Ramage's Devil

by Dudley Pope

  Now Swan was steadying the ship on the new tack as sheets and braces were trimmed, and as Ramage put the speaking-trumpet down beside one of the guns and gave a contented sigh, Sarah said: “We’re almost out of this beastly river. Is that—?”

  “Pointe St Mathieu? Yes. It seems a long while ago …”

  “In some ways. Certainly, as we sat up there in the sun and looked out across here and up towards Ushant, I never expected to be sailing out of the Iroise in the dead of night. Yet”—she paused, and he was not sure if she was choosing her words carefully or deciding whether or not to say it—”yet the way you looked out at the Black Rocks, and Ushant, and across this estuary to the Camaret peninsula—you were recording it, not looking at it like a visitor. You were noting it down in the pilot book in your head, ready for use when the war started again. Our ride back to Jean-Jacques’—you were more interested in the forts and batteries than anything else!”

  “No,” he protested mildly, “I saw as much beauty as you did. I just made a note of the things that might be trying to kill me one day, like the guns in the batteries and forts.”

  “But has all that really helped you now—as we sail out?”

  “Oh yes, although I was gambling that the commandant of the port, or the commander of the artillery, or the commander of the garrisons, would all disagree about whose responsibility it was to warn the forts.”

  “Do you have to gamble when you’re on your honeymoon?”

  He squeezed her arm. “It’s better for the family fortunes to gamble with roundshot rather than dice!”

  Sarah laughed and nodded. “Yes, I suppose so: if a roundshot knocks her husband’s head off, at least his widow has the estate. But if he gambles at backgammon tables she has a husband with a head, but no bed to sleep in!”

  Ramage stood at the taffrail of the Murex in the darkness and mentally drew a cross on an imaginary chart to represent the brig’s position. She was now clearing the gulf of the Iroise, which stretched from the high cliffs and ruined abbey of Pointe St Mathieu over there to starboard across to the Camaret peninsula to larboard.

  Ahead was the Atlantic, and the English Channel was to the north, round Ushant, which stood like a sentry off the northwestern tip of France. The Bay of Biscay, with Spain and Portugal beyond, was to the south. Astern, to everyone’s relief, was Brest, and about three hundred miles due east of it was Paris.

  So that was it: from here, a tack out to the north-westward for the rest of the night and then dawn would reveal Ushant to the north-east, so that he could then bear away. He then had a choice: either he could run with a soldier’s wind to the Channel Islands to get more men (having the advantage of a short voyage with such a small ship’s company), or he could stretch north (perhaps nor-nor-east, he had not looked at the chart yet) for Falmouth or Plymouth.

  The advantage of either port was that once he reported and handed over the Murex, he and Sarah could post to London or go over to the family home at St Kew, not far from either port. On second thoughts London would be better: their Lordships would certainly need written reports, and it would do no harm to be available when Lord St Vincent read them, concerning both his escape and the size and readiness of the French fleet in Brest, and the Murex episode.

  Anyway, the Murex was now making a good six or seven knots; the courses had been set once they were safely out in the estuary and drawing well. A couple of seamen at the wheel were keeping the ship sailing fast, with Swan occasionally peering down at one or the other of the dimly lit compasses in the binnacle, his confidence restored.

  Sarah was asleep down in the captain’s cabin; Ramage himself was weary but warm at last, thanks to Sarah finding a heavy cloak in the captain’s cabin and bringing it up to him. Dawn was not far off and the sky was clear with the moon still bright, although there was now a chill greyness that seemed to be trying to edge aside the black of night. The Murex was not just butting wind waves with her weather bow and scattering them in spray that drifted across like a scotch mist, salting the lips and making the eyes sore: now she was lifting over Atlantic swells that were born somewhere out in the deep ocean.

  Very well, he told himself, the time had come to make the decision so that the moment daylight revealed Ushant on the horizon, he could give Swan the new course, for Falmouth, Plymouth or the Channel Islands.

  Or south-westward, to start a 4,000-mile voyage to Cayenne, without orders, without much chance of success, to try to rescue Jean-Jacques and the other fifty or so people declared enemies of the French Republic?

  He walked back and forth beside the taffrail and then stood looking astern at the Murex’s curling wake. There was one thing in the brig’s favour. One thing in his favour, he corrected himself (there was no point in trying to shift the responsibility on to the poor Murex). Yes, the one thing in his favour was that he knew he was only a few hours behind L’Espoir. As a frigate she was much bigger, but more important she had fifty extra people on board, all of whom had to be kept under guard. So the frigate would be carrying extra men, seamen or soldiers, to make up the guard. Twenty-five? Extra in the sense that they were in addition to the normal ship’s company. Whoa, not so fast; she was armed en flûte so she would have only the guns on the upper deck, say half a dozen 12-pounders. And that—being armed en flûte—meant she needed only sufficient men to fight six or eight guns, not the thirty or so which had been removed to make room for the prisoners. Against that, the French in Brest were very short of seamen: that had been the last piece of information given out by that wretched bosun before Sarah shot him. The Commandant de l’Armée navale de Brest would certainly favour fighting ships at the expense of transports like L’Espoir.

  Yet the French were in a hurry to get these prisoners on their way to Cayenne before the British re-established their standing blockade of Brest, which would otherwise have made the capture of L’Espoir a distinct possibility. In turn that could also mean that these fifty prisoners were of considerable importance: people that Bonaparte wanted out of France at any cost and incarcerated in Devil’s Island.

  So apart from the importance of Jean-Jacques—which from the Royalist point of view was considerable—what about the others? What value would the British government put on them? In other words, if Captain Ramage acting without orders attempted with a brig and a dozen or so men a task for which a fullymanned frigate would not be too much, and succeeded, what then? Pats on the head, a page in the London Gazette, a column or so in the next issue of the Naval Chronicle, the grudging but heavily-qualified approval of the First Lord.

  But if Captain Ramage failed in this self-appointed role of rescuer riding a (borrowed) white horse, what then? Well, the resulting court martial would make the trial establishing his father as a scapegoat for the government look like a hunt cancelled because of heavily frozen ground. At best, Captain Ramage would spend the rest of his life on half-pay. At worst? Well, at least being cashiered with the disgrace of being “rendered incapable of further service in his Majesty’s Naval Service.”

  Yet it really boiled down to ignoring the Admiralty. By chance he had been able to recapture a British brig from the enemy, and without his activity the Murex would have been added to the French Navy. That was where the chance ended. Did he owe it to Jean-Jacques to try to rescue him? A debt of honour? That was using a rather high-flown phrase, but supposing Ramage had been seized and taken off to some improbable prison, and Jean-Jacques had escaped and knew where he was? Jean-Jacques would attempt a rescue. That was all there was to it, really, although the Admiralty would certainly not agree.

  To make an enormous dog-leg course to call at Plymouth to get provisions, men and water would wreck everything because it would probably mean that a couple of frigates would be sent in his place, and a vital week lost—at least a week; more if there was bad weather. It would take a couple of days to convince the port admiral at Plymouth of the importance of such a rescue and pass a message to the Admiralty (though with the new telegraph, Plymouth could send
a signal to London and get a reply in a few hours), then watering and provisioning the frigates would take another day or so … By the time they were clear of the Chops of the Channel (and perhaps driven back by a westerly storm or gale) L’Espoir would be a third of the way to Cayenne; a third of the way to the Île du Diable. At this moment, though, the Murex brig was only a matter of hours behind her. Yet without enough men to do any good and perhaps short of provisions and water. But no more than fifty miles … If L’Espoir had careless or apathetic officers of the deck, poorly set sails and inattentive men at the wheel, plus the feeling that once clear of Brest they were safe from the Royal Navy, the smaller Murex, sailed hard, would be able to make up the gap.

  “I’m going below for half an hour,” he told Swan. “Report when you can see Ushant.”

  Sarah was awake, unused to the swinging cot, which was little more than a large hammock with a shallow, open-topped frame fitted in it, like a box in a net bag.

  “I preferred going to and from India,” she said teasingly. “A proper bed is more comfortable.”

  “You wait until there’s rough weather. Going to windward in a blow and that cot will swing comfortably, while a fixed bed tosses you out.”

  “How do I get out of it, anyway?”

  “You don’t; you’re marooned!”

  “Do you want to get some sleep?” she offered, sitting up with her tawny hair tousled, naked because she had only the clothes she had worn in the fishing-boat. The lantern light seemed to gild her and he turned away quickly, reassuring her and telling her to stay in the cot. Stay in the cot, he thought to himself, or the captain will not concentrate on his charts …

  He put the lantern on the hook in the beam just forward of the desk. The charts were rolled and stowed vertically in a rack fitted on one side of the desk. Checking what charts were there meant removing each one and partly unrolling it. He sat at the desk and made a start. English Channel, western section, including the Scilly Islands; English Channel, eastern section, including the mouth of the Thames and the Medway. North Sea … in four sections. Ireland, the southern half. The Channel Islands. St Malo to Ouessant (the French spelling and the detail showed it was probably copied from a captured one). Ushant to Brest and south to Douarnenez … Those were probably the charts for her last patrol … Half a dozen more left. North Atlantic, southern section …

  Ramage unrolled it. It covered from the south-western corner of Spain to the eastern side of the West Indian islands, and down to the Equator, yet giving very little detail of the South American coast. There was Trinidad—which anyway could be identified by its shape. No reference to Cayenne, though; it must be about there, just a kink in the ink line of the coast, north of Brazil.

  He looked at the remaining charts. A French one of the islands of St Barthélemy, St Martin (with the southern half owned by the Dutch and given its Dutch name, St Maarten), Anguilla and well to the north, just a speck, Sombrero. Then another two of the group just to the southward, Nevis and St Christopher. And two more, St Eustatius and Saba. A detailed chart of Plymouth … and Falmouth … and, finally, the Texel, showing the northwestern corner of the Netherlands.

  All in all, Ramage thought wryly, he was no better off than he would be with a blank sheet of paper and his memory; in fact he was going to have to draw up a chart or two for himself. For the moment, though, he had to try to put himself in the French captain’s place.

  When sailing from Europe to the West Indies or the northern part of South America, the trick was to pick up the Trade winds as soon as possible without getting becalmed in the Doldrums. Which meant sailing where you could be reasonably sure of finding steady winds. Every captain and every master had his own invisible signpost in the Atlantic; a sign which said “Turn south-west here; this is where the north-east Trade winds begin.”

  For Ramage it was 25° North latitude, 25° West longitude. And—he took a pencil from the desk drawer and a crumpled sheet of paper which he smoothed out enough to make it usable.

  According to the copied French chart, St Louis church in the centre of Brest, just north of the château, was 48° 23’ 22” North, 4° 29’ 27” West. That, within a mile, was where L’Espoir had sailed from, and she was bound first to the magic spot, 25° North, 25° West. Which … was … about … yes, roughly seventeen hundred miles to the south-south-west.

  Then, from the magic point it was to Cayenne … about … another two thousand miles, steering south-west-by-west. Say four thousand miles altogether, and let no one think that steering south-west-by-west from the magic point would bring him or his ship to Cayenne: he would probably start running out of the Trades by the time he reached 12° North; from then on he would be trying to fight his way south against a foul current which ran north-west along the coast of Brazil. Caught in the right place, it helped; but if the wind played about, whiffling round the compass (which it could do in those latitudes) then the current would sweep the helpless ship up towards the islands—towards Barbados, for example, where the British commander-in-chief was probably lying at anchor in Carlisle Bay.

  Ramage looked at his brief calculations again and then screwed them up.

  Sarah asked: “When do you think we shall be in Plymouth if this weather holds, dearest?”

  “In about three months.”

  “No, seriously. Our families will be worrying.”

  “I expect the Rockleys will be worrying about you, but mine will make a wrong guess and give a sigh of relief that I am safely locked up in a French prison while they will expect you to be lodging with a respectable French family.”

  “Is that how it would have been, normally?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I should think so. Anyway, my parents will not be worrying, and I’m sure as soon as they get the word they will be calling on your people.”

  “But we’ll be back in London before then, won’t we?”

  He was sure she suspected the idea that was popping in and out of his mind like an importunate beggar.

  She said, in a flat voice: “It would be madness to go after L’Espoir. You’ll lose the Murex and everyone on board. A scout’s job is to raise the alarm, dearest. Losing everything won’t help Jean-Jacques, but getting help will …”

  He nodded and was startled when she said: “You took so long to make up your mind.”

  She was making it easier for him, and he took the opportunity as gracefully as possible. “I needed to give it a lot of thought.”

  She sat up in the cot, swung her legs out on to the deck and holding one end firmly stood up. She walked over to him and, standing to one side, gently held his head against her naked body. “You had two choices, dearest, Cayenne or Plymouth. Two choices. But you know as well as I do there was really only one that you could take.”

  “Yes, but …”

  “But in the same circumstances another captain would have had only one choice: he would have gone to Plymouth!”

  He nuzzled against her, his unshaven face rasping slightly on her warm skin, his chin pressing gently against her breasts. “I suppose most other captains wouldn’t have to choose because they do not usually meet people like Jean-Jacques.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RAMAGE had just gone on deck after Swan called that they could now sight Ushant, and the deck lookouts had been sent aloft when both men heard the hail.

  “Deck here!”

  “Foremast lookout, sir: sail ho! Two sail!”

  “Where away?”

  “Two points on the starboard bow, sir, frigates I reckon.” “Very well, keep a sharp lookout.”

  Swan turned to Ramage, saw that he was already looking over the bow, and heard him cursing. “Those blasted mutineers—I wish they’d left us the bring-’em-near. Even a nightglass!”

  “They must have spotted us ten minutes ago, probably more. They’ll recognize the rig …”

  “And guess we’re the Murex—perhaps sailing under the French flag?”

  Ramage shook his head. News did not tra
vel that fast. “I doubt if the Admiralty yet know anything about the mutiny. In a day or two they’ll read about it in the Moniteur: half a page of French bombast about oppressed English seamen fighting for their liberté, fraternité and égalité.”

  “Yes,” Swan said bitterly, “at the price of treason and making sure that fifteen of their shipmates go into a French prison.”

  “That’s what is meant by fraternité,” Ramage said laconically.

  “That western-most frigate has tacked,” commented Phillips, who had come on deck when he heard the hail.

  “And the other one is bearing away a point or so,” Ramage noted. “They’re taking no chances. If we try to make a bolt for it, one can catch us to windward and the other to leeward.”

  “But they recognize our rig,” Swan protested. “The French don’t have any brigs like this one!”

  “They had one briefly, until last night,” Ramage said. “Remember, in wartime all sails are hostile until they prove themselves otherwise. I presume we still have a set of signal flags.”

  “Yes, sir,” Swan said and took the hint. “I’ll have our pendant numbers bent on ready.”

  “Deck there!” Once again the lookout was shouting from the masthead, the pitch of his voice rising with excitement.

  “Deck here,” Swan called back.

  “More sail, sir, just beyond those frigates. Must be a couple of dozen, I reckon, and some of them 74s and bigger.”

  “Count ‘em, blast it!” Swan shouted. “Divide ‘em up and count ‘em.”

  Ramage counted the days since the declaration of war. Yes, it might be. Indeed, if there were ships of the line it had to be, so there would be an admiral, which meant so much explaining to be done; so much persuading to be done.

  “Deck there, foremasthead here … I’m counting as we lift up on the swell waves, sir … Looks like at least six o’ the line—one of ‘em bigger’n a 74 and seven frigates, including the first two.”