Ramage's Devil

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

'She's hove-to on the starboard tack, sir,' Jackson shouted down from the mainmasthead. 'Waiting for us to come down to her.'

'What is she?'

'Frigate, looks as though she could be French-built, sir, but she's too far off to distinguish her colours.'

Ramage turned aft and began to walk, hands clasped behind his back, oblivious of the glances of the guns' crews on each side of the quarterdeck.

A French frigate: 32 guns or so, a hundred and fifty men or less in peacetime, and her captain with no idea the war had started again. Unless she had sighted L'Espoir. In which case she would know not only about the war but where L'Espoir was perhaps only a few hours ago. In the meantime, the fact that she had hove-to, waiting for the Calypso to run down towards her (like an affectionate dog rolling over on its back in anticipation of a tickled belly) meant that she had recognized the Calypso as French-designed and built: her distinctive and graceful sheer would be seen particularly clearly as she approached, taking in her stunsails.

Ramage walked between two guns and then looked out through a port. The Trades were kicking up their usual swell waves with wind waves sliding across the top of them. Not the sort of seas for ships to manoeuvre at close quarters; seas in which a cutter with strong men at the oars would have to take care. An accidental broach in those curling and breaking crests - which seemed sparkling white horses from the deck of a frigate but were a mass of airy froth which would not support a man's body or a boat any more than thick snow carried carriage wheels or horses' hooves - was something that kept a coxswain alert.

He turned forward again at the taffrail, cursing softly to himself. Devil take it; he wanted to concentrate all his thoughts and all his efforts on catching L'Espoir and rescuing her prisoners, without being bothered by another frigate, least of all French. An enemy which had to be attacked.

Yet... yet... He reached the quarterdeck rail and turned aft again, unseeing, walking instinctively, almost afraid to move or yet stand still because out there just beyond his full comprehension, like the dark hurrying shadows on a calm sea made by tiny whiffles of a breeze that came and went without direction or purpose, refusing to strengthen or go away, intent only on teasing, like a beautiful and wilful woman at a masked ball, there was a hint of an idea.

Well, at least he could see the wind shadows of an idea, and they hinted where this frigate could fit in. Taffrail, turn forward ... So let us consider the arguments against this vague, floating idea, or anyway what little he could grasp of it. Damage to the Calypso'sspars ... But they were still far enough north to make Barbados under a jury rig ... Seamen needed as prize crew and Marines as guards ... Now those dark whiffling shadows were becoming a little sharper, the edges more distinctly outlined... Quarterdeck rail and turn ...

No more hails from Jackson but, he suddenly realized, both Southwick and Aitken had been standing where he turned, waiting to say something but unwilling to interrupt his thoughts. He swung back to them.

'Sir,' Aitken said, 'the ship ahead is now in sight from here on deck. We can't make out her colours but from the cut of her sails and her sheer, she looks French all right. Shall we hoist our colours? Do you want the guns loaded now and run out?'

Ah, how one decision depended on another, but the sequence had to have a beginning. In this case the beginning was positively identifying the ship ahead as French. French-built with French-cut sails almost certainly made her one of Bonaparte's ships, because the last year and a half of peace ruled out her being recently captured by the Royal Navy.

Very well, she is French. 'Don't hoist our colours,' Ramage said. 'She probably wouldn't be able to see them anyway because we're dead to windward. Have the guns loaded. Canister, not roundshot, and grape in the carronades. We want to tear her rigging and sails, not splinter her hull. Don't run them out, though.'

He thought a moment. 'Have a dozen men rig up a line of clothes on the fo'c'sle. Laundry always looks so peaceful.' He grinned. 'Tell them that anything lost will be replaced by the purser.'

'Pusser's slops' were never popular with any seaman proud of his appearance. 'Slops', the name given to the shirts, trousers, material and other items which could be bought from the purser, who combined the role of haberdasher, tobacconist, and general supplier whose profit came from the commission he charged, were usually of poor quality. The shirts all too often came, so the men grumbled, in two sizes - too large and too small. Likewise the trousers were too long or too short. All were too expensive, as far as the men were concerned. The 'pusser' was rarely a popular man, and in most ships the victim of scurrilous stories. He was, the seamen of the Navy claimed, the only person who could make dead men chew tobacco. The miracle was performed when a seaman died or was killed and an unscrupulous purser put down in his books that the man had drawn a few pounds of tobacco, the price of which would be taken from the wages owing to relatives while the tobacco remained in the purser's store to be sold again. Careless pursers had even charged men who never touched tobacco.

Daydreaming ... Again Ramage cursed his habit of letting his mind go wandering up byways when his thoughts should stay on the highway.

He waited until Aitken had finished passing the orders and watched Martin, Kenton and Wagstaffe down on the maindeck supervising their divisions of guns. He looked around for Orsini and found the young midshipman waiting beside the binnacle. His role when the ship was at general quarters was to be near the captain, ready to run messages. He had once heard the boy complain to Martin that being the captain's aide de camp sounded a fine job in action, but Mr Ramage never wanted any messages taken anywhere ...

Well, Paolo could hardly complain with any justification: since Gianna had first asked Ramage to take her nephew to sea as a midshipman and teach him to be an officer in the Royal Navy, the lad had been in action half a dozen times or more; he had even been given command of a prize while in the Mediterranean.

Gianna. No matter how hard he tried to shut her out, and no matter how he and Paolo had tactfully not talked about her when he had rejoined the Calypso, she came back. Not because of a broken love affair, because it was not really like that, and since Gianna had left England he had met Sarah and they had fallen deeply in love and married. Still, that did not mean he was not very worried over Gianna's safety or did not have affectionate memories of her.

It had been a relationship which now had a strange air of unreality about it: could it have happened to him, had she really existed? Well, she had and did because that handsome youngster over there, one of the most popular people in the ship as far as the men were concerned, was her nephew. Yes, she was the ruler of Volterra, a small state in Tuscany; yes, she had fled before Bonaparte's Army of Italy, and been rescued by Lieutenant Ramage, who had carried her to safety ... Yes, they had both fallen in love and she had gone to England as a refugee and lived with his family, and yes it was obvious now that with such differences in religion the Catholic ruler of Volterra could never marry the Protestant heir to one of the oldest earldoms in the kingdom.

It had taken Bonaparte to end it all, though, just as he had, some years ago, then simply the General commanding the Army of Italy, unknowingly started it. Then, when Britain and France had signed that peace now called the Treaty of Amiens, Gianna had decided it was safe to return to Tuscany: that it was her duty to return to her people ... Ramage, his father, many people, had warned her not to trust Bonaparte, that the peace would be brief, that she risked arrest by Bonaparte's police at best, assassination at worse, but she had gone. She had travelled to Paris with the Herveys while he had sailed on a long voyage with the Calypso, lucky to remain employed and in command in peacetime, and by bizarre circumstances he had met Sarah, returned to England and married her - and found there was no news of Gianna. No one knew if she had arrived in Volterra or not. The Herveys confirmed that she had left Paris safely, but that accounted for only the first steps on a long journey. Then, while he and Sarah had honeymooned in France, the war had started again, and with it went the last chance of knowing about Gianna.

Daydreaming again, and now the French ship was hull-up on the horizon. He looked with his glass. Yes, backed foretopsail and lying there like a gull on the water, rising and falling as the crests and troughs of the swell waves slid beneath her and carried on westward. Sails in good condition. French national colours hoisted. Guns not run out. A hoist of flags at the foretopmasthead, probably her pendant numbers identifying her.

It might work. Surprise, that great ally, could quadruple one's apparent size (or quarter them if you're the one surprised). But he would have to do it himself: it was unfortunate that Aitken did not speak good French.

He beckoned Aitken and Southwick closer and explained his plan. He then told Southwick to call Jackson down from aloft - he was not needed as a lookout any more. Southwick gestured down to the maindeck. 'Stafford and Rossi, sir? And one or two of those Frenchmen?'

They were all serving at the same gun, and the Calypso was not short of men. Auguste and his brother could be useful. Gilbert and Louis would be too clumsy. Ramage told the master the names and ordered him to be ready to hoist out a boat.

Formality: oddly enough, that would eventually save time. It might trip him up, too, but a boat cloak too would be normal and hide much. 'Orsini,' he said, 'fetch my sword and boat cloak from the great cabin. Get your own boat cloak too. I see you have your dirk!'

Paolo grinned and nodded as he turned to the companion way. The dirk, a short sword two feet two inches long and, as he readily admitted, little more than a broad-bladed dagger, was one of his proudest possessions, but despite that he was a realist and usually carried a seaman's cutlass as well, using the dirk as a main gauche. Ramage guessed he dreamed of the day when he exchanged the midshipman's dirk for a lieutenant's sword, with its elaborate hilt.

The main and forecourses were being clewed up. Seamen hurried to hook the stay tackle on to the cutter, ready to hoist it out. Jackson waited until the last tie was undone and the canvas cover pulled clear before, as the captain's coxswain, climbing into the boat to check over the oars, rudder and tiller, pull the bung from the small water breaker lashed beneath one of the thwarts and confirm that it was full of fresh water, and finally put the large bung in the boat itself: it was normally left out to drain rainwater.

Stafford and Rossi were already up on the gangway with Auguste and Albert, cutlass belts over their shoulders and pistols stuck in their belts, but Ramage guessed from their stance that the two Frenchmen were puzzled and bewildered because Gilbert's translation of the instruction to arm themselves and go to the gangway with Rossi and Stafford would have been the only orders they received.

At that moment Paolo appeared, a sword in one hand and two boat cloaks slung over the other arm. 'Put them down there, beside the capstan. Now, listen a moment,' Ramage said.

Quickly he outlined what had happened so far - which Paolo had seen anyway as the Calypso rapidly approached the unknown frigate - and added his intentions. 'Now, go and tell those two Frenchmen what they need to know. It's time you polished your French.'

After that everything happened with the speed of an impatient child shaking the coloured chips in a kaleidoscope. The ship once ahead was now fine on the starboard bow and men had left the guns to stand by at the sheets and braces controlling the foretopsail and yard. Jackson had the cutter's crew mustered on the starboard gangway. The boat would be hoisted out on the weather side, so everyone would have to work fast, but the lee side would be open to too many prying French eyes.

He lifted the glass and looked at the ship and was startled to see that she was close enough for him to notice the uniforms (or lack of them) on the quarterdeck. He glanced at Aitken, who already had the speaking trumpet to his mouth while Southwick stood by the quartermaster close to the wheel.

The wheel began to spin and the Calypso's bow started to swing slowly to starboard to put her on a curving course bringing her close to windward of the French frigate. Sails began slatting while Ramage put the telescope in the binnacle drawer, picked up his sword and clipped it on to the belt, and slung the cloak over one shoulder. He thought a moment and then flattened his hat and put it under his left arm. Paolo followed his example and, with the sails thundering aloft as the ship swung and the great foretopsail was backed, the two of them went down the steps to the gangway.

The ship slowly came to a stop, the wind now blowing on the foreside of the foretopsail, and the cutter swung out and over the side. Wagstaffe gave a brief order here and there but mostly used hand signals. In a few moments the boat was in the water, the bow held by the painter while the sternfast kept the boat close in to the rope ladder which had been unrolled over the ship's side.

Jackson was first down the ladder, the wind catching his sandy hair, and before Rossi, who had followed him, had jumped into the boat, the American was shipping the rudder and the tiller. The rest of the men scrambled down, the last one followed by Orsini.

'Here!' Ramage shouted, throwing down to Jackson his rolled-up boat cloak, with the hat inside. The coxswain waited until Ramage was on board and sitting in the sternsheets and then pulled the boat cloak round him to hide his uniform. Ramage pushed his sword to one side to make the wooden grating a more comfortable seat, and then watched the enormous bulk of the Calypso seeming to move sideways as the men at the oars rowed the cutter clear.

Jackson eventually put the tiller over so that the cutter passed under the French frigate's stern to come along her lee side. 'La Robuste, sir,' he commented. The name meant nothing to Ramage. He counted up the gunports. Sixteen this side, so she was a 32-gun frigate. About the same size as the Calypso but not built from the same plans: her sheer was flatter, her fo'c'sle was longer, and he had the impression her transom raked more sharply.

Ramage saw several faces looking down at him over the taffrail and gave a cheery wave, which the men answered enthusiastically. He glanced at Paolo sitting opposite him. The lad had a wide grin on his face: no sign of any doubts or fears.

Suddenly every damned thing seemed to be happening at once, Ramage thought, and then realized it was his own fault because he would let his concentration wander. The cutter's bowman had hooked on with his boathook and while men pulled and hauled to secure painter and sternfast, Ramage stood up to find that the French had also unrolled a rope ladder, so he did not have the nail-breaking and finger-twisting climb up the battens. He pushed his sword round under his boat cloak and clutched his hat, guessing that no one on La Robuste's deck would recognize it for what it was.

He leapt for the ladder and immediately started climbing, glad that Paolo was only a couple of rungs below him because his weight stopped each wooden slat trying to swing inwards. More jerks followed as the rest of the men followed and this was the moment of danger: would any of the French officers look down past Ramage and Orsini and notice that the seamen were carrying cutlasses? Ramage let his boat cloak flow out.

Up, up, up - now his eyes at deck level; four more steps and he was on the deck itself with four men standing in a half circle to greet him - presumably the captain and three lieutenants.

Ramage paused, punched his cocked hat into shape, jammed it on his head and, undoing the buckle of his boat cloak, swirled it off and tossed it to Jackson, who was now standing beside Paolo at the entryport.

'Captain Ramage, of His Britannic Majesty's frigate Calypso at your service,' he said in French to the heavily-jowled and sallow-faced man with iron-grey hair who seemed to be the captain.

'Britannic?' the man muttered disbelievingly. He was a stocky man who had seemed taller than Ramage, but as he turned to look at the Calypso hove-to close by he protested: 'She is flying no -' he stopped and then, arms extended and palms uppermost, he said angrily: 'When she first hove-to she had no colours. She is French-built. Naturally, I think she is French.'

Ramage shrugged his shoulders and smiled. 'You are free to think whatever you like.'

The Frenchman's shrug made Ramage's look like a feeble twitch. 'Of course, of course.' He introduced himself. 'Citizen Robilliard, commanding the French national frigate La Robuste, at your service. May I -'

As he turned to introduce his officers, Ramage interrupted him calmly. 'Citizen Robilliard, a moment please. You are now the former captain of the former French frigate La Robuste, which is now a prize to His Britannic Majesty's frigate Calypso...'

'But... mon Dieu, citizen,' Robilliard protested, 'the war is over. It is all finished. We are friends. Where have you been that you do not know?' He slapped his thigh and started to roar with laughter. 'Ah, it is the English humour! You make a joke because -' he saw Ramage's face and his voice tailed off. He took a deep breath. 'No, you don't make a joke, Captain Ramage. You come from Europe. We have just come from the Batavian Republic. You have news...'

Suddenly Ramage felt sorry for this amiable man, whose accent showed he had grown up not far from Honfleur.

'Yes, hostilities have begun again. Brest is blockaded - my ship is part of that fleet.'

'And you are bound ...'

'... for the West Indies,' Ramage said. 'Now, m'sieu, you and your ship's company must consider yourselves my prisoners.'

'But this is absurd,' Robilliard protested, and then looked in the direction of Ramage's pointing finger. The Calypso's guns were run out while the French guns were still secured, well lashed down and ready for bad weather.

Ramage said to Paolo in Italian: 'Collect papers, charts and signal books from his cabin. Take a couple of men with you.'

Robilliard scratched his head, still unwilling to accept what he had heard. 'I can't believe this. You have documents? A newspaper - Le Moniteur, perhaps? There must be a written declaration - you just come on board and tell me that you have taken my ship prize! Why no!' he exclaimed, as though suddenly losing his temper. 'You are just pirates!'

'You are familiar with Brest?'

Robilliard nodded his head cautiously. 'I was blockaded in there for three years.'

'When did you sail?'

'As soon as the peace was signed. In fact we carried the dispatches informing the governor of the Batavian Republic'

Ramage beckoned to Auguste and Albert. 'These two men can tell you the names of all the important ships in Brest three weeks ago, as well as the names of the Navy and Army commandants, and answer any questions you care to ask. They are French. I was in Brest until after the war began; I can give you a certain amount of information.'

Auguste said: 'It's all true, citizen. The English ambassador left Paris, war began and Bonaparte arrested all the English in France, whether officers on leave or women. Bonaparte now makes war on women.'

Robilliard flushed and then said angrily to Ramage: 'This is ridiculous. Why, I could seize you, and then your ship would never dare open fire for fear of killing you!'

A series of metallic clicks made him look round and he was startled to find that three seamen, Jackson, Stafford and Rossi, were standing close with broad grins on their faces and pistols aimed at Robilliard, and each man swung a cutlass as a parson might use his walking stick to knock the head off a dandelion.

'Captain,' Ramage said, 'we are wasting time, my ship would certainly open fire if necessary, my second-in-command has strict orders about that. But you would not be alive to hear the first broadside that might kill me. You have been tricked by the perfidious English, captain, just as I was tricked by the perfidious French less than a month ago. There is no dishonour: no need for you to fire a broadside "for the honour of the flag".'

Robilliard still shook his head disbelievingly. 'I have only seventy-six men because we were short when we left Brest and have had much sickness in Batavia and at sea, but how can you keep us all prisoner ... ?'

That is no problem,' Ramage said and signalled to Jackson. 'Give me your pistol,' he said in English, and then switched back to French to say to Robilliard: 'We are agreed, are we not, that you and your ship are my prize?'

Robilliard shrugged his shoulders and looked round at his three lieutenants. They were all young men, their faces frozen with the shock of finding an English frigate poised to rake their ship and her captain on board La Robuste.

'What do you say, mes braves?'

'We have no choice,' the oldest of them said without much conviction.

'You must remember you said that when a committee of public safety accuses me of treachery,' Robilliard said bitterly. 'We have no choice, certainly, but I don't want any of you claiming to be heroes if we are exchanged and get back to France.'

'Don't worry,' Ramage said and waving to Jackson to go aft. 'My dispatch will make it clear you had no knowledge of the war.'

'A lot of good your dispatch would do me in France!'

'I expect it will be published in the London Gazette, which is as good as Le Moniteur. Certainly, I'm sure that Bonaparte has it translated and read to him.'

Robilliard was watching Ramage closely. 'Yes, I believe you.' He spelled out his name. 'And make sure you put in the "Pierre", because there is my cousin, too, and although he does not command a ship he is a scoundrel - no, I didn't mean that -'

'I understand,' Ramage assured him.

'But so many prisoners,' Robilliard said as he watched the Tricolour flutter down as Jackson hauled on one end of the halyard. 'How will you ... ?'

'Leave that problem to me,' Ramage said. 'You are not short of provisions?'

'Water, but not provisions. With so many dead from sickness, I could have doubled the rations of the living.'