a knife could do to a man walking about clad only in a thick woollen jersey and a pair of felt shoes obviously cobbled up by a clumsy sailmaker.
The sailor pointed to the second lieutenant’s cabin and followed Gilbert into it. The two men took up all the space and Ramage stood at the doorway, with the point of the knife just resting on the base of the matelot’s spine, so that he moved slowly and very obviously kept clear of Gilbert and the lantern.
Finally he reached round very slowly, offering four large keys to Ramage, like an acolyte at communion. “These are the ones, sir.”
“You carry them. Call to the other two guards and warn them to put their weapons down, or you’ll die. Now we go and undo those padlocks.”
The next cabin was empty. “The captain was here,” the matelot said hastily, “but he was so ill they took him to the hospital yesterday.”
Ramage felt a surge of relief. He had not looked forward to interviewing a captain who drove his crew to mutiny, whatever his state of health.
The two guards were collapsed in a drunken stupor and the prisoners were lying at the fore end of the lower deck. Iron rings protruded from the deck so that metal rods through leg irons needed only a padlock at one end—the other was too bulbous to pass through the eye—to secure each of the four rows of men. They all looked up, and although blinking and squinting in the lantern light, all were wide awake, obviously roused by the pistol shot.
Ramage decided it would be easier to ensure their attention if he left them prone on the deck for a few more minutes so he waved the matelot to one side, telling him to be ready.
“Gentlemen,” Ramage said loudly. “I am Captain Ramage, of the King’s Service. I spoke to one of your lieutenants while delivering potatoes—ah,” he pointed, “it was you. Very well, in a few minutes you will all be free. I have this fellow here and three other French seamen on deck as prisoners and the bosun is dead—you heard the shot. But listen carefully: in addition to this man”—he gestured towards Gilbert—”there are three other Frenchmen up there, dressed in fishermen’s clothes. Two of them do not speak English but all three are responsible for your rescue. So be very careful.