Ramage & the Rebels (16 page)

No French frigate. She was still at Aruba. He looked astern—
La Créole
was so close it seemed her bowsprit and jib-boom would soon ride up over the
Calypso
's taffrail. Lacey's lookout—Ramage could just make him out, a fly clinging to the mainmast—would also be reporting an empty horizon, and the schooner's men would be equally disappointed.

Ramage said nothing for several minutes, then commented to Wagstaffe: “I can see a grey goose at a mile.”

That was the standard distance always used for visibility: from that moment each morning the life of the ship could go on. Small arms would be stowed in the chests, and guns run in, canvas aprons, or covers, lashed over the flintlock on each gun to shield the flint and mechanism from spray, and the cook would soon have the galley fire alight (it was always doused when the ship went to quarters). And then the cooking would start. Cooking … everyone could have their meat however they wanted it, as long as it was boiled; and the same went for vegetables. The Navy had a sense of humour when they called the man a cook: he had only to light the galley fire and boil the water in the coppers.

Today, Ramage remembered, was sauerkraut day. The pickled cabbage was good for the men's health, but he could well understand their lack of enthusiasm for it because when a cask was first opened it smelled like a privy. Worse, in fact. The stench lasted only fifteen minutes, but it quickly filled the ship. And, the dutiful captain, he always made a point of sampling it even though the thought, let alone the taste, made him want to retch.

In the meantime the damned French frigate was not in sight and the south and west coasts of Curaçao had little to offer by way of scenery. He would spend the day off the entrance to Amsterdam: it would help keep the Dutch quiet, and there was always a chance of capturing a fishing boat, so they could discover what was happening on the island.

He beckoned to Wagstaffe and took the speaking-trumpet, hailing the lookout at the mainmasthead. “Can you see any smoke over the land?”

“No, sir; nor smell it.”

The lookout was wide awake: they were dead to leeward of the island now, and a lookout high aloft would be much more likely to smell smoke than someone on deck, where the odour of bilgewater, tarred rope, the breath of the men chewing tobacco and the damp smell of clothing provided strong competition. There was, of course, the usual smell of hot and dry land. Not the rich herbs-and-spices of Spain or Italy, but a dried-hay-and-manure smell of an arid tropical island just before the sun gets high enough to scorch off the night dew.

The fires causing yesterday's smoke near the village with the impossible name had not been spread to the western end of the island by the night breeze, nor had he seen any glow. The lighter eastern sky now put this western side of Sint Christoffelberg into dark shadow and the hills rolling down towards the flat eastern end of the island looked more than ever like giant waves tumbling flat to their death on a beach. There was no sound of gunfire, cannon or musket. The island's troubles were obviously over. Ramage pictured cattle sheds accidentally burning, and men shooting fear-crazed animals. He shrugged his shoulders: fire in these parched islands was as dangerous as in a ship.

It was time to beat back to Sint Anna Baai and look once again at those privateers: a beat of twenty-five or thirty miles against a west-going current of one or two knots, perhaps more, probably increasing as the wind came up. He looked round for Southwick and, relaxing, suddenly felt hungry. In ten minutes or so his steward Silkin would come on deck to report that his breakfast was ready. The sky was clear—an hour or so after sunrise the little white puffballs of cloud would begin to form up to the eastward and start their daily trek to the west; the sky would become a bright blue, the sea its dark reflection, hinting at great depths, the unmarked graveyard of the centuries and of secrets. And the sun would climb steadily to sear and scorch, withering plants and men, directly overhead at noon at this time of year and making everyone thankful for the cool of night.

For forty years or more the buccaneers had tacked along this coast. That was a century and a half ago, when it was always called the Spanish Main. Had his great-grandfather passed this way, heading for one of the towns on the Main? He had a sudden longing to know; to be able to sail up to a Spanish port and know that great-grandfather Charles and his men had once captured it from the Spanish. Even to take bearings of the peak of Sint Christoffelberg and Westpunt, and draw them in on a chart to fix the ship's position, and to know that Charles Ramage had done just that, using a crude chart for the lack of anything better and an even cruder compass. Old Charles had won a fortune from the Spanish along the Main; enough to rebuild and furnish a home shattered by Cromwell's troops, men who thought beauty was a sin and were offended by one of the loveliest houses in the west country.

“Old Charles”: why
old?
He may well have been in his twenties at the time, the same age as his great-grandson was now. Curious how one rarely thought of a forebear as having once been young. Why, he wondered, these recent thoughts about Charles, who had succeeded a brother as the eighth Earl of Blazey?

Ramage had served in the Caribbean for several years without giving Charles more than an occasional moment's thought; now it was almost as though he was sailing with him. He then realized it dated from finding the
Tranquil
with her passengers and crew just massacred by the privateer with a Spanish name. That had jolted his memory, thrusting him into the past.

He suddenly noticed that Southwick was waiting patiently; the old Master was used to finding the Captain daydreaming, and he knew when to interrupt and when to wait, without appearing to be waiting. “Disappointing, sir—not seeing the Frenchman, I mean.”

“I've never met a punctual Frenchman.”

“True, sir, true,” Southwick said soothingly, “you did warn us we might have to wait a day or two. Still, we may pick up a Spanish prize by this evening—they must trade between Amsterdam and the Main. I seem to remember all the fruit and vegetables for the islands come from the Main in small schooners; they have a market in Amsterdam, selling direct from the schooners.”

Ramage nodded, already regretting his sourness. “They have so little rain that they must get fresh food from somewhere. But a prize schooner laden with bananas and cabbages …”

“The men would be glad of fresh cabbage instead of that sauerkraut, sir. We have to open a cask today.”

Neither Ramage nor Southwick mentioned the prize regulations: there were times when a sensible captain ignored them. The regulations said that any ship taken in prize had to have its hatches sealed and be sent into a British port, where it would be inventoried, valued and sold at auction. There was no provision in the regulations for capturing a small Spanish schooner or sloop laden with perishable fruit and vegetables. A prize would have to be sent to Jamaica, some 700 miles to the north-west. The chances of such a vessel staying afloat for a long voyage (local schooners and sloops were roughly and cheaply built) were slight, and a fruit and vegetable cargo would be rotting within hours and almost explosive in a couple of days. A schooner full of exploding bananas …

A wise captain, ever on the watch for scurvy and the fresh fruit and vegetables that could prevent it, would in such a case take off the cargo, sink the prize, land the two or three men on board, or let them off in their boat, and make a note in the ship's log implying the capture was only the size of a rowing boat, and therefore scuttled. It would be different if a schooner was laden with tobacco, grown on the Main and shipped to Curaçao—that would be worth a lot of money.

“We'll return to Amsterdam, patrolling about five miles off,” Ramage said, “and Lacey can take
La Créole
in closer every four or five hours to took at the privateers and generally rattle the bars.”

“Can we stay close in with the coast, sir? I'd like to have another look at where we saw those fires.”

So Southwick was intrigued as well. “As close as you want: there's deep water right up to the shore, isn't there?”

“My chart says ‘No bottom at 100 fathoms' to within a hundred yards or so, sir, and the water's crystal clear. I reckon once the sun's up you'll see the bottom at ten fathoms or more. Coral reefs just off the beaches and sometimes up to five hundred yards off.”

Ramage looked astern, and
La Créole
was still as close as if she were on a short tow. “Mr Wagstaffe, we'll wear ship in a few minutes and make our way back to Amsterdam. Make a signal to
La Créole—
I don't want his bowsprit poking through our stern lights while I'm eating my breakfast.”

The foremast lookout gave an excited hail: “Deck there!” Southwick, Wagstaffe and Ramage all stared at each other, then looked upwards. Wagstaffe ran to the binnacle drawer for the speaking-trumpet, but Southwick capped his hands and roared: “Foremast lookout—deck here! What do you see?”

“Sail on the larboard bow, an' I think she's steering towards us. Reckon she's a ship o' war; could be a frigate, sir!”

“Wear ship at once and make a signal to
La Créole,
” Ramage snapped. “Send Jackson aloft with a telescope. Muster a party on the fo'c's'le and make sure they have heaving lines handy.”

He waited until Wagstaffe and Southwick had given those orders and watched as the
Calypso
swung round, away from the distant ship and heading towards Amsterdam. Men hauled on sheets and braces, trimming the yards and sails so that the frigate was now sailing eastwards, parallel with the coast, the sun giving a hint that it was about to rise on the larboard bow.

“What the devil's happened to Jackson?” he snapped. He did not expect an answer and turned to watch
La Créole.
She was still in the
Calypso
's wake and Lacey was handling the schooner well, but the next ten minutes would finally show whether he was a natural leader or just another lucky young man commanding by virtue of a piece of parchment signed by a commander-in-chief.

And then Jackson was hailing from the masthead: “She's three-masted, sir; everything set to the royals. Hull below the horizon, but she's a frigate and from the cut of her sails looks French to me.”

Southwick caught Ramage's eye and winked cheerfully. “That's her, sir; Jackson's never mistaken.”

Ramage nodded. “Make the special signal to
La Créole,
” he told Wagstaffe, “and as soon as she hauls clear of our wake, back the fore-topsail and heave-to on the larboard tack.”

“Beat to quarters, sir?” Southwick asked.

“No, not yet; we've plenty of time and a lot to do.”

He glanced round and saw Gianna's nephew scurrying up the quarterdeck ladder. He was off watch, but obviously had heard the hailing.

“Orsini!” Ramage barked, holding out a small key. “Top right-hand drawer of my desk—fetch me the French signal book. And lock the drawer again.” Then, just as the boy turned away, Ramage remembered, “It's in the weighted canvas bag, along with the other papers. Make sure you secure the neck of the bag again before you lock the drawer.”

That small canvas bag, containing the secret daily challenge and reply for the next three months, along with the extra copy of the British signal book and his orders, and weighted with a six-pound bar of lead, was the most valuable object in the
Calypso
: if she was about to be captured by the enemy, that bag had to be thrown in the sea. If it fell into enemy hands and Ramage survived, he would be court-martialled as soon as the Admiralty could get their hands on him, and ruined. No excuses were ever accepted for that, and every captain knew it.

C
APTAINS, Paolo thought to himself as he scurried down the companion-way; they always treat everyone else as a fool. All Uncle Nicholas need have said was: “Get the French signal book from the top drawer.” If it was not on top, he'd have guessed it was in the canvas bag, and he'd have unlaced it, taken the book out, and laced the bag again. All without having to be told.

Nod to the Marine sentry and a quick explanation: “On the Captain's business.” The sudden darkness of the cabin, the key in the lock, and there's the bag. The canvas coarse, the brass eye-lets for the roping going green with corrosion caused by the salty sea air. And that's it, the signal book—funny how he thought in English now, and saw the French language on the cover quite differently than when he lived in Italy and French was always the second language.

A wonderfully precise language, English: you could be so exact. But, he thought ruefully, remembering Mr Southwick's stern questioning during navigation and mathematics lessons, that was one of the language's drawbacks: Italian and French allowed you to give a more evasive, even imaginative, answer; there was more scope for disguising the fact you didn't know something; for dissembling. But Mr Southwick taught mathematics and navigation in English; good down-to-earth and unambiguous English.

Lock the drawer again, don't lose the key. What is Uncle Nicholas planning? All that amount of anchor cable ranged on the foredeck. “Ranged”—a good word, that. Surely he's not intending to anchor close inshore? It is the lightest of all the cables, and there's no anchor bent on. Nor, for that matter, would the cable be ranged on the fo'c's'le if he was going to anchor.

If only he'd been on deck sooner he would probably have been sent to the masthead with Jackson. Paolo loved it aloft, the ship small and narrow-beamed below him, the men tiny, like lizards scurrying on a marble floor. Ah well, he was too late to go with Jacko, so belay the grumbling.

An odd man, Jackson. The men said that he and Uncle Nicholas had saved Aunt Gianna's life, had literally snatched her from under the hooves of the French cavalry. And, only a few weeks ago, Jackson had saved his own life. Aunt and nephew. But the American had said nothing about it at the time, nor had Uncle Nicholas: Rossi had finally told him, and then only to say that Uncle Nicholas had been angry with him for joining the boarding party when they cut the
Jocasta
out of Santa Cruz.