Ramage & the Guillotine

by Dudley Pope

  Dyson knew that there were too many other reports and logs coming in from the ship during the next few months for that single change in the Two-monthly Book to make him vanish altogether as far as the Navy was concerned. However, the clerk was sure that the general inefficiency in the Navy Board, which had to deal with a Navy which now comprised more than 100,000 men, meant that he was safe enough: clerks tended to deal with discrepancies or contradictions by ignoring them, particularly if there was no widow asking awkward questions. And then, as an insurance, Mr Simpson had obtained a Protection for him: a regular Protection made out in his own name and describing him as a regular waterman. With that Albert Dyson could not be taken up by a naval press-gang: watermen, along with masters, mates and apprentices in merchant ships, and a few others, were admitted by the Admiralty to be better left alone rather than swept into the Navy.

  Dyson reached under the seat and pulled out a box, extracting a bottle carefully wrapped in a piece of cloth, and several tin mugs so dented from use they looked like carelessly hammered pewter.

  “Best brandy,” he said, pushing a mug across to Ramage. “How about you, sir: a ‘welcome on board’ tot?”

  Ramage had an inflexible rule that he never drank at sea in his own ship; but the little Marie was far from being his ship, and before they sailed he was anxious to find out a great deal more from Dyson than he knew already. Refusing a drink might upset the fellow, who had all the touchy pride of a real rogue.

  “A small one, then; just enough for a toast.”

  Dyson poured a little into five mugs and passed them round. “Won’t do to get drunk; we’ll need our wits about us a’fore the night’s over.”

  Jackson felt the pressure of Ramage’s knee and immediately took the hint, asking: “How so, Slushy?”

  Dyson lifted his mug: “Here’s to a successful cruise.” When the other four had echoed his toast he put his mug down with an exaggerated gesture, as if to lend weight to what he was about to say. “We have a lot of dodgin’ to do, an’ we’re due to meet another smack … let’s ‘ope it ain’t too rough.”

  Jackson knew Mr Ramage must have his reasons for wanting him to question Dyson. “Aye, dodging the Frogs is going to be difficult …”

  “The Frogs?” Dyson exclaimed, obviously startled and with more than a hint of outraged indignation in his voice. “T’ain’t the Frogs we got to worry about; it’s our own bleedin’ Revenue cutters first, then ‘Is Britannic Majesty’s frigates once we get near the French coast.”

  “Why?” Jackson asked innocently. “What harm will they do us?”

  “Come orf it,” Dyson growled. “Just give a sniff. Go on, sniff ‘ard.”

  Jackson sniffed and shrugged his shoulders. “Can’t smell anything odd. Tarred marline—Stockholm tar, from the nets I suppose. Bit musty—some rot around in the planking or the frames …”

  “Nothin’ else?”

  “No-o,” Jackson said cautiously. “Whiff of fish, perhaps.”

  “Just a whiff, eh?”

  When Jackson nodded, Dyson said contemptuously, “You wouldn’t make much of a Customs searcher, Jacko! Just a whiff o’ fish in the cuddy of a smack—why it should stink o’ fish!”

  Stafford gave a tentative sniff. “S’fact. What ‘appened, Slushy —all the fish swum away, or you gettin’ lazy?”

  Dyson looked round the group suspiciously, as though suspecting they were teasing. Then, deciding they were not, he leaned forward and said mysteriously. “It’s a special sort o’ fishing.”

  “Ah, bottle fishin’,” Stafford said scornfully. “You’re a bleedin’ smuggler, Slushy! I couldn’t see you ‘auling in ‘alibut, I must say.”

  Dyson’s face fell and he drank from his mug to hide his disappointment at not being able to reveal his secret with a flourish.

  Jackson had been waiting patiently. “You said we have to meet another smack tonight, Slushy, and you hoped the sea wasn’t rough …”

  Instead of answering the American, Dyson turned to face Ramage. “They left it up to me how much I tell you, sir. They’re worried about when you get back: you—well, they—”

  “They’re frightened I’ll inform the Revenue men, eh? Tell me, Dyson, if you get us over to France and back again, do you think I’d be so ungrateful that I’d give you away? Be honest, man; this is your ship and you’re free to say what you think.”

  Although the anguished look on Dyson’s face told him all he needed to know, Ramage waited. The man sipped from his tin mug—whatever else he might be, he was not a heavy drinker—and, suddenly setting the mug down, he said simply: “I owe you my life, sir: any other capting would ‘ave brought me to trial and made sure I ‘anged. I don’t forget that in a hurry; in fac’, I’ll remember it to me dyin’ day. No, the trouble is the uvvers, sir; they don’t know you and they ‘ave to take my word for it—” he broke off embarrassed.

  “Don’t they trust you, Slushy?” Jackson asked.

  “Well, yus and no. They do as far as bottle fishin’ goes—I’ve proved meself long ago. It’s just they’re a bit suspicious ‘bout what went on while I was—well, was in the King’s service.”

  “Why the distinction?” Ramage asked.

  “It’s like this, sir. When I heard what the password was goin’ to be and guessed it was you, I got so excited I told ‘em all about—well, the Triton brig business. Instead of that ‘elping, it made ‘em suspicious, on account of them thinking it gave you a sort o’ twist on my arm: you’d know I was a deserter, an’ you could threaten to hand me over to the authorities if I didn’t tell you everything you wanted to know about ‘ow contraband is landed on the Marsh—all that sort o’ thing.”

  “But nevertheless you managed to persuade them?” Ramage asked quietly.

  Dyson looked uncomfortable. “I made a bargain. I can use the Marie, but I had to put up a sort o’ guarantee. It’s all arranged, sir; there’s nothin’ to worry about.”

  “What was the guarantee?” Ramage said.

  “Just some money as security for the Marie, and my young brother—he usually sails with me as mate. I had to leave him behind.” Dyson saw Ramage’s raised eyebrows and added uncomfortably: “Better security than money, my brother, an’ they know it.”

  Was the brother literally a hostage? Ramage was not sure and phrased his next question carefully: “What does the money and your brother’s life guarantee, exactly?”

  The seaman shrugged his shoulders. “Hard to say, come to think of it. Our good behaviour, I s’pose. That you don’t interfere with the contraband trade and don’t hand me over to the authorities; and—well, that I get you there and back and don’t take risks with the smacks.”

  So the smugglers were quite ruthless: Dyson’s brother would get his throat cut if Slushy put a foot wrong. Ramage also pondered over “smacks.” Was another one due to sail with the Marie, or was Dyson referring to the one they were supposed to meet? He decided to wait and see: at the moment Dyson seemed angry with his smuggler friends and genuinely anxious to repay what he regarded as a debt to Ramage himself. Yet Ramage was curious at the way Dyson had been treated—it contradicted Simpson’s airy and open-handed behaviour of a few hours ago.

  “Tell me, do you have much to do with—well, no names, but he lives near Studfall?”

  “The gentleman you went to first,” Dyson nodded. “No one sees ‘im. Like the Navy, it is. If he’s the Commander-in-Chief—and I ain’t sayin’ he is,” Dyson added hurriedly, “then the like o’ wot I deal wiv is bosuns, and me a bosun’s mate.”

  “A big organization,” Ramage commented. “But when I talked with the man at Studfall, he promised me everything I asked.”

  “I’m sure he did, sir, and meant it too. The trouble starts among the men under him. It’s money, Mr Ramage; contraband round the Kent coast brings in a great deal of money, and where there’s that kind of money men get greedy and suspicious o’ each other. Money never bought loyalty, sir. The gentleman at Studfall won’t have any idea about the
guarantees I ‘ad to give; fact is, I dare say ‘e’d get very angry. But ‘e’ll never know; not from me, anyway: more than my life’d be worth, to make any complaint. An’ I ain’t complaining, reelly; you was askin’ me. Fact is, no man’s yer friend as far as bottle fishermen are concerned.”

  Rossi tapped the little table with his mug. “So sad, Slushy; I cry for you. Poco tempo, fa—not so long ago—you sell off the slush from the Triton’s coppers to make the extra soldi; now you are the grand signor. Of course is dangerous; of course is not many friends. But the Navy, amico mio, is short of friends, too. The Triton after you waved goodbye—two, three times we are in battle. And a hurricane—Madonna! such wind—and we lose our masts and run on a reef. Yes, Slushy, I cry for you—on your saint’s day.”

  “Thanks,” Dyson grinned. “That’ll be a great comfort to my old mother, p’ticularly since she reckons the Devil’s a Catholic. You want some more brandy in that mug?”

  Before Rossi could reply, Ramage interrupted: “What time do you intend sailing, Dyson?”

  The seaman pulled out his watch. “‘Bout eleven, sir—in fact, won’t ‘arm any to leave earlier. We can go now. If you’d let my men pass down your sea bags we can stow ‘em and then get under way.”

  He made no move as he put his watch away, and Ramage looked questioningly. “Do you have any special orders for me, sir? I mean, is there anything I need to do a’fore we get under way?”

  “Is anyone going on shore before we sail?” Ramage asked cautiously.

  “No, sir; my two lads are coming with us—part of the trip, anyway.”

  Unsure whether Dyson was deliberately talking in riddles or assumed he had guessed more than he had, Ramage decided to wait before asking any more important questions: Dyson seemed to be the kind of man of limited intelligence who thrived on mystery; who for various devious reasons made secrets from what others would regard as idle gossip or the kind of information imparted when passing the time of day.

  “What exactly were you told had been arranged with the man at Studfall?” asked Ramage.

  “No one seemed right to know. Take you and some men to Boulogne; stand by to bring you out again; mebbe bring some things back in between—reports and the like.”

  Ramage felt relieved. “That covers everything,” he said. “How will you be able to stand by?”

  “Smack’ll be waiting in Boulogne ‘arbour, sir,” Dyson said, his voice showing surprise that Ramage did not know that. “‘Ow else can I be standing by?”

  Ramage shook his head, trying to stifle his exasperation. “Dyson, I don’t know a dam’ thing about how you people run your affairs, so you’d better—” He broke off. The devil take it; he had neither the wish nor the patience (and too much pride?) to squeeze Dyson like a lemon for drops of information.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BY midnight the Marie was heading for Boulogne with the wind comfortably on the starboard quarter. Comfortably as far as steering her in the darkness was concerned, because the wind was far enough round that a few moments’ inattention by the helmsman or an unexpectedly large swell wave coming up astern would not gybe her all standing, the heavy boom and gaff crashing over as the wind filled the mainsail on the other side.

  As far as the Revenue officers in Folkestone and Dover were concerned, the smack Marie had sailed for a night’s fishing and, as usual, was under the command of Thomas Smith, who was noted down in the Register of Ships in Dover as her owner and to whom had been issued, under the recent Smuggling Act, a special licence.

  As its name indicated, the Act was intended to stamp out smuggling; but like most acts which Parliament in its wisdom passed with much talk and eventual self-congratulation, it was only a partial success (the Government’s view) or an almost complete failure (the view of the Inspectors of Customs stationed round the coast). Thus the judgment of the Government and of the Customs was really the same, but a politician prefers to describe an almost complete failure in more positive terms as a partial success. Men under orders to enforce the law had to take a more realistic and thus more negative view.

  So as far as the law was concerned, the Marie was going about her lawful business of fishing. She was more than a certain length and had a fixed bowsprit, so under the Act, Thomas Smith, her registered owner, had to have a licence. He had a licence and was at all times ready to show it to any official duly authorized to demand its production.

  The Act was an almost complete failure because the various experts concerned in drafting it would not (the view of the Inspectors of Customs) or could not (the subsequent excuse offered by the Government) interpret the appropriate requirements set out by the Board of Customs. Instead, Parliament passed an Act which was, as usual, a legal redundancy, and superbly upholstered with “whereby,” “notwithstanding,” “heretofore” and other such words so beloved of anyone who ever used a heavy legal textbook to prop open a door on a windy day.

  One did not have to be a boatbuilder to find the loopholes. The fixed bowsprit, for example. One boat could have a sliding bowsprit, which meant it could be run in (slid back out of the way, as a Customs Board member had patiently explained to one of the legal draftsmen working on the original Act), and put her into a certain category. Her otherwise identical sister ship could have holes drilled for a couple more bolts and, providing the nuts were tightened up, the bowsprit could be classified as fixed, putting her into another category requiring a licence.

  To a boatbuilder it was a distinction without a difference—an hour’s work with an awl and the supply of two long bolts, washers and nuts meant the owner decided whether his vessel had a fixed or a sliding bowsprit: it took only a matter of minutes to change from one to the other.

  In the case of the Marie the real owner was a wise man: he knew the value of having a document to flourish at an official, whether the commander of a Revenue cutter or a naval frigate. “What are you doing?” “Fishing.” “Prove you’re not out here for smuggling!” “Here’s my licence allowing me to fish nine miles offshore …”

  So the new Act modified an earlier one, the Hovering Act, which had at least given the Revenue men an excuse to act on suspicion. Any vessel waiting some distance off the coast was assumed to be “hovering for an unlawful purpose.” Now, under the new Act, licences had to be issued to applicants unless a very good reason could be found for refusing them, and the effect was to legalize hovering, to the delight of men like the owners of the Marie and the chagrin of the Revenue officers.

  Previously it had been enough to sight a vessel; the owner could later be charged with hovering. Now a vessel had to be caught smuggling—a far from easy job, since the larger smugglers were usually faster than the Revenue cutters—and searched for contraband, with the certainty that during the chase the smuggler would, if there was a risk of capture, quietly dump the contraband over the lee side, thus destroying any evidence and leaving himself with the excuse—should anyone claim that flight was proof of guilt—that he had fled because he thought the Revenue cutter was a French privateer.

  At midnight Ramage knew very little more about Slushy Dyson’s immediate intentions than he did before they slipped the mooring in Folkestone harbour. The two sea bags of spare clothing and Rossi’s bagpipes were in the cuddy, and Stafford and Rossi were already stretched out on the seats, fast asleep, along with the third man in Dyson’s crew.

  Thomas Smith, officially the owner and master of the Marie but, from the way he was treated by Dyson, no more than a hand, was at the tiller and to Ramage’s surprise (until he remembered Dyson’s reference to meeting another smack) steering a very careful compass course, cursing all the while that the wick of the tiny binnacle light had not been properly trimmed.

  Dyson had muttered something about the chart and gone below to the cuddy and lit the lantern, leaving Ramage and Jackson sitting on the deck, using a bundle of the smack’s nets as cushions.

  As far as the Marie was concerned, she might have been the only British vessel at sea. Jackson com
mented that if the people in England who worried about Bonaparte could see the Channel now, they would lock their doors, hide under their beds and pray to be spared to see the dawn.

  Thomas Smith lifted his head from the binnacle long enough to reveal that his mind was on Revenue cutters rather than invasion flotillas. “The Rev’noo won’t be takin’ a night orf, you can rely on thaat,” he said bitterly.

  Ramage suddenly jumped up with an oath: a dark red glow flickered up from the cuddy, as though the smack was on fire and about to explode. But even as Thomas Smith said phlegmatically, “S’only Slushy wiv the lamps,” the flickering stopped and Ramage realized Dyson must be preparing a signal lantern with a red glass. The light dimmed as Dyson turned down the wick and a moment later began to flash rhythmically through the open hatch, in time with the rolling of the smack, as Dyson hung it from a hook on a beam.

  “Shut the bleedin’ ‘atch, Slushy,” Thomas Smith growled. “The sentries at Dover Castle’ll see that light in a minute!”

  Dyson climbed up the ladder and slid the hatch closed, leaving a small gap for air to get below. “Just hanging the lamps up ready,” he explained. “Quarter of an hour to go, I reckon, then we’ll spot ‘er.”

  “Just one of the local whores or someone we know?” Jackson asked innocently.