Ramage's Devil

CHAPTER TWELVE

The abominable Bullivant had changed nothing in the great cabin: the desk was polished, the keys were still in the locks of the drawers. The settee was the same as usual, its dark-blue cover not torn or stained. The armchair was unmarked (except by the passing years flattening the springs). The man's possessions had been stowed in his trunks and sent across to the Murex. Yet although he had been on board for only a few days he had left an invisible atmosphere: now Ramage knew how the owner of a house felt standing in a room which had been rifled by a burglar.

He sat down at the desk, jerking open one drawer after another. Nothing had been removed, nothing added. Letter book - that was still here, and he flipped open a few pages. Bullivant had not written any official letters or, more likely, the clerk had not copied them into the letter book. Order book - yes, the Board order giving Bullivant command of the Calypso, followed by the Admiralty order to him to join Admiral Clinton's fleet were here, and so was Clinton's order to Bullivant telling him to place himself under the admiral's command. Nothing else.

The 'Captain's Journal' was here, started the day Bullivant joined the ship, and Ramage put it in another drawer without reading it. Yes, here was the muster book, and an entry indicated the date that Bullivant had joined the ship 'as per commission'. No one had noted that he was replacing Captain Ramage, who was on leave. Now there was a nice point - in noting that Bullivant had gone to the Murex 'by order of the commander-in-chief ', did Ramage now note that Captain Ramage had taken (resumed?) command 'as per commission', thus having taken command twice without ever having (officially) left the ship? Or did he ignore Bullivant's brief command?

Some tedious quillpusher at the Navy Board could worry about that bureaucratic problem, and no doubt the correspondence ensuing would continue for another ten years. He noted that no seaman had been discharged and no new men had joined the ship.

He put the muster book and letter book back in the drawer, and took Admiral Clinton's order from his smock. Soon he would be back in uniform. Several officers in the flagship had offered spare uniform frocks and breeches, stockings, shirts and stocks, but Ramage guessed that his own clothes would still be in the Calypso, and indeed almost the first thing his steward Silkin had reported was that his trunks had been brought up from the hold and all the clothing was being washed or cleaned or ironed with a sprinkling of vinegar to get rid of the musty smell.

He opened Admiral Clinton's two sets of orders and read the second one again. The admiral and Captain Bennett had drawn them up in a hurry, which ensured brevity.

'Whereas I have received information,' Admiral Clinton's orders began, 'that the French national frigate L'Espoir sailed from Brest very recently carrying as prisoners a large group of men and women accused by the French government of disloyalty and sentenced to transportation and exile in Cayenne, you are hereby required and directed to proceed with all possible dispatch in His Majesty's ship Calypso under your command and make the best of your way towards Cayenne and intercept the said French national frigate L'Espoir and free the prisoners and carry them safely to a port in England, reporting at once to my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty the success of your mission ...'

He slid the letter between two blank pages in the order book and put the volume back in the drawer, locking it. It was lucky that Bullivant never bothered to put a key in his pocket - every drawer in this particular desk had a different lock.

The shouting, stamping and scuffling on the deck overhead had finally stopped and Ramage listened for feet clattering down the companion way, to be halted at his door by the Marine sentry, who would then call out the person's identity.

He sat back and sighed with sheer pleasure. It was exciting to be back - he had spent so long in this cabin it seemed like home. Indeed, it was his home. Certainly sitting at this desk dressed as a French fisherman was unusual, but there was no time to wait for Silkin's smoothing iron to finish its work.

Since boarding the ship he had used the first fifteen minutes to listen to Silkin (who regarded his sartorial report as the most important the captain would want to hear) and then come down to the great cabin and read his orders once again. He had done this while Aitken prepared the ship for the next step.

And now there were the footsteps clattering down the companion way, and the clank of a sword hilt held high but not high enough to prevent it catching one of the steps.

The thump of feet and clatter of a musket indicated the Marine sentry coming to attention. Two voices, a question (from the sentry, one he would have had to ask even if the visitor had been his own mother), and a reply.

Then a tap on the door and the sentry's voice: 'Captain, sir - the first lieutenant!'

'Send him in.'

And in came a smiling Aitken, crouching slightly because of the low headroom, his sword held clear with one hand, his cocked hat under his arm.

'Ship's company mustered aft, sir.'

'Aitken' - Ramage stood up and walked towards the young Scot, his hand extended. As they shook hands, Ramage added: 'I'm glad to be back and I'm glad I have the same officers.'

'Thank you, sir. We held our breaths when we heard the British ambassador - Lord Whitworth, I think it is - had left Paris, but when you didn't come back from your honeymoon we guessed that the French had captured you and her Ladyship.'

Ramage gestured down at his smock and trousers. 'You didn't expect to meet me off Ushant in this rig! Well, you should see her Ladyship - she's dressed as a fishwife.'

He led the way up the ladder and out on deck. The Marines were lined up in two ranks against the taffrail; Southwick, the lieutenants and Orsini were at the starboard end of the front file, and the seamen formed the other three sides of the square so that the quarterdeck was a box of men.

Ramage had mustered all the men not through any overweening conceit but, because of that confidence always existing among men who have fought beside each other many times, he knew that they wanted to see him and be reassured.

The drunkard who had briefly taken his place had been hoisted out lashed on to a stretcher shouting and screaming that the seamen at the staytackle were doing the Devil's work. Now Bullivant was on his way to Plymouth in the Murex and he could only feel sorry for Sarah. She will, he thought grimly, see and hear what we went through with Bowen. Still, it is a bare 120 miles from Ushant to Plymouth and the Murex should stretch over to the northeast at a good six knots, so that Sarah will have to put up with it for only twenty-four hours. Then she would post to London and very soon the thought of the recent excitement would be like a half-remembered dream.

On top of the main capstan: the ship was not rolling enough to make it difficult for him to balance, and he could look round and see everyone, except for two or three Marines hidden by the mizenmast. But it was a dam' cold wind: the downdraught from the mainsail seemed to go straight through his smock. The advantage of full uniform in a northern climate was its warmth, although it was too hot for the Tropics - the cocked hat, for instance, seemed to gain a pound in weight for every ten degrees of latitude it moved south, so that near the Equator it was about as comfortable as a knight's helmet.

Now the Marines were standing stiffly to attention, the lieutenants frozen to the deck, and the seamen looking up at him, some grinning, some straight-faced, but none sucking teeth. Few captains seemed to realize that the presence or absence of the sucking of teeth revealed more about the men's attitude, happiness or discontent, than anything else.

He spoke a few words of greeting as he pulled the first of Admiral Clinton's orders from the front of his smock and the Marines and lieutenants unfroze. The seamen knew only too well what was coming next and made sure they were standing comfortably.

Ramage unfolded the paper and began the ritual of 'reading himself in'. Until that was completed he could not officially give any orders and expect them to be obeyed; he had purposely made 'stand at ease' a gruff comment rather than an order, and the helm order to Southwick was to save time. Then he began reading.

'By virtue of the power and authority to me given as commander-in-chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels comprising the Channel Fleet, and being off Brest and outside the Channel limits, I Reginald Edward Clinton, Vice-Admiral of the Red, do hereby constitute and appoint you captain of His Majesty's ship the Calypso frigate, willing and requiring you forthwith to go on board and take upon you the charge and command of captain in-her accordingly...'

Ramage paused for breath, cursing the man who had originally (probably a hundred years ago) drawn up the wording, never considering the poor captain who had to recite them loud enough so that over the sound of the wind and the sea every man in a ship's company could hear them. Well, almost all the seamen were grinning now, and he continued.

'... Strictly charging and commanding all the officers and company of the said Calypso frigate to behave themselves jointly and severally in their respective employments... and you likewise to observe the General Printed Instructions ... Hereof nor you nor any of you may fail as you will answer to the contrary at your peril; and for so doing this shall be your warrant...'

That last sentence meant just what it said: lieutenants, post-captains and admirals had been court-martialled and broken for failure. The commission of course covered any orders given by superiors, and the admiral's actual orders had a vagueness about them explained partly by the lack of much knowledge about L'Espoir, her prisoners and her route, but also so worded that whatever happened (in case of failure) the admiral could not be blamed. Admiral Clinton had been careful to note that he and Ramage were 'outside the Channel limits', because within Channel limits only the Board of Admiralty could appoint captains.

Ramage folded the orders and tucked them back inside his jersey: he had 'read himself in', he was (once again) commanding the Calypso. As soon as he had 'read himself in', Ramage reflected, a captain usually made a speech to the ship's company (threatening, inspiring, flatulent, boring - different styles). But all these men, all the names attached to the sea of faces surrounding him, knew him well: they had gone into action with him, boarded enemies beside him, pistol, cutlass or boarding pike in hand. Some had been blown up with him, most had seen him brought back unconscious from wounds. There were no words to say to such men.

He just looked round slowly at all the men, raised his right hand in a salute that suddenly reminded him absurdly of a Roman emperor's gesture, and jumped down from the main capstan amid a swelling roar of cheers: 'Three cheers and a tiger,' and apparently led by Southwick.

Well, he was back. Where was L'Espoirl

The sea now had the is-it-mauve-or-is-it-purple? of the deep ocean, with white horses stippling the tops of a few wind waves while swell waves slid beneath them. The Calypso was pitching slightly and rolling heavily, the masts and their yards creaking and the bulging sails frequently flattening and slatting as a particularly quick roll suddenly spilled the wind for a minute or two.

Astern the sun had lifted over the line of distant black cloud lying low and flat on the eastern horizon like a shadowy baulk of timber floating on the sea, and quickly the last of the stars were dazzled away and the sky overhead turned pale blue and cloudless.

In a few hours they would be crossing that invisible line of latitude 23 degrees 27 minutes North, marking the Tropic of Cancer, and, Ramage reflected thankfully, at last they seemed to have picked up the Trade winds.

For the previous few days it had been a damp and dreary ritual. During the night the wind dropped, leaving the Calypso wallowing in a confused sea which bounced her up and down like a doormat being shaken and made everything movable creak, rattle or bang. In Ramage's cabin even the wine glasses clinked in their rack as though toasting each other. Two drawers full of clothes which had not been shut properly skidded across the painted canvas that served as a carpet on the cabin sole, spilling silk and lisle stockings, handkerchiefs, stocks and shirts as though a dog was making a nest in a draper's storeroom.

Dawn each day had revealed thunderstorms building up all round them, the lower clouds foaming upwards towards a higher layer which soon cut off the sun. From time to time Ramage had stood at the quarterdeck rail, picturing L'Espoir scores of miles ahead and sailing in different weather, the Trade winds sweeping her south and west to Cayenne, sails bulging, the French captain cheerful as he marked his chart and filled in his journal to record a fast passage from Brest.

In the Calypso, Ramage, almost stifling with frustration, had looked up at the sails hanging down like heavy curtains, chafing against rigging, the foot of each one wearing against the mast since the sails of the King's ships were cut with a straight foot, not the deep curve favoured by merchant ships deliberately to avoid the chafe but reducing the area of the sail, something a ship of war could not afford.

Clew up to save some of the chafe or furl and avoid any at all? Or leave them so that he would not lose a minute once the first gust of wind arrived? But when it came (this week or next) would the wind be just a nice gust or would it be a roaring blast from one of those great thunderstorms that would send topmen hurrying to furl as courses were hastily clewed up and Aitken doubled the number of men at the wheel so that four stood a chance of preventing the overpressed frigate broaching as she raced to leeward, barely under control?

Should he risk losing a mile or so of progress, should he risk that heart-stopping bang of sail torn in half by the brute strength of the wind and then the thudding and thumping of the pieces slatting, or should he furl everything and wait for the wind to set in properly?

Eventually while he argued back and forth with himself and Southwick paced up and down, a lonely figure on the lee side of the quarterdeck, or Ramage stopped and barked at the quartermaster or chatted with the officer of the deck, in this case Martin, whiffles of wind had been spotted by the lookout at the foremasthead (a man having to hold on for dear life, and Ramage would have forgiven him if he had been too dizzy to spot anything). But the dancing shadows on the water were coming from the south. Anyway, anything was better than having the ship slat and bang herself to pieces, so they had braced up the yards and trimmed the sheets and found that, with the swell from the east and the lightness of the wind, the best they could lay and keep the sails asleep was west by north. They could pinch her to west by south but she slowed like a carriage miring itself in mud.

For the rest of each of those days they had jogged along at four and five knots, with the wind falling away at night and dawn bringing more thunderstorms. And the glass had fallen a little.

Except for this morning: while it was still dark the wind had again set in light from the south but he noticed that the glass had stopped falling and went on deck to find the sky was full of stars, already a good deal brighter than usual in northern skies. As dawn had begun to push away the dark of night the wind backed slightly - the coxswain had reported it as fluking around southeast by south, and the Calypso would just lay southwest by west. An hour later it was a steady east-southeast with the Calypso almost laying the course.

By noon it had backed another few points so that Southwick marked the slate in the binnacle box drawer and recorded the wind as northeast by east, with the ship making seven knots with all sails set to the royals and laying the course. More important, the ship's company were getting the stunsails up on deck ready for hoisting. The Trades had really set in? They could only hope. The noon sight - with Southwick, Aitken and Ramage himself on deck with quadrants and sextants measuring the sun's altitude - gave the latitude as 24 degrees 06 minutes North. Orsini had also taken a sight, which involved only turning the adjusting screw of the sextant to get the highest angle the sun made and did not depend on the accuracy of the chronometer. The young midshipman had achieved all that without difficulty but had stumbled over the simple calculations which involved the sextant angle and the sun's declination. The latitude which he finally admitted to Southwick had to be wrong, as the master pointed out with mild irony, since it placed the Calypso on the same latitude as Edinburgh.

Ramage was allowing a knot of southeast going current but previous experience showed this was too much. However, like Southwick who was a cautious navigator, he preferred that any error put the reckoning ahead of the ship: if the ship was ahead of the reckoning she could (and many did!) run on to unseen rocks and reefs guarding the destination.

As he was taking the noon sight, Ramage felt sure the Trades were setting in with their usual abruptness. At the moment only a few of the typical Trade wind clouds - small, flat-bottomed with rounded tops and reminding him of mushrooms - were moving in neat lines apparently converging on a point beyond the western horizon.

Trade wind clouds were a never-failing entertainment in the Tropics. In fact, he reflected, weather in the Trades could also be alarming for a Johnny Newcome, whether a seaman or officer fresh to the Tropics. In crossing the Atlantic, often one would find at dawn a band of low, thick cloud to the east (to windward and therefore, one would think, approaching) which would become black and menacing as the sun rose behind it: obviously, one would think, the herald of a strange tropical storm or gale, or at least a devastating squall.

The beginning of the day in the ship usually meant that for an hour or two every man was fully occupied, and then the Newcomes would suddenly remember (with more than a stab of fear) and look astern for that low, black cloud. But a quick glance to the eastward would show a clear horizon and an innocent sun rising with all the grace and smoothness of a duchess composing herself for a portrait artist.

So by nine o'clock the sky would be clear from horizon to horizon and the sun just beginning to hint that soon it would have some warmth in it. Then the parade of the mushrooms would begin.

He called them mushrooms but they really started in the distance as rows of white pinheads on a pale blue velvet pincushion. They would gradually move to the westward, keeping in neat lines but each pinhead beginning to expand like a fluffy ball of cotton growing on its bush. On and on to the westward they would move, and the sun warming the air would make the clouds blossom larger, but they would still stay in orderly and evenly-spaced lines, like columns of well drilled soldiers advancing across a plain. Sometimes the shapes would change: while the bottom stayed flat, the top would take up a grotesque shape, like a bun determined to alarm the baker's wife.

For Ramage the actual growth of the lines of cloud was the least of it. The fun came in looking at each of them. With flat bottom and bulging top, many were like recumbent effigies on the tops of tombs; with others the white vapour curved and twisted into the shape of faces staring up into the sky. In the course of fifteen minutes, ten chubby, long-faced, pug-nosed or long-nosed politicians familiar from cartoonists' broadsides, a dozen friends, and a dozen more bizarre but identifiable shapes would sail past on their way westward.

Occasionally, often in the late afternoon towards sunset, the western sky would slowly turn into the most horrifying scarlets and oranges, livid purples and ominous mauves, as though a child was being introduced to watercolour washes, and it seemed that within hours a most devastating hurricane must roar up against the wind and bring enormous seas to set them all fighting for their lives. But by nightfall the sky was usually clear again and sparkling with its full complement of stars and no hint of where the gaudy clouds had gone or why they had appeared.

The first flying fish always excited the ship's company: as soon as the ship slipped into the warmer southern seas most men would glance over the side as frequently as possible, hoping to be the first to glimpse the tiny silver dart skimming a foot or two high in a ridge and furrow flight over the waves to vanish as quickly as it appeared. What seemed the upper quadrant of a slowly turning and very thick wheel was the curving back of a dolphin, and always good for a yell, and sometimes a dozen or so of them would play games with the ship, racing to cut across the bow from side to side and so close that it seemed the cutwater must hit them.

For Ramage, though, there was a particular assignation in the Tropics, and he always felt cheated if he was not the first to sight it. It was the unusual rather than beautiful white bird which could be mistaken for a great tern, but for the fact that its tail, three times as long as its body, comprised a couple of long thin feathers trailing in a narrow V. The beak of the Tropic bird was red or yellow and the wings were narrow and pointed like those of the tern with the fast beat of a pigeon. Strangely enough it seemed to be a bird of the islands and headlands, one that was used to jinking and diving, and which would not stray far from land. And what was the purpose of that tail?

The birds in fact lived in colonies - he knew of several at St Eustatius and Nevis, in the Leeward Islands (each island, coincidentally, was easily identified because of the huge topless cone at one end revealing an old volcano). A passage between St Martin and St Barthélemy on one side and Saba, St Eustatius and St Kitts and Nevis on the other usually produced a dozen or more Tropic birds flying across the channel.

Yet Ramage had seen them here in the middle of the Atlantic, fifteen hundred miles and more from the nearest land, flying with just the same quick, almost nervous wing beats, as though due back at the nest in twenty minutes. It seemed to make little difference whether its destination was fifteen or fifty miles away. Nor fifteen hundred: that was simply the middle of the Atlantic between the Canary Islands and Barbados. To reach one from the other (or any land) the bird had to fly nearly three thousand miles. Did it just fly day and night without stopping? He had never seen one resting on the water like a seagull. And another strange thing was that all those he had seen out in the Atlantic were always flying directly east or west, never to the north or south. On the last voyage, he remembered looking up at eight o'clock in the forenoon to see his first Tropic bird of the passage flying due east, directly over the ship. Then, at four o'clock in the afternoon, he had seen one flying due west, again passing right over the ship. The same bird? His ship's destination, Barbados, had been two thousand miles to the westward. Yet, he remembered, every Tropic bird he had ever seen out in the Atlantic had passed directly over the ship: he had never seen one flying past in the distance. Nor did the bird ever dip down towards the ship, as though looking for a resting place or a tasty scrap of food.

Other species of birds often came on board, though of course they were usually much nearer land. Still, an old Barbados planter he had once spoken to said Tropic birds lived on flying fish and squid, diving down for them. The planter called it the boatswain bird, and the French had several names, different in each island - paille-en-queue, paille-en-cul, and flèche-en-cul. Straw tail, arrow tail - there were a dozen ways of translating it, but the Spanish contramaestre was the nearest to the English boatswain bird.

He waved to Aitken to cross the quarterdeck and join him.

'Horizon looks very empty, sir,' the young Scotsman commented. 'Seems you only realize how big the Western Ocean is when you're looking for someone.'

'We could have overtaken her. Or she could be to the north or south. Or ahead of us.'

'Aye, it'll be only a matter of chance if we sight her. Ten different captains have ten different routes for making this crossing.'

'So you're not very hopeful?'

'No, sir, not with the difference in time.'

Ramage nodded. 'Once she was a complete night ahead of us - ten hours of darkness - there was always the chance of us accidentally overtaking her. And with two or three hundred miles' difference in position, there's the weather, too. She could be stretching along comfortably with a northerly breeze while we are beating against a southerly. She could have a soldier's wind with stunsails set and we could be becalmed.'

'At least we're catching up now!' Aitken gestured to the stunsails, long narrow strips of sail each hanging down from its own tiny boom and hoisted by a halyard out to the end of a normal yard so each stunsail formed an extension of the sail, like an extra leaf at the end of a table.

'Catching up or outstripping?' Ramage mused. 'I can't see Frenchmen hurrying with a ship full of prisoners: they could be treating it all as a comfortable cruise and be in no rush to get back to France - it'll be winter by then, too. They've no idea they're being chased.'

The two men walked aft from the quarterdeck rail, past the companion way leading down to the captain's cabin, then abreast the great barrel of the main capstan, with the slots for the capstan bars now filled with small wedge-shaped drawers containing bandages and tourniquets, ready at hand if they should go into action. Past one black-painted gun on its carriage, and now a second. Then came the binnacle box, like an old chest of drawers with a window on each side, a pane of stone-ground glass revealing a compass which was far enough away not to affect the one on the other side but so placed that the man on either side of the wheel had a good view.

Now the double wheel. Normally the man to windward did most of the work, pulling down on the spokes, but with the ship running before the wind as she was now doing, yards almost square and stunsails drawing, each helmsman paid attention and the quartermaster's eyes never stopped a circuit which covered the luffs of the sails, the telltales streaming out from the top of the hammock nettings, and the compass.

The telltales - Ramage was thankful to see them bobbing so vigorously. Four or five corks threaded at ten-inch intervals on a length of line, with half a dozen feathers embedded in each cork, and the whole thing tied to a rod and stuck up in the hammock nettings, one each side, might not be everyone's idea of beauty, but after those days of calm and light headwinds, they were a wonderful sight.

Now they were passing the captain's skylight - built over the forward side of the great cabin it was a mixed blessing: it provided air and light, and he could hear what was going on, but sometimes the quarterdeck was a noisy place: at night there could be the thunderous flap of sails followed at once by the officer of the deck cursing the quartermaster, and the quartermaster cursing the helmsmen for their inattention... The officer of the deck at night would regularly call to the lookouts (six of them, two on the fo'c'sle, two amidships, and one on each quarter) to make sure they were awake and alert ... Then, Ramage thought sourly, there would be one of those 'Is-it-isn't-it' conversations, probably between the sharp-eyed young Orsini and the officer of the deck. One would think he glimpsed a sail, or land, or breakers in the darkness. The other would be equally sure there was nothing. The muttered but heated debate would be enough to make sure that a drowsy Ramage wakened completely, and often, although he knew there was no land for a hundred miles, he would pull on a cloak and go on deck - there was always a chance ...

Finally the last gun on the starboard side and a few more paces brought them up to the taffrail and time to turn back, both men turning inwards, a habit which ensured no interruption if they had been talking.

'This Count of Rennes, sir?' Aitken said cautiously. 'You've met him?'

'He has been a friend of my family since long before the war began.'

'Ah, so you feel all this personally, too, sir?'

'Yes - but he escaped to England at the Revolution and lived in England until the recent treaty. He still has an estate in Kent. But we're chasing L'Espoir because he's one of the most important French Royalists alive today.'

'And he won't be alive for long if they get him to Cayenne. That Devil's Island is well named, so I've heard.'

'There are two or three islands. I think the French call them the Îles du Salut. One is for convicts and another for political prisoners.'

'I have some notes on Cayenne and the islands,' Aitken commented. 'Taken from some old sailing directions from the Seventies. They probably haven't changed much!'

'You have them on board?'

'In my cabin, sir. I checked as soon as you mentioned where L'Espoir was bound.'

'We'll go over them soon, just in case.'

'That's where you'll catch the rabbit, sir,' Aitken commented. 'A poacher doesn't set a snare in the middle of the field; no, he puts it just outside the burrow. Then you catch the rabbit when it runs for home!'

Ramage stopped for a few moments. Yes, Aitken's simile made sense: why comb the Atlantic? Three thousand miles was the distance, and assuming the Calypso's lookouts could see ten miles on each beam in daylight, they were searching a swathe three thousand miles long and twenty miles wide - sixty thousand square miles. Which, to continue Aitken's simile, must be like walking across a county unable to see over the top of the grass. Cayenne was the burrow: that's where he had to set the noose.

Yet... yet... He resumed walking with Aitken.

'It doesn't leave us room or time to make any mistakes,' he said. 'If we're off the coast of Cayenne and L'Espoir heaves in sight, she only has to cover five miles or so and she's safe.'

'But if we're patrolling that stretch of the coast with all our guns run out, sir,' Aitken protested.

'You might just as well leave them unloaded with the tompions in,' Ramage said grimly. 'I can hardly fire into a ship where a quarter of those on board are likely to be those I'm ordered to rescue...'

'Then how are we ... ?' Aitken broke off and came to a stop facing Ramage. He shook his head. 'I've spent many hours trying to decide the route L'Espoir would take, so that we could intercept her, but I didn't think of ... Yet it's so obvious!'

'Not that obvious,' Ramage assured him. 'Neither the admiral nor his flag captain considered it in drawing up my orders!'

'We're going to have to bluff 'em,' Aitken said dourly.

'Bluff won't help much: the French will see Devil's Island close to leeward and all they have to do is make a bolt for it.'

'Would they risk damage to their spars with land so close to leeward?'

'Of course. From what I've read, it's a mud-and-mangroves-and-sand coast and it's theirs, so even if we sent all their masts by the board, the ship would drift on to a friendly lee shore and the French would march their prisoners off at low water. Not quite that, because there's ten feet or so of tide, but you know what I mean.'

'But L'Espoir's people would know they'd then be marooned there for months, until the next batch of prisoners are sent out. Worse than that, until the next ship arrives that manages to break our blockade of Brest.'

Ramage thought of the problem often facing captains: how to train their officers fully to consider all the enemy's advantages without getting too overwhelmed or depressed to think of ways of overcoming them. An overwhelmed or depressed officer was almost as dangerous as an overconfident one. Well, perhaps Aitken would get there by himself.

'The French captain may have guessed that a British frigate is after him,' Ramage said, without adding the corollary that he would have had a long time to think of his advantages and disadvantages.

'I don't see why, sir,' Aitken said politely but firmly. 'In fact, if you'll pardon me, I think it'll be just the opposite. He'll be treating it like an unexpected cruise.'

'But he can't be sure he won't be intercepted somewhere by a patrolling British frigate.'

Ramage almost grinned at the effort Aitken, usually a very patient man, was making not to show his complete disagreement with this sort of reasoning. In other words, Ramage thought, it's working: Aitken really is considering!

'Sir, no ship that he meets, not one, whether French or British, Spanish or Dutch, will know that the war has started again: the news can't possibly have reached them yet. Cayenne and Devil's Island won't know of the new war until L'Espoir arrives, and her captain knows that as long as he smiles and waves if he sights a British frigate, he's in no danger because the British frigate will think the world is at peace.

'The Calypso, sir,' Aitken continued emphatically, 'is the most westerly British ship that knows the war has started again. If we've overtaken L'Espoir, then we are the westernmost ship in existence.'

Ramage nodded agreement. 'We can be thankful Bonaparte didn't send out a dozen frigates from Brest the moment our ambassador left Paris: in areas off Madeira and the Canaries they could have captured dozens of John Company and other ships all bound to and from England. But he didn't because he's a soldier and not a sailor, and anyway they're very short of seamen in Brest.'

'Aye,' Aitken agreed. 'That Bonaparte seems to be a bonny soldier and we can be thankful he didn't take to the sea. Anyway, L'Espoir will have no reason to think the Calypso knows there's a war.'

'Wouldn't she be suspicious at seeing a British frigate so far south on this coast? About eight hundred miles south of the nearest British naval headquarters, Barbados?' Ramage continued testing Aitken.

'Sir, the Calypso's French-built, and apart from the fact that she's a little smarter than the usual French national ship, there's no way she'd know we're British unless we're flying our own colours.'

Now Aitken was straying from the point Ramage wanted him to discover and consider.

'Yes, I agree with all that but - and it's a big "but" - Bonaparte never forgives anyone who makes a mistake. In France there's a very complicated secret police system under which everyone is supposed to report on everyone else. One effect is that anyone failing to carry out his orders is likely to be accused of treason. Failure is frequently labelled treachery to the Revolution. And that usually means the guillotine - few brought before the courts in France are ever found not guilty.'

'So you think that the captain of L'Espoir will have considered that among the possible risks and dangers, sir? That he won't regard this voyage as a cruise, even though he is certain to be sailing ahead of the news of war?'

'Look at it another way, Aitken: forget the naval aspect. The captain of L'Espoir is carrying out the orders of the admiral at Brest, but he is a realist: he knows that the orders really come from the Ministry of Police, from that man Fouché, in fact. His written orders may have said that he was to carry fifty déportés from Brest to Devil's Island and hand them over to the préfet, but he knows very well that those fifty men (and their women) are regarded by Bonaparte at the moment as being the fifty greatest traitors who can be transported instead of guillotined. Now do you follow?'

Aitken shook his head. 'I don't think so, sir. It seems quite straightforward to me, but from the tone of your voice obviously it isn't!'

'Well, if somehow the captain does not deliver those fifty prisoners to the préfet in Cayenne, but instead they escape or are rescued by a British ship, so that Bonaparte and his police can't get at them, then -'

'Ah, I see!' Aitken exclaimed, his voice a mixture of triumph and disbelief. 'He would be accused of treachery - of deliberately allowing those fifty to escape.'

'Exactly. Ministers in power and Bonaparte himself always need scapegoats. The captain of L'Espoir knows that. No one commands a French national ship of war today solely because of his seamanship. Remember, in the first six months of the Revolution France destroyed many of her best officers, so today most of her captains are former boatswains; men who've survived all those earlier régimes. The captain of L'Espoir has survived - for nine years. He knows how to do it; he's an expert. So you can be sure he hasn't ruled out the chance of interception.'

'How does that affect us, sir? He must still be sure he is sailing ahead of the news of war.'

'Come now, forget that aspect. He has fifty valuable prisoners on board - valuable particularly because they could lead him to the guillotine. Surely he must have at least one overwhelming advantage ...'

'Well - oh yes!' Aitken exclaimed. 'Fifty hostages! No one attempting a rescue would dare risk harming them! Yes, he knows no one dare fire a broadside into him. By God, he's as immune from harm as a pirate holding a nun in front of him.'

'Exactly, immune from broadsides, and he doesn't have to give a damn about arriving disabled on a lee shore. If he hands over the prisoners to the préfet safely at the cost of losing his ship the Minister of Marine might be lenient as long as he gets a favourable report from the préfet. Mind you, the captain and ship's company will be marooned in Cayenne and half might die from the black vomit and the survivors be captured on their way back to France in another ship...'

Aitken said suddenly: 'What do we do if we sight L 'Espoir thisafternoon, sir?'

'I've no idea,' Ramage admitted. 'We might send their masts by the board or tear their sails to shreds with langrage, but we'd still have to carry the ship by boarding and if the captain uses the prisoners as hostages and threatens their lives, we're still no nearer rescuing anyone.'

'It's a worry, sir,' Aitken commented, and Ramage was irritated by the Scotsman's tone: he spoke in the 'Yes, well, the captain's bound to think of something' voice. However, as Aitken now knew well, this time there was no way.

Admiral Clinton was lucky, Ramage thought sourly as he turned yet again at the taffrail: if the Count of Rennes and his fellow prisoners were not rescued, or were killed, the commander-in-chief would certainly incur the disfavour of the Prince of Wales, but that was all, because his orders (as far as they went) were quite correct. But Captain Ramage, whatever the verdict of a court-martial, could be sure that at best he would spend the rest of his life on the beach, drawing half-pay. No one would say anything out loud, but at the Green Room in Portsmouth, at Brooks's, White's and such places, there had been too many of his Gazettes published by the Admiralty for there not to be jealousy of 'that fellow Ramage'.

Nor would half-pay now be so boring and frustrating; in fact, with Sarah beside him it could be very lively. They would live at St Kew and running the estate would keep them busy. Yet he knew that while the war against France lasted and there were ships of the Royal Navy at sea, only half his heart would be in Cornwall. That, Sarah would know, might prove the most difficult thing to deal with.

He shook his head to dispel the thoughts: what on earth was he getting so depressed about, putting himself on half-pay when they had not even sighted L'Espoir?

Five minutes later, as Aitken wrote on the slate and Ramage continued pacing the windward side of the quarterdeck, there was a hail from aloft.

'Deck there - foretopmast lookout here!'