by Dudley Pope
Robilliard was watching Ramage closely. “Yes, I believe you.” He spelled out his name. “And make sure you put in the ‘Pierre,’ because there is my cousin, too, and although he does not command a ship he is a scoundrel—no, I didn’t mean that—”
“I understand,” Ramage assured him.
“But so many prisoners,” Robilliard said as he watched the Tricolour flutter down as Jackson hauled on one end of the halyard. “How will you … ?”
“Leave that problem to me,” Ramage said. “You are not short of provisions?”
“Water, but not provisions. With so many dead from sickness, I could have doubled the rations of the living.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
RAMAGE and Aitken sat at the desk, Ramage in his normal chair and the first lieutenant opposite, trying to make himself comfortable on a chair that normally served at the dining table in the coach. Aitken was hurriedly writing notes, quill squeaking, as Ramage translated from various pages of the small pile of documents in front of them.
“Ah, here we are,” Ramage said happily, “some of the answers about Cayenne. This is”—he glanced at the title page—”a sort of pilot book published three years ago, so it is reasonably up to date. Take notes as I read it aloud.”
He turned over a couple of pages. “It begins with a word about the currents to expect off the coast of French Guiana. There are two—well, we knew that. The first starts close off the African coast, near to the Cape Verde Islands, and is caused by the Trade winds blowing across the Atlantic. Yes, well, we know all about that, too. It reaches to within …” he paused, making the conversion, “to within 35 miles of the coast, or a depth of eight fathoms, where a second current, produced by the tides, meets it. And there is the water pouring out of the Amazon and the Orinoco. Well, it’s the heights not the rates that interest me.
“Hmm, numerous other rivers between the Amazon and the Orinoco carry down vast quantities of mud, tree trunks and branches … these accumulating along the shores have built up a border of low ground.” The pilot was written in stilted French and translation was difficult. “Mangroves generally cover it between high and low water. At low water this border seems impassable: at high water there are sometimes channels accessible to vessels … Ah, here we are: ‘The only ports are at mouths of rivers … there are usually bars at the entrances and shoals in the channels … Larger ships can anchor to wait for high water without risk because no violent tempests ever occur in this region …’”
“That’s comforting; I dislike ‘violent tempests.’ The mariner ‘can wait for a local pilot or send boats ahead to make soundings.’”
Aitken reached out for the inkwell. “Except for the mangroves and the lack of ‘violent tempests,’ it sounds rather like the east coast of England!”
“Yes. Now for the general information: the French have owned Cayenne—Guiana, rather—since 1677 … It stretches about two hundred and fifty miles along the coast and goes more than a hundred miles inland … The land is low along the coast which runs roughly north and south with a mountain chain running east and west … Produces and exports pepper, cinnamon, cloves and nutmegs. Nothing,” Ramage noted, “that isn’t used for seasoning food!”
He read several more pages without bothering to translate but finally hunched himself in his chair and squared up the book. “Here we are … During the summer the current runs strongly to the north-west off this coast … Heavy breakers generally ease at slack water … Tide rise just over eight feet at springs, four or five at neaps …
“Now, we’re interested in 27 miles of coast between the River Approuague to the south and the River Mahuri to the north. The land is so flat you can see it at only seven or eight miles from seaward … behind it, though, are the Kaw mountains, a level ridge not very high. Now, the Mahuri river—”
He broke off, cursed and shut the book with an angry gesture and stood up. With his head bent to one side to avoid bumping it on the beams overhead he strode round the cabin, watched by a startled Aitken, who then picked up a piece of cloth and busied himself wiping the sharpened point of his quill. He knew better than to ask what was the matter. Was the vital page missing? The Scot did not trust anything French. The good luck of finding a French pilot book would obviously, he considered glumly, be cancelled by there being pages missing …
Ramage sat down, face flushed, and opened the pilot book again. “Cayenne … Cayenne …” he said crossly. “Wouldn’t anyone in their right mind assume that any wretched Frenchman deported ‘to Cayenne’ was being sent to a penal colony on the island of Cayenne, which is in the middle of the entrance to the Cayenne river?”
Aitken thought for a moment but could see no danger in agreeing. “Yes, sir, that seems a reasonable assumption; indeed, a very logical conclusion.”
“Yes, but any ship laden with prisoners and anchoring off the Îles de Cayenne in the Rivière de Cayenne would find herself some 25 miles too far south!
“Having no charts or pilots, I’d assumed the three Île du Salut, which include Devil’s Island, were in the Cayenne river.” He tapped the book. “Now I find they are three almost barren little lumps of rock seven miles offshore and 25 miles north of Cayenne, river or island. So, tear up what you’ve written and let’s start again …”
“A good job we found La Robuste,” Aitken said. “Otherwise …”
“Otherwise we’d have looked very stupid,” Ramage completed. “Right, we start at Pointe Charlotte. The coast is low and sandy, plenty of mangroves up to the high-water mark, occasional clumps of trees behind, and isolated rocks sitting in the mud to seaward.
“By a stroke of luck, or just the kindness of nature, there is a high, cone-shaped hill nine miles inland: on a clear day you can see it for twenty miles, so you don’t have to rely on the mangroves for a landfall.
“Right, now we get to it. The coast is trending west-northwest when you reach Pointe Charlotte, which is three miles north-west of the Kourou river, which is marked by three small mountains ‘all remarkable objects at a long distance, and good guides for the entrance to the river.’”
“To distinguish Pointe Charlotte from a thousand other points, it has some rocks at its base,” Ramage said ironically. “Of more interest to us, though: if you stand on Pointe Charlotte and stare out across the Atlantic, hoping perhaps to see Africa, you’ll see instead ‘a group of three small rocky islets,’ and they are small, occupying a space of about half a mile.
“As far as I can understand from this pilot, the island farthest out in the Atlantic is the northernmost, Île du Diable, 131 feet high; the one on your left is the largest and highest, Île Royale, 216 feet; and to the right is the nearest, the southernmost, and the smallest, Île St Joseph.”
“Which is the one we’re particularly interested in?” Aitken asked.
“I think Île du Diable, or Devil’s Island, and the blasted pilot simply says it is forbidden to land on any of the islands without the written permission of the préfet at Cayenne because St Joseph and Royale are ‘convict settlements’ while Diable is a settlement for ‘détenus,’ which I’m sure means ‘prisoners’ but not people who have actually been convicted, although I’ll check it with Gilbert because he knows better than I the finer shades of meaning in Revolutionary France.”
“What about anchorages?” Aitken asked. Captains concerned themselves with tactics, first lieutenants worried about anchorages.
“The pilot makes a great song and dance that the lee of the islands provides the only sheltered anchorage along the coast—otherwise you have to go up one of the big rivers. Yes, here we are—five cables south-west of the western end of Royale, soft mud, five fathoms, well sheltered from easterly winds. Ah, Royale seems to be the headquarters—it has a fort guarding it to seaward, a church on the hill, and a jetty on the south side. Diable—well, that has only ‘a fortified enclosure’ for the détenus. St Joseph: a poor anchorage a cable to the south in hard mud—that is all it has to offer the world …”
“Are there any rocks and shoals?”
“Plenty,” Ramage said, “and too many to mention. The positions this pilot gives are too vague to be of much use. Hmm … ‘generally, a vessel coming in sight of the fort on Île Royale will result one hour later in a canoe with a local pilot waiting close under the north-west corner of Île du Diable …’ He’ll guide you to the recommended anchorage I’ve just mentioned southwest of Île Royale.”
Ramage closed the book. “That’s all it says about the Îles du Salut. More important, though, is that L’Espoir will presumably have a copy …”
“… and so will wait for a pilot and anchor there?”
I hope so,” Ramage said, “but I hope it doesn’t mean we have to try to capture three rocky islands.”
Wagstaffe walked the starboard side of La Robuste’s quarterdeck and reflected that commanding a ship was a satisfying experience, even if the ship was a prize-frigate and all he had to do for the next few hundred miles was stay in the wake of the Calypso. This was easy enough in daylight but at night it was difficult to follow the triangle of three poop lanterns. In fact, in the last couple of nights he had gone to his cot and fallen asleep to waken almost at once, certain that the three lights had gone out of sight, and the officer of the deck (Kenton the first time and Martin the second) had been startled to find the commanding officer suddenly flapping round the deck in a boat-cloak, staring forward, grunting and going below again, all without a word of explanation.
Well, Wagstaffe told himself, how on earth did one explain all that to junior lieutenants? Now he thought about it, both Kenton and Martin were sensible enough to report the moment they lost sight of the lights—indeed, there’d be enough yelling in the darkness, with the officer of the deck shouting questions at the lookouts and making a noise which would come down the skylight like a butt full of cold water.
It is easy enough to be brave and confident when the sun shines bright, he thought defensively, but hard on a dull cloudy day when it is raining. Harder still at nightfall, and dam’ nearly impossible at three o’clock in the morning. Three o’clock courage, that’s what he lacked. It’s what distinguished Captain Ramage from most other men: he had it in abundance. It was also, Wagstaffe admitted, what kept Captain Ramage’s officers poised on the balls of their feet all the time. Not because he yelled and screamed when things went wrong: perhaps it would be easier if he did. No, it was that chilly, quizzical and questioning look from those dark eyes set under thick eyebrows that was far more reproachful than words. They seemed to say: “I trained you and trusted you: now look what you’ve done …”
Wagstaffe lifted his “distance staff” and held it up. He was proud of it because it was so easy to make and to use. He had been told to keep one cable astern of the Calypso and in her wake. One cable was two hundred yards precisely, not one hundred and fifty or two hundred and fifty. It was a distance which anyone in the Calypso could check with a quadrant or sextant in a few moments because of the two simple facts: if you knew the height of an object (in this case a mainmast) and the angle it made from you, it was easy enough to work out how far away it was: the mast made the vertical side of a right-angled triangle and the angle was opposite, between the base and hypotenuse. And of course the base was the distance, in this case two hundred yards.
However, to avoid having to get a quadrant or sextant out of its box to measure the angle, it was easy enough to cut two notches in a short stick at appropriate distances apart so that when you held the stick vertically at arm’s length, the lower notch was level with the Calypso’s after waterline, and her main-masthead touched the upper notch. If the mast appeared shorter than the distance between the notches, La Robuste was more than 200 yards astern: if taller, they were too close.
In fact it was not too difficult to keep station because both frigates were almost the same size and of course French-designed and built, with the sails cut by French sailmakers. Providing La Robuste set the same sails, and providing the men at the wheel, the quartermaster and the officers of the deck stayed alert in this sun (which was really getting some heat in it as the latitude decreased), it was easy.
What had Captain Ramage in mind? The series of rendezvous he had given to Wagstaffe, a latitude and longitude for each day, in case they lost each other during the night and were not in sight at dawn, ended up at 5° North and 52° West, which was the South American coast at Cayenne … The French kit of charts on board La Robuste did not include French Guiana, except as a half-inch square on the chart of the south part of the North Atlantic. Cayenne, Devil’s Island … Wagstaffe shivered. It was probably no healthier than it sounded. Devil’s Island was said to be the place Bonaparte sent his enemies. Well, it must be a big island because the Frenchman had a lot of enemies. And friends, too, judging from England’s lack of allies.
Sergeant Ferris, the second-in-command of the Marines on board the Calypso, undid his pipeclayed crossbelts and unbuttoned his tunic. Sitting on the breech of one of the guns was not exactly resting in an armchair but the breech was in the shade and the breeze blowing the length of the main deck was cool, even if La Robuste’s bilges stank so that the last foot that the pump would not suck out swirled back and forth with the frigate’s pitch and roll and occasionally made the main deck smell like a Paris sewer.
Jackson walked up and sat on the truck on the after side of the gun and leaned back against the breech. “Coolest spot in the ship,” he said.
“Aye,” Ferris said, “count yourself lucky you’re not a Marine and wearing this damned uniform.”
“Trouble with the French prisoners?”
“No, not yet. A couple of them started quarrelling with each other and some of my lads had to stop them, so we’ve put them all in irons, each man one leg, so they’re sitting in rows facing each other and staring at the sole of the other fellow’s foot. Still, 46 prisoners is not too bad since I’ve got half the Calypso’s Marines, and we’ve got that twelve-pounder trained on ‘em.”
“Yes, but that’s just a bluff,” Jackson said. “If we have to fire it down the hatch the recoil will turn the gun upside-down!”
“The Frogs don’t know that,” Ferris said philosophically, “and if only half the canister catches them it won’t leave many alive.”
“More likely put a hole in the hull,” Jackson said.
“Don’t worry. Just go down in the hold and sit down with one ankle held by the irons, and I can tell you that inside ten minutes the muzzle of that twelve-pounder will seem to measure two feet in diameter and be winking at you like death himself.”
Jackson’s laugh was mirthless. He had fought the French for too long to have much sympathy for them. “What about Gilbert?”
Ferris puffed out his lips and then opened his mouth as if blowing out a plum stone. “Don’t make a mistake about that fellow! He may be small and he may be a Frog—it’s easy to forget that because he speaks such good English—but you should see him when he gets worked up!
“Before we took half the prisoners over to Calypso he talked to all of them below decks (this was while you was ferrying across our seamen) and gave ‘em a warning. All French to me, of course, but I understood everything he said just by watching the faces of the prisoners! I think a lot of it was religion—Diable, that means the Devil, doesn’t it? Well he went on a lot about him, and they shuffled about a lot, as though they were scared of the Devil. There was another chap they were scared of, too, someone called More. What with him threatening ‘em with the Devil and More, and us Marines, too, we had them French twittering like frightened starlings.”
“Until the two started fighting.”
“Yus, but I think they are so scared that they very easily get on each other’s nerves. Anyway, a day or two in irons won’t hurt ‘em. Given half a chance, Gilbert and his chaps would have beaten the two of them. Yet they’re French too—why do they hate the fellows in this ship so much, Jacko?”
“It’s not just this ship: they hate all Frenchmen who support Bonaparte. I
don’t know much about it myself but of course Gilbert and Louis worked for the Count of Rennes, who Bonaparte is shipping to Cayenne in the frigate we’re trying to catch.”
“Cayenne? That’s a sort of pepper, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it comes from French Guiana, which is near Brazil. It’s a deadly sort of place—makes islands of the West Indies like Antigua seem as healthy as Bath. Die like flies there, according to the captain.”
Ferris nodded and flapped the front of his tunic back and forth like a fan. “I can believe it. But what does the captain want with this frigate, La Robuste? Halves our strength in men, even if it doubles the number of ships. But doubling the number of guns and halving the number of men to fire them,” his voice assumed the monotonous drone of a drill sergeant, “is militarily unsound, Jacko.”
“Tell the captain,” the American said. “He may not have considered that. Or,” he added sarcastically, “he might be considering it only from a naval point of view, not a military one.”
Sergeant Ferris patted his stomach. “Yes, that could be so,” he agreed judicially, completely missing the tone of Jackson’s voice. “Yes, I agree, he might have some particular naval plan in mind.”
Wagstaffe looked at his makeshift journal. There was something very satisfying about the book, which had been made up by young Orsini stitching together the left-hand side of a dozen sheets of paper. How satisfying to write boldly across the top (normally it was only a matter of fitting names in the blank spaces of a printed form) “Journal of the Proceedings of—” he paused a moment: this was an unusual situation. He then continued, “—the former French national frigate La Robuste, presently prize to one of His Majesty’s ships, Lieutenant Wagstaffe, commander.” He had added the date and then carefully ruled in nine columns, and today, as he glanced down them, the ship’s progress was becoming more obvious.
The date occupied the first two columns, the third recorded the winds (which had stayed between south-east and north-east the whole time), then came the courses (which were unchanged) and the miles covered from noon to noon, which were usually around 175. The latitude and longitude occupied the next two columns and showed to a navigator’s eye the progress they were making to the south-west.