Ramage & the Rebels (26 page)

“That may be so,” Bazin exclaimed angrily, “but who are you to kill him?”

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “He was not a true republican.”

“I know that well enough,” Bazin said as he half rose but sank back when he saw the Marine's cutlass. “But that is no reason for you, an aristo, to murder us.”

“But why should I murder him but spare you?” Ramage enquired mildly.

“Because … well, because … what I mean is, you should not murder me because I am a true republican; I believe in the freedom and equality of man. But Duroc—he was an
opportuniste.
He was a bosun before the Revolution. He joined the Revolution only to get promotion!”

Ramage took out his watch and inspected it. “Ten minutes before midnight,
citoyen.
For us,” and he could not resist putting a slight emphasis on
us,
“the new day is about to begin.”

He called to the sentry in the other cabin, and a minute later Duroc stamped through the door. Bazin leapt to his feet like a rocket, white-faced, crashed his head against the beam, and fell flat at Duroc's feet. The French captain looked across at Ramage, a grin on his face. “He knows all about revolutions. By dawn he will know all about working a chain pump, too. You have a droll sense of humour, milord, but it brings out the truth at times.”

A
MSTERDAM'S houses were painted in gay colours which the glaring sun emphasized without making them garish. The owners on the Punda side obviously preferred pinks and light blues while Otrabanda favoured reds, greens and white, but most of the roofs, steeply pitched and gabled in the Dutch style, had red tiles, in contrast to the wooden shingles favoured in the British islands. It was curious about the colour preferences but, Ramage thought, the explanation was probably mundane: the paint shop on one side stocked some colours; its rival the others.

The channel separating the two halves of the town was stained brown as it joined Sint Anna Baai, probably due to the slight rise and fall of tide draining out some of the water as it ebbed from the Schottegat, the inland lake.

The fort on Punda, Waterfort, seemed quiet enough; nor was there any sign of movement at Riffort on Otrabanda, “the other side.” The Dutch flags were flying from flagpoles on both forts; it was also flying from the building that Ramage assumed was Government House.

Amsterdam, Ramage decided, was an oddly attractive and typically Dutch town set down on an arid and desolate island whose sole function was to be the main Dutch trading post in the Caribbean. The Dutch had done their best to make the town look cheerful and they had succeeded. If you forgot the heat and the bright glare, Amsterdam could be any town built along a canal in the Netherlands. Certainly the general flatness of the island (if one did not look to the west as the hills began and rolled up to Sint Christoffelberg) made you think that the average Dutchman was only happy on flat land, although from seaward small hills gave the appearance of waves in a choppy sea.

The privateers were at anchor just at the entrance to Schottegat and still had the laid-up-out-of-commission look about them. He had only a fleeting glance of them through the telescope as the
Calypso
tacked in towards the shore, but it was enough to show him that nothing had changed since they had passed on their way to the west end of the island.

Aitken shut his telescope with a snap. “That fresh lot of smoke near Willebrordus puzzles me, sir. I'm sure it's from burning buildings. Black smoke with the white. If it was just scrub and grass burning, it would be white.”

“And I'm sure I could hear gunfire,” Wagstaffe said. No one else had heard it, but they had been almost to leeward of the smoke at the time and Ramage was quite prepared to believe the Second Lieutenant. Rennick, in his usual impulsive way, had wanted to be landed in Bullen Bay with a platoon of Marines to investigate, but as Ramage pointed out, gunfire and smoke in Curaçao was the concern of the Dutch Governor, and the Dutch, like the French and Spanish, were the enemy … Fire could only mean the destruction of bush and cactus, a few scraggy divi-divi trees, aloes and agaves, and perhaps some plantation houses (not many because there were few plantations). The goats and iguana would bolt, the wild doves would take off for quieter corners of the island, and the fire would eventually burn out.

The
Calypso,
under topsails alone in a fifteen-knot breeze that occasionally whipped up small whitecaps in sudden gusts, was steering north-west towards Piscadera Baai as Ramage looked up the channel into the Schottegat. But so far the only reaction to the frigate's presence in this part of the Caribbean seemed to be fish leaping away from her stem, like dogs dodging a careering carriage, and swarms of flying fish coming up out of the water like small silver arrows without making a ripple, then skimming above the waves for scores of yards and suddenly vanishing without the tiniest splash. The frigate birds, broad-winged with thin bodies, black and white, graceful in flight (yet to Ramage always ugly and menacing), swooped down on the flying fish, showing a fantastic skill in flying but attacked by the tiny laughing gulls. The chubbier boobies flew low, and often rested on the water like old ladies sitting in a market selling their wares, beady eyes alert, or dived for a fish. Very occasionally half a dozen dolphins played under the
Calypso
's bow, swimming at enormous speeds and crossing ahead of her so close it seemed they must be hit by the cutwater. The cry of “Dolphins!” usually sent the off-watch men running to the bowsprit and jib-boom, from where they would “ooooh!” and “aaaah!” until the dolphins vanished as quickly as they arrived.

Ramage decided to make one more tack across Sint Anna Baai, passing two miles off Waterfort and Riffort to wake up the gunners and perhaps provoke them into firing. This rattling of the bars was useful because although the
Calypso
had nothing to fear from shore guns at that range it was usually too close for them to resist firing. Careful observation of the puffs of smoke could reveal how many guns a fort had, and if they had not been fired for a long time they could sometimes do their owners considerable harm: a wooden carriage with hidden rot could send a gun barrel weighing a couple of tons spinning away in a shower of smoke and flame like a carelessly-thrown stick. Roundshot painted too frequently or neglected and rusted invariably ended up larger than they should be, like swollen grapefruit, and they could stick in the bore, with the gunners left unsure whether or not to fire the gun to clear it in case the barrel blew apart. Tacking back and forth in front of the forts and just outside their effective range was as good a way of teasing the enemy as any and always pleased the ship's company.

Taking the ship in closer than intended was also a way of ensuring smart sail-handling, Ramage mused. Lucky shooting which took away a mast or yard when fifty other shot had missed altogether seemed to happen more frequently at long range than close in. And many ships sailing in boldly with a nice fresh breeze to intimidate a shore battery had been lost when the wind suddenly vanished, leaving them becalmed, a stationary target and an artilleryman's dream.

He lifted his telescope for one more look at the town—from this angle he could see the third side of Riffort on Otrabanda. Beyond it, on Punda, there was a curious movement round the flagpole at Government House. In fact the big Dutch flag was being lowered. He looked at the flags on the two forts, but they were still flying. Yet—yes, there were several men round the bases of each flagpole.

Now a bundle was going up the flagpole at Government House and breaking out to stream in the wind—a plain white flag. Another was being run up to replace the Dutch flag on the fort at Punda. And now a third was being hoisted at Riffort.

A white flag, the flag of truce? Well, there was no question about its meaning; everyone treated it as a truce flag, the signal for a parley. But here, in Amsterdam, with ten French privateers safely anchored inside the two forts guarding the entrance? What could—

Aitken suddenly exclaimed as he saw the flags; then the lookout at the foremast hailed the quarterdeck. In a few moments the whole ship was buzzing with comment and speculation. Southwick, quite inevitably, sniffed and announced that it was a trick; that the
Calypso,
with
La Perle
hardly out of sight, should not get caught on her own bait.

“They can see we've a good breeze out here and there's probably a dead patch close in under their guns that we don't know about and where we'd be becalmed,” he announced. “It's no good trusting
mynheer;
he's a cunning fellow. Drives a hard bargain—and fights hard, too.”

Ramage walked to the binnacle and looked at the compass card. The wind was due east; with the yards braced sharp the
Calypso
could lay north-north-east, almost direct for Amsterdam. A bow-on approach gave the Dutch gunners the smallest target and made it harder to estimate—or guess—the range, because calculating the speed of an approaching ship was difficult. More important, the wind allowing him a direct approach also gave him a choice of direction if he needed to escape: ease sheets and bear away to the west or tack and bear away if he preferred the east.

A quiet order to Baker, who was the officer of the deck, had the Marine drummer beating his ruffles, which sent the men to quarters. A second order had the coxswain watching the compass and the men at the wheel as they brought the ship round three points to starboard.

By the time the trucks began rumbling as the guns were run out, the
Calypso
was headed for the channel separating the two halves of the town. In the distant days of peace, Ramage reflected, the
Calypso
would be preparing to fire a salute to “the place,” as the Regulations and Instructions termed it.

He checked the compass and noted the
Calypso
's bow was now heading a fraction to the north of north-north-east, although the men at the wheel were on course.

“Watch for the current, Mr Baker; it seems to be west-going and quite strong, perhaps a couple of knots.”

It did not really matter because the
Calypso
most certainly was not going up the channel, but young lieutenants are supposed to be quick to note currents. In many Caribbean ports a few degrees to one side or other of the course meant you would hit a rock waiting alone and unmarked for the careless mariner. Many rocks were named on charts after the ships that had hit and sunk beside them. It was the kind of enduring fame, Ramage thought, that he would gladly avoid.

Southwick had put down his quadrant and looked up after consulting a volume of tables. “We're a mile and three-quarters off the forts, sir.”

“Very well, Mr Southwick.”

Ramage opened his telescope once again, careful to set it at the focusing mark he had filed on the brass tube, and looked at the forts. There were a few people standing on the walls. Although it was impossible to be sure at this distance, they seemed to be watching rather than preparing for action. From their point of view the
Calypso
was approaching fast (they had an excellent view of her bow wave, which must look like a white moustache), and one would expect even the most controlled of battery commanders to open fire at a mile if he meant to be unfriendly. At the speed the
Calypso
was making, she'd be a mile off in about seven minutes.

Now Aitken was officer of the deck; Wagstaffe, Baker and Kenton were standing by their divisions of guns. Paolo Orsini (wearing a seaman's cutlass as well as that wretched little dirk, Ramage was glad to see) was waiting, telescope in one hand and the signal book in the other. Southwick, his usual burly self, was at the starboard side of the quarterdeck rail, using his quadrant, quite convinced that the Dutch were up to some trick but obviously unperturbed at the prospect.

The Master turned and said casually: “A mile off the fort on Otrabanda, sir.”

“Very well, Mr Southwick.”

A mile … why the devil was he going in so close? Ramage felt a sudden chill. Just because the Dutch had hoisted flags of truce, he had taken the
Calypso
almost into the port; yet the Dutch could just as easily lower the white flags, suddenly rehoist the Dutch colours in their place, and open fire—and quite fairly claim it was all a
ruse de guerre.
After all, he'd just done it himself to
La Perle
…

Yet his telescope still showed men standing on the walls of the fort at Otrabanda. And at Punda. But—what
was
going on there now, on the Punda side of the channel?

“Mr Orsini, hurry! Aloft with your telescope and tell me what that boat is doing in the channel.”

While Paolo bolted for the shrouds both Aitken and Southwick trained their telescopes forward, having to move across the quarterdeck to find a place where their view was not obscured by the bowsprit, jib-boom or rigging.

“It looks like a boat the size of our gig, sir,” Aitken reported. “Pulling perhaps six oars a side. And they are in a hurry!”

Ramage left Aitken to keep an eye on the boat: the
Calypso
was approaching the port so fast now that if there was going to be any treachery it would happen in the next few moments. The first warning would be those men vanishing from the walls of the forts: they would have their eardrums burst if they stayed there while the Dutch guns fired. If they vanished from the battlements, the
Calypso
would immediately tack out again: they would be his danger signal.

“The boat's hoisting a mast, or something, sir,” Aitken said, his voice showing uncertainty. “It's bigger than an oar but seems too short for a mast. And I can't think why they'd step a mast now: it would have been easier to do it alongside the quay.”

The
Calypso
was almost gliding now as she came in with the land, which was flat enough not to interrupt the wind but formed a lee from the swell waves, so the sea was almost flat. Suddenly, just as Aitken reported he could not make out what was going on in the boat because he could not get a clear view, an excited Paolo hailed from high up in the mainmast. “A boat is pulling out towards us, sir … Twelve oars … Only one or two people in the sternsheets … Now they're holding up a white cloth on an oar … they're waving it, sir …”