Ramage & the Rebels (22 page)

Aitken, having passed all his orders, was now steadily and fluently cursing
La Perle
's First Lieutenant, his Scots accent becoming more pronounced as he pictured the damage that would soon have to be repaired along the
Calypso
's quarter. None of them thought to look at Ramage; none except the quartermaster, who was Thomas Jackson. The American watched him from habit. He was not sure quite what the Captain intended, but there must not be the slightest delay in passing a helm order. Jackson knew the men at the wheel were reliable, quite competent to watch the wind-vanes and the luffs of the topsails, and for the moment had to admit he could not see how the Captain was going to get out of this situation. He heard the grumbles of the First Lieutenant and the contemptuous snorts of Mr Southwick, and he noted that oddly enough the only person who was not worrying about any damage to the ship was the one man who would be held entirely responsible for it, the Captain, and from long experience Jackson knew that if the Captain was not worrying, then the odds were that there was nothing to worry about.

Personally, he had to admit that if he was the Captain he would be—well, worried: that French frigate was not only sagging down on them but moving faster than the
Calypso.
Now she looked as if her bow would hit amidships: she'd shove her jib-boom and bowsprit through the mainshrouds and the wrench would probably carry away the mainmast.

Ramage, rubbing the scar over his eyebrow and then snatching his hand away as he realized what he was doing, took one last look at
La Perle
and then briskly said to Aitken: “Cut the cable!”

He walked over to an open gun port and looked over the side. The
Calypso
was still making more than a couple of knots; she had steerage-way. The Frenchman was making a good four but slowing fast. And she would not hit the
Calypso
's quarter for two reasons—first, that foolish French Lieutenant was still trying to luff her up, but was losing speed and control instead, and second, the sheer which turned the
Calypso
towards her could, with the wheel turned back, swing her away; swing her just enough that instead of
La Perle
's bow ramming the
Calypso
amid-ships she would crash her whole starboard side against the
Calypso,
as though she was intending to board. And the moment that happened … He gestured to Jackson and gave the order which began the
Calypso
's sheer to starboard, swinging her stern away from
La Perle,
but agonizingly slowly.

He glanced back at
La Perle:
already her towering jib-boom was abreast the
Calypso
's quarterdeck but passing it. Now the bow, and he could see the black paint peeling, rust weeps from iron fittings, stains where garbage was thrown carelessly over the side. Now the foremast … French seamen just standing there or peering over hammock nettings, astonishment or fear showing on their faces, but none wielding a cutlass or aiming a musket.

Now
La Perle
's sails flogging overhead, not drawing, and the sloshing of water as waves rebounded between the two hulls. But, Ramage realized, no orders being shouted across the French ship's deck.

La Perle
's mainmast passing now. She is slowing down appreciably, her sails not drawing, and she is very close: you could lob a grapeshot on to her deck. The sheer to starboard is working well: the two ships are now on almost identical courses but just slightly converging, and both are slowing down:
La Perle
because a desperate First Lieutenant has braced up the yards too much and starved the sails of wind, the
Calypso
because the cable has been cut and
La Créole
has let the rest go and is already wearing round, determined not to miss the next few minutes.

Then the crash. For a moment Ramage, nearly flung off his feet, thought they had hit a rock, but the rending of wood as
La Perle
's hull scraped along the
Calypso
's told the story.

Crisp shouts along the
Calypso
's decks showed the junior lieutenants had their men in control. Grapnels flew through the air to hook into
La Perle
's rigging and hold the two ships together, and then there was no more movement of the ships:
La Perle
was stopped alongside, her transom level with the
Calypso
's quarter-deck rail so that Ramage could see her three officers, one of them no doubt the First Lieutenant, standing rigid on the quarterdeck, looking more like statues. They were all watching the
Calypso
's quarterdeck, as though expecting the devil to appear.

Ramage held the speaking-trumpet to his mouth and shouted forward: “Away boarders!”

“Sir!” Southwick said pleadingly, and Ramage nodded, and the Master ran down the quarterdeck ladder to join the boarding parties streaming over the bulwarks.

In the meantime the two ships began swinging to starboard:
La Perle
had more way on when she hit and she was slowly turning the
Calypso
to starboard, away from the beach. And that, Ramage realized, was what he wanted: the
Calypso
would end up to leeward of the French ship and, by letting fall her sails and cutting the lines to the grapnels, could get clear.

The shouting on board
La Perle
was unbelievable but, Ramage noted thankfully, there had been no pistol shots so far. The metallic clang of cutlass against cutlass was dying out—he'd heard only a few, less than a dozen. And all along the larboard side of the
Calypso
the guns' crews waited in their respective positions trying to see what was going on, and no doubt frustrated at not being allowed to fire even one broadside before the boarders were ordered away.

Ramage now aimed the speaking-trumpet at
La Perle
's quarterdeck and shouted in French: “Do you surrender?”

The French First Lieutenant must be the tall, thin man, and he looked dazed. He had heard Ramage and turned to stare at him, jaw slack and puzzled. But he was giving no orders. In fact, Ramage suddenly realized, the poor fellow probably had not noticed the
Calypso
's Tricolour coming down at the run several minutes earlier, and at the very moment the
Calypso
's boarding party streamed over the bulwarks he had been expecting to hear a stream of abuse from Captain Duroc …

Jackson called to him, pointing almost overhead. Ramage looked up to see
La Perle
's Tricolour coming down, and hauling at one end of the halyard was one of the officers. The man he thought was the First Lieutenant was watching; not with interest but with the same fascinated stare of a rabbit facing a ferret.

“What,” Southwick grumbled, “are we going to do with three hundred French prisoners?”

The two frigates, still alongside each other, were slowly drifting westward off the coast of Curaçao with
La Créole
circling them like an anxious mother hen worrying over her chicks that were now fully grown.

“First we attend to the ceremonial,” Ramage said, nodding to where Lieutenant Rennick, a sergeant and six Marines were climbing back on board the
Calypso
with three French officers in their midst. The officers were wearing their swords and once they were on the
Calypso
's deck, with Rennick leading and shouting brisk orders and the Marines stamping their feet as they marched in time, they walked along nervously in the centre, trying to get into step.

Rennick and his Marines were enjoying themselves, and Ramage waited until the three French officers were standing to attention in front of him on the quarterdeck, covered by the Marines, and Rennick was reporting in a stentorian voice the presence of French officers who wished formally to surrender. At least, he added in an outburst of honesty, he did not speak French but he thought that was what they meant.

But for the fact that the Marines rarely had a chance to show off their drill, Ramage would have cut short the ceremony:
La Perle
had been taken without a shot being fired from a pistol or one of the great guns, and she had been handled like a bumboat coming alongside with vegetables to sell. The French officers deserved to be bundled below without so much as a nod.

“Please introduce yourselves,” Ramage said in French. “I am Nicholas Ramage,
capitaine de vaisseau,
and commanding His Britannic Majesty's ship the
Calypso.
”

At the mention of his name two of the lieutenants glanced nervously at the third, the tall and thin man Ramage had seen earlier on
La Perle
's quarterdeck and who still seemed to have a fixed stare.

“Jean-Pierre Bazin,
lieutenant de vaisseau,
formerly second in command of the French national ship
La Perle!
” He drew his sword, making his movements very deliberate, obviously worried in case the gesture might be misunderstood by the Marines. He held the sword hilt-first towards Ramage. “I surrender my sword.”

“And the ship,” Ramage reminded him.

“Yes, and the ship, milord,” Bazin said hurriedly.

Ramage was puzzled by the “milord” but turned to the next Frenchman as he handed Bazin's sword to Aitken. The Second Lieutenant gave his name, surrendered his sword and was followed by the Third Lieutenant. The Fourth Lieutenant, Bazin hastily explained, had died of yellow fever two weeks earlier. “Do you speak English?” Ramage asked Bazin casually, and when the Frenchman shook his head signalled to Rennick to take them below.

As soon as they were marched off, Ramage turned to Aitken and realized he was still holding the three swords.

“Share them out,” he said. “Have one yourself. How about you, Southwick?”

The Master shook his head. “I don't need a memento,” he said. “But just think of it—a French frigate captured without a shot fired and not one man killed or wounded. On our side, I mean. You'll get a
Gazette
for that, sir. Only ten lines, perhaps, but what a despatch! Three hundred men and a 34-gun frigate captured with a 100-fathom cable!”

“Aye, just look at her.” Aitken gestured at the great bulk of
La Perle
with his free hand. “Not a sail to mend nor a bit o' rigging to knot or splice. Not a shothole for the carpenter to plug. Aye, and not a man to be buried either … Just one or two Frenchmen for Bowen to stitch up.”

He put the swords down on the deck beside him. He looked embarrassed as he turned back to Ramage; his usually pale face was slightly flushed and now he was not holding the swords he did not seem to know what to do with his hands.

“I think—we, I am sure, sir, the ship's company would want me to say on their behalf—and mine, too, sir—that …”

By now Aitken's accent had deepened and he came to an embarrassed halt. Ramage was puzzled and gave the First Lieutenant a minute or two to recover, then said: “Well, Mr Aitken, take a deep breath and finish what you were going to say!”

“That-they-appreciate-how-you-managed-to-save-lives, sir.” It came out as one long word, and Southwick nodded as Ramage heard Jackson, the men at the wheel and the crews of the nearest guns murmuring in agreement.

“You took the devil of a chance, if you don't mind me saying so, sir,” Southwick said in his usual blunt way. “If we'd failed, no court would have believed what you were trying to do.”

Ramage nodded in acknowledgement to Aitken and said dryly to Southwick: “If I'd failed we wouldn't have been alive to face a trial.”

“Don't believe it, sir. Their Lordships have a deputy judge advocate stationed permanently in hell: he has a quire of paper, a gallon of ink, a bundle of quills, and a copy of the Articles of War.”

“And if I go to Heaven?”

Southwick shook his head. “Doesn't matter, sir; they have another one sitting beside St Peter …”

“But!” Ramage said, grinning broadly.

“But what, sir?” The Master screwed his eyes up in concentration, knowing Ramage was teasing him and trying not to fall into any trap.

“But we succeeded, so their Lordships won't worry.” Southwick gave one of his more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger sniffs, and Ramage said: “I'm just going down to have a word with that French First Lieutenant. Pass the word, please, Mr Aitken, I want him brought to my cabin. And don't be too hard on the French. I wonder if we could have resisted poking our noses in, if we'd seen a small schooner towing a frigate …”

B
AZIN could hardly believe his eyes when, a few moments before
La Perle
's bow crashed into the
Calypso
's quarter, the prize-frigate suddenly began to move over to starboard, as if deliberately moving over so that
La Perle
could come alongside without a collision.

At the same moment a seaman by the mainmast began shouting at the quarterdeck something about the
Calypso
's gun ports, and Bazin saw that they were opening, and her guns were being run out. It is all very strange, he thought; first they drop the Tricolour and now they run out the guns. And here is Roget, the Second Lieutenant, his face as white as a sheet and shaking him by the shoulder and screaming at him, his teeth bared like a mad dog. But the words are slurred—by fear, though there's no need to be scared now; there will be no collision. “Control yourself, Roget; speak slowly.”

Roget swallowed hard, took a deep breath—and Bazin gave him credit for the way he controlled himself—and then said, very distinctly: “It's a trap. She's English.”

“Don't be stupid! She made the correct challenge. And all the signals!”

“She's English, I tell you—she's dropped the Tricolour; there's just the English flag now. Look, you fool! It was a
ruse de guerre.
”

At that moment the two ships touched, hull against hull, like a fat couple walking down a narrow alley, and the Second Lieutenant turned and ran to the quarterdeck rail, shouting at the seamen to stand by to repel boarders, but even as Roget shouted Bazin saw grapnels flying through the air on the end of ropes, and as the crunching and banging ended with
La Perle
stopped alongside the
Calypso,
he also saw the bulwarks of both ships suddenly become alive with men: seamen from the
Calypso,
waving cutlasses and pistols, and wielding long boarding-pikes, and shouting weird cries.