Ramage & the Rebels (31 page)

It was a long way from Dunkeld to Amsterdam, from the Highlands of Scotland to this parched tropical island perched on the edge of the Spanish Main, and, despite the excitement and actions of the past few months, these latest twenty-four hours almost passed belief. At this very moment the frigate of which he was First Lieutenant—of which he was second-in-command—was moored across the entrance channel of the port of the island of Curaçao, the Netherlands' most important base in the West Indies. Not a man or vessel could stir without Captain Ramage's agreement. And now the Captain was becoming impatient, too, but his hand still felt shaky.

“Sign under Major Lausser's name. Your full name, and then ‘Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and second-in-command of His Majesty's frigate the
Calypso
' underneath. Don't blot it.”

The Captain was speaking quietly, just as he had been doing for the past couple of hours. And what a couple of hours. There were times when Mr Ramage had refused some Dutch request and it had seemed unreasonable: he, James Aitken, would have agreed with the Dutch on that. Then a few minutes later it would become clear that the refusal was proof of how quickly the Captain's mind had been working; he had looked far ahead and seen difficulties, and the Dutch Governor had finally agreed, often looking very crestfallen that he hadn't thought of it first.

Well, there was the result of it all: a folded sheet of paper in exchange for an island nearly forty miles long and with a harbour third only to Port Royal in Jamaica and Cartagena on the Main. And there were the signatures—Gottlieb van Someren, Governor; Lausser, Major; Ramage, Captain; and now James Aitken, Lieutenant.

And he had managed to write it without making a blot. The writing
was
a bit shaky, but Lausser had been nervous, too; he had wiped his hand before signing because it was obviously damp from perspiration. And perspiration meant nervousness because this room was delightfully cool, built so that the Trade wind blew along its entire length, and the sun was kept out by the jalousies.

Now a second copy was being passed across. This was the French version. The Governor had wanted the second copy to be in Dutch but Mr Ramage had refused because he did not speak the language. Finally they had agreed on French, which he suspected Mr Ramage spoke better than the Governor.

Now they all shook hands. The Governor paid him a nice compliment, too, about handling the
Calypso
and helping with the negotiations. And the Governor suddenly said, pointing at the signed documents: “Before we were enemies; now we are friends.”

“But we have quite a task ahead of us,” Mr Ramage said, obviously warning the two Dutchmen that signing papers might end wars but it didn't win battles.

B
ACK on board the
Calypso
Ramage returned Wagstaffe's salute and commented on the springs now on the anchor cable. With only three hours of daylight left, there was a lot to be done. The
Calypso
's other three boats had been hoisted out and now floated astern of the frigate, the ducklings behind the mother.

The officers were all within sight of the gangway: obviously they had expected a surge of activity the moment the Captain and the First Lieutenant returned from Government House. Ramage decided it was too hot for them all to go down to his cabin and pointed towards the binnacle.

Briefly and quickly Ramage gave each of them his instructions. Rennick was to divide his Marines among the
Calypso
's four boats. Wagstaffe was to command one, Baker another, Kenton the third, and Ramage himself the fourth. This had resulted in protests from both Southwick and Aitken, but Ramage had silenced both of them by asking if they spoke French. When they admitted what he knew well, that they did not, he had shrugged his shoulders, as if that was the reason why they had not been chosen.

In fact Ramage had decided to lead the little expedition simply because he was bored; there was no chance of any action, but the walk to and from Government House had been the first escape from the
Calypso
's quarterdeck for weeks, and his cabin was beginning to feel like a cell. None of the other officers had been off the ship, but they had each other's company in the gun-room while the captain lived in almost monastic seclusion.

Ramage took out his watch. “We start in fifteen minutes. Mr Kenton, will you pass the word for my coxswain?”

With that he went down to his cabin and, with Silkin's help, changed into an old uniform. Jackson arrived before he had finished and, told what was about to happen, began methodically to load the pair of pistols which were kept in the case in the bottom drawer of Ramage's desk. They were a matched pair, beautifully balanced, a present from Gianna and bought the day he had been made post. In fact the visit with Gianna to the gun-smith in Bond Street had been his first foray in his new uniform, when the single epaulet showing he was a post captain with less than three years' seniority seemed to weigh a ton and pull his shoulder down.

First Jackson snapped them to make sure each flint gave a strong spark; then he opened the chamois-leather bag of lead shot, looking like dull grey marbles, and selected two that had no dents or flaws. Then he opened the box of wads, small circles of felt the diameter of the bore of the guns, took out four, and reached for the two powder horns. From the larger he poured a measure down the barrel of one pistol—a lever on the spout of the horn measured the exact amount—and, with a rammer, pushed home a wad, then a shot, and then a second wad. He then took the smaller horn and poured some of the fine powder it contained into the pan and shut it. He then repeated the process with the second gun.

He looked at the two guns critically. They were beautifully made and no doubt very accurate but, he wondered, how would they stand up to the kind of harsh use that was usually the pistol's lot in a ship of war: fired and then often hurled at an enemy's head, dropped on the deck, used as a club? The regular Sea Service pistol had the grace of a hammer compared with these, but it could also stand up to being used as a hammer, a bung starter or a wedge driver. Accuracy as such was not really important; it was rare that a man with a pistol fired at a target more than twenty feet away; in fact, Jackson realized, he could not remember ever aiming at a target even that distant: fighting on board a ship was a close-range business, often little more than jamming the muzzle of a pistol in an enemy's ribs and squeezing the trigger.

As Ramage came into the cabin, having changed, Jackson held out the pistols, which Ramage took and slid the belt clips into the waistband of his breeches. Jackson saw that he now wore a cutlass-belt over his shoulder: the usual sword, used for ceremonial occasions and which he had worn on shore for his visit to the Dutch Governor, must be back on its rack on the bulkhead. It was a good job that the Marchesa, who had also bought that, did not know …

“Do you think we'll have any trouble, sir?”

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “I doubt it.”

“The lads hope we will,” Jackson commented, and when Ramage raised his eyebrows questioningly he added: “After what that Spanish privateer did to those people, the lads won't be giving quarter to privateersmen …”

“These are French, though,” Ramage said, more because he was interested to hear Jackson's reaction than by way of defending privateersmen.

“They're as bad. Any man that goes privateering is no better than a thief and a murderer, sir. Why, they say most of the privateersmen are on shore, attacking the Dutch and burning their villages. They'd loot this place as soon as look at it …”

Ramage knew only too well that Jackson, in his unique position as the Captain's coxswain and respected by the ship's company, was well placed to relay information to the men, information that was in effect official but not announced by the Captain on the quarterdeck.

“The chief of these privateers, a man called Brune, has already warned the Governor that they'll burn down this town and murder the people unless he surrenders it to them.”

“Brune, eh?” Jackson repeated. “Means ‘brown,' doesn't it, sir? Must be a nasty sort of man to want to burn down his ally's capital …”

Ramage led the way out of the cabin, knowing that the information would pass through the ship like a gust of wind, and was soon walking along the gangway to the entry port, where Aitken and Southwick were waiting.

“Your gig's ready, sir,” Aitken reported, “and the rest of the boats are holding on astern, each with the number of seamen and Marines you specified.”

Aitken's voice was polite, as became a First Lieutenant reporting to his captain, but the tone made it clear that the Scot was not overly keen on staying behind while Ramage went off, even though the expedition seemed little more than routine.

Southwick, telescope under one arm, said lugubriously: “I've been watching those privateers for an hour or two. There's something odd about ‘em, but I'm damned if I know what it is.”

“They might be like us, brandy in the water casks.” Southwick grimaced: he had not been allowed to forget the purser's concern, nor had he yet devised a satisfactory way of disposing of it.

Ramage settled himself in the sternsheets, careful that the butts of the pistols did not jab his ribs, and the gig cast off. Jackson steered the boat at the head of a small armada: immediately astern was the launch with twenty-four boarders and commanded by Wagstaffe, then the pinnace with sixteen under Baker and finally the cutter with another sixteen under Kenton, who was enjoying his first command in what he hoped would be an action.

In Ramage's gig Rennick sat stiffly on a thwart with his Marines, and, although his head did not move, his eyes missed nothing: any sign of movement on board the privateers, a grease stain on a Marine's tunic, a button missing, a musket butt whose woodwork showed a scratch which had not been carefully stained and then waxed.

As the gig leapt forward, the rowers' faces soon glistening and then running with perspiration, Ramage watched the sides of the channel and the privateers with all the concentration of a hungry poacher uncertain whether the gamekeeper really was ill in bed. Small rowing boats from which two or three men had been fishing suddenly scurried for the shore as they saw the boarders leaving the
Calypso;
men who had been working on the quays or walking along the paths lining the banks farther down stopped to watch, the more prudent of them then disappearing. A woman snatched up a small child and ran back towards Punda; a soldier on the Otrabanda side stood still, obviously uncertain what to do. Shutters slammed shut across many windows of houses facing the channel and sent gulls squawking off in alarm.

Then, as the gig approached, Ramage watched the privateers. The ten were anchored in pairs, the Trade wind swinging them diagonally across the channel. Presumably each pair was secured together to make it easier for the maintenance parties: half a dozen men could just as easily look after two privateers rafted up alongside each other as one. The first pair soon obscured his view of the rest, but they were all big vessels. The nearest was the largest and smartest—a schooner perhaps a little smaller than
La Créole.
He counted the ports—she was pierced for ten guns, and a couple of bow-chasers. Were they carronades, intended to sweep the victim's deck with grapeshot as she approached? Black hull, buff masts, white topmasts. Booms black, which was strange. All the paint was dull and neglected, yet the sun reflecting from some of the rigging showed that it had been recently tarred.

The second privateer, beyond, was ketch-rigged, her hull painted green, the dark-green of slave ships, the colour of mangrove leaves so that they could hide in the narrow inlets, their hulls blending with the bushes lining the banks. Her lower masts were buff and her topmasts white, so anyone looking for them would be unlikely to spot them against the white of clouds. Ramage once remembered explaining all that to an Army officer, who expected the topmasts to be blue, to match the sky, not realizing that in the Tropics, and particularly on the Guinea coast, there was nearly always broken cloud scudding along. Yes, with that sweeping sheer and low freeboard the ketch was probably a former slaver now finding that in wartime privateering was more profitable.

He felt sure that the nearest privateer, the schooner, belonged to Brune; the leader, or most senior of the privateers, would choose the best berth. In an emergency, the schooner would be the first out of the harbour because she was the nearest to the entrance. And when Brune was on board but felt like an evening in one of Amsterdam's brothels or cafés his boat had the shortest distance to row.

There! A definite movement behind that bow-chaser, which was a carronade. And a blur of blue behind the first gun, the washed-out blue that French seamen always favoured. Ramage stood up, drawing his cutlass and waving it a couple of times to attract the attention of the boats astern before pointing to left and right. Even without looking astern he knew that Wagstaffe had started to turn the launch to larboard and Baker would swing the pinnace out to starboard, while Kenton moved over to larboard a few yards with the cutter to be between Ramage and Wagstaffe. The four boats, in line abreast, now made a series of individual targets and as they took up their positions the men rowed even harder at the oars.

Suddenly the schooner's carronade and first two guns were run out, their barrels jabbing from the ports like black, accusing fingers. Ramage, feeling that the gig was rowing right into the muzzle of the carronade, suddenly stood up again and, using the speaking-trumpet that he had brought with him, shouted in French: “If you fire, we will give no quarter!”

For more than a minute nothing happened and Ramage reckoned that the threat, the sight of four boats laden with boarders, and the harbour entrance blocked by a British frigate, was going to be enough to make the men in the privateers surrender. But the carronade gave an obscene red wink; suddenly yellow, oily smoke spurted out and with a noise like ripping calico the sea fifteen yards away to starboard erupted as if a hundred great fish had broken the surface in a gigantic leap to escape a marauding shark.