by Dudley Pope
She gave a ghost of a smile, as if to start making up for her earlier tartness. A start, but by no means an acceptance of the fact she was now (for the first time in their brief marriage) very definitely the moon in her husband’s life; the navy was the sun. This was, of course, precisely what the Countess of Blazey had warned her about before the wedding. Sarah admitted to herself that she had thought Nicholas’s mother was being too protective (of both of them) when she warned that navy wives always came second. Well, that had not prevented the Countess’s own marriage being a most successful one—the Earl of Blazey, apart from being one of the navy’s finest admirals until falling victim to politics, clearly loved and was loved by his wife.
“Am I allowed to know what Admiral Clinton’s orders are?”
“Of course!” he said, snatching at the tiny olive branch which was being inspected rather than proffered. Quickly he explained how the Calypso had hoisted what seemed a bewildering signal. It took longer to explain that there were only three physicians in the entire navy, while surgeons were numbered in hundreds, but she was intrigued.
“What do you expect to find?”
“I have absolutely no idea; nor has the admiral, which is why he is sending me.”
“But this new captain, Bullivant, what … ?”
“I’m sure he is not going to be very pleased to see me!”
“Why not? I should have thought that—”
He cut her short. “Just imagine it. The Calypso is not famous but people know about her. I captured her, was put in command, and took her into action several times. All the officers and many of the ship’s company would be regarded by a new captain as ‘my’ men because normally he selects his own officers when commissioning the ship—certainly his first lieutenant and midshipmen, and probably the master.
“This wretched fellow Bullivant—I feel sorry for him. He knows that whatever he does, from how he wears his hat to the way he gives orders, everyone on board is comparing him with the previous captain. It can’t give him much confidence. He must hate the thought of me—I know I should!”
“You wouldn’t, you know: you’d just make sure you did everything better—and quicker, too. You are one of the lucky people who have confidence in themselves.”
Ramage’s laugh was bitter. She could never guess the hours before going into action when he had completely lost confidence in himself and his plans, and would have changed them completely but for there being no time or no obvious alternative. Even as late as two nights ago, when he led the four Frenchmen and Sarah to capture the Murex—did she think he had no doubts and fears? Well, perhaps it was better if she (along with everyone who had served with him in the Calypso) thought he had not.
He heard shouting from aloft, and then Swan’s question to the masthead lookout. “Where away? … You are sure? … French-built from the sheer? Very well, keep a sharp lookout!”
Then the shout from the top of the companion-way, “Captain, sir,” but by then Ramage had given Sarah a hasty kiss and his foot was already on the first step.
Swan repeated the bearing. “Dead ahead, sir, and the lookout says he sees her well as we lift on the swell waves. Thought I glimpsed her sails for a moment.”
“Strange how helpless one feels without a bring-’em-near,” Ramage commented. “I should have borrowed one from the flagship.”
“I can’t see anyone giving up his glass, even for Captain Ramage,” Swan said jocularly.
“There!” called the master, “I glimpsed a sail then. That’s her, dead ahead!”
CHAPTER TEN
AN HOUR LATER the brig and the frigate crossed tacks, the Murex passing half a mile ahead.
“No signals flying,” Swan commented.
“So I see. But now we are to windward of her, so hoist her pendant and make number 84.”
Swan snapped out an order to two seamen, who began hoisting the three flags forming the Calypso’s pendant numbers, and told two more to hoist eight and four.
“Pass within hail, isn’t it, sir?” Swan asked. “You have the book,” he said apologetically, “but I’m presuming it hasn’t been changed.”
“Yes, but whether or not Captain Bullivant chooses to obey is another question. He might assume a brig is still commanded only by a lieutenant.”
“I think if I was him and a brig tacked across my bow and gave a peremptory order, I’d assume she had a senior officer on board!”
“We’ll see,” Ramage said. “In the meantime, have 173 bent on and ready for hoisting, and have number one gun on the larboard side loaded with a blank charge. There’s no need to send the men to quarters: have Bridges and a couple of men do it. Here’s the key to the magazine. It was still in the desk drawer.”
Swan was enjoying himself hoisting flag signals with orders for Bullivant, that much was obvious, and his enjoyment revealed more about Bullivant than his earlier comments. Ramage handed him the Signal Book, knowing that the first lieutenant could not remember the meaning of 173.
He quickly leafed through the pages, which were cut at the side with the signal numbers printed in tens.
“Ah,” Swan said, “a gun and that should produce results!”
“Yes, we’ll tack again; they’re ignoring 84.”
Ramage saw Bridges and two men running to the forward gun on the larboard side, where seamen in answer to Bridges’ earlier shouted order were already casting off lashings.
Out came the tompion; a man held the flintlock in position and hurriedly tightened up the wing nut to clamp it down. The gun was quickly run in and a cartridge slid down the bore and rammed home. The gun was run out again, a quill tube pushed down the vent and priming powder shaken into the pan.
Bridges held up his hand in a signal to Ramage, who was watching the Calypso as she sailed on, approaching their starboard bow.
“Mr Swan, we’ll pass very close across the Calypso’s bow …” Ramage gestured to the two seamen who had bent on the three flags representing the signal 173, Furl sails.
Ramage watched the Calypso out of the corner of his eye and said to the seamen: “Leave up the pendant numbers but lower 84.”
By now Swan was bellowing orders and the brig’s bow was turning to starboard, canvas slatting, the ropes of sheets and braces flogging, spray flying across like fine rain as the bow sliced the tops off waves. Then, with Swan giving the word to haul, the yards were braced round and sheets trimmed so the sails resumed their opulent curves. The Murex began to leap through the water again—right across the Calypso’s bow.
“Oh, nicely, nicely!” Swan exclaimed. “Less than half a cable—we’ll be able to throw a biscuit on to her fo’c’s’le as we pass across her bow!”
“Stand by,” Ramage shouted, and saw the gun captain kneel with his left leg thrust out to one side, the trigger line taut in his right hand.
The Calypso was a fine sight, bow-on and just forward of the Murex’s beam. Men were peering over the bulwarks; Ramage thought he saw the lookout at the foremasthead gesturing down to the deck.
“Hoist 173!” Ramage said to the seamen and watched the three flags soaring upwards. He turned forward. “Mr Bridges, fire!”
The gun spurted flame and smoke, and a moment later came the flat “blam” of an unshotted gun firing, the standard signal drawing particular attention to a hoist of flags.
Ramage watched the Calypso for the first sign that she was altering course or clewing up sails. There was only one more signal that he could make (108, Close nearer to the Admiral) but if Bullivant ignored that too, what next?
Were the luffs of the courses fluttering slightly? As the Murex passed across the Calypso’s bows the frigate’s masts had for a few moments been in line, but now the brig was hauling out on the Calypso’s beam and it was hard to distinguish an alteration of course. But … yes …
Swan exclaimed: “She’s bracing her courses sharp up, sir! Yes, I can see men going up the ratlines. There, she’s starting to clew up!”
Ramage judged distance
s and times. Better than Bullivant he knew how long it would take to clew up the big forecourse and the main course, the lowest and largest sails in the frigate; then as the Calypso slowed down the foretopsail would be backed, the yard braced sharp up so that the wind blew on the forward side. With well-trained crew and Aitken and Southwick, she could be hove-to a good deal faster than the smaller but undermanned Murex.
“She’s heaving-to,” Ramage told Swan. “Cross her bow again and then as soon as we’re to windward, heave-to.” Was there any point in sending the Murex’s men to general quarters? Ten guns, five each side, and only a dozen or so of the men had ever fired them. No one would know his position in a gun’s crew. No, there would be chaos, and ten guns against the Calypso, with her well trained, experienced crew, would do about as much harm as the shrill cursing of bumboat women.
“As soon as we’ve hove-to, I want the cutter hoisting out to take me across to the Calypso.”
Swan looked anxious, his eyes flickering from Ramage to the frigate. “Sir, Bridges and Phillips are quite competent to handle this ship. May I come with you to the Calypso? Not because I’m being nosy,” he added hastily, “but I’d be happier if you had an escort.”
Ramage had been thinking not of an escort but of something that might prove more necessary. “Yes—but you’ll be coming as a witness. Keep your eyes and ears open. Try and remember exact phrases. I can’t tell you more than that because I don’t know what the devil we’re going to find.”
As the cutter surged down and rounded up alongside the Calypso, Ramage recognized several of the faces watching from over the top of the bulwark, but no one was waving a greeting and no one was standing at the entry port.
Aitken? Southwick? Young Paolo? They must be on board, and although they could never expect to find their old captain arriving alongside in a brig’s cutter, surely some of them would have recognized him by now, since he had deliberately stood up in the sternsheets of the cutter for the last hundred yards. Surely someone would be watching through a telescope. The whole episode of a brig making peremptory signals to a frigate was unusual enough to make the cutter’s arrival a matter of considerable importance.
It seemed only a moment later that the cutter was alongside and Ramage leapt for the battens just as the cutter rose on a crest. He sensed that Swan was right behind him. A rope snaked down from the Calypso to serve as a painter.
No sideropes, so the Calypso was not extending the usual courtesy to the commanding officer of another ship o’ war, but perhaps there had not been time to rig them. There had, of course, and Ramage knew it, but he also knew that when Aitken and Southwick proposed it, Bullivant might have refused.
Up, up, up … cling to the battens with your fingers, keep your feet flat against the side of the ship to prevent the soles of your shoes from slipping … Yes, that gouge in the wood there was so familiar and that scarph in the plank there … He could remember the actions in which the hull had been damaged.
Suddenly his head came level with the deck and a moment later he was through the entry port, standing on the deck itself and staring into the muzzle of a pistol held by a man he had never seen before but who was wearing the uniform of a post captain. He had a single epaulet, showing he had less than three years’ seniority, Ramage noticed inconsequentially.
“Stop!” the man bellowed. He was young, stocky, with a round face mottled with—was it anger? The pistol in his right hand was beautifully made, the barrel damascened, the silver and gold tracery of inlaid patterns catching the sun. The silver tankard in his left hand also had an intricate design worked all round it. And the man, who seemed too excited to string together a coherent sentence, took a pace forward as Swan stepped on deck.
“Stop, both of you!” He gestured with both hands as though shooing a hen back into her coop, and an amber liquid spilled from the tankard.
“You see, pirates! Look at him, a sans-culotte! A Republican pirate. And the other one …” he paused, catching his breath and then unexpectedly took a long drink from the tankard. He’s wearing the … the King’s uniform …”
Ramage saw that the speech was becoming more slurred and the man’s eyes were glazing. The man—Ramage guessed it must be Bullivant—turned and pointed. Ramage recognized the lieutenant in Marine’s uniform as Rennick, now white-faced, fear showing in the way the lips were drawn back. Ramage had seen Rennick facing broadsides, muskets fired at close range, pistols from a few feet, dodging the slash of cutlasses, but the Marine officer always grinned because he loved battle. Fear? A moment later he realized why.
“Shoot these men!” Bullivant screamed. “Come on, you have your file of Marines ready! The devil’s work … that’s what these French swine are doing …” His speech was slowing and Ramage glanced round.
There they all were, in a circle of men with fear on their faces: Aitken, the Scots first lieutenant; Wagstaffe; the red-haired and freckle-faced Kenton, his face red and peeling from the effect of wind and sun; young Martin, the fourth lieutenant; and old Southwick, his white mop of hair as usual trying to escape his hat and suddenly reminding Ramage of straw sticking out from under a nesting hen. And Paolo, his normally sallow face now white, his hooked nose bloodless, as though he was some young Italian model for a Botticelli painting.
Then Ramage saw that every one of the men on deck, seamen and Marines, was watching him, horrified by Bullivant’s words. Rennick was making no move. The sergeant of Marines stood firm. Yes, they must be thinking, their old captain has by some magic come back, dressed as a French fisherman, and their new captain has just given orders to shoot him.
Now the signal for the physician of the fleet made sense: Bullivant had been driven mad by drink and presumably Aitken had hoisted that signal at a time when Bullivant could not see it—when he was below.
Where was the surgeon, Bowen? Even as Ramage glanced round once again, he saw the surgeon coming up the companion-way, carrying a big flask. Now everyone was watching Bowen and Bullivant was smiling: it was the vapid smile of an idiot, ingratiating and welcoming.
“Ah, Mr Bowen … Welcome, you bring me sustenance … you see the demons I face.” He waved both pistol and tankard towards Ramage and Swan. “Here, you are just in time.” He held out the tankard and Bowen poured liquid from the flask. Bullivant took a sip, swallowed and then gulped like a calf at a cow’s udders.
Swan, pressing with his elbow, caused Ramage to look down. The Murex’s first lieutenant had a Sea Service pistol tucked in the waistband of his breeches and was trying to draw Ramage’s attention to it while Bullivant, head back and tankard to his lips, had his eyes closed.
This situation was what every officer dreaded. Relieving a captain of his command was juggling with the risk of being charged with treason. What was madness on the high seas could appear to be perfectly sane behaviour when the captain soberly described it to a row of hard-faced officers forming a court martial in the peace and quiet of a guardship’s cabin in Plymouth or Portsmouth. The whole edifice of discipline was built on the authority of a senior officer—a seaman obeyed a bosun’s mate who obeyed the bosun who obeyed a lieutenant who obeyed the captain who obeyed a captain senior to him or an admiral who obeyed the Admiralty: it was all in the Articles of War … Many covered every aspect for maintaining command—numbers XIX, XXII (carrying the death penalty for anyone even lifting a weapon against a superior), and XXXIV … and of course, XXXVI, the so-called captain’s cloak, covering “all other crimes” not covered by the Act. None provided the means of depriving a man of command …
Bullivant was not just senior to all the officers and men of the Calypso; his commission appointing him to command the Calypso, signed by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, and which he would have read out aloud to the ship’s company when he first came on board (“reading himself in”), would have enjoined everyone to obey him, and given warning that they failed to do so “at their peril.”
Only one thing could save them all from a crazed captain, and th
at was a more senior officer. There was no signal in the book that Aitken (as the second-in-command) could make to warn the admiral; he could only, Ramage realized, ask for the physician of the fleet and rely on him to declare the captain unfit to command.
That was the only thing unless a senior officer came on board … and that was why Admiral Clinton had made sure Ramage was higher up the Captains’ List than Bullivant. Ramage was senior. A higher link in the chain of command …
Ramage pulled the pistol clear and held it out of sight behind him. All this might be of significance at a court martial charging that Bullivant was first threatening an unarmed senior officer with a pistol. To this, Ramage realized, Bullivant at the moment had the perfect defence: he did not know Ramage, who was not in uniform, and genuinely mistook him for a Frenchman.
The hell with courts martial and niggling points of law; this was the Calypso and Rennick had just been told by his captain to order his Marines to shoot Ramage. Now was the time to act, while everyone was paralysed by the outrageousness of the order.
Ramage waited until Bullivant lowered the tankard and then stepped forward.
“Captain Bullivant, I believe?”
“Yes, I am. Listen, Bowen, this dam’ fellow speaks passable English!”
“I am Captain Ramage, and I have been ordered by Admiral Clinton to board your ship and satisfy myself on certain matters.”
“Captain Ramage? Absurd. Ramage is on the Continent. Prisoner of Bonaparte. With his new wife. Ramage’s, not Bonaparte’s. Spy, that’s what you are. Rich, Ramage is dam’ rich; he wouldn’t wear fisherman’s clothes. That brig—I ask you, where has she come from, eh? Shoot you and sink her, doing my duty. Says he is Captain Ramage, Bowen, what do you think of that, eh?”
“He is Captain Ramage, sir,” Bowen said loudly and clearly. “I have served with him for several years, and so have all the ship’s officers, and they recognize him too.”