Ramage and the Freebooters

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As the Triton sailed back from Martinique, passing southwards along the west side of Grenada, Ramage stood en the larboard side looking at the mountains covering the island and reviewing the voyage. He admitted with ill grace due he was still no wiser than before.

Plenty of wide, open bays, almost enclosed bays, big bays and small bays; but none holding a privateer. Working north from Grenada, there'd been the small rocky islets just north of the island—among them the pointed Kick 'em Jenny, as aptly named a place as he'd ever come across, since the Trade winds and current flowing into the Caribbean knocked up a vicious, confused sea round it; then the large, narrow island of Carriacou, a thousand or so people living on it, and a couple of uninhabited and desolate islets just east of it.

Both islets had bays on the leeward side which could be used as anchorages—indeed were by small open fishing boats. They were picturesque; the water startlingly clear. but not only was there no sign of a privateer but the local fishermen swore they'd never seen any and Maxton, who'd done the questioning, was satisfied they'd been telling the truth.

Then the Triton had visited the larger Union Island to the north of Carriacou, with Chatham Bay on the lee side and several small islets on the other three sides. Again plenty of possible anchorages but all much too open for secrecy. Then Mayero and the Tobago Cays with more islets to the north, and Cannouan, larger and mountainous but hopeless for unloading schooners because of the swell.

On then to Bequia, more hilly than mountainous, with strong currents and a large open anchorage. Admiralty Bay, and a thriving whaling industry run mostly by Scotsmen.

They were curious men and Ramage wanted to know more about them. From what he could gather they were descendants of former Scots taken prisoner in the fighting against Cromwell's Ironsides during the Civil War of 1648. And Cromwell had shown no mercy: these men who'd fought unsuccessfully for Prince Charles had been shipped out to the West Indies and treated like slaves. Now most of their descendants, skin burned red by the sun, many with red hair, made a living as fishermen or working on the plantations.

They had their women with them—also descendants of the women who'd elected to be transported with their menfolk —and although treated like the native slaves, refused to have anything to do with the coloured people, behaving with a pride which should have shamed many of the white plantation-owners who employed them. Already there were signs of too much inbreeding.

But whatever the rights and wrongs of their being transported to the West Indies, Ramage believed their assurances that privateers never visited Admiralty Bay.

St Vincent, a few miles across the channel to the north, was very large—much bigger man Grenada, with the port and capital of Kingstown in the south-west corner. Mountainous, fertile, a great green mass of sloping hills, terraces and forests, it had plenty of bays—among them Wallilabu, Cumberland, Chateau Belaire (with a small harbour)—but nothing that hid a privateer.

So far Ramage had not felt disappointed: he was sure he would find the answer in St Lucia, the last big island before Martinique. From the north end of St Vincent there was a clear view of St Lucia twenty-four miles to the north. More mountainous than St Vincent, the island seemed to attract all the/ rain in the Caribbean (though he remembered the prize usually went to Dominica, way to the north). At me south end, like two enormous thumbs sticking up in the air, were the cone-shaped twin mountains of the Pitons. And all along me west coast up to the capital, Castries, and beyond, were many bays.

Even before leaving Grenada Ramage had half hoped he'd spotted on the St Lucia chart the place me privateers were using—Marigot Bay. Shaped like the glass stopper of a decanter, the bay's entrance was a 200-yard-wide gap in the cliffs and it ran inland for 600 yards before a low sandspit on either side narrowed the channel to less than fifty yards.

Beyond the sandspits the bay suddenly opened out again into a circular lagoon.

Less than ten miles south of the port of Castries and completely surrounded by high hills, it had seemed an ideal spot, and as the Triton approached, Ramage had ordered Southwick to beat to quarters.

There was a natural platform in the otherwise sheer cliff on the south side of the entrance—a couple of guns mounted there could prevent anything approaching the entrance, and although the north side was not so sheer mere were several positions where guns could be hidden.

But the Triton had gone right up to the entrance and hove-to, every gun of the starboard broadside aimed at the southern platform, while both he and Southwick had looked carefully, first for signs of guns, then through the entrance and across the first bay at the two sandspits which almost sealed it off from the lagoon beyond.

But the spits were low, covered with palms, and mere had been no signs of a ship's masts in the lagoon. Some of the palms on the northern spit were withering, the fronds turning brown in the hot sun. Perhaps the river flowing into the lagoon had recently flooded, washing away the earth and sand from round the roots; or maybe some animal had eaten away the bark. It wasn't often one saw a dead palm tree—they seemed to live forever.

So Marigot Bay wasn't the privateersmen's nest; and as he'd ordered me yards to be braced round to get the Triton under way to call in at the island's capital, Castries, and then check the north side of the island before going on to Martinique, he knew why the two frigates had failed.

There'd been no clues in Castries or in Fort Royal at Martinique. Talks with the governors of both islands—and schooner-owners and captains—yielded plenty of criticisms of the Royal Navy, but no ideas; indeed, all of them talked of the privateers as if they were evil spirits manifesting themselves out of the misty rain forest in the darkness of a Tropical night. And in an atmosphere thick with voodoo, superstition, witch doctors and ignorance, it wasn't surprising.

Southwick had been unusually silent for the past hour as me Triton sailed down the last few miles back to St George.

Away over the starboard bow the headland of Point Saline was just coming up over the horizon, but only the caps of the smoothly-rounded hills forming the peninsula were visible so that it seemed like a sea monster wriggling along in the water.

Southwick pulled his hat forward to shield his eyes.

'Twas a waste of time, that trip.'

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. 'The only way to be sure was to look for ourselves. And now we all know what the islands look like.'

'That Marigot Bay... I was sure we'd find them there.'

Southwick pronounced the 't' and Ramage just checked himself from correcting him yet again. Instead he nodded. 'I'd have bet on it.'

'Marigot, or the privateers coming down from north of Martinique.'

That was Southwick's particular pet idea; that the privateers were based north of Martinique and sailed down past Fort Royal, captured me schooners and took them back somewhere to the north: some isolated lair in Dominica, Guadeloupe or the dozen or so smaller islands up towards Antigua. But the authorities in Martinique had ruled it out: their only contribution to the scant information available was that there were enough fishing boats working out to leeward of Fort Royal both by day and night to be sure no privateers passed.

'What now, sir?'

Again Ramage shrugged his shoulders. 'There's only prayer left,' he said sourly.

At that moment Southwick saw him stiffen, as if stabbed in the back. He began rubbing the scar on his brow, swung round and walked aft to me taffrail. The Master watched closely, having made no secret that he was worried about the Admiral's orders: it was obvious to him—though Mr Ramage made light of it—that the Admiral had chosen the Triton's captain as the scapegoat. And, Southwick brooded to himself, the Ramage family have already suffered enough from the time the Government of the day used the old Earl as their scapegoat.

Southwick had lived too many years to expect justice or fair play; he'd long ago asked only that the injustices and unfairness in Service and political life should be kept within reasonable bounds. Yet to be fair to the Admiral, the two frigate captains who'd already failed to find the privateers were probably men he'd had with him since they were lieutenants: he owed them some loyalty.

When faced with an apparently impossible task maybe it was only natural to shield them by passing it on to someone to whom he owed no loyalty—Mr Ramage. Although it was bad luck for Mr Ramage, the fact was he had been lucky recently inasmuch as he'd gained a loyal ally in Commodore Nelson who, judging from his performance so far, would go a long way in the Service—if he didn't fall foul of the Admiralty through not obeying the exact wording of some order or another.

At that moment Ramage came back to Southwick. The expression on his face was an odd mixture of anger, embarrassment and happy surprise: like a child who'd been given an unjustified beating one moment and an unexpected present the next.

'I'm beginning to think we're tackling this from the wrong end,' he said quietly.

'How so, sir?'

'Well, we've been trying to find the privateers' base. But since there's never any sign of them at sea, obviously they don't patrol looking for schooners ...'

Southwick looked puzzled. 'Then how do they find 'em?'

'They must know exactly when and where to look.'

'I don't follow you, sir.'

'Oh, wake up, Southwick: they must get secret information. If they don't go and search, then they must know that a schooner will pass a certain headland at a certain time, so they can be there to meet her in the dark. Minimum distance to sail, and a certain interception: that's why no one's ever seen them.'

'By Jove!' Southwick exclaimed. 'That is the only answer! And it means there's a spy at work in Grenada! But"—he paused, forehead wrinkled, nose twitching like a rabbit's—'but they sail from Grenada in darkness: it's 160 miles to Martinique and 115 miles to St Lucia. How the devil can a spy get the information to 'em quickly enough? Why—beggin' your pardon, sir,—it's almost impossible.'

'But it happens, Southwick; obviously it happens. I'm dam' sure that's how they do it. And because the privateers guess we'd think it's impossible, they succeed. Surprise, Mr Southwick: do the unexpected and you'll nearly always win, whatever the odds.'

Southwick had heard that often enough from his Captain, and seen him put it into practice. 'Was that why you left the master's mate and some men at Carriacou—so they might spot how the news is passed?'

Yet again Ramage shrugged his shoulders 'Yes and no— I'd a feeling we could do with some eyes we could trust keeping a watch from somewhere along the route, and Appleby can get down to us in a local cutter in five or six hours...'

'If he can keep his men sober.'

'I warned them what'd happen if they so much as touched a drop of liquor...'

'Aye, but whatever you threaten seamen think it's worth it.'

'Well, Appleby'll stay sober; and he has enough guineas in his pocket to hire the cutter's crew as well.'

Sir Jason Fisher, the Governor of Grenada, represented a new type of colonial administrator, but Ramage was far from sure he was any improvement on the old. Sir Jason came from humble origins—that much was obvious from his every action, from every sentence he spoke, from every thought he ever expressed in his whining Midland accent.

According to Colonel Wilson, who made no secret that he detested him, as a young man Sir Jason had been lucky to get a clerkship in 'John Company', and he'd worked hard and made the best of it. Like many a clever lad in the Honourable East India Company service, he'd received an excellent training, and he'd soon left it to begin his own business, so that twenty years in India changed him from a clever but impoverished and timid clerk into a rich nabob, able to retire to England at forty-four.

But Ramage guessed that the riches he'd acquired through trade had brought Sir Jason problems he'd never thought of when he'd started to accumulate his money. He was wealthy, yes; but he had no social position. Very rich nabobs returning to England with their fortunes could usually buy their way to an Irish peerage and men by sheer persistence (and a judicious marriage into an aristocratic but impoverished family who needed money sufficiently to overcome any distaste for wealth obtained through 'trade') finally become tolerated—though never accepted—by Society.

All this Sir Jason obviously had only discovered when he arrived back in England. And at the same time he'd also discovered that although he was rich, he was not rich enough. His wealth would, with some 'interest', buy him a seat in the Commons but the House of Lords would forever be beyond his grasp; even an Irish peerage was beyond his purse since the competition from other, richer nabobs was too great.

But Fisher had been shrewd; he'd recognized the problem and thought he'd found a way round it—a 'wise' marriage. Finding what to him was an aristocratic (but impoverished) family, he married the younger daughter, reversing the usual procedure by himself providing a 'dowry' in the form of a handsome settlement on his prospective father-in-law.

Unfortunately, the marriage did not open the doors to London Society; his knocks went unheeded because, as he soon discovered, his bride's family, though certainly impoverished, was by, no means aristocratic.

To his dismay, he had found (and Wilson chortled as he told Ramage, who listened only because of the insight it gave him into the mind of the man he had to deal with at Government House) that in London baronet fathers-in-law were as common as coal-pits in Lancashire.

However, his father-in-law was married to the cousin of a marquis who controlled several Parliamentary boroughs, and the marquis, a kindly man, thought poor Jason deserved some reward for marrying a very distant member of the family who'd hitherto been considered unmarriageable, doomed to a nagging spinsterhood and a perpetual trial to her relatives.

And what better reward than to procure poor Jason a knighthood and give him one of the boroughs, so that he could also call himself a Member of Parliament? It mattered little to the marquis who actually walked into the voting lobbies in the Commons, providing he walked into the one that cast the vote the way the marquis wanted.

Two years of marriage, two years of voting in the Commons as the marquis dictated, two years of snubs as he persisted in trying to become 'accepted' socially had finally opened Jason's eyes, but not before it had embittered his wife, who'd shared his ambitions.

But, Wilson continued, the man with brains enough to make a small fortune in India had eventually realized what many others in a like situation discovered at about the same stage in their lives: if London Society was powerful, proud and impregnable—rating the eldest son of a cousin of an earl higher than a knight with a quarter of a million in the Funds who'd been 'in trade'—why not look elsewhere: for a smaller society where a nabob knight married to the distant relative of a marquis would count for something?

So Sir Jason had asked for, and the marquis had secured for him, the Governorship of Grenada. At this point Wilson had become scornful—the wretched Sir Jason had, of course, made another mistake: most governors came out to the islands for a few months during the dry season and were careful to leave the actual work to a deputy.

But the indomitable Sir Jason had come out (with embittered wife, servants terrified of sickness, many tons of furniture to feed the termites and a vast amount of enthusiasm) in the next available ship and stayed ever since.

Ramage, weary of the gossip, only partly listened to the rest of the tale: in nearly two years Sir Jason had established something approaching a Florentine court: he expected (and received) the obeisance of the Lieutenant Govenor, Chief justice, Attorney General, Solicitor General, Provost Marshal, Judge of the Vice Admiralty Court and various other functionaries, right down to the Fort Adjutant and Barrack-master, the Chaplain and the Collector of Customs.

He'd also been rewarded with the undying hatred of those who, on receiving their appointments in London, had promptly appointed deputies who had gone out to Grenada (at half the salary) to carry out the actual work while they themselves stayed in London, using the remaining half of their salaries to supplement their incomes.

But Sir Jason had put a stop to that—the same ship that brought him to Grenada took back to London stem warnings to the absentees that in time of war all office-holders should be in die island, not their deputies. When one or two of mem had not even bothered to reply to his peremptory letters, he had written directly to the Secretary of State who—according to Wilson—quickly weighed up which could make the most trouble, opted for Sir Jason and bundled the errant office-holders off to the island.

But poor Sir Jason (by this stage in Wilson's narrative Ramage was more than sorry for the Governor): after six months he had finally realized that not only did Grenada 'society' rate somewhere around the level occupied by bodes and valets in less fashionable London houses, but it was about as intelligent, interesting and vicious. His wife, who had spotted mat within a fortnight of arriving, now re-minded him of it daily.

The widespread revolt in the island before Sir Jason arrived, from March 1795 until March 1796, when die Frenchman Fedon led die slaves in a bloody insurrection, had only served to magnify Sir Jason's inadequacies as a Governor, whatever his skill as a man of business, and was one of the reasons why Wilson had been installed as military commander with—as he pointed out with some bitterness— the usual instructions from the Government which gave him all me responsibility for me island's defence but no powers to carry it out Since the Governor's mistakes and vacillations had not brought any reprimands from London, Sir Jason regarded Wilson not as the military commander but as the man responsible for seeing that all the troops were smartly turned out in the Governor's honour on every possible occasion. In fact the soldiers were known locally as 'Fisher's Fusiliers'.

'No manoeuvres allowed,' Wilson commented sourly. 'Governor's orders, of course, in case they get their uniforms torn. The damned men haven't marched five miles in the past twelve months—except to parade at die Governors receptions.'

Out of all this, Ramage was interested in two facts: first. that Sir Jason's social uncertainty had turned him into such a snob that (according to Wilson) his constant companion was the Royal Kalender, with the pages containing the arms and mottoes of the peers of the realm, family names and heirs, almost worn out during the time he'd taken to learn them all by heart. And secondly, with this overbearing snobbishness went a querulousness which sprang from his complete lack of understanding of the functions of a governor.

A formidable combination.

And a moment later Wilson bore out Ramage's fears, complaining it was impossible to get Sir Jason to make any of the major decisions which only the Governor could make.

Through fear of making the wrong decision (which he hid by a pretended disdain of what he preferred to label as mundane matters beneath his notice) he made none. The result of such inaction, Wilson said bitterly, was often worse than a wrong decision...

Wilson had begun his story about Sir Jason in the carriage taking them both up to Government House; but the latter part had been continued in one of the Governor's drawing-rooms with Ramage standing at the window and looking down at the harbour and lagoon below. Ramage glanced at his watch and then at Wilson slumped in an archair puffing a second cigar.

Within minutes of the Triton anchoring off St George Ramage had gone on shore and up to Fort George to see Wilson who, in the four days that Ramage had been away, had obviously undergone a considerable change of heart.

Where Ramage had originally met rudeness, he now found genuine politeness; in place of an arbitrary 'You'll-do-as-I-say' manner he found a man anxious to hear his views, ideas and plans. And after hearing Ramage's theory that a spy was at work in Grenada he spent five minutes pacing up and down his office, heels grinding on the stone floor as he turned, and using language generally monopolized by cavalry officers' grooms in the privacy of the stables.

To Ramage's surprise he discovered—when Wilson stopped because the effort made him too hot and breathless— that the object of the Colonel's wrath was not the privateers but Sir Jason Fisher.

The reason was even more surprising—after the Triton sailed Sir Jason had become even more querulous (hitherto regarded as impossible) when he discovered that apart from failing to call on him, Ramage had sailed for Martinique, leaving orders endorsed by Wilson that the laden schooners waiting in the harbour were not to sail until the Triton returned.

Wilson was summoned to Government House where, for more than an hour, the Governor had treated Grenada's military commander more like a barrack-room orderly. .

But Wilson bad refused to budge over the sailing orders: as he explained to Ramage, realizing he bad not the authority himself he'd looked up the regulations and discovered that among those who had was the 'Senior naval officer upon the Station' and among those who had not was the Governor— for once a fortunate oversight by the constitutional lawyer who had drafted the original regulations.

When he had pointed all this out to Sir Jason, the Governor had been outraged, swearing he could overrule an admiral, let alone a lieutenant. Could, he declared wrathfully and, damnation take it, he would.

Fortunately, after Wilson had left, the man had obviously resumed his habit of avoiding decisions, so the schooners had not sailed. In the meantime Wilson had copied out the relevant section of the regulations and later handed it to Ramage.

Now, as Ramage waited with Wilson for the Governor, he began to grow impatient: Sir Jason had received them with a chilly hauteur—or what the poor fellow thought passed for it—and, as soon as they had sat down, excused himself 'for a few minutes' on the score of 'having urgent work to attend to'. The only trouble was, as Wilson was quick to point out when the door dosed behind the man, that he had sounded more like a butler excusing himself for a few minutes while he refilled a coal scuttle.

Nearly thirty minutes... Ramage had a lot to do. It was now three o'clock and it would be dark in less than four hours. One more schooner had finished loading and Wilson had already warned him that Rondin was making trouble, apparently offended that Ramage had not told him he intended going up to Martinique in me Triton. 'How long is he going to keep us waiting?' Wilson growled.

For an answer Ramage walked across the room and tugged the red bell cord. To me devil with governors; his orders came from the Admiral and time was short enough without wasting it on the Sir Jasons of this world.

'May I use your carriage?' he asked the Colonel. 'I'll send it back as soon as it's taken me to the Careenage.'

'Oh, I say—you can hardly walk out on the Governor like that!'

'Can't I, sir! The safety of the schoo------'

He broke off as the butler knocked and entered the room. Ramage glanced questioningly at Wilson, who nodded.

'Please have the Colonel's carriage brought to the door.'

The butler looked startled, knowing they were waiting for the Governor, so Ramage added, 'At once.'

The man left the room quickly and Ramage grinned at Wilson. 'I'll lay a guinea to a penny the Governor'll be here inside two minutes.'

'Not taken.'

It was a little over two minutes before the door opened again and Sir Jason walked in. If the cartoonist Gillray had drawn a skinny, defrocked parson who'd just inherited a wardrobe of clothes from a rich uncle weighing twenty pounds more, the result would have borne a remarkable likeness to His Excellency the Governor of Grenada.

He was, Ramage reflected, a man who must drive his tailor mad because Nature obviously intended that Sir Jason's physique should be a dreadful warning of what could happen to a man who worried continually.

And he had a most extraordinary gait, swinging his left arm in time with his left leg. Now his right hand was tucked inside his frock coat, as if to reassure himself his heart was still beating.

Surprisingly enough his face was almost plump—a lump of dough ready for baking and waiting to go into the oven— and from which protruded a thin, surprisingly pointed nose which twitched continuously and tiny, closely-spaced eyes glanced about with suspicious restlessness.

At their first brief meeting half an hour ago Ramage thought that the nose twitched to the left as the eyes glanced to the right, and to the right as His Excellency looked left, but he now saw this had been sheer chance. And clearly Sir Jason was a man with few friends and an overly-timid wife, because they'd all failed to warn him never to smile: when he did his narrow lips vanished, lifting like curtains to reveal a set of uneven, yellowed teeth that looked more suited to a horse trying to spit out the bit between his teeth. 'Ah—Wilson, my Lord, I'm sorry to have kept you: I'm sure you people never appreciate how busy is the life of a Governor,' he said.

'But I certainly do, your Excellency,' Ramage said uncompromisingly. 'In fact only a moment ago I remarked to Colonel Wilson how unfair it was to take up your time with idle gossip and rang for our carriage.'

The lips, which had momentarily unfolded, drew back again.

'Gossip? Gossip?' he exclaimed in his whining voice. 'Who wants to gossip? I've no time for gossip.' 'Quite, your Excellency,' Ramage said politely. 'So if you'll excuse------'

'But you've only just arrived!'

Ramage took out his watch with deliberate slowness and pressed the top so the front sprang open. After looking carefully at the face he shut it and, replacing it in his pocket, said nothing.

The Governor swung his left arm, nonplussed. 'Well—I er... Well, Colonel Wilson, you, er...' The Colonel glanced up, startled, having been absorbed in admiration for what Ramage had just done. Obviously the Governor had expected that the two officers had come to Government House within an hour of the Triton's arrival to make an official report and get his approval for their future plans.

After deliberately keeping them waiting to show his importance, he'd just been completely deflated to find they were apparently paying only a social call, and complaining how busy he was now led them both to hurry away to avoid wasting his time with 'idle gossip'.

Very neat, Wilson thought. Ramage had said nothing that could offend His Excellency; nevertheless Sir Jason was now in the humiliating position of not only having to ask what was going on, but since Wilson had told him of Ramage's authority as 'Senior naval officer upon the Station', risking being snubbed as well.

'Your Excellency...?' Wilson prompted.

'Oh—well, won't you stay for a drink? And you, my Lord—surely you can spare ten minutes?'

Wilson glanced at the Lieutenant, unwilling to spoil any move, and Ramage said politely: 'You'll forgive us if we make it just ten minutes, your Excellency? We have a lot to do.'

'Of course, of course.'

He shambled across the room, removed his right hand from where it recorded his heart beat, and used it to tug the bell pull so violently that the long strip of red silk braid tore in half six feet above his hand, the tasselled end dropping back across his face.

'Damnation!' he snorted, pulling it away. 'The tropics! Everything just rots in the heat and damp!'

'I wonder if the bell rang, sir?' Ramage inquired innocently.

Sir Jason hauled his lips apart in a brave smile.

'I'm sure it did—rang it so loudly the clapper's probably broken!'

Ramage smiled but Wilson, fascinated by the Lieutenant's easy grace, just watched the two men. However, he realized that Sir Jason was learning extremely quickly and, shying from Ramage, he turned to him.

'You are coming to my ball this evening, I trust, Colonel?'

'Of course, your Excellency—social occasion of the year, what?'

'So nice of you to say so, Colonel. I trust the orchestra has been rehearsing.'

'Of course sir,' Wilson assured him. 'The bandmaster's had 'em hard at it for the past fortnight—since you gave the order.'

'And Colonel... I really do hope none of them get drunk again: it was so distressing last year and—oh, Lord Ramage, I've just realized you haven't received an invitation! You sailed so quickly and I had no idea when you would return.

'The Governor's Annual Ball is tonight—and you've just heard Colonel Wilson call it the social occasion of the year. Can I persuade you to leave your ship for a few hours?'

Ramage, thinking hard from the moment the Governor first mentioned it, realized it was a good opportunity to meet the island's leading people. And the drunker they were, he thought grimly, the more he'd learn.

He bowed slightly, 'I'm honoured, your Excellency.'

'At seven, then?'

'Thank you, your Excellency,' and he seized the opportunity to add. 'Since the invitation is unexpected and time so short, you'll forgive me if I return to the ship at once and make myself ready? There are several things I must do. Colonel Wilson...?'

'Me too,' said the Colonel, hauling himself up from the chair. 'Hadn't realized how the time had gone.'

'Please don't rush away,' the Governor protested, irritated to find that almost every remark he made was taken as an end of the visit.

Again Ramage smiled. 'Duty calls, sir: while neither of us bear the responsibilities that your Excellency does, our masters in Whitehall...'

'Quite—indeed, I understand. Until this evening, then.'

With that they took their farewell, and as the carriage clattered down the hill, Wilson said: 'Well, that went off better than I expected!'

Ramage laughed like a happy schoolboy who'd just evaded a beating from the headmaster. 'The credit's all yours, sir.'

'Mine?' Wilson shook his head.

'You discovered we had an ace—the "Senior naval officer upon the Station"—and his Excellency had to think of a way of making sure I didn't play it.'

Wilson remained silent until the carriage reached the Careenage, where one of the Triton's boats waited, and then he said unexpectedly:

'Have you ever thought who our worst enemies are in a war?'

'Yes,' Ramage said promptly. 'Politicians seeking cheap victories to announce in Parliament—cheap in terms of money but usually costly in lives. Then bureaucrats—among them colonial governors. Then aged generals and admirals who should have retired long ago but hold on to power 'Because their pride won't let them miss a chance of glory, even if they lose the battle. There are a few more. The French come about tenth on my list, the Spanish about fifteenth!'

Wilson gave the first real laugh Ramage had heard from him: a laugh that began well below the highly-polished leather belt struggling to hold in his stomach and rumbled and fought its way up to his throat.

He thumped Ramage's knee with his first 'Seditious talk to a senior officer, young man; but I enjoy it! I've a feeling you're going to catch those privateers in a matter of days. I'll be sorry in one way because it'll mean you'll be on your way—but you're a breath of fresh air in this God-forsaken island.'

The carriage stopped by the Triton's boat and as Ramage turned to thank Wilson he looked up at the mottled face, the drinker's nose, the bloodshot eyes, and wondered if he'd ever misjudged a man so much in his life.

Jackson was waiting on the quay several yards from the boat, obviously wanting to say something he did not want the other men to hear. Ramage looked questioningly.

'Evening, sir. I wanted to mention Maxton...'

Ramage looked puzzled, then suddenly remembered months ago asking the West Indian seaman where in Grenada he'd been born, and he'd said Belmont. Glancing at the boat's crew he saw Maxton sitting there. He had not seen his family for many years and he had neither applied for leave nor deserted. Ramage felt angry with himself and, nodding to Jackson, called Maxton, who leapt on to the quay.

'Sah?'

'Your family—where do they live?'

Maxton pointed to a group of huts on the far side of the lagoon.

'Over there, sir.'

'Do you want some leave?'

Maxton nodded, too excited to speak.

'Go now, but report back on board by dawn tomorrow: you can't have longer at the moment because we may have to sail suddenly.'

Still Maxton was too excited to speak. Ramage felt in his pocket for a guinea.

'And you'll need this.'