Ramage & the Rebels (7 page)

Had the schooner taken everyone on board prisoner? Was the ship abandoned? Curious that no one was attempting to trim her sails or furl them. Now she was making a stern board, one which risked wrenching off her rudder if the men at the wheel did not stop it spinning. There was, of course, another explanation, and he tried to avoid thinking about it; he would soon know.

“Mr Aitken, we'll need one boat, possibly two, so have them ready for hoisting out. Six Marines for each boat and a dozen extra seamen. And tell Mr Bowen to be ready with a bag of instruments, because he'll be going over.”

The First Lieutenant stared at him, and then realized the significance of the reference to Bowen, because it was unlikely the merchant ship had been in action against the privateer. As he gave the orders he watched the distant merchant ship slowly turning, like a swan's feather on a pond, turning and drifting in the breeze.

Now Rennick was giving orders to his Marines while men ran to prepare the boats for hoisting out, and Jackson said to Ramage: “Shall I get your boat-cloak, sir?”

He had a light cloak, intended only for use in the Tropics, to keep the spray off his uniform, and there was enough of a sea to ensure a wet row to the merchant ship. He shook his head. “I shan't be going over.”

The American coxswain's face fell. A visit to a merchant ship just out from England usually meant the gift of newspapers and often some tasty snacks like cheeses. Ramage said: “You had better take Mr Baker.”

Aitken, overhearing the conversation, turned expectantly, but Ramage said: “Send Kenton with one boat and Baker with the other and Rennick had better divide his Marines. And make sure the surgeon's mate goes with Bowen.”

“You think it will be as bad as that, sir?”

Ramage watched the merchant ship's sails fill for a few moments as she turned slowly in the wind. “Yes, it'll be as bad as that.”

It was, in fact, far worse. As the
Calypso
approached Ramage saw that the merchant ship was low in the water and obviously settling, and Ramage wasted no time in bringing the frigate up to windward, backing the foretopsail and hoisting out the two boats, giving Baker orders that he was to board first and give any necessary orders to Kenton in the second boat.

Ramage had watched through the telescope as Baker boarded with Jackson, swarming up a rope ladder hanging over the merchant ship's quarter. He had paused on the poop, then walked forward, finally going below. He had emerged briefly to signal Kenton to come on board, and Bowen had gone up the ladder as well as Rennick and his sergeant. Then, as far as Ramage could see, they had systematically searched the ship's accommodation, although it was clear that the hatches were still battened down, the covers, battens and wedges still in place, showing that no one had been down into the cargo holds.

Half an hour later, with the ship settling so deeply that she was becoming unstable, liable to capsize unexpectedly, Ramage had fired a gun to signal the boats to return, and when they were back on board Baker, Kenton, Rennick and Bowen had come to the quarterdeck to report, all of them white-faced and obviously distressed at what they had seen.

“You saw the name on the stern, sir, the
Tranquil
of London, but there are no ship's papers on board. The captain's cabin has been looted, his desk smashed up, every drawer emptied out,” Baker said.

He held up a bundle of papers. “We shall be able to identify most of the bodies of the passengers from these letters, sir, and some of the crew too, I expect. There were some packages addressed to people in Jamaica. They're in the boat and I'll have them brought up.”

Ramage knew he was trying to avoid asking the question just as Baker was avoiding referring to it, but finally he said: “How many?”

“Fifteen in the ship's company, sir, and nine passengers, five of them women.”

“All dead?”

“Three were still alive when I found them. One died before Bowen could get on board, and the others—both women—died before he could do anything. The women were raped and then shot or butchered. But the strange thing is none of them seem to have tried to run away.”

“Could they have been standing there, expecting to be taken over to the schooner as prisoners, but suddenly murdered by their guards?” Ramage asked.

Baker nodded miserably. “I think that's what must have happened. When the privateer sighted us, sir?”

“Yes. The boarding party were probably about to secure the prisoners—or perhaps choosing those likely to be worth ransoming—and preparing to put a prize crew on board and get under way just as we came in sight.”

If I'd waited another hour before tacking, Ramage told himself, the privateer would never have seen us. Working beyond the rim of the horizon, she would have sent her prize off, and those people would still be alive, even though prisoners. As it was, there had been a senseless massacre. The ship was sinking anyway, scuttled with her boats still secured, so why kill everyone? Why not let them take their chance in the boats? It would have cost the privateer nothing. “The quality of mercy …”

“Why was she sinking?”

“She carried two 6-pounders,” Baker said. “Little more than boat guns, but the privateersman trained one down the companion-way and fired a shot through the bottom.”

“And there's no indication of the name of the privateer?”

“No, sir, but she was French,” Baker said, motioning to Kenton, who opened the drawstring of a canvas bag and pulled out a handful of blue, white and red cloth. “They had this flag ready to bend on her, but they left it behind in the rush.”

For a moment Ramage pictured the scene: women screaming as pistols and muskets fired, men begging for mercy as cutlasses slashed at them, and somewhere there, watching, the man who had ordered it all: the privateer captain who was not content with leaving all these people to take their chance in a sinking ship. No, he wanted the satisfaction of murdering them, 24 murders which did not put another penny in his pocket nor make his life any safer, because none of the victims could possibly have known his name.

Kenton held the hoist of the flag so the cloth unrolled like a sheet. He looked up at Ramage. “It was a terrible sight, sir. Not like battle, where you expect to see bodies and men badly wounded. It was like a slaughterhouse.”

Ramage took the bundle of papers from Baker, and knew that for the next few hours he would have to read through many private letters, so that he could identify as many victims as possible. It was nothing compared with what the young lieutenants had just gone through. As Kenton had said, it wasn't like battle. Yet war wasn't made up only of battles which was why he had sent these youngsters over to the merchant ship. Southwick, Aitken, Wagstaffe … they might not have seen this sort of thing before although they expected it, but for Baker and Kenton and probably Rennick, it was a side of war of which they had not yet even dreamed. And Ramage knew that in future they would understand if the captain of the ship in which they were serving refused to show any mercy towards a privateer or privateersmen.

“Look,” Southwick suddenly called, “there she goes.”

Air trapped in the merchant ship's hull was bursting the hatches, hurling up the planks in showers of spray as canvas covers, battens and wedges tore free. Sacks and crates floated away as the ship began to heel, yards slewing and dropping as the lifts broke. She heeled towards the
Calypso
and for a minute they were all looking down on her, a gull's eye view, and then she capsized, fat-bilged and ungainly. The bottom was greenish-brown from the copper sheathing, but here and there small, rectangular black patches showed where sheets of the copper had ripped off. There was a swirling in the water, as though a great whale was submerging, and then she was gone, a few air bubbles making the floating wreckage, planks and sacks, bob and twist.

Ramage looked towards the eastern horizon. The privateer was now a mere speck several miles to windward, an anonymous killer sneaking into the haze. Astern
La Créole
was lying hove-to and like the
Calypso
her gun ports were open. Chasing the privateer was a waste of time; she would vanish in the night long before the
Calypso
or
La Créole
could ever get close.

Aitken looked questioningly at Ramage, who nodded, and a few moments later the men were bracing round the fore-topsail yard while others unscrewed the locks from the guns and coiled up the trigger lines. Cartridges were returned to the magazine, cutlasses and pistols put back in chests. The sand had been washed from the decks and the hot sun had dried the wood in two or three minutes. Ten minutes later the
Calypso
's off-watch men were back doing whatever they had been doing when the privateer and her victim had been sighted.

Ramage took one last look round the horizon and went down to his cabin with the handful of papers. It was cool and dark, and he was thankful to be out of the glare of the sun. Watching the funeral of a ship and 24 innocent people left him feeling shaky. Should he have read a funeral service as the
Tranquil
sank? He had not thought of it, because he preferred to mourn in his own way, in a quiet and dark place. He hated the pomp and ritual of church funerals, but he knew the ship's company were great sticklers for ritual. Not for ritual, perhaps, but for “doing the right thing.” They had a healthy attitude towards the death of one of their shipmates, and their wish to give him what they called a “proper funeral” was perhaps more because they wanted to please him; to give him the kind of funeral they thought he would like—which in turn, Ramage supposed, meant the kind of funeral each man wanted for himself: a time when everyone, from the youngest boy on board to the captain, paid their respects.

The people represented by the handful of papers now on his desk had not been given a farewell wave. Yet he was sure that no one else had thought of it: Southwick would have been the first to whisper a hint; Jackson had heard Baker's report, and he had said nothing, and the American was not one for keeping his thoughts to himself if the Captain's reputation was at stake. No, those who knew what that sinking ship contained had been too shocked to think of anything, and the
Tranquil
had gone down on her own with a quiet dignity and taken her people with her.

R
AMAGE took up his pen and inspected the point. The quill was blunt but he could not be bothered to sharpen it. It was a miserable feather, taken from a moulting goose no doubt. At least it was from the left wing, for a right-handed writer. After unscrewing the cap of the inkwell he took his Journal from a drawer and made a brief entry recording the encounter with the
Tranquil.
Then he took out a blank sheet of paper and began the draft of a report to the Admiral. Be brief, he told himself; old Foxey-Foote will examine every word, looking for trouble (an admiral's privilege, of course), and the fewer the sentences the fewer the loopholes. The obvious criticism from such an inexperienced admiral was going to be that he did not pursue the privateer, and the equally obvious answer was that in twelve hours of darkness the privateer could be anywhere, and Ramage knew he would be wise to point out that he was acting under the Admiral's orders to proceed to Curaçao. He read the draft through again. Less than a full page—that would please the clerk when he came to make the fair copy and also copy it into the letter book.

He took a piece of cloth from the top drawer and carefully wiped the pen dry of ink, then screwed the cap back on the inkwell and put it away. Then he knew he was deliberately putting off looking at those letters.

The first was from the
Tranquil
's master to his owners, intended to be posted in Jamaica, because the Post Office packet would arrive in England weeks before the convoy with his ship. He was reporting that the weather had been fair for the whole voyage so that instead of anchoring at Barbados with the rest of the convoy he had sailed on alone. He had stopped at Nevis only to buy fresh vegetables for the passengers and then left for Jamaica. He explained that with so many ships calling at Barbados, the price of fruit and vegetables there was often three or four times that in Nevis. A piece of economy, Ramage realized, which had taken the ship out of the convoy and put her some fifty miles farther north than she would have been if she had remained in the convoy when it sailed from Barbados. The reason the ship had gone to Nevis and then come in sight of the privateer had been the high price of fruit and vegetables in Barbados; the reason the
Calypso
had tacked an hour early—and thus panicked the privateer—had been Captain Ramage's trick on
La Créole
…

The wife of a major in the 79th Foot was visiting her parents, who obviously owned a plantation in Jamaica. She had written a letter to her husband in the form of a diary, the last entry being the day before. Ramage pencilled in the two names on another sheet of paper, beneath the name of the master and the name and address of the owners of the ship.