Ramage And The Rebels

CHAPTER FOUR

The darkness immediately before dawn was depressing, chilly and damp, and Ramage pulled his boat cloak round him, hating the way the wool smelled because the salt soaked into it had absorbed the humid night air. In three or four hours the scorching sun would make him envy the seamen wearing only light shirts and thin trousers. But now, as they all waited for dawn, it seemed as cold as the English Channel. It wasn't, of course; he was now so accustomed to the Tropics that any time the temperature dropped below what would be a scorching day in England he felt frozen.

Baker was the officer of the deck; every ten minutes he called to the six lookouts posted round the ship, one at each bow, one amidships and one on each quarter. He called to them individually and received the same answer, that nothing was in sight, but this constant hailing was not because Baker was nervous or there was any particular danger: it was one way of ensuring the lookouts stayed awake. Staring into the darkness was peculiarly tiring; it was fatally easy to drop off to sleep, even though standing up. And sleeping on duty was a serious crime; not the mere fact of dozing but because in those minutes (even moments) of sleep an enemy could close in or a rocky shoal come into sight. One dozing man could lose the ship and kill every one of his shipmates.

Ramage accepted that lookouts might doze; his own days as a midshipman were not far behind him, and he could remember the tricks he had been reduced to as he tried to stay awake. Wetting your eyelids and facing the wind - that revived you for a few minutes, but never for long enough. Rocking back and forth on heels and toes, shaking the head like a wet dog, flexing the knees, knuckling the eyes and brow .. . But best of all was the officer of the deck checking every man every ten minutes, and that was in his night orders. Perhaps other captains ordered it, although he had never been lucky enough to serve with one. But never in the years he commanded a ship had he needed to flog a man for sleeping on duty.

He imagined the earth slowly turning towards the sun, bringing dawn to start the day here, bringing twilight, to end the day there, somewhere at the far end of the Mediterranean. In Cornwall, dawn had arrived four hours ago; by now it would be broad daylight with St Kew bustling: breakfast would be over and what would Gianna and his parents be doing? The old admiral would probably be astride a horse, cantering out to inspect a field of growing wheat or call on a sick tenant; his mother would be deciding the day's menus. Gianna - perhaps Gianna would be writing to him, another page in the long letters they wrote like diary entries.

The sun already shining over England (or hiding behind cloud) was lifting across the Atlantic and it would soon be here. The theory was interesting and there was no doubt - unless the world stood still - that it would occur in practice but Ramage thought crossly, for the moment it was damned dark and damned cold here, just north of the Dutch island, with a ten - knot breeze and all plain sail set and, from the sound of it, the drummer buckling on his instrument to beat to quarters. Every ship of the Navy in wartime met the dawn with its men at general quarters; the ever - widening circle of daylight could reveal an empty horizon, but it could also reveal an enemy ship, even a fleet, within gunshot.

He listened to the ship noises, so much a part of life that normally one did not notice them: the creak of the great yards overhead and the occasional flap of a sail, like a deep sneeze:

the rumble of the barrel of the wheel as the men turned the spokes and the tiller ropes tightened or slackened, pulling the tiller below deck one way or the other, transmitting direction to the rudder to keep the ship on course and make that distant, ugly noise as gudgeons and pintles grated against each other, the metal lubricated only by the sea.

There was the creaking of the ship herself as she rolled and as the swell waves moved under her: creaks caused by slight movements of planking, of futtocks, of keel and keelson. Here, light aft, the intricate framing of the transom made more noise than in a British frigate, presumably because of some difference between British and French shipbuilding practice. The brief but deep noise of the trucks of the guns moving an inch, the distance the rope stretched when the ship rolled heavily. The lighter creak of rope shrouds stretching under 'train, a curious noise which Ramage always thought rheumatism would make if it had a noise of its own. The animal squeak of the sheaves of blocks as rope rendered through them; blocks that the boatswain and his mates had missed greasing when they went round with the tallow bucket, ii though with all the hundreds of blocks in use it was a never - ending job.

The hiss of the sea, of the white horses riding crests, was 'ore pronounced in the darkness; occasionally there was a dump and splash as' the bow caught an odd wave and sliced off the top in a shower of spray, sometimes a sudden movement in the sky as a seabird wheeled in the darkness, probably startled as it slept on the surface of the water. Sometimes Hidden slight flappings on the deck showed flying fish had landed on board and the officer of the deck usually gave permission to a lookout to grab them and put them in the fish bucket kept by the mainmast for the purpose.

Ramage gave a start as the drummer began rattling away, and below decks the boatswain's mates began their ritual, the calls shrilling with the noise that earned them their nickname, 'Spithead Nightingales', and followed by the bellows and threats to the seamen to get them out of their hammocks.

And once again the Calypso's ship's company went to their stations for battle: decks were sanded, guns run out (they had been left loaded, their muzzles protected from spray and rain by ornately carved wooden tompions), cutlasses, pistols, muskets and pikes were issued to the men, the Marines formed up under Rennick's sharp eye (Ramage had once heard a Marine grumbling that the lieutenant was a vampire who could see in the dark).

The sea was slowly turning a dark grey: because of a trick of the light the black, oily, fast - moving waves were slowing down and seemed higher, and one could see them approaching as the sky lightened almost imperceptibly towards the east.

Ramage saw that Southwick had come on deck and was standing at the forward side of the quarterdeck, his hands on the rail, looking forward. Of all the men on board, the master had most invested in what daylight would reveal today: he had predicted that they would see the land of Curacao broad on the starboard bow, distant fifteen miles, while on the larboard bow would be the much smaller island of Bonaire.

Ramage would not be sorry to see Curacao, though for a different reason from Southwick: with the Creole keeping station astern, it was necessary to keep a poop lantern burning because it had been a dark, overcast night, and Ramage did not want to risk the schooner losing sight of the Calypso. The lantern had been badly trimmed and was smoking slightly, and the sooty smell seemed to have penetrated all of Ramage's clothes as various random puffs of wind went round under the transom and came up over the taffrail.

Again Ramage shrugged his shoulders under his boat cloak, trying to make it fit more closely: the downdraught from the mizen topsail was like a miniature gale blowing down his neck and always particularly bad with the wind on the beam. Well, the draught was always there, he admitted to himself; it became a habit to say it was worse from whatever quarter the wind happened to be blowing at that moment. It meant, of course, that one hoped that the next alteration of course, bearing away a point or luffing up, would send the down - draught on to some other more deserving victim. It never did, of course.

The circle of grey was extending fast now, and Baker came up to him.

'Permission to send the lookouts aloft, sir?'

'Yes,' Ramage said, 'and send Orsini up with a bring - 'em - near: Southwick will want to know the moment anyone sights land.'

Baker laughed, gesturing towards the master, who was still standing at the quarterdeck rail like a nervous punter waiting for his horse to come in sight.

The master's navigation had been accurate; twenty minutes later, as the ship's company hosed down the decks to get rid of the sand and secured the guns, replacing boarding pikes in the racks round the masts, Paolo's hail from aloft told them land was coming into sight through haze on the larboard bow, which was Bonaire, and from two to four points on the starboard beam (from south - south - west to south - west, Southwick noted on the slate kept in the binnacle drawer), which was Curacao. There was no mistaking it: flat to the east, hills gradually rising until they ended in a cone - shaped mountain in the west, Sint Christoffelberg.

They were nicely to windward, Ramage saw, with the harbour half - way along Curacao's south coast, the Calypso and La Creole could run in from the north - east with a commanding wind. Any alert sentries at the eastern end of the island should spot the frigate and schooner against the sunrise, but later, as they came closer, they would be up the sun's path and the glare would dazzle a watcher, making it more difficult for him to distinguish flags. All the more reason why such a watcher should assume that a frigate and a schooner so obviously French - built were in fact French.

Rossi swept up the last of the brickdust and looked at the brass rail on the top' of the companionway. That polish would satisfy the first lieutenant - providing some stupido did not touch it before it was inspected. Fingermarks, fingermarks, he thought crossly. The fingers of half the men in this ship were used only to dab on newly - polished brasswork, or so it seemed.

Jackson and Stafford had half a dozen leather buckets lined up by the mainmast The water had been emptied out and they were polishing the leather before they were refilled and hung back on their hooks, firebuckets which would be useless in case of fire but which, with the name 'Calypso' painted on them, looked smart Looked smart from that side, but anyone with a little curiosity looking at the other side would see the faint scratches and scoring in the leather, done when the paint of the original French name had been removed with a sharp knife.

'Ever been to this Kurewerko, Jacko?'

'Sounds as though you're writing poetry. You pronounce it Cue - rah - so. No, never been there; never had anything to do with the Dutch.'

They're reckoned to be fighters, the Dutch.'

Jackson nodded. 'Hard people, so I hear. Hard in business, hard drinkers, hard fighters.'

'What've they gorn into business with the Dons and the French for, then?'

The American shrugged his shoulders. 'Politics or profit. Them and women are at the bottom of most things.'

'Women,' Stafford muttered nostalgically. Them Dutch women is usually very beamy, from what little I seen of 'em. An' what a clatter they make, them as wears those wooden shoes.'

He held up the bucket he was polishing so that its sides caught the sun. 'It's women what make me wish we was in the Mediterranington,' he said.

'Mediterranean,' Jackson said, correcting the Cockney out of habit. 'But I don't remember reckoning you as a lady's man when we were there.'

'Weren't much opportunity, were there? But Italy, and Spain . . .'

'I've seen some beamy ones there too. Built like three - deckers. Corsica, as well. Remember 'em in Bastia, selling fruit and vegetables? As round as their cabbages, some of them.'

'Oh yus, yus. And they had luwerly oranges, an' every now and again yer saw a real beauty. Woman, I mean.'

'You might have done,' Jackson growled, 'but I never did.'

'Yus, I prefer Italy. The Marcheezer,' Stafford reminded him.

'She don't count,' Jackson said firmly. There was only one of her in the whole of Italy.'

For the next fifteen minutes the two men reminisced about the rescue of the Marchesa from the Tuscan beaches and the subsequent voyage to Gibraltar, and then they were joined by Rossi who, finished with polishing brass, now had to help them with the buckets.

Rossi was, for once, not interested in discussing women, although it was a subject on which he claimed to be an expert. His verdict was always the same - that no women equalled those from Italy, and with it the implication that anyone who disagreed was probably a eunuch.

These privateers, Jacko: you think we find them in Curasao?'

'Preferably just outside,' Jackson said grimly. Then we can sink 'em or bum 'em while their friends watch from the shore.'

Rossi said with relish: 'Remember the Tranquil... let 'em burn.'

One of the bosun's mates, coming over to see how the work was progressing, looked up startled. 'What's burning?' The look in his eye showed that fire at sea was the fear of every seaman.

'Nothin's burning,' Stafford said soothingly. 'Not yet, anyway. We're just 'opin' to catch some privateers and make bonfires of 'em.'

'Use my flint and steel, then,' the bosun's mate said bitterly. 'You should "ave seen those people. You did, Jacko. Slashed to pieces, particularly the women. Whoever killed those five was like a butcher's apprentice.' He looked at Jackson, who was regarded by most of the ship's company, quite erroneously, as being in the captain's confidence. 'Are we reckoning on finding privateers in Curacao? Never heard tell of them using the place before. It's a Dutch island, ain't it?'

The American shrugged his shoulders and ran his hand through his thinning, sandy - coloured hair. 'Looks to me as though it's turned itself into a privateers' nest. I only know that's why we're going there, to look for 'em, though why they've all started using it as a base I don't know. Our frigates are probably making it too hot for them along the northern coasts, I suppose. Not many Spanish ships move around Cuba. Hispaniola's quiet, so's Puerto Rico.'

That don't leave many other places except the Main,' commented Stafford.

'You don't understand the first thing about privateering,' Rossi said with a surprising fluency. The privateer, he capture a ship and he capture a cargo, and sometimes he capture passengers. Three things. He is not interested in anything else.' With a wave of his hand he disposed of the victim's crew over the side in a boat.

"He make his profit from these three things. He sell the cargo - for that he need a port and a market, a place where merchants have money. Then he sell the ship. He need the same thing. Port, merchants, men with money. For the passengers - well, collecting the ransom is hard work, and if he think he get enough profit from the ship and cargo allora, he let the passengers go in the boat - or - ' he gestured to the northwards - 'he kill them.'

'You seem to know about privateering,' commented the bosun's mate.

'In Genova I did not train to be a prete,' Rossi said simply. 'I do not have the face for a priest. But privateering - ' he held his hands out, palms upwards - 'it is like fishing, only no nets to mend.'

'Why is privateering all right there and not here?' Jackson asked shrewdly.

'Privateering is all right anywhere' Rossi said emphatically, 'but in the Mediterranean only the Saraceni would kill passengers. Leave them only the boats, yes, but murder - no!'

Jackson could not remember having seen the Italian so coldly angry. In fact there was not a man on board the Calypso who had not been shocked by the death of those women, as though each could imagine a wife or mother or sister.

'Era barbarico!' Rossi declared, 'and if I find the man . . .' He made an unmistakable gesture showing how he would castrate them. That is to start with. And then - '

'Hold 'ard,' Stafford said, 'leave us to guess. My imagination's too strong and I can imagine it 'appening to me.'

The Spaniards,' Rossi growled, they march about Italy for too many years.'

"Ere, Jacko,' Stafford said reminiscently, 'you remember that fortress near where we rescued the Marcheezer? Where you an' Mr Ramage went and fetched the doctor?'

'Santo Stefano, that was the place. The fortress was named after some Spanish king. The one that sent off the Armada. Philip the Second.'

'La fortezza di Filipo Secundo,' Rossi said. 'I know it, built high over the port That Filipo - the worst of the Spaniards. He taxed everybody and used the money to build fortresses everywhere to guard them. Guard them against anyone ever rescuing them.'

'I thought it was the French you didn't like.' Stafford enjoyed teasing the Italian.

'I do not like the French, no, because they capture Genova now and call it the Ligurian Republic. But in the past we not have the much trouble from the French. The Spanish, though. Always they rush to the Pope. They think all the Italian states belong to them. Always these cruel things for scores of years; centuries in fact. The rack for the heretic, the stiletto for the rival. .. and out here the cutlass for the women passengers.'

These buckets,' said the bosun's mate, giving a shiver, they're polished enough now, let's get 'em filled and hung up again.'

All across the Calypso's decks men were now finishing off various jobs. The tails of halyards and sheets, of dozens of other ropes which had been used in the last few hours, were neatly coiled; the bell in the belfry on the fo'c'sle gleamed as the sun caught it; occasionally there was the smell of wood smoke as a random eddy of wind brought it back from the chimney of the galley stove where the coppers were already boiling the meat for the men's midday meal.

In fifteen minutes the calls of the bosun's mates would have the men exercising at the guns, with the first lieutenant watching closely, a watch in his hand. In the meantime the Calypso, now pitching and rolling with the wind and sea on her larboard quarter, headed for the eastern edge of Curacao, followed by La Creole. The island was a bluish - grey blur on the horizon and with the sun still low the long shadows thrown by the few hills distorted the shape. But as the sun rose and the Calypso approached at almost eight knots, within an hour the grey gave way to faint browns and greens.

Ramage, newly shaven and beginning to feel fresher after an hour's nap and some breakfast, watched the island from the quarterdeck rail. He knew that by now the lookouts at the eastern end of the island would have sighted the ships - the Calypso anyway, with her higher masts - and no doubt a messenger on horseback would even now be galloping to the capital of Amsterdam with a report.

Southwick joined him, telescope under arm and judging by the contented look on his face, with a good breakfast inside him. He pointed at Curacao, now on the Calypso's starboard bow as she sailed down through the channel separating the larger island from Bonaire to the east.

'Must be the worst bargains in the Caribbean, these islands,' Southwick said. 'Just goats, cactus, aloes, salt pans, hardly any rain . .. must drive men mad to be stationed here . . .'

'Bonaire and Aruba, yes,' Ramage agreed, 'but not Curasao: Amsterdam is reckoned to be one of the finest of the smaller harbours: a tiny Port Royal.'

Southwick glanced round at Ramage. Have you ever seen it, sir?'

Ramage shook his head. 'I've only looked at the chart It seems to be a slot cut at right - angles to the coast'

'Aye, calling it a slot is right. A ship sailing in could hit either side of the channel with a pistol. I don't know why we ever let the Dutch keep it. Impossible to cut out a ship - unless you first capture the fort on each side of the entrance.'

'Perhaps we couldn't get them out, and anyway we're usually at peace with them. I'd sooner have the green of Jamaica: plenty of fruit, beef, pork, fish . . . Here, from what I read, they live on goat, an occasional baked iguana - which doesn't appeal to me - with wild duck and snipe for the good shots. Pink flamingoes on Bonaire, I'm told. Hundreds of than.'

'Aye, they're quite a sight,' Southwick agreed. 'But Amsterdam itself is just a big warehouse. Tobacco brought in from the Main, liquor smuggled out, slaves from Guinea sold in the market by the dozen, salt shipped out by the ton. They're busy enough, the "mynheers". Wherever there's a chance of trade you'll find a Dutchman.'

'You can't blame them for that,' Ramage said. The merchants in Jamaica do their best, you know.'

'That's true,' Southwick admitted grudgingly. 'But mynheer's a great smuggler, you know. To the Main.'

'But the Spanish are their allies,' Ramage pointed out 'Aye, but the duty on Dutch spirits imported into Spanish ports is very high. On all Dutch goods, in fact. Leastways, that's what I've heard. So mynheer sails over on a dark night and lands his cargo of gin and slaves quietly up a river. Saves bothering the Spanish customs with too much paperwork . . .'

They've been doing that for 150 years or more,' Ramage pointed out, 'Remember their old cry, "No peace beyond the Line", when Spain claimed that no foreigners could sail to the New World.'

'Ah, the buccaneers of the sixteen - fifties,' Southwick said wistfully. "No commander-in-chief, no signal books, no orders, no forms for the Navy Board . . . you just captured any ship that was Spanish - and raided any Spanish town that took your fancy. Choose from hundreds of miles along the Main and the Isthmus, not to mention the Moskito Coast, New Spain, Cuba and Hispaniola . . .'

'And Puerto Rico,' Ramage said. 'But don't forget what happened if the Dons captured you.'

The master looked puzzled.

The Inquisition,' Ramage reminded him. The Jesuits. All foreign prisoners were treated as heretics. The priests believed the only way to save heretics from Hellfire and damnation was to put 'em on the rack.' He glanced at Southwick's protruding stomach and plump cheeks. They'd halve your beam in half an hour. And by the time you'd spent the rest of your life digging in the salt mines, raking the salt pans or hammering rock into square rocks to build fortresses, you'd be as slim as a handspike.'

Southwick patted his stomach ruefully. That's a comfortable belly . . .'

'Well, a hundred years ago you'd have to be a Papist to keep it - or not get captured.'

'Just think of it, sir: suddenly sailing in over the horizon and holding a whole town to ransom . . .' Southwick was almost poetic. 'Putting a good price on the mayor's head - and the bishop, too,' he added, obviously recalling the rack. "Searching the merchants' houses for chests of pieces of eight . . . killing and skinning beeves to put down fresh salt meat - aye, and finding a few demijohns of Spanish wine too . . . It'd have been worth it,' Southwick said with all the wistful - ness of a worldly ecclesiastic condemning sin. 'I'd have spent the money as fast as I won it, just like the buccaneers; but the fact is, sir, forty years in the King's service hasn't left me a rich man, either.'

With that he began examining the coastline of Curacao with his telescope. 'It's even more desolate than I remember it twenty years ago,' he said.

Ramage raised his telescope. He could just see along the south coast of the island as the Calypso rounded the eastern tip and then bore away to keep about two miles offshore. Thirty - eight miles long, and varying between two and a half and seven miles wide, the land was grey and arid in the glass, the sun - now almost overhead - harsh and mottling the landscape with shadows from bushes and cacti, as though each stood on a black base. Here and there the sparse divi-divi trees, each little more than a thin trunk with a wedge of thin boughs and leaves, were pointing to the west, away from the wind, like gaunt hands. Aloes - the people credited the leaves and bitter sap with magic properties, taking the pain or irritation from insect stings, burns, cuts . . . Ah, there were some of those huge cacti that grew like organ pipes. 'Datu', a book had called them. And there, beside that apology for a hill, a dump of kadushi, another cactus that looked like the same organ pipes but with joints in them. And round the cacti and moving over the ground, looking in the distance like swarms of insects, the flocks of goats, nibbling, ripping, finding food where most animals would starve. There a tamarind tree making arches; nearby the dark green bulk of a manchineel, and he could picture the little apples on the ground below it; apples which burned a man's mouth if he bit one, and killed him if he swallowed it. A strange tree, the manchineel; slaves always made a fuss when ordered to cut one down; they claimed the sap burned their skin, like drops of acid.

'And what of the privateers? No sign of a sail, apart from some wisps of white doth dose in to the shore, little fishing boats tending pots . . .'