Ramage & the Guillotine

by Dudley Pope

  Dyson glanced at him in the darkness, his eyes as red as a ferret’s in the chink of light escaping from the hatch. “Our opposite number, o’ course!” he said scornfully. “Wotcher fink’d ‘appen if the Marie stayed out fishin’ for a month, or ‘owever long you want ter stay in France?”

  “I was wondering,” Jackson admitted.

  “Nah,” Dyson said patronizingly. “The Marie’ll be back on ‘er mooring in Folkestone ‘arbour time enough for the early market this morning.”

  “Won’t have much of a catch, though.”

  “Enough,” Dyson said airily. “Already caught and sorted and boxed by now, it is.”

  “So I see,” Jackson said lightly.

  “I should think so; you seem to be very slow sometimes.” With that Dyson lapsed into silence and a frustrated Ramage was left little the wiser. At least he now knew they would be transferred to the vessel they were going to meet, and the Marie would return to Folkestone. It was the obvious way of doing it, but would only work if there was a prearranged rendezvous. How would they be able to get back from France? How long did it take to arrange a rendezvous—two or three days? It was going to be a devil of a job sending back reports, and if things went wrong in France there was no chance of a hurried escape.

  All of which, he told himself, angrily, was his own fault: he should have forced Dyson to explain everything before they left Folkestone; explain while there was still time to change his plans. Because of his own carelessness, he was in Dyson’s hands. Carrying out the intentions of the First Lord of the Admiralty depended on the whim of a deserter, a former cook’s mate and mutineer who had the marks of a flogging on his back and was now a smuggler … Afterwards, if the whole thing was a fiasco, he could imagine Lord St Vincent’s questions, in that deceptively quiet voice. And Lord Nelson’s, in that slightly nasal tone, the Norfolk accent unmistakable. “You planned the whole operation so that its success depended on the actions of a deserter, eh, Ramage? … You stand there and admit that halfway across the Channel you still didn’t know what the devil this fellow intended to do? … You didn’t plan the operation?” The voice would be incredulous. “You just met this smuggler in a bar and went on board his smack without making any arguments whatsoever?”

  If he was honest with himself, he had to admit that he could hardly believe it either. In giving him these orders, Lords St Vincent and Nelson had made it more than clear that the safety of the whole nation might depend on his success. Both of them had anticipated that the difficulties and dangers would be in France. Instead, the crisis seemed to be coming in mid-Channel …

  Dyson hauled a watch from his pocket and bent over the binnacle to catch some light. “Not a bad guess: quarter past midnight: time for the lanterns.” With that he opened the hatch to the cuddy.

  “You’d better rouse Stafford and Rossi,” Ramage said, “and tell them to bring up the sea bags.”

  “They’d better stay there out of the way—men and bags,” Dyson said as he climbed down the ladder. “My fellow and Tom, an’ if Jacko’ll bear a hand …”

  While a puzzled Ramage was digesting that, Dyson popped up at the hatch again, holding the red lantern. “‘Ere, Jacko, ‘old this a minute while I get the other one. Watch out, Tom; shut an eye when I call, or you’ll be completely dazzled.”

  Ramage had already turned away to keep his night vision and blinked as he saw a red and then a white spot of light. “Dyson—red light over white, fine on the larboard bow, less than a mile away.”

  The seaman grunted as he scrambled up with the second lantern. The red lantern had lit the Marie’s deck and mainsail with a soft glow; the harsh white light showed every seam and made the shadows of the rigging dance on the canvas.

  “Red above white, eh?” Dyson murmured. “Ah yes, I see ‘er. Jacko, hold that red lantern as high as you can.” With that he held the white lantern below it. Immediately the distant red and white lights were changed so the red was above. Dyson then held the white lantern so that it was level with the red. The distant lights once again reversed position.

  “Challenge and reply,” Dyson muttered, opening the door of the red lantern that Jackson was holding and blowing out the flame. “That’s the fellow we’re looking for. Put the lantern down below, Jacko, and rouse out my man, will you? Time he woke up.”

  As soon as the third man emerged from the cuddy, Ramage saw a new Dyson: a man snapping out orders which had the Marie’s heavy mainsail lowered and furled, followed by jib and staysail. The thumping of the boom and rattle of the mainsail hoops brought a sleepy Rossi and Stafford on deck. Within ten minutes the other vessel had sailed down close enough for Ramage to identify her as another smack and as she luffed up and dropped her sails he was puzzled by the fact that her shape was familiar. She had the same curious stern as the Marie—neither typically Kentish nor typically French, but reminiscent of both.

  Thomas Smith and the third seaman had by now hauled up the small boat which they had been towing astern. The third man jumped into it, put in the thole pins and then unlashed the oars.

  Dyson said to Smith: “You got the papers in your pocket? Right, off you go, then.”

  With that Thomas Smith climbed down into the boat and Dyson let go the painter.

  “Time now for a bite to eat,” Dyson muttered as he lashed the tiller which was slamming back and forth as the Marie pitched. He took the lantern and climbed down to the cuddy. A couple of minutes later he pushed a small basket up through the hatch, calling to Jackson to grab it, and followed with the lantern.

  “Cold chicken, cold potatoes, bread and”—he put a bottle down beside the basket—”some good red wine I had stowed in the bilge. May be vinegar by now, what with all the shaking up, but usually it lasts well. I’d like your view on it, sir.”

  Ramage almost laughed: Dyson’s comment on the wine was spoken with all the proud authority of a gourmet inviting an opinion on the first case he had received of a vintage wine.

  As Dyson began unpacking the basket he suddenly swore.

  “‘Ere Rosey, nip down and get the mugs, will you? Give ‘em a wipe out with the tail o’ yer shirt, else the wine’ll taste ‘o brandy.”

  The five of them squatted round the lantern and began eating thankfully as Dyson tore cold roast chicken apart with his fingers and shared it out. The cold potatoes had been roasted in their skins, sliced in half when cold and a piece of butter put inside.

  “Greasy p’tater, my mother calls it,” Dyson said as he offered one to Ramage. “But don’t eat it too fast, sir, else it lodges on the breastbone an’ gives yer what for.”

  They had just finished eating and were wiping greasy fingers on their trousers when there was a hail from the darkness.

  “Here ‘e comes,” Dyson said matter-of-factly. “The new master of the lerbong b’tow Marie.”

  It took Ramage a moment to realize that Dyson was merely massacring the French language. Would the new master of le bon bateau Marie be French?

  The man who scrambled up after throwing the painter on board and pausing only a few moments to lash the oars was indeed French; and as his face was lit up by the lantern on the deck, throwing the eyes into shadow, Ramage saw that by comparison Dyson’s face was one which inspired confidence and trust, but only by comparison.

  It was as if a wilful Nature had created a face which was the exact opposite of Dyson’s: the Frenchman, introduced to Ramage with a brief, “This ‘ere’s Louis,” looked like a pumpkin into which had been pressed, too far apart, two black buttons for eyes, two holes which were nostrils—no nose as such was apparent—and two narrow sausages which were his lips, and between which a furry tongue popped out in a grotesque circular motion every minute or so. Occasionally the lips parted to reveal uneven and blackened teeth.

  Louis was about five feet four inches tall and his body, a barrel stuck on two short legs, reminded Ramage of a performing bear sitting up and begging while his master played a fiddle. Louis gave the impression of enormous strength
. In contrast to his short legs, his arms were long, and he stood with a thumb jammed in his belt, arms akimbo, tongue appearing to circle briefly, like an obscene rodent poking an inquiring head out of its lair.

  The Frenchman stared curiously at Ramage for a few moments, and then said to Dyson in heavily-accented English: “We get the mainsail up, eh?”

  From the way he spoke, it was clear that Louis, if not Dyson’s superior in the smuggling hierarchy, was at least an equal, but it was equally clear that Dyson resented the fact.

  “Got the papers?” he demanded.

  The Frenchman tapped a pocket and repeated, “We get the mainsail up, eh?”

  Dyson swung round and walked towards the mainmast. “Give us ‘n ‘and,” he said to Stafford and Rossi. “That throat halyard just about creases me up.”

  Jackson threw off the gaskets and as the mainsail was hoisted Ramage noticed that Rossi was hauling down on the throat halyard and Stafford the peak, while Dyson was standing back encouraging them. And that showed more clearly than anything else that Dyson, the Marsh Man, was considerably more artful than Stafford, the sharp-tongued Cockney. With those two vying with each other to avoid the hard work it was inevitable that the good-natured Rossi should end up with the throat halyard. But all the native shrewdness and tricks learned during a childhood spent in Genoa emerged the moment Rossi thought he was “being took advantage of,” a phrase he had learned from Stafford. With the main halyards belayed, Ramage was not surprised to see that Dyson and Stafford found themselves hoisting both staysail and jib while Rossi walked round, explaining loudly that he was “tending sheets.”

  Louis, hunched over the binnacle, pushed the tiller over as soon as the Marie had steerage-way, and grunted his thanks as Ramage trimmed the mainsheet.

  Dyson came aft and squatted down on the deck with an exaggerated sigh of weariness. Ramage thought for a moment and then asked: “Well, what do we do when the Marie goes into Boulogne?”

  Dyson glanced up in surprise as he opened the lantern and blew out the flame. In the sudden deeper darkness he said: “Do sir? Why, we let Louis go on shore and shout loudly there’s no fish, an’ he takes the papers to the port captain. Then, when it’s dark again, you all go on shore. You’ll have to stay down in the cuddy while it’s still daylight.”

  Steady, Ramage told himself; the tone of Dyson’s voice made it clear the man was stating what he considered to be obvious.

  “I thought you said the Marie had to be back in Folkestone by dawn …”

  “But she will be, sir!”

  Ramage struggled to speak quietly; to keep the edge out of his voice—an edge which Louis, if his English was bad, might well misinterpret.

  “Dyson, one ship can’t be in two places at once. The Marie can’t be in Boulogne and Folkestone at the same time.”

  “But she can,” Dyson protested and then, as Jackson began to laugh, hastily explained: “There’s two Maries, sir; habsolutely hidentical they are. See, it don’t matter which one goes into what port, perviding the master’s got the right set of papers. The authorities don’t know, o’ course!”

  “Of course,” Ramage said casually; so casually that only Jackson knew how angry he was with himself. “So Louis will have caught enough fish for Thomas Smith to run into Folkestone market.”

  “Five stone,” Louis grunted, revealing his knowledge of English.

  “But—you said Louis reports we caught nothing when we get to Boulogne. You don’t intend to try on the way in?”

  “What, an’ get the stink of fish all over us?” Dyson made it clear that as far as he was concerned, the idea was unthinkable, but he added: “Mind you, if Jacko or someone wants to try his ‘and with an ‘ook and line …”

  “The French port authorities—won’t they get suspicious?” Ramage asked cautiously.

  “Never ‘ave so far; we pay ‘em enough to take their suspicions somewhere else. It’s only the English Revenoo men we ‘ave to worry about. They’re all too stoopid to take bribes!”

  “Or too honest,” Ramage said.

  “Same thing,” Dyson said bitterly. “Gawd save us from ‘onest fools. ‘Ere, Jacko, in that locker there you’ll find a board with ‘Boolong’ written on it. Take it out and change it for the one that says ‘Dover’ on the transom. Just slips up and down vertical, like a sliding window.”

  Dawn found the Marie running into Boulogne with a Tricolour flying from the leech of the mainsail and only Louis and Dyson on deck. For the previous hour both men had taken it in turns to search the horizon carefully with a night glass.

  “It can get like a main highway out here,” Dyson had explained. “So many of our frigates and cutters keeping a watch. We usually time it so we’ve got ‘em east of us as dawn breaks, so they show up against the lighter sky. That gives us a chance to dodge. Still, quiet enough this morning.”

  Louis invited Ramage to watch at the hatch so he would recognize Boulogne from seaward again: there had been many changes, he said, pointing out the stone forts of Pointe de la Creche and Fort de l’Heurt, and several batteries round the harbour and on the cliffs and hills surrounding it.

  “Barges,” he said, pointing at the rows of vessels anchored close inshore and almost hidden in a gloom only lightly washed by pink from a sun still below the horizon. “Gunboats, and sloops too. More there—and there. They build there—” he pointed at the shore, where what seemed at first to be several wooden buildings on the sloping foreshore proved to be vessels under construction on crude slipways. “Very slow. No money, no wood, no shipwrights. No sails and no ropes either. Even when money and wood, still slow. Butchers’ and bakers’ apprentices is all they have, twenty old men and boys to every shipwright, and sometimes conscripts. The Admiral—he goes crazy. Much trouble when the Corsican makes a visit …”

  He pushed a hip against the tiller and pointed again: “You see the camps? Five so far—have you ever seen so many tents?”

  Boulogne seemed as martial as Folkestone was peaceful, and Ramage felt a brief dismay. This was what the lists had said, but somehow he had not actually pictured what they had told him. Twenty barges—yes, it didn’t seem much when written down, but the devil of a sight it looked, with them moored bow to stern! The Norman—for Ramage had at last managed to identify his accent—made no secret of his contempt for Bonaparte, a contempt that seemed both deep-seated and genuine. As he stared at the rows of barges, Ramage said: “Do you think Admiral Bruix is ready to sail his flotilla to England?”

  Louis shrugged his shoulders. “They brag like Gascons; all the invasion talk is gasconade. Yes, he could sail a flotilla …” But there was no mistaking the contempt in his voice. “Anyone could sail a flotilla from Boulogne. But to reach the English coast—that is another question! Boxes, these barges; they are beyond management.”

  He gestured to Ramage to get his head below the level of the hatch. “We pass close to the watch tower in a few minutes. You stay down now.”

  Dyson, anxious to seem well informed, said: “Once you go on shore you’ll be able to walk around and look for yourself, sir; they don’t have guards or nothink, just patrols roaming the streets like stray dogs.”

  “Dogs can bite,” Ramage heard Stafford mutter from the forward end of the cuddy.

  Louis said sharply: “Mainsheet, Sloshy!”

  Dyson hauled the sheet hurriedly. “Enough?” he asked hopefully.

  “You are too lazy to haul in too much,” Louis said sarcastically. “Now the staysail sheet. Then you drop the flying jib.”

  The Frenchman was a good seaman who obviously took a delight in keeping Dyson running about the deck. The flying jib had not been down five minutes before he wanted it hoisted again and sheeted home, explaining that the wind was falling light, and a puffing Dyson had only just completed that task before Louis wanted the boat painter shortened in.

  “Give us a luff,” Dyson gasped as he tried to haul the boat closer to the smack, “there’s too much weight: I can’t haul in an inch w
iv you racin’ acrorst the ‘arbour.”

  “I’m not loffing,” Louis snapped crossly. “You haul him in, and make the rush; we are alongside the quay in two minutes, and then you ‘ave the ‘urry.”

  Jackson called up through the hatch: “You were better off in the Triton, Slushy.”

  “At least I could mutiny and only get a couple of dozen lashes,” Dyson gasped glumly. “I don’t fink Louis’d let me off as lightly.”

  “No one else would, either,” Jackson said. “You were lucky to pick the only Captain that would.”

  “I know, I know,” Dyson said impatiently, “an’ that’s why I’m here, trying to ‘elp ‘im.”

  Ramage felt the Marie heel sharply and then come upright again. “Leave the boat painter,” snapped an exasperated Louis. “Drop the jib, then the staysail. Then stand by the main halyards.”

  By now the sky was lightening, and down in the cuddy they heard the jib halyard squeaking through the block, and then the rope slatted against the mast. That was followed by the rattle of the staysail halyard, and the sail thumped the deck for a few moments before Dyson stifled it.

  A couple of minutes later Louis’s order to lower the mainsail turned into a stream of virulent French curses softly spoken but punctuated by grunts of exasperation. Then the light moving round the cuddy warned of a change of course and the water gurgling more slowly told Ramage that the Marie was losing way. There was a gentle thump as Louis put her alongside the quay and Ramage saw him move swiftly across the open hatchway, obviously not trusting to Dyson’s alacrity with the dock lines.

  “Wish it was always like this, comin’ into ‘arbour,” Stafford muttered. He turned to Ramage with a grin. “I’m a born passenger, sir.”

  “I noticed that a couple of years ago,” Ramage said sarcastically, “though I never thought I’d hear you confess it. Still, if you ever serve with me again …”

  Dyson stuck his head down the hatch. “Welcome to Boolong, everyone. No Frenchies about, so you can talk, but don’t come up on deck. Louis is going up to the ‘arbour capting’s orfice with the papers.”