Ramage & the Rebels (19 page)

“Mr Aitken, make a signal to
La Créole
to tack. But don't hoist it: I want the flags hung over the bow where
La Perle
can't see them and have Lacey's attention drawn to them by a musket shot. If the Frenchmen see flags being hoisted that they don't recognize …”

“Aye aye, sir,” the First Lieutenant said briskly.

“And I hope he has plenty of way on that schooner when he puts the helm over.”

“I warned him about that,” Aitken said dryly. “I didn't want our dead weight pulling his stern back again and putting him in irons.”

Ramage nodded and looked over towards the island. Once they were on the other tack they would be steering almost directly for the shore. It would take them half an hour to reach the beach, and although half an hour sounded a long time it would seem a matter of moments if anything went wrong. Particularly, Ramage thought grimly, if the person involved was a French lieutenant upon whose shoulders the fate of two frigates and a schooner was suddenly and unexpectedly thrust.

A
ITKEN stood by the binnacle watching the schooner. Lacey had acknowledged the signal to tack and had then turned away a good point to starboard and eased sheets to increase
La Créole
's speed. The cable running from the schooner's stern to the
Calypso
's bow now had less of a curve in it, straightened by the extra pull, and when the strain suddenly brought several feet of rope jerking up out of the sea, water spurted from between the strands, like a burly washerwoman wringing out sheets.

Then, with the
Calypso
now moving faster, the schooner began to turn slowly and deliberately to larboard. Aitken snapped out the order to the quartermaster, who relayed it to the two men at the wheel, and they hauled at the spokes. Almost at once the
Calypso
began to turn inshore and Ramage watched. The frigate should be round and on her new course by the time
La Créole
had completed her tack, and during that time the cable would have slackened just enough, dipping deeper under its own weight so that it would act as a spring to dampen the jerk as the frigate's weight came back on it.

“Mr Orsini,” Ramage said quietly, “you have
La Perle
's numbers ready to hoist?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“And number 56?”

“Yes, sir—
'Ship indicated shall take disabled vessel in tow, the course to be steered to be made known in the next signal.'
”

“The signal for the course is bent on ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what course is that?”

“North-east, sir.”

“Very good. Don't get them mixed up.”

Paolo Orsini was angry. His olive skin was flushed; his brown eyes glared. For a start he was wearing a seaman's shirt and white duck trousers, instead of his uniform, and he had no hat, except this straw thing woven out of palm fronds and painted. He was more proud of his uniform than anything except perhaps his name, although fortunately no one had so far strained his loyalties to find out, and he resented his present garb, even though all the officers were similarly dressed.

Not only had Uncle Nicholas—the Captain, he corrected himself sarcastically—made him wear these wretched clothes, so that he looked like some damnable
sans-culotte,
but he kept asking silly questions about the signals. They were the right ones, they were bent on different halyards, they had been checked half a dozen times. Five times by himself, and once furtively by Jackson and Rossi who, with Stafford and the sailmaker, had sewn up the French flags in the first place and had written what each one was in small figures at the bottom of the hoist. Orsini had been angry when he first saw the figures and had rounded on Jackson, who had just listened and then winked.

Winked! Not offered any explanation to the officer whom the Captain had made responsible for signals, which was himself, but winked. Admittedly no one else could see the wink, but a wink was no way to behave towards a midshipman. Why, he could have taken Jackson to the Captain and reported his insolence. Not that that would have done any good, he admitted, his anger melting as quickly as it had arisen, because the Captain would have pointed out that Jackson was helping him. And so he was; it was the kind of thing that Jackson did, quietly and without anyone else seeing, and Paolo sheepishly admitted to himself that he was grateful. It was so hot down here in this latitude; too hot to think and certainly too hot to remain good-tempered.

Anyway, the signals made no sense. Was the Captain going
pazzo?
What was the point in this French frigate
La Perle
taking the
Calypso
in tow instead of
La Créole?
Did he have some other task for the schooner? And why tow the
Calypso
anyway? Why didn't the
Calypso
cast off the tow and get alongside
La Perle,
then pour in a few broadsides and board her in the smoke? That's what
he
would do if he was the captain. Captain Orsini.
Dunque,
three broadsides and
allora,
it would be all over.

And this tacking. Just look now:
La Créole
is towing them straight towards the shore!
Mama mia,
if she gets into stays on the next tack offshore we'll all end up on the beach. And you can be sure the
Calypso
will bilge herself on the only rocks along a mile of sand and spring some planks, so all we'll hear for the next couple of days will be the clanking of the chain pump and the creak of our own muscles. Every man will have to take his turn—in this heat too, when it is too hot to think, let alone pump. And the Dutch cavalry will come galloping along and start sniping at us. Then they'll bring up artillery and the
Calypso
will not be able to fire back because she'll be heeled to seaward and all her guns on the landward side will be pointing up in the air.
Accidente,
what a mess, and all because Uncle Nicholas didn't—then, to his surprise, he saw they were still a mile from the beach, the
Créole
towing steadily, and the French frigate still hove-to. The way his imagination ran away with him … if Uncle Nicholas had the slightest idea, he'd send him back to Aunt Gianna!

Ramage looked at his watch. Five minutes to go. There were nearly two hundred men waiting on the
Calypso
's lower-deck, which must be like an oven.

“Carry on, Mr Aitken!” he said, “I'm just going below for a few minutes.”

He clattered down the companion-way, noting yet again the comfort of the trousers: going up or down steps in breeches always caused an uncomfortable tightness across the knees. He made his way forward to the mess-decks, where the men waited. Not only was it appallingly hot but it was smelly. There was the sickly stench of bilgewater, the last gallons that no pumps could ever clear, and the smell of which was usually cleared away by the downdraught of the sails. At anchor the water settled, but now, with the ship rolling under tow and no sails set, the effect was like stirring up a stagnant pond on a hot, windless day.

The men were grouped round the ladders with their officers. Wagstaffe, the cheery Londoner, was obviously keeping his men amused; he had a good fund of stories and could mimic Stafford's Cockney accent. Baker, the burly young Third Lieutenant from Bungay, in Suffolk, was quiet; the chance of him telling a funny story to amuse his men was remote, but they all seemed to like him. And finally, of the sea officers, the Fourth Lieutenant, young Peter Kenton. His shortness and red hair made him conspicuous, and because his heavily-freckled face was usually peeling from sunburn, he seemed younger than his 21 years. His men looked contented, while Rennick and his Marines were a compact mass of pipeclay.

All of them fell silent as soon as they saw Ramage, a silence not caused by awe but because they were obviously expecting him to say something. He had not intended to do more than show himself, but rows of expectant faces made him climb a couple of rungs of a ladder up to the main hatch so that he could be seen by all the men.

“While you fellows are resting down here,” he said, and they all gave murmurs of mock protest, “we have been busy on deck. We have the Captain of the French frigate on board as a guest—of the Marines, who I hope have him in irons in the gunroom—and the
Calypso
is being towed by
La Créole,
as you know, to save you all the effort of sail-handling on a hot day.”

The laughter showed that the men liked this teasing, simple as it was, but time was passing and he was anxious to get back on deck. “At the moment the French frigate is hove-to astern. Within an hour I hope we shall have captured her. You'll get your orders. Speed is what will matter. Speed will mean success. It'll also be your best protection. In the meantime
La Perle—
that's the name of the French frigate—is quite convinced we are
La Créole
's prize. Well, we'll see. We know how much their Lordships reckon French frigates are worth in prize-money and we know the deductions for damage, so we'll be gentle with
La Perle.
”

With that the men cheered him and he swung up the ladder into the bright sunlight. In the past few months each of the men had earned a considerable amount of prize-money—from ships including the
Calypso
and
La Créole—
and they obviously liked the idea. Each of them was now entitled to more prize-money than he could earn in wages in twenty years at sea. Curiously enough it did not seem to affect their attitude to life—or death, rather. A man with several score guineas due to him, enough to go home and set up a little business which would keep him comfortably into a prosperous old age, might well be more anxious than usual to stay alive; he might show some reluctance when going into action. Wasn't it Frederick the Great who berated his tardy Prussian guards with: “Dogs, would you live forever?” A sensible man's answer, Ramage reflected, would be an uncompromising yes, but fortunately the Navy (and the Army too!) comprised men born without an excessively strong sense of self-preservation.

On deck once again the sun's glare was harsh and it took him a moment or two to adjust his eyes. Curaçao seemed startlingly near but automatically he checked: he could see the beach clearly so it was less than three miles; he could see a shrub the height of a man growing at the back of the beach but not quite distinguish the colours of the flowers growing on it—so it was between two miles (colours indistinguishable) and one (colours distinguishable). Call it a mile and a half. On this course, making an angle to the coast,
La Créole
had two miles to sail before she ran up on the beach, followed by the
Calypso
nearly one hundred fathoms, or two hundred yards, astern.
La Perle
was still hoveto and he could make out her main rigging, so she was a mile away: the
Calypso
and
La Créole
by tacking, were in effect sailing along the tangent of a circle of which
La Perle
was the centre.

As he walked to the quarterdeck Ramage began rubbing the scar over his eyebrow. He knew he had gone below to see the men because the tension of remaining on deck was getting too much: he hated the split-second timing on which the next part of his plan depended, the split-second timing which depended not on the hands of a watch but on his own judgement. And through making that speech—the mouthings of bravado—he had probably wrecked everything by starting the second part of the plan two or three minutes late. But stay calm, he told himself: if you try to rush people they just make silly mistakes.

“Orsini—hoist
La Perle
's pendant number!”

His voice was so calm that he surprised himself, but he could afford it because earlier he had made the boy check the flags. Now the midshipman and his two seamen hoisted them smartly.

“Now number 56 of the French code.”

“Aye aye, sir.” As the boy and the seamen hoisted Paolo repeated:
“‘Ship indicated shall take disabled vessel in tow, the course to be steered to be made known in the next signal.'”

“Very well,” Ramage said. “Let me know when she acknowledges.”

But even before he finished speaking three telescopes were trained on
La Perle
: Aitken was standing with his back to the quarterdeck rail, balancing himself on the balls of his feet against the
Calypso
's gentle roll, Southwick was watching with the complacency of a prosperous farmer inspecting a ripe field of corn, half of which had already fallen before the reapers' scythes and with the weather set fair, and Paolo had snatched up a telescope with the speed of a conjurer producing an out-of-season apple from the rector's hat.

Even Ramage could see without a telescope as
La Perle
answered. “They had the flag already bent,” Southwick commented.

“Now, Orsini, hoist the signal for north-east, and make sure it is acknowledged.”

Aitken and Southwick walked over to join Ramage, who had remained by the binnacle, which for the moment was shaded by the furled mizen topsail.

“I'm glad I'm not that French First Lieutenant,” Aitken said to no one in particular.

“Why not?” Ramage was surprised at the Scotsman's gloomy tone.

“Well, sir, he's been ordered to take us in tow, but how is he to get the cable from
La Créole?
By the time he gets up here the schooner will be nearly on this coral reef running parallel with the beach. There'll be hardly any room for him to manoeuvre. If he stays too far off he could hit the reef; if he gets too close to the
Calypso
he runs the risk of hitting
La Créole.
But somehow he has to get that cable secured on board!”

“You've forgotten two other things.”

“What, sir?” Now Aitken was surprised.