Ramage & the Rebels (42 page)

“This is ridiculous,” van Someren snapped. “You don't take that surrender seriously, do you? It was signed under duress.”

“All surrenders are signed under duress,” Ramage said dryly. “Only I wasn't applying the duress; your own Dutch rebels and the French privateersmen were, if you remember.”

“The duress, or threat, does not exist. You know that.”

“Oh yes, I know that it does not exist now; I removed it for you.”

“So you can see how absurd it is that I should surrender an island like this to a single English frigate! Quite absurd.”

“The instrument of surrender has your signature on it, witnessed by Major Lausser.”

“Lausser no longer holds a commission.”

“Neither do you,” Ramage said quietly. “You are no longer the Governor of the island, by virtue of the surrender you signed, but that doesn't make the surrender document invalid: nothing—” he paused and then said with more emphasis—”nothing erases your signature. You surrendered the island of Curaçao.”

Van Someren gave an airy wave of his hand. “This is just the idle chatter of a young man,” he said in English to the
Delft
's Captain. “He knows nothing of law, diplomacy or politics.”

And that, Ramage thought, is the end of that: he had given van Someren plenty of time to reconsider: whatever happens to him now is his own fault. Ramage admitted to himself that he was angry because he had taken van Someren for a man of honour, forgetting he was first and foremost a politician and a survivor: he had changed his politics and survived as Governor of Curaçao when the French invaded the Netherlands and his own monarch had fled to England.

“Mister van Someren,” Ramage said, with a slight emphasis on the “mister,” “I must return to my ship, but before I go I think my Admiral would want me to point out two things. First, the instrument of surrender will be published in England, and the moment the French government read it your life won't be worth a worn-out shoe if they can get their hands on you; they'll trot you off to the guillotine. Any question of your going back on it, therefore, is suicide. Second, Curaçao has been surrendered to the British. That a Dutch frigate has since arrived in the port is of no consequence. Now the island is British and we shall keep our word—my signature is on the document by which you place Curaçao under my King's protection. Long before you can send any news to the Netherlands, let alone receive any help, a substantial British force will have arrived here from Jamaica.”

The
Delft
's Captain, a swarthy and stocky man with a plump, white face in which the eyes seemed to be deeply-embedded currants in a suet pudding, tapped Ramage on the shoulder, and grinned, showing yellowed teeth which reminded Ramage of the horse that van Someren was changing in midstream. “You know the answer, English?”

Ramage shook his head.

“The answer, English, is that this surrender paper must not leave Amsterdam.”

In a fraction of a second Ramage realized that not only was he in a trap and the
Delft
had sprung it, but there was no point in acknowledging defeat. Surprise, that was the secret, helped by a white lie or so. He gave a contemptuous laugh. “Must not leave Amsterdam? You don't seriously think it is still here, do you?”

The Captain looked nervously at van Someren, who had gone white. “When did you send it away? How? No ship has left Amsterdam!”

“Amsterdam is hardly the only place from which a ship can leave the island. What do you think my Admiral would say if I took the surrender of the island and then, without telling him, went off over the hills chasing a horde of pirates and rebels? He would court-martial me!”

He would, too, Ramage thought wryly, if he knew about it. And the contemptuous laugh and the tone of his voice was perfect. The two men believed him at the moment. Later they might have doubts; later they might reassure each other, but that would be later. Ramage had seen many actors staying on the stage too long after a good performance, remaining until the applause died so that they had to walk off in silence.

“I bid you gentlemen good night,” he said.

“Don't try to escape, English,” the
Delft
's Captain called after him. “My ship is covering you. You are my prize.”

“That's so,” van Someren repeated. “You must consider yourselves our prisoners. We shall hoist the Dutch flag over the British in the morning.”

His cabin was cool and the breeze, still strong even though it was ten o'clock at night, made the candles flicker. The lieutenants stood or perched on the settee: Southwick, although only a warrant officer and technically the most junior in rank, sat in the armchair and Ramage was at his desk, the chair pulled round to face the men.

He had just finished telling them about his visit to Government House, and of how the
Delft
's Captain had played what he thought was an ace by saying the instrument of surrender would not leave the island.

“Do you think they believed you, sir?” Aitken asked. “Saying it had already gone sounds likely. A fine trump card, in fact.”

“They believed me at the time because it was such a shock, but by now they may have had second thoughts. Van Someren knows no ship left Amsterdam. The chance of us having a ship waiting in one of the bays—well, it's remote, when you come to think of it.”

Wagstaffe straightened himself up. “Whether or not they believe it, sir, are we to assume the
Delft
is hostile?”

“Very much so. But her Captain and van Someren regard us as her prize. If she needs to sink us, she will.”

Southwick gave one of his contemptuous snorts. “The
Delft
might be planning to sink us, but what have you in mind for the
Delft?
”

Ramage looked round at the gathered men. “Suggestions?” Lacey said: “I'd like to start off by bombarding Government House. When I think of all those mosquito and sandfly bites … just to kill off some of the former Governor's enemies.”

“It'd be a good idea, if only to teach this damnable former excellency a lesson,” Southwick growled. “Topple a few tiles round his ears. Teach him that a gentleman keeps his word!”

“He knows that already,” Aitken said sourly. “That's why a scoundrel can always cheat a man of honour.”

“Oh yes, but there's nothing to stop a man of honour boxing his ears afterwards,” Southwick said.

“I'm waiting for ideas,” Ramage said patiently.

“Just open fire on her, sir. We've springs on our cable and our shooting will be accurate,” Wagstaffe said.

“They can put a spring on their cable—probably have, in fact—and shoot just as well,” Ramage said. “We end up with a pounding match at a cable's distance. The first ship reduced to splinters is the loser.”

“What had you in mind, sir?” Aitken asked cautiously.

“I'd like to destroy the
Delft
with no damage to the
Calypso
and no casualties to us.”

“Who wouldn't?” Southwick growled impatiently, ruffling his hair. “No one wants damage or casualties, sir, but short of blowing her out of the water, how can we do that?”

“What's wrong with blowing her out of the water?” Ramage asked innocently.

“It's a waste of our powder,” Southwick chuckled. “It'd take several tons.”

“Quite,” Ramage said, “but I had in mind to use hers.”

Six pairs of startled eyes jerked round to stare at him.

“You're teasing us,” Southwick protested.

Ramage shook his head. “You have to think ahead. After we've destroyed the
Delft
we still have a problem—my original orders.”

“The privateers?” Southwick exclaimed. “Why, we've dealt with them!”

“I'm sure Admiral Foxe-Foote wouldn't agree. We have ten privateers anchored in Amsterdam, but we can't stay here and guard ‘em, and we don't have enough men to sail them all to Jamaica. If we leave any behind, the Dutch might take them—or sell them to the French or Spanish.”

“Let's sink those we can't take with us,” Southwick said gruffly. “They won't yield much prize-money, anyway.”

“That
Nuestra Señora de Antigua,
” Wagstaffe said bitterly. “I'd like to see her burn. Pity we can't sort out the survivors of her original crew and put them on board. Anyway, her Captain's dead, we know that.”

“She would burn well,” Ramage said dreamily, and all movement in the cabin stopped. Suddenly he could hear the water lapping under the
Calypso
's stern, and the gentle whine of the wind in the rigging, and on deck a sentry coughed and then spat over the side.

“Francis Drake, sir?” Aitken asked.

Ramage nodded. “Tonight. The wind is holding. About three o'clock, before moonrise. The explosion should take most of the tiles off Government House.”

“Shall I start the preparations, sir?”

“Here, hold hard a moment,” Southwick protested. “This is all beyond me.”

Wagstaffe laughed happily and said: “Drake … come on, old man, he was a bit before your time, but you must have heard how he launched fireships against the Spanish Armada when it anchored off Gravelines.”

“Ah, yes, but although I wasn't there I did hear tell that he didn't sink any Spanish ships with ‘em.”

“No, but they cut their cables and ran for their lives.”

“We don't want the
Delft
cutting and running though; we want her blowing up right where she is,” Southwick declared.

Wagstaffe was enjoying teasing the Master. “Drake would have enjoyed the idea of using a French privateer with a Spanish name to blow up a Dutch frigate.”

“So would I,” Southwick said as he suddenly worked out Ramage's intention. “And there's a lot of work to be done preparing the
Nuestra Señora.
For a start she hasn't a single sail bent on.”

Silently in the darkness, always keeping the bulk of the
Calypso
between them and the
Delft,
the British frigate's boats had rowed back and forth to the
Nuestra Señora
ferrying across casks, axes and saws, grapnels, lengths of light chain, coils of ropes and several single and double blocks to make up sheets for the sails to save time searching through the schooner for the originals.

While seamen working under the boatswain and Southwick hoisted the sails up on deck and then bent them on to masts and stays, others removed all the hatches, cut big holes in the few permanent bulkheads so that the wind could blow through the ship and up the hatchways, and lifted off skylights to ensure a good draught.

More men climbed up the rigging and secured the grapnels from chains so that they hung down just above the level of the enemy bulwarks, suspended where they would hook into the
Delft
's rigging. Two axes rested against the anchor cable bitts; all her guns to the starboard side had been loaded with two shots each and a treble charge of powder, although no gunners would fire them because the barrels would probably burst; only heat or sparks falling into the pans would ignite the gunpowder.

Ramage went into the captain's cabin—it was little more than a large cuddy—and was surprised and thankful at the draught blowing through it; a draught that when the time came would fan the flames like a blacksmith's bellows, although for the moment it did its best to remove the stench in which Brune had lived. He walked forward to where the privateersmen normally lived and where their hammocks were still slung. Several seamen were busy breaking up blocks of pitch and wedging them wherever a ledge in the planking would hold a piece. Several of the hammocks swung gently with the sharp outlines of pieces of pitch revealing their contents.

In another corner half a dozen seamen were busy chopping coils of thick rope into ten-foot lengths, while others frayed the ends and jammed them into the piles of pitch. Every few feet were small casks of tar, identifiable only by their smell, because there was always seepage between the staves. They would not be smashed or have their bungs knocked out until the last moment, and many of them rested on piles of spare sails.

Rennick and his sergeant, each with a long coil of slow match slung round his neck, were at work round the mainmast where ten half-casks of powder, each three and a half feet long, were securely lashed in place, each with its bung uppermost. From a point fifteen feet away several lengths of slow match stretched along the deck, like a thin octopus, the ends disappearing in the bung-holes, where they went down into the powder and were held lightly in position by wooden bungs.

“Burns at the rate of two feet a minute, sir,” Rennick explained. “There's fifteen feet from this point to the casks. We don't need a slow match to each cask, of course,” he added hurriedly. “One would be enough, because when one cask goes up they'll all go, but we have plenty of insurance. When the time comes we light as many as possible, but there's no need to do them all.”

“The guns?” Ramage asked.

“I finally triple-shotted them on the starboard side—those which will point at the
Delft.
Those on the larboard side facing us are triple-charged without shot, and the breechings are cut, so when they go off they'll recoil right across the ship.”

“You still have the port fires to arrange?”

“Yes, sir; I thought I'd set them on deck near the wheel. It'll help us see what we're doing for the last minute or two.”

“And that brandy?”

“Southwick has stowed the casks on deck along the starboard side, forward. I have a Marine sentry guarding it. We were lucky to get it on board without a cask being ‘accidentally' stove in.”

Ramage nodded. “The purser's glad to see the back of it. He's been worried ever since he found it.”

On deck Ramage shivered as he considered the
Nuestra Señora de Antigua
as a furnace: pitch and tar with frayed rope, old sails and smashed-up gratings to start a fire, brandy to increase it and finally powder to scatter it—and the schooner—over the
Delft.
The grapnels should catch in the
Delft
's rigging and hold the
Nuestra Señora
to her long enough for a fatal and fiery embrace.