Ramage & the Rebels (36 page)

“Now,” Ramage said, “tell me the details of the
La Perle
business.”

“There isn't much to tell, sir. She steered a course for the Main, burned lights at night, and pumped. I think the leak was worsening all the time, but her pumps were just about holding. I was watching in case she settled really low in the water, but usually I kept astern of her.”

“Did she keep the same course?”

“Yes, sir. I think they'd decided to make for San Juan de los Cayos. Anyway, that's where we arrived 28 hours after leaving you. I expected her to anchor, but they rounded up, reduced sail, hoisted out boats, made sail again and steered straight for the beach.

“By this time it was getting so shallow that I had a man in the chains with a lead and had the sheets eased, so we were making only a couple of knots, but the French were in a hurry: she hit the shallows making a good five knots.”

“Her draught increased by the leak?”

“By a couple of feet, sir: we were watching the waterline in relation to the height of her gun ports. Anyway, it must have been a soft bottom, although farther out we were finding sand with our lead, and she slowly came to a stop, with courses and topsails still set.”

Ramage nodded. “It's a strange sight, a ship with canvas set but not moving. A stronger wind, of course, and the masts would have gone by the board.”

“Yes, sir, they didn't wait to let anything run—sheets, tacks, braces, halyards … They just tossed booms over the side, hatch covers, anything that would act as rafts. And then they abandoned ship, the boats towing the rest of the men as they clung to anything that floated. Then, when the boats had just about reached the beach—there was quite a heavy surf and two of the boats broached and capsized—we saw smoke coming from the main hatch. Ten minutes later the ship was blazing from stem to stern. The sails burned like sheets of paper in that wind; the rigging was a fantastic sight, with all the tar on it, the rope spluttering like slow match as it burned. Then the masts went by the board, well alight by the time they fell and sending up clouds of steam as they hit the water.”

With his face flushed by the excitement of telling the story, Lacey stopped, embarrassed at his own eloquence, and carried on with his soup. When he had finished and refused more when Silkin offered the tureen, he nodded when Ramage asked if there was anything more to tell.

“When the masts and yards went by the board she lost a lot of weight and this made her float higher—enough for her to move again. The wind caught her and slewed her round parallel to the beach, which runs east to west, and she had her bow to the west. I think the wind then began coming in through the sternlights—” he turned to gesture to the large windows of Ramage's cabin—“and it was like a pair of bellows starting up. She moved perhaps fifty yards, a little to the westward, and just burned like the fire in a blacksmith's forge. An hour later—we were anchored offshore, just watching her—she had burned almost to the water's edge.”

“And the Spanish?” Ramage asked. “Any sign of patrols?”

“No, sir. The French ship's company were just scattered along the beach. Some of them were trying to haul the boats higher, so that they wouldn't be smashed by the surf, but three broke up. We saw a group of Spaniards to the east, from the village, but they were keeping away from the French. I have a feeling the French aren't going to get much of a welcome.”

While they finished the meal Ramage told Lacey of Curaçao's problems and the island's surrender, and then described his intended night attack on the rebels. “I can muster thirty men, sir,” Lacey offered eagerly. “That would give you eight groups.”

Ramage thought for a moment.
La Créole
was anchored beyond the privateers, almost in the Schottegat. The danger to the ships would come only from a large enemy ship attempting the entrance. The schooner with a much-reduced crew would be safe enough.

“Very well,” he said. “Rennick has the map of the island. Spend half an hour or so with him, so you'll know what we propose.”

The meal had been finished and Lacey had left when a boat from Punda brought Major Lausser on board with a report from the Governor telling Ramage that the rebels and privateersmen had not moved from the camp they had set up the previous night near Daniel; that they had apparently looted the villages of Pannekoek, Willebrordus and Daniel; and in burning down some large estate houses they had collected a large quantity of rum. Patrols had seen men driving cattle into the camp, where presumably they were being slaughtered. And, the Governor commented, tomorrow was the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. Was it possible, he asked, that the Frenchmen were going to celebrate it? If they were, it seemed highly likely the drinking and feasting would start tonight …

T
HE DUTCH shopkeepers and their families, along with most other people living on the Otrabanda side, had spent most of the day moving over to Punda with as many of their valuables as they could carry or persuade the boatmen to take on board. The rowing boats, laden with furniture on which the owners perched precariously, crossed the channel with the occupants cursing, joking or being reassured in shrill Dutch or Papiamento, the local language which was a curious mixture of Dutch, Spanish, English and African dialects. Southwick noted to Aitken that it was probably the first time that so many people in Amsterdam had exerted themselves in the blazing midday sun; usually they retired to cool and curtained rooms for a siesta lasting until three o'clock.

Now, half an hour after darkness, the
Calypso
's boats were landing the last of the eight companies on the Otrabanda quay. Rennick's Marines were formed up as though awaiting the Colonel-Commandant's inspection on the parade ground at Chatham; Lacey was prowling round the thirty men he had brought from
La Créole.
Aitken stood at the head of his group, which he had formed up in three columns each of ten men, and was silent, no doubt congratulating himself that Southwick had lost the argument that the First Lieutenant should stay behind in command of the ship, not the Master. Ramage had ruled that marching long distances across the Curaçao countryside—and probably running, too—was for youngsters; that masters over sixty with pot-bellies and short of breath could only be rated youngsters if they lived in one of the new charitable homes for old folk. Wagstaffe had his men in four columns of seven men, with a leading seaman ahead and astern. Lacey, Baker and Kenton copied Aitken, who had in turn used the same system as Ramage.

Ramage was thankful that there was still a breeze and knew that with luck it would hold the whole night. As usual it had been cool out in the
Calypso,
but the moment he landed on Otrabanda the heat soaked into him, as though the earth had been storing it all day and would be slowly releasing it through the night. Mosquitoes landed on him like droplets of water in fog and, thwarted at the ankles by his high boots, they made up for it by whining assaults on his wrists and face. The red-hot needle jabs of sandflies showed that Curaçao was not free from the tiny midges which elsewhere the seamen called “no-see-'ems.”

Now, as the men scrambled out of the last boat and joined Kenton's company, Ramage checked his own men. Choosing his thirty had been difficult only because it meant refusing at least another thirty. Jackson was the second-in-command, with Stafford and Rossi. Another dozen or so had been chosen because they had served with him in the
Kathleen
while most of the rest had been in the
Triton.
It had been a case of choosing thirty men out of a hundred or so that, like children expecting a treat, were shouting, “Me! Me!”

After giving it some thought, Ramage finally had no compunction about risking being accused of favouritism. He had no set plan for the attack (that was impossible until he could see the rebels' position) but he knew that in the darkness it was more likely that he would have to do something special with his own company because of the difficulty of passing orders to one of the others. That being the case, he wanted men around him who would understand his intentions without a lot of explanation. Someone like Jackson, who as a youngster had fought for the rebels in the American War of Independence and probably knew a good deal more than Rennick about this sort of fighting, which was a matter of ambushes, sudden attacks and vanishing again before the victims recovered. Never, in other words, remaining still long enough for an enemy to take aim. Rennick was by training a man of march and countermarch by files, complicated outflanking movements, brave beyond belief but limited by the drill manual, which dealt with routine situations where men fired to order and battalions and armies, friendly and enemy, moved as though in some gigantic quadrille. It was not, Ramage thought wryly, a case of eager seamen scrambling through the night …

In the darkness, though, it seemed that he had a small army formed up, but Rennick's suggestion that the first men landed should include one from each company, who would act as a marker—a marker buoy, in fact—and avoid confusion in the dark as the rest of the men landed, had worked perfectly.

Ramage started his inspection at the head of the column, which was led by Rennick's company and followed by the Marine sergeant's. Then came Ramage's company, followed by Kenton and Baker, Lacey and Wagstaffe, with Aitken bringing up the rear. One hundred and eighty seamen and forty Marines—more than two hundred twenty men, and all silent except for the muted slapping at mosquitoes. The danger in all operations like this was that a man hoarding his tots of rum would get drunk on the march and become rowdy, but each man boarding a boat had to pause at the
Calypso
's gangway and be inspected by Southwick on one side and the master-at-arms on the other. The master-at-arms had growled as he checked each man: “Breathe out … pistol or musket … cutlass or pike … yer got any rum hidden on yer?” Only after the test had been passed was the man allowed to go over the side, sober and properly armed.

It was eight o'clock and they had at least ten miles to cover. Ramage finished the inspection, went back to the head of the column and said to Rennick: “Where are the Dutch guides?”

The Marine indicated the two men standing at the head of the column.

“One had better come with me; there's no point in both being with you.”

“They both speak English, sir,” Rennick said thankfully.

Ramage called one of the guides, gave the order for Rennick to move off and with the guide hurried back to the head of his own company and followed the Marines. His orders to his lieutenants had been simple enough—follow the company in front.

The road out of Amsterdam was cobbled for a few hundred yards past the last house, but after that it was dried earth, so that the marching men made almost no sound. The moon had not risen—nor would it for several hours—but there was very little cloud so the stars were brilliant. And somewhere along the road, close to Amsterdam, Dutch soldiers would be watching them pass—the Governor still had a platoon of soldiers scattered round the west side of Amsterdam to intercept any spies or sympathizers who might try to sneak out of the city to warn the rebels that the British were landing troops and seamen.

Less than a mile up the road Ramage felt the muscles in his shins beginning to tighten up with the unaccustomed marching, and the jarring of his heels was giving him a headache. The road turned inland and then turned west again to form the spine of the island. The figure appearing suddenly in the darkness was Rennick, acting as whipper-in, making sure the companies were keeping closed up.

An hour and a half later, when the guide reckoned that the village of Daniel was only three miles away, Ramage was hot, sticky and tired. His heels were raw, his feet felt swollen to twice their normal size. His jacket was sodden with perspiration, his stock chafing his neck and the band of his hat like an iron strap being tightened with a thumbscrew every half a mile. It was time to call a halt, their second, and a few minutes later the whole column was resting on the side of the road, most of the men lying down with their feet in the air, quietly cursing the blisters but admitting this tip given them by Lieutenant Rennick really worked.

Rennick had just loomed up in the darkness, apparently full of energy and with feet that never swelled or blistered, when the faint popping of muskets stifled every groan. It continued for ten or twelve seconds, by which time Ramage was on his feet and looking in the direction from which the sound came. Then, just as he was refocusing his eyes in the darkness on what seemed to be a faint pink glow low on the horizon, there were several tiny flashes at the base of it, like fireflies, followed by more popping.

Rennick, clicking his heels as if indicating to Ramage that he was speaking officially, gave his verdict: “Muskets being fired without using ball, in my opinion, sir.”

And Ramage realized that the Marine was right: distant musket fire always sounded unreal, little more than a pop, but the last ones had been fired with the muskets pointing in their direction—that was clear from the brightness of some of the flashes—and the pop was more like the sound of corks leaving bottles. If the muskets had been loaded with shot one would expect a sharper note. That was where Rennick's military training came in useful: he knew instinctively what Ramage might well not have noticed.

Now, Ramage realized, Rennick expected an explanation of the pink glow. Well, it was a fire, obviously, but it was a
steady
glow. The few houses that Ramage had seen burning in darkness at a distance, tended to flare up and die down, then flare again as the flames found fresh wood to consume. This steady glow seemed to indicate a fire that was being fed regularly—a large bonfire, for instance, that had been burning several hours.

“How far away were those shots?”