Ramage and the Freebooters

by Dudley Pope

  Ramage, who found himself liking the Frenchman’s irrepressible cheerfulness – he could keep grinning within a few hours of finding his ship captured and himself a prisoner of war – couldn’t resist saying: ‘I hope you won’t think me impolite, M’sieur Marais, but by that time it was hardly yours to give…’

  ‘Touché! But your King wouldn’t have begrudged it.’

  ‘I fear he would; in fact his regulations particularly forbid taking anything out of a captured ship until she has been “adjudged lawful prize” in some Admiralty court–’

  ‘A barbarous regulation!’ Marais exclaimed. ‘Why–’

  ‘Another says that “None of the officers, mariners or other persons on board her shall be stripped of their clothes, or in any sort pillaged…”’ Ramage added dryly. ‘Now that is barbarous.’

  ‘My shirt is of little value, but my heart is of pure gold.’

  ‘We’ll have that, then – don’t you agree, Bowen?’

  The surgeon nodded. ‘Yes – I can remove it without spoiling the shirt.’

  ‘Ah, what an evening,’ Marais said, still sniffing the brandy between sentences. ‘A good dinner, good company – and a good surgeon to do whatever the host requires, quickly and painlessly!’

  Bowen said evenly, ‘Since you owned a slaver, I imagine not only your heart is made of gold.’

  ‘You overestimate the profit,’ Marais said blandly, ‘and you flatter me. I regret I am not the owner – was not the owner,’ he corrected himself. ‘Merely the captain.’

  ‘But surely it’s a profitable trade,’ Ramage said.

  ‘It’s a gamble. When you win, you make a lot of money. When you lose, you lose heavily. There’s no – how do you say? No “happy medium”.’

  ‘But on a round voyage surely you can hedge your bet?’ Ramage asked. ‘There’s profit on the goods you carry from France to the Cape Coast, and profit in carrying sugar, spice and rum from the West Indies to France. Surely your gamble is only from the Cape Coast to the West Indies with the slaves?’

  ‘True,’ said Marais. ‘But that’s also where the major profit is. Don’t forget these are fast ships, well-equipped and splendidly built. You saw there’s little cargo space – no depth in the holds. And the crews have to be large and need to be paid very well – twice as much as in merchantmen. So for two thirds of a round voyage – from France to the Cape Coast, then from the West Indies back to France – they are expensive and half of them unnecessary.’

  ‘What’s the usual profit on a slave?’ Bowen asked bluntly.

  Marais shrugged his shoulders. ‘M’sieur Bowen, be thankful that in the world of medicine you are never concerned with the words “net” and “gross”. But a fair question deserves a fair answer. We don’t buy the slaves with cash – it’s all bartering with the goods we carry out from France. But it works out at – forgive me, I must change the coinage – yes, about twenty-five guineas a slave: that’s what we pay the chiefs and traders for a male. About fifteen guineas for a female. And we sell males at’ – he paused, changing French louis into English money – ‘between fifty and sixty guineas each, providing we are among the first slavers in after the hurricane season ends or the last in before it starts. So our gross profit is between twenty-five and thirty-five guineas for each slave. But ten per cent might die on the voyage – it’s rarely as high as that, incidentally – or we might arrive within a week of another slaver, in which case naturally the market price is lower.’

  Bowen was obviously both horrified and fascinated by the way Marais discussed the slaves as if they were sacks of sugar or puncheons of rum.

  ‘I don’t see how you can make a loss?’

  Marais’ eyes looked up at the deckhead, shrugging his shoulders and holding out his hands, palms uppermost.

  ‘M’sieur Bowen, I would like you as a backer. If I had a ship but no money to finance a voyage, I wish I could meet you and persuade you to take shares!’

  ‘Why?’ Bowen asked innocently.

  Marais was serious now: the sharp little eyes focused on the surgeon, the palms of his hands were flat on the table, shoulders hunched forward. The lamp swinging in its gimbals on the bulkhead threw shadows which changed his face from that of a jolly grocer to the captain of a slaver used to dealing with desperate situations which needed desperate measures.

  ‘Take your field, M’sieur Bowen, medicine. The Cape Coast is the unhealthiest place in the world. I often have to take my ship thirty miles up rivers to collect my cargo – in itself a great risk to the ship. I’ve read the burial service over more bodies consigned to those rivers than ever at sea. I sail from France with a crew of thirty-five – because I need twenty left alive for the passage from the Cape Coast to the West Indies. Many times I’ve made a passage with only a dozen… The rest have died of sicknesses for which there is no cure, only a death of the most painful kind. When you came in sight,’ he said to Ramage, ‘only twenty of the thirty-five who left France had survived: fifteen died in the Bight of Benin – one stabbed by a treacherous slave-trader, the rest from sickness.’

  ‘But losing crew from sickness is hardly a financial loss,’ Ramage objected pointedly.

  Marais gave a sly grin. ‘I understand the implication; but there is a loss because men who ship in slavers are not gamblers. They won’t sign on and agree to collect their pay at the end of the round voyage, so if they died the owner doesn’t have to pay, which is what you are thinking. Oh no! They want a large advance before they leave France. Why, I–’

  ‘Come, come,’ Ramage interrupted. ‘If you paid such large advances they’d desert on the eve of sailing.’

  Without saying it, Marais’ hands and a twitch of his head indicated this was proof enough of the crude way of British sailors but that French sailors were cleverer.

  ‘The advance, usually four months’ pay, is delivered by my agent to whoever the seaman nominates – a week after we have sailed.’

  ‘What do you barter for the slaves?’ Bowen asked.

  ‘All sorts of manufactured goods. Cloth and clothing – the brighter the better – brass and iron cooking pots, beads, knives, looking-glasses – they’re very popular – liquor, muskets, shot, powder, cutlasses–’

  ‘Muskets and shot?’ exclaimed Bowen.

  ‘Of course – the chiefs pay well for them. They’re cheap affairs, naturally; more danger to the men that fire them than their targets!’

  ‘And how – well, what happens when you first arrive on the Coast?’

  Marais grinned at Ramage. ‘First we discover whether there are any British ships of war in the area. Then – well, let’s describe it as it was before the war, then I shan’t give away any secrets.

  ‘First, M’sieur Bowen, there’s a slaving season – that’s obvious, because we don’t want to arrive in the Caribbean during the hurricane season. So on the Coast the trading settlements and local native chiefs have been preparing for us by collecting slaves. When enough slave ships arrive, the slaves are taken to the market and each captain inspects them. As he chooses one, so he bargains with the owner – usually a slave-trader or the agent of the particular chief – and agrees on the price.’

  Bowen asked: ‘These chiefs – where do they get the slaves?’

  ‘You might well ask! From many places. To start with a chief takes up any young men or boys in his own tribe who have misbehaved. Not criminals necessarily, you understand? Then, if it’s a large tribe and the chief wants a lot of muskets, or a lot of bright clothes for his wives – well, he’s likely to march some of his own people to the settlement.

  ‘Of course, the tribes often raid each other’s villages to capture men to sell as slaves. That’s quite usual – you can always tell by the tribal marks on the faces. If you see a chief’s agent at the market has, say, two vertical scars on his cheek and the slaves he’s offering have one horizontal scar, you know they’re prisoners of war from another tribe. If they are the same scars – well, the chief is either selling those who’ve m
isbehaved, or he’s getting greedy.’

  ‘But surely you don’t get all your slaves at the settlements?’ asked Ramage, remembering Marais’ reference to rivers. ‘Most of the settlements are on the coast, aren’t they?’

  ‘We get perhaps half from the settlements: the best – and the most expensive. The rest we find up the rivers, visiting small villages.’

  ‘You capture them,’ Bowen said bluntly.

  ‘Oh no!’ Marais exclaimed. ‘For a start it’d be too dangerous to send a party of seamen on shore; in fact we usually have a guard boat rowing round the ship day and night. No, a hundred seamen wouldn’t last an hour in that jungle – they’d be riddled with spears and arrows from three yards away by natives they couldn’t even see, or else they’d come back riddled with sickness.

  ‘Oh no, M’sieur Bowen, we arrive at a village and wait. First a representative of the chief – perhaps even the chief himself – comes out in a canoe for a palaver. He tells us how many slaves he has and the price he wants. One of my men – usually the mate – goes back with him and inspects them. When they return, we agree on the price. And usually, after dark, more canoes arrive with slaves from villages nearby.’

  ‘Where do the other slaves come from then?’

  ‘I never ask, but it’s obvious.’ Marais shrugged his shoulders. ‘You must understand that a man with two sons and six daughters considers he has six useless mouths to feed: he values only his sons. So he’s likely to sell some of his daughters. If he has little land and many sons – well, the extra sons too. Particularly if he dislikes any of them.’

  Bowen groaned.

  ‘My friend,’ said Marais, ‘don’t be shocked; don’t judge them by your standards. These people live different lives and have different codes. They’re happy and they work just enough to avoid starving. And it’s difficult to starve because fruit and many vegetables grow wild in the jungle, and they catch fish in the rivers.

  ‘And you must remember the family is not the family as we Europeans understand the word. Before I went to the Coast I’d have been shocked if I’d known what I’m telling you now. After twenty years, I understand.

  ‘Incidentally, things we do shock them. The idea of spending sums of money in building enormous ships solely for fighting – that shocks them. They have large canoes – but when they’re not fighting another tribe they’re used for fishing or trade.

  ‘You consider government. When a chief dies, all the elders elect a new chief – the man they think is best qualified to lead them in battle, administer justice and so on. The European system makes them laugh – a hereditary king whose son’ – he glanced significantly at Ramage – ‘might be stupid or insane or otherwise totally unfit for the crown; then three or four hundred “minor chiefs” elected without qualifications by fools who were probably bribed with pints of ale… You’ll admit the results in Europe are a series of situations where nothing gets done and the minor chiefs – your Members of Parliament, the French senators – simply make speech after speech. Who’s to say which system is best? In my opinion one system suits the Cape Coast, another suits Europe.’

  ‘When you have the slaves on board,’ Bowen asked, ‘how are they fed, exercised, cared for?’

  Marais looked at him squarely. ‘M’sieur, I think you are a supporter of that M’sieur Wilberforce. But always remember this – it would be madness for a slaver captain not to care for the slaves. For every slave that dies – pouf, there’s a twenty-five guinea investment and another twenty-five guinea profit thrown over the side. If you had hundreds of guineas invested in a company, I think you’d make quite sure the company’s goods were well cared for.

  ‘However, to answer your question. The slaves – in La Merlette, anyway, and she is typical – get three meals a day, and the food is what they’re used to. Once we’re at sea they spend at least five hours a day on deck. True, each pair of men is shackled together with leg irons, but they get plenty of exercise – they even manage to dance. Their accommodation is cleaned out while they’re on deck, and we give them brandy each day.’

  Ramage grunted. For all the talk – and Marais was sincere and the logic of some of his arguments was inescapable even if you disagreed with him – it didn’t change Ramage’s views on slavery. That chiefs of tribes would sell their own youth into slavery didn’t justify slavers buying them. Nor did it justify plantation owners buying them from the slavers.

  Marais obviously guessed his thoughts.

  ‘What’s the Royal Navy’s bounty for seamen now, M’sieur Ramage?’

  ‘That’s hardly relevant.’

  ‘No? Your country’s Navy and mine are manned in the same way. Prisons are emptied and men herded on board ships of war in which they stay for years, usually without shore leave and for wages hardly worthy of the name. Or a starving man is offered a pitifully small crust of bread – a bounty – to join. To stay alive he accepts – and at once becomes a slave of your King or, in the French ships, the Directory.

  ‘Perhaps not even a starving man. A farm labourer gets drunk – and wakes up to find himself in a boat on his way to a ship of war, having been knocked on the head by a press-gang. He’s left a wife and children at home to starve,’ Marais continued.

  ‘In France and in Britain the price of bread and potatoes goes up every few weeks. Staple foods, M’sieur Ramage: foods that town-dwellers cannot grow, nor can many of the country folk. So, the poor are almost starving. Can you imagine a plantation-owner who’s paid more than fifty guineas for a slave letting him starve?’

  ‘Slavery is for life,’ Bowen pointed out. ‘A seaman serves only for the war.’

  ‘And when the war ends? Why, he’s thrown out – along with thousands of other seamen, and soldiers too – and can’t find work. All he knows is seamanship. He doesn’t know where his next meal will come from; he may have lost a limb; his constitution is probably ruined through hard service in bad climates. Scurvy will have lost him his teeth; malignant fevers will plague him always. Yes, a slave’s a slave all his life – and that means regular meals all his life, too.

  ‘Your M’sieur Wilberforce means well, and so do you gentlemen. But shouldn’t we look at the starving people living lives little removed from slavery in the narrow streets of our towns, or in hovels in our villages, before we condemn slavery? Only cheap gin or wine to keep them warm in winter: no fires, no fuel, very little food?’

  ‘I’m sorry, M’sieur Marais,’ Ramage said abruptly, ‘nothing can be achieved by talking about it. Are you by any chance a chess player?’

  Marais’ eyes lit up. ‘Ah – chess! How I wish for a good game. When I choose my officers, always I ask if they play chess. But never…’

  Ramage glanced at Bowen. ‘I think you’ll have time for a few games before we reach Barbados. I’ll have the steward take the chess set to your cabin, Bowen. Oh, by the way, M’sieur Marais, to save you the embarrassment of playing chess with a sentry standing behind you, if you gave your parole…’

  ‘Gladly,’ said Marais. ‘If I escape I have to swim to Guadeloupe. If I give my parole I can play chess in comfort. Thank you for a pleasant evening.’

  Bowen led the way out of the cabin and Ramage looked round for his hat to go up on deck. Two more nights in the Trades, and then Barbados, and under the orders of the Admiral… He realized he’d be more than happy if the Atlantic crossing lasted another couple of months. He was happy with his own little floating world. It had been a challenge to change a mutinous crew into a loyal one, and he wasn’t the slightest bit ashamed of his pride in having achieved it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  With Barbados only a few score miles to the westward, Ramage sat on the aftermost starboard carronade – his favourite spot since it was sheltered from the scorching sun by a small awning – and reflected how few days had passed since Southwick had persuaded him to deal with the problem of Bowen.

  The voyage was nearly over; Bowen may or may not be cured permanently but certainly had not touched a drink
for more than a week. He could now watch others drinking without becoming soaked with perspiration as he silently fought himself to avoid reaching for a glass.

  The tropics – still the words gave Ramage pleasure. But now, approaching the islands which stretched in a chain shaped like a new moon from the South American coast at the east end of the Spanish Main to Florida, he knew the lives of the men in the Triton would probably depend more on Bowen’s skill than his own.

  Dozens of islands ranging from Cuba in the north, six hundred miles long, to barren rocks barely a mile wide. But all of them islands containing great extremes: great beauty and great ugliness; much peace and much violence; much pleasure and much pestilence.

  One week the heat and humidity would be tempered by the fresh Trade winds into a blissful climate; another, when the wind dropped, would be damp and unbearably hot, draining every man’s energy, mildewing his clothes, sapping his spirit.

  A perfectly fit and strong man could admire the frangipani, its delicate white blossom with gold centres flowering on leafless trees clinging precariously to a cliff face; he could stare at the almost unbelievably beautiful flamboyant tree covered in brilliant scarlet blossom, an enormous ball of flame. And that night the man could be struck down with some disease like the black vomit, which within twenty-four hours, would leave him dying with insects crawling wherever life oozed from his body.

  Islands where moderation did not exist.

  The first day of the rainy season came – and almost overnight the sun-scorched brown hills turned green with tiny shoots sprouting like down on a boy’s face. The sun nourished the plants so they grew fast and then, as they flowered, scorched them to death, and while the sun and rain rotted the remains the ants, scorpions, lizards and great buzzing swarms of flies hunted and feasted…

  The trunk of a fallen tree apparently solid – until you touch it and it crumbled to powder, riddled with termites…

  And beside the rotting piles there’d be scatterings of poinsettia – the Spanish Flor de Pascuas, the Italian Stella di Natale, the Flower of Christmas – growing wild and profuse, each slender stem topped by petals hanging down like leaves in a brilliant red star.