Ramage & the Rebels (10 page)

Ramage gave a start as the drummer began rattling away, and below decks the boatswain's mates began their ritual, the calls shrilling with the noise that earned them their nickname, “Spit-head Nightingales,” and followed by the bellows and threats to the seamen to get them out of their hammocks.

And once again the
Calypso
's ship's company went to their stations for battle: decks were sanded, guns run out (they had been left loaded, their muzzles protected from spray and rain by ornately carved wooden tompions), cutlasses, pistols, muskets and pikes were issued to the men, the Marines formed up under Rennick's sharp eye (Ramage had once heard a Marine grumbling that the Lieutenant was a vampire who could see in the dark).

The sea was slowly turning a dark grey: because of a trick of the light the black, oily, fast-moving waves were slowing down and seemed higher, and one could see them approaching as the sky lightened almost imperceptibly towards the cast.

Ramage saw that Southwick had come on deck and was standing at the forward side of the quarterdeck, his hands on the rail, looking forward. Of all the men on board, the Master had most invested in what daylight would reveal today: he had predicted that they would see the land of Curaçao broad on the starboard bow, distant fifteen miles, while on the larboard bow would be the much smaller island of Bonaire.

Ramage would not be sorry to see Curaçao, though for a different reason from Southwick: with the
Créole
keeping station astern, it was necessary to keep a poop lantern burning because it had been a dark, overcast night, and Ramage did not want to risk the schooner losing sight of the
Calypso.
The lantern had been badly trimmed and was smoking slightly, and the sooty smell seemed to have penetrated all of Ramage's clothes as various random puffs of wind went round under the transom and came up over the taffrail.

Again Ramage shrugged his shoulders under his boat-cloak, trying to make it fit more closely: the downdraught from the mizen topsail was like a miniature gale blowing down his neck and always particularly bad with the wind on the beam. Well, the draught was always there, he admitted to himself; it became a habit to say it was worse from whatever quarter the wind happened to be blowing at that moment. It meant, of course, that one hoped that the next alteration of course, bearing away a point or luffing up, would send the downdraught on to some other more deserving victim. It never did, of course.

The circle of grey was extending fast now, and Baker came up to him.

“Permission to send the lookouts aloft, sir?”

“Yes,” Ramage said, “and send Orsini up with a bring-'emnear: Southwick will want to know the moment anyone sights land.”

Baker laughed, gesturing towards the Master, who was still standing at the quarterdeck rail like a nervous punter waiting for his horse to come in sight.

The Master's navigation had been accurate; twenty minutes later, as the ship's company hosed down the decks to get rid of the sand and secured the guns, replacing boarding-pikes in the racks round the masts, Paolo's hail from aloft told them land was coming into sight through haze on the larboard bow, which was Bonaire, and from two to four points on the starboard beam (from south-south-west to south-west, Southwick noted on the slate kept in the binnacle drawer), which was Curaçao. There was no mistaking it: flat to the east, hills gradually rising until they ended in a cone-shaped mountain in the west, Sint Christoffelberg.

They were nicely to windward, Ramage saw; with the harbour half-way along Curaçao's south coast, the
Calypso
and
La Créole
could run in from the north-east with a commanding wind. Any alert sentries at the eastern end of the island should spot the frigate and schooner against the sunrise, but later, as they came closer, they would be up the sun's path and the glare would dazzle a watcher, making it more difficult for him to distinguish flags. All the more reason why such a watcher should assume that a frigate and a schooner so obviously French-built were in fact French.

Rossi swept up the last of the brickdust and looked at the brass rail on the top of the companion-way. That polish would satisfy the First Lieutenant—providing some
stupido
did not touch it before it was inspected. Fingermarks, fingermarks, he thought crossly. The fingers of half the men in this ship were used only to dab on newly polished brasswork, or so it seemed.

Jackson and Stafford had half a dozen leather buckets lined up by the mainmast. The water had been emptied out and they were polishing the leather before they were refilled and hung back on their hooks, firebuckets, which would be useless in case of fire but which, with the name
“Calypso”
painted on them, looked smart. Looked smart from that side, but anyone with a little curiosity looking at the other side would see the faint scratches and scoring in the leather, done when the paint of the original French name had been removed with a sharp knife.

“Ever been to this Kurewerko, Jacko?”

“Sounds as though you're writing poetry. You pronounce it Cue-rah-so. No, never been there; never had anything to do with the Dutch.”

“They're reckoned to be fighters, the Dutch.”

Jackson nodded. “Hard people, so I hear. Hard in business, hard drinkers, hard fighters.”

“What've they gorn into business with the Dons and the French for, then?”

The American shrugged his shoulders. “Politics or profit. Them and women are at the bottom of most things.”

“Women,” Stafford muttered nostalgically. “Them Dutch women is usually very beamy, from what little I seen of ‘em. An' what a clatter they make, them as wears those wooden shoes.”

He held up the bucket he was polishing so that its sides caught the sun. “It's women what make me wish we was in the Mediterranington,” he said.

“Mediterranean,” Jackson said, correcting the Cockney out of habit. “But I don't remember reckoning you as a lady's man when we
were
there.”

“Weren't much opportunity, were there? But Italy, and Spain …”

“I've seen some beamy ones there too. Built like threedeckers. Corsica, as well. Remember ‘em in Bastia, selling fruit and vegetables? As round as their cabbages, some of them.”

“Oh yus, yus. And they had luvverly oranges, an' every now and again yer saw a real beauty. Woman, I mean.”

“You might have done,” Jackson growled, “but I never did.”

“Yus, I prefer Italy. The Marcheezer,” Stafford reminded him.

“She don't count,” Jackson said firmly. “There was only one of her in the whole of Italy.”

For the next fifteen minutes the two men reminisced about the rescue of the Marchesa from the Tuscan beaches and the subsequent voyage to Gibraltar, and then they were joined by Rossi who, finished with polishing brass, now had to help them with the buckets.

Rossi was, for once, not interested in discussing women, although it was a subject on which he claimed to be an expert. His verdict was always the same—that no women equalled those from Italy, and with it the implication that anyone who disagreed was probably a eunuch.

“These privateers, Jacko: you think we find them in Curaçao?”

“Preferably just outside,” Jackson said grimly. “Then we can sink ‘em or burn ‘em while their friends watch from the shore.”

Rossi said with relish: “Remember the
Tranquil
… let ‘em burn.”

One of the bosun's mates, coming over to see how the work was progressing, looked up startled. “What's burning?” The look in his eye showed that fire at sea was the fear of every seaman.

“Nothin's burning,” Stafford said soothingly. “Not yet, anyway. We're just ‘opin' to catch some privateers and make bonfires of ‘em.”

“Use my flint and steel, then,” the bosun's mate said bitterly. “You should ‘ave seen those people. You did, Jacko. Slashed to pieces, particularly the women. Whoever killed those five was like a butcher's apprentice.” He looked at Jackson, who was regarded by most of the ship's company, quite erroneously, as being in the Captain's confidence. “Are we reckoning on finding privateers in Curaçao? Never heard tell of them using the place before. It's a Dutch island, ain't it?”

The American shrugged his shoulders and ran his hand through his thinning, sandy-coloured hair. “Looks to me as though it's turned itself into a privateers' nest. I only know that's why we're going there, to look for ‘em, though why they've all started using it as a base I don't know. Our frigates are probably making it too hot for them along the northern coasts, I suppose. Not many Spanish ships move around Cuba. Hispaniola's quiet, so's Puerto Rico.”

“That don't leave many other places except the Main,” commented Stafford.

“You don't understand the first thing about privateering,” Rossi said with a surprising fluency. “The privateer, he capture a ship and he capture a cargo, and sometimes he capture passengers. Three things. He is not interested in anything else.” With a wave of his hand he disposed of the victim's crew over the side in a boat.

“He make his profit from these three things. He sell the cargo—for that he need a port and a market, a place where merchants have money. Then he sell the ship. He need the same thing. Port, merchants, men with money. For the passengers—well, collecting the ransom is hard work, and if he think he get enough profit from the ship and cargo
allora,
he let the passengers go in the boat—or—” he gestured to the northwards—”he kill them.”

“You seem to know about privateering,” commented the bosun's mate.

“In Genova I did not train to be a
prété,
” Rossi said simply. “I do not have the face for a priest. But privateering—” he held his hands out, palms upwards—”it is like fishing, only no nets to mend.”

“Why is privateering all right there and not here?” Jackson asked shrewdly.

“Privateering is all right
anywhere,
” Rossi said emphatically, “but in the Mediterranean only the
Saraceni
would kill passengers. Leave them only the boats, yes, but murder—no!”

Jackson could not remember having seen the Italian so coldly angry. In fact there was not a man on board the
Calypso
who had not been shocked by the death of those women, as though each could imagine a wife or mother or sister.

“Era barbarico!”
Rossi declared, “and if I find the man …” He made an unmistakable gesture showing how he would castrate them. “That is to start with. And then—”

“Hold ‘ard,” Stafford said, “leave us to guess. My imagination's too strong and I can imagine it ‘appening to me.”

“The Spaniards,” Rossi growled, “they march about Italy for too many years.”

“‘Ere, Jacko,” Stafford said reminiscently, “you remember that fortress near where we rescued the Marcheezer? Where you an' Mr Ramage went and fetched the doctor?”

“Santo Stefano, that was the place. The fortress was named after some Spanish king. The one that sent off the Armada. Philip the Second.”

“La fortezza di Filipo Secundo,”
Rossi said. “I know it, built high over the port. That Filipo—the worst of the Spaniards. He taxed everybody and used the money to build fortresses everywhere to guard them. Guard them against anyone ever rescuing them.”

“I thought it was the French you didn't like.” Stafford enjoyed teasing the Italian.

“I do not like the French, no, because they capture Genova now and call it the Ligurian Republic. But in the past we not have the much trouble from the French. The Spanish, though. Always they rush to the Pope. They think all the Italian states belong to them. Always these cruel things for scores of years; centuries in fact. The rack for the heretic, the stiletto for the rival … and out here the cutlass for the women passengers.”

“These buckets,” said the bosun's mate, giving a shiver, “they're polished enough now; let's get ‘em filled and hung up again.”

All across the
Calypso
's decks men were now finishing off various jobs. The tails of halyards and sheets, of dozens of other ropes which had been used in the last few hours, were neatly coiled; the bell in the belfry on the fo'c's'le gleamed as the sun caught it; occasionally there was the smell of wood smoke as a random eddy of wind brought it back from the chimney of the galley stove where the coppers were already boiling the meat for the men's midday meal.

In fifteen minutes the calls of the bosun's mates would have the men exercising at the guns, the First Lieutenant watching closely, a watch in his hand. In the meantime the
Calypso,
now pitching and rolling with the wind and sea on her larboard quarter, headed for the eastern edge of Curaçao, followed by
La Créole.

The island was a bluish-grey blur on the horizon and with the sun still low the long shadows thrown by the few hills distorted the shape. But as the sun rose and the
Calypso
approached at almost eight knots, within an hour the grey gave way to faint browns and greens.

Ramage, newly shaven and beginning to feel fresher after an hour's nap and some breakfast, watched the island from the quarterdeck rail. He knew that by now the lookouts at the eastern end of the island would have sighted the ships—the
Calypso
anyway, with her higher masts—and no doubt a messenger on horseback would even now be galloping to the capital of Amsterdam with a report.

Southwick joined him, telescope under arm and judging by the contented look on his face, with a good breakfast inside him. He pointed at Curaçao, now on the
Calypso
's starboard bow as she sailed down through the channel separating the larger island from Bonaire to the east.

“Must be the worst bargains in the Caribbean, these islands,” Southwick said. “Just goats, cactus, aloes, salt pans, hardly any rain … must drive men mad to be stationed here …”