Ramage's Devil

CHAPTER SIX

Auguste sighed in the darkness and admitted: 'The price is good at the moment, but in truth I hate the smell of potatoes.' He pulled fretfully at a couple of sacks, trying to find himself a more comfortable position in the little hut. 'And madame, you must be very uncomfortable?'

'I had not realized potatoes could be so hard,' Sarah admitted, 'but if my husband is to be believed, we'll soon be sitting on the hard wooden seats of a boat and probably thinking of potatoes with nostalgia...'

And how long would Nicholas be? He had talked for half an hour with Gilbert, Louis, Auguste and his brother Albert, and now he had gone for a walk along the quay. She saw now that he had been very clever. Although he had told her back at the château that he had no plans for their escape, in fact he had an idea. Certainly as he had explained it to the men, speaking softly in the darkness of Auguste's hut in the fruit and vegetable market, he had sounded diffident. Not nervous, but almost shy, so much so that first Auguste and then Gilbert had tried to reassure him. Then, as he explained his idea piece by piece, like stripping an artichoke, they had discussed it among themselves, exclaiming from time to time at its soundness, like antiquarians examining old china or an early edition of a book and agreeing on its authenticity.

The more they had exclaimed, the more diffident Nicholas had become, putting up reasons why his idea would never work and declaring he did not want anyone to risk his life in such a stupid venture. 'Stupid venture', a phrase which translated well into French, was the one that definitely turned the tide, though whether a neap or a spring, she did not care. At that point, the four Frenchmen rallied together to persuade Nicholas that the plan - by now it had graduated from an idea - was not only possible but certain of success and Sarah sensed that in their own minds it had become their plan: one of which Captain Ramage had now to be convinced.

Then she realized that as far as Nicholas was concerned it had been a plan all the time but was such a gamble that its only chance of success was to have it carried out by men who were convinced it would succeed. What was that phrase Nicholas had once used? 'Better one volunteer than three pressed men.' So with four volunteers he had the equivalent of a dozen. And, of course, his wife! Louis seemed to be bearing up bravely, she thought, to the fact that his wife had decided not to come. Louis said she would go to her parents as soon as she was sure he had escaped. Between them they had prepared a likely story of Louis throwing her out of the house - of the servants' quarters of Jean-Jacques' house, rather.

Sarah sensed that both Louis and his wife had reached the stage where they bored each other. In another year it would be followed by dislike and that would turn to hatred. The wife missed life on the farm where she had been brought up, obviously preferring feeding the pigs and mucking out the cattle to feeding humans and making beds, and as she was the only child, she would inherit the farm on the death of her parents. Clearly, Sarah realized, each thought the parting had come amicably and at the right time. And, not surprisingly, the other servants had decided to stay behind.

Where was Nicholas? This was worse than being a young girl waiting to grow up, or a pregnant woman waiting for her hour to come. Or, she thought bitterly, a sailor's wife waiting for her man to return ...

Ramage looked in the darkness across the Brest Roads. 'Roads' - a strange name but one usually given to the anchorage in front of the port. Well, even though it was dark but cloudless, giving the stars a chance to prove themselves before the moon rose, there was plenty of traffic in the Roads; it seemed as busy as Piccadilly after the Newmarket Races, when winners wanted to celebrate and losers wanted to drown their sorrows, and the Duchess of Manston always gave a ball at which it was forbidden to talk about racehorses.

Spanish Point over there, forming the south side of Le Goulet. the Château black and menacing, its walls now sharp-edged shadows. Somewhere over there in the Roads, L'Espoir was at anchor, and by now Jean-Jacques would be on board, a prisoner, probably awake and thinking of his home or his future in the tropical heat and sickness of the Île du Diable. Boats were going out to the frigates and ships of the line, many more than would normally be taking officers to and fro. There was no doubt that the ships were being prepared for sea in great haste.

He paused against the trunk of a huge plane tree, hidden from the sharp eyes of any patrolling gendarmes. The masts of the distant ships were like leafless shrubs lining twisting paths. The ships of the line were easy to distinguish, while one, two, three frigates and more were over to the right, towards Pointe des Espagnols. Further round to the left, partly hidden by the cliffs rising up at Presqu'île de Plougastel, were more frigates. Where was L'Espoir?

Ah, there was the Murex brig, much easier to spot because she had only two masts and was much closer. And it was near the top of the tide; almost slack now, and the ebb would start in half an hour or so.

Anchored ships were something like weathervanes on church steeples. If the wind was strong and the current weak they indicated wind direction, but if the current was strong (as it would be at spring tides) and the wind weak they showed the direction from which the current was coming.

On a calm night at slack water, when the current stopped flooding in and paused before ebbing like a bewildered man on a ballroom floor, ships headed in various directions, and those carelessly anchored and usually lying to single anchors would drift and foul neighbours.

He cursed softly because at night distances were always hard to estimate, although by some good fortune the Murex brig had been anchored more than half a mile from the nearest ship, a frigate. And she was near enough to where he stood to see that only a single boat floated astern of her on its painter. Either the rest of her boats had been hoisted back on board or they were being kept in the dockyard. In other words, it was unlikely that the French guards had been reinforced and, more important, if they were not expecting visitors in the shape of senior officers, they would be keeping the rum jar tilted, with all the prisoners in irons.

He shivered, but was not sure if the goosepimples came from the chill of the night or the knowledge that he could no longer delay going back to the hut to start everyone moving. Sarah was the problem: she was his hostage unto fortune, although she must never realize it. When the Calypso went into action he had worried about Paolo, who was Gianna's heir and nephew; now it was Sarah. Would he ever go into action having given no hostages, with nothing to bother him but the fight itself? There was always something to stop him concentrating all his thoughts on the action. He shrugged and then smiled at the stupidity of such a movement alone in the darkness.

Probably most captains of the King's ships were often in this same predicament - especially, he told himself, if they were married. Yet if you had a wife, and perhaps children, you thought of them whether they were in a house in the quiet countryside or if the wife was waiting nearby in a rowing boat: in one instance you were worrying about her being widowed and the children made fatherless; in the other you were worrying about her safety. Either way, you were worrying; either way you were preoccupied. So perhaps Earl St Vincent was right when he said that if an officer married, he was lost to the Service...

Sarah and the four men waiting in the hut clearly expected to start off at once. He took out his watch. Yes, by now the French guards would have soaked up enough rum to ensure they were befuddled, if not in a stupefied sleep.

He gestured towards the lantern and told Gilbert: 'Bring it with you, otherwise all of us stumbling along in the dark will arouse suspicion. Now, have we the fishing lines? Ah,' he nodded as Auguste and his brother held up coils of thin line. 'And bait?' Sarah rattled the bucket she was carrying.

Two gendarmes passed them on their way to the jetty and one said cheerfully: 'Good fishing. It's a calm night!'

'Too calm,' Auguste answered dourly. 'The fish prefer some wind to ruffle the water.'

Once the gendarmes had passed, Auguste explained: 'Fishermen always grumble. I don't think the fish care about the waves; they have enough sense to stay below them.'

'Unless they bite a hook,' Louis said.

'Ah, no, they're biting the bait, not the hook.'

'They cannot have so much sense: a meal hanging from a line is obviously bait.'

'Yes,' Auguste agreed sarcastically, 'sensible fish eat only from a plate.'

Ramage led them to the avenue of plane trees lining the quay but told Auguste to lead them on to the boat: a sentry might become suspicious of the leader of a group of fishermen who seemed uncertain which was his boat.

He dropped back to walk with Sarah who, careful to act the role of the obedient fisherman's wife, even though it was late at night, had followed the menfolk.

'Feeling nervous?'

'No, not nervous. At the moment I'm thankful not to be smelling potatoes but not sure' - she rattled the bucket - 'if sliced fish is a welcome change. Do you enjoy fishing?'

'This is my first experience,' Ramage admitted. 'I let the men tow a hook when they want, because fish makes a welcome change from salt horse. But towing a line from a rowing boat, or casting with a rod along a river bank - no.'

'You've no patience, that's why,' she said.

He was saved from admitting that by Auguste stopping above a boat moored stern to the quay. 'Well, my friends,' he said loudly, 'I hope your muscles are all working smoothly. Now, someone haul in the sternfast so that I can jump in and slack the anchor rope: then we can get her alongside and put our gear on board.'

The boat's stern was four or five feet from the dock and Louis went down the narrow stone steps to untie the sternfast from a ring that slid up and down a metal rod let into the vertical face of the quay, allowing for the rise and fall of the tide. He cursed as he nearly slipped on the green weed.

'Farmers,' Auguste's brother commented unexpectedly. "That's what we are, farmers going out for a night's fishing.'

No one answered as he went down to help Louis, then called up to Auguste: 'All is ready for the real fishermen to step on board.'

It took five minutes of hauling, pushing and banter for the four Frenchmen to get on board and hold the boat alongside the steps for Sarah and Ramage to climb in. The lantern set down on one of the thwarts revealed the inside of a hull which seemed to have been painted with dried fish scales and decorated with the sun-dried heads, tails and fins of past catches. The worst of the smell was for the moment masked by the sewage running into the Penfeld river from a large pipe a few feet upstream from the steps.

With Sarah seated on a thwart, the wooden bucket of bait on her knees, Ramage and Auguste counted up the oars. Four, held down by a chain wound round them and secured by a padlock. 'I have the key, here,' Auguste said in answer to an unspoken question. 'Now, I want you two, Louis and Albert, to stand in front of the lantern: cast a shadow over the bow.'

Ramage saw a pile of fishing lines and a coil of rope, and as soon as the lantern light was shadowed he saw Auguste pulling them aside and for a moment a flash of steel reflected a bright star.

'They're here,' Auguste muttered. 'Six cutlasses ... two, three large daggers ... five pistols - no, six... a bag of shot... flask of powder, and another of priming powder... You said no muskets.'

It was a remark which sounded like a reproach.

'Believe me,' Ramage said, 'muskets are too clumsy for boarding a ship. If they're loaded, there's always the danger of the lock catching on clothing so the musket fires just when you're trying to be quiet. A pistol tucked in the top of the trousers - that is enough. Anyway, cutlasses or knives tonight: no shots except in an emergency.'

'But we can carry pistols?' Auguste asked anxiously.

'Yes, of course,' Ramage assured him. 'Now, let's get away from here and start fishing nearer the Murex. Bottle fishing - none of you ever heard of that, eh?'

Both Auguste and Gilbert repeated the phrase, which certainly lost something in translation. 'No, never "bottle fishing",' Auguste finally admitted. 'For what kind of fish?'

Ramage laughed and explained. 'In the West Indies, smuggling is even more common than in the Channel, only out there it is called "bottle fishing" when it involves liquor.'

'What is it when it is silk for ladies?' Auguste asked slyly.

'No need to smuggle silk out there: no customs or excise on that,' Ramage said.

Auguste unlocked the padlock and unwound the chain securing the oars. 'We are ready,' he said. 'The fish are waiting for us.'

The men took up their places on the rowing thwarts, leaving Sarah to sit at the aftermost one. They would use a tiller to avoid having to give orders to the oarsmen.

Auguste boated his oar and then scrambled forward to the bow to begin hauling in the weed-covered rope and the anchor while his brother cast off the sternfast, leaving it dangling from its ring on the quay wall. Would the boat ever return to use it again? Ramage thought not.

Gilbert tentatively pulled at his oar and nearly fell backwards off the thwart as the blade scooped air instead of digging into water.

'Don't let go of the oar,' Auguste snapped. 'Dip the blade deeply and just try and keep time with the rest of us.'

'I know how to do it.' Gilbert's voice had a determined ring. 'I'm out of practice.'

'And the palms of your hands will soon be sore,' Auguste added unsympathetically.

'I can see the Murex,' Sarah murmured. 'She's in line with the western end of the Château.'

'Ah, a woman who knows the points of a compass,' Albert said.

The oars creaked, the thwarts creaked from the men's weight and their exertions, and as Ramage crouched he was sure his spine was beginning to creak too. The smell of last week's fish was now almost overwhelming and seemed to be soaking into his clothes. Then he could just see the western edge of the Château, stark and black against the lower stars. The only lights over there were from a high window and a few gun loops, vertical slots that, because of the thickness of the wall and the changing bearing, soon cut off the light from the lanterns inside.

Sarah put her bucket down beside the lantern as Ramage said: 'We are at the meeting point of the Penfeld and Le Goulet.'

'Stop rowing, men,' Auguste said, and then announced formally: 'Your fishing captain now hands over to your fighting captain.'

Ramage laughed with the rest of them and looked forward at the Murex brig. She was a good half mile away and it was still slack water, with the ships heading in different directions. A frog's view of models on a pond. For a few moments the familiar shape of the brig once again brought back memories of the Triton. He remembered her best at anchor in some West Indian bay during a tropical night when her masts and yards cut sharp lines in a star-littered sky. Up here in northern latitudes fewer stars were visible, for reasons he could never understand, and they were not nearly so bright, as though the atmosphere was always more hazy.

To fish or not to fish? He looked slowly round the horizon. No other boats were following them out of the Penfeld; the nearest ships to the Murex were half a dozen frigates and ships of the line at least half a mile beyond. Various boats moved under oars (and he could see one under sail making poor progress because of the light wind) taking officers and men out to the ships. None had that purposeful, marching sentry movement of a guard boat: the war, he guessed, was too new for the French to have started regular patrols in the Roads, and anyway lookouts along the coast (at Pointe St Mathieu, for instance) would most likely have reported that the English had not yet resumed the blockade; that no English ships were on the coast.

He coughed to attract their attention and as a way of accepting the transition announced by Auguste. ' I think madame can throw that bait over the side; she must be tired of the smell of fish.'

A clatter showed Sarah had not waited to hear if anyone disagreed.

'Good, now let's get our oars on board, before someone lets go and we lose a quarter of our speed. Auguste, can you issue the weapons you have hidden up there?'

The Frenchman scrambled forward, fumbled for a minute or two, and then stood up again, clutching several objects.

'Cutlasses,' he said. 'Here, Gilbert, take a couple before they slip from my arms. Ah, and one for you, captain, and one for me. I shall put mine under my thwart. Careful with your feet when you sit down again, Gilbert.'

With that he bent down and burrowed under the coils of lines again. 'Four knives...' his voice was muffled as he dropped them behind him, '.. and the pistols.'

'You have six, I believe,' Ramage said. 'We'll have one for madame.'

'Of course!' Auguste said. 'I remember Gilbert telling me she is a fine shot. I shall load it for her myself. Now...' he pulled the coil of lines to one side, '... ah, the flask of powder... and the priming powder ... and the box of balls and wads. Here, Gilbert, pass things aft, starting with the knives.'

For the next five minutes the men were busy checking the flints, flipping them to make sure they gave a good spark, but hiding them under a piece of cloth to conceal their unmistakable flashing. Then they loaded the pistols, putting them on half-cock.

Louis and the two brothers were wearing high fishermen's boots and slid their knives down into them. Ramage and Gilbert wore shoes and so had to tuck the knives into the waistband of their trousers. Ramage was thankful the cutlasses had come with belts, but decided against slipping his over his right shoulder and instead pushed it under the thwart.

'You were right about muskets being too bulky, captain,' Auguste commented. 'With knife, pistol and cutlass, I have all the weapons I can handle.'

'Yes - but everyone remember: use the pistol only to save your life: shots might arouse the sentries in another ship, or alarm a passing boat.'

'Is madame content with her pistol?' Auguste inquired.

Sarah said: 'Yes, it is much like the English Sea Service pistol: clumsy and heavy!'

'Yes, but remember how roughly the sailors treat them,' Auguste said, beating Ramage to it, 'and when you've fired, you can always throw it at the next target.'

By now, Ramage was having second thoughts about his original plan. If a sentry challenged, they could probably gain several important seconds by innocently protesting that they were fishermen; seconds which could be converted into yards, and a closer approach.

'Auguste, what would you be using out here - a seine or long lines?'

Auguste thought for a few moments. 'Long lines, I think.'

He guessed what Ramage had in mind and added: 'One could use either, and I doubt if a sentry would know anyway! And it won't matter that we have no bait!'

Although they were not rowing, and there was very little wind, the Château was slowly drawing astern and the western bank where the Penfeld ran into Le Goulet was now closer, showing the direction the boat was drifting.

'The ebb has started,' Ramage said. 'The rest of us can start rowing again while Auguste puts over some lines.' He moved into the fisherman's seat.

Sarah took the tiller and gave occasional directions to the four oarsmen as Auguste struggled with the lines. 'Hold up the lantern, madame,' he said finally, 'otherwise I shall be the only fish these lines catch.'

'You need only two or three,' Ramage said. 'No one will notice.'

'That's true,' Auguste said and put over one and then another, feeding out the lines expertly. 'Shall I sit aft and pretend to watch?'

'As long as you have your cutlass and knife ready under the thwart,' Ramage said. 'In fact you can take over as coxswain from madame, and start by giving me a distance.'

Sarah quickly pointed out the Murex to the Frenchman, who exclaimed: 'Why, we are close! Much closer than I thought!'

'That's the ebb taking us down. ' Ramage then glanced over his shoulder and was also startled to find the brig now only about five hundred yards away: already her masts and yards were standing stark against the stars like winter trees with geometrically precise branches. 'Auguste, we'll row past at about a pistol shot and then, if nothing happens, turn under her bow and even closer under her stern and then if we still see no one, board this side.'

Sarah suddenly murmured in English: 'Nicholas, I am frightened. The Murex looks more like a house full of ghosts.'

'I'd prefer ghosts to French matelots,' he said lightly, while Gilbert, who had understood, gave a reassuring laugh.

'How are you going to get on board?' she asked reverting to French. She undid the knot of scarf round her head, took it off and shook her hair free.

'I don't know at the moment,' Ramage said, his sentences punctuated as he leaned forward and then stretched back with each oar stroke. 'There might be a ladder hanging over the side, or a rope. Otherwise, it'll probably be a scramble up the side.'

Sarah was silent for a moment and then said quietly in English: 'There's a light on deck. A lantern, I think. It gets hidden as rigging and things get in the way.'

'Speak in French,' Ramage said, trying to hide his disappointment. 'We don't want our friends to think we have any secrets.' He turned away towards them and repeated Sarah's report.

'A warm night, so they're drinking on deck,' Auguste commented. 'It would be natural. That cabin we saw - the "gunroom" I think you called it, captain - was very small. It would get very hot down there.'

Ramage saw his ideas being thrown aside like men caught on deck by a blast of grapeshot. Five Frenchmen up on the Murex's deck drinking with weapons to hand, and two more guarding the prisoners below, would be more than a match for the five of them down in the rowing boat: the matelots would have the advantage of height, as well as numbers. But despair, fear, alarm - all were contagious, so Ramage laughed. 'It'll soon be hot on deck for them too!'

They continued rowing in the darkness at the speed set by Auguste, with an occasional 'left' and 'right'. Auguste said he was not using the seamen's terms because not all of them understood them and anyway, facing aft, they would only get muddled.

'We are two ship's lengths from her,' Auguste muttered. 'How close before we begin our turn to pass?'

'One,' Ramage said. That would be thirty yards, or so. Close enough for Ramage to see what was happening on deck; close enough for any French seaman to see a fishing boat passing. Or perhaps to show whether or not rum fumes would allow French matelots to see that far.

'No lights showing at the stern - what does.that mean?' asked Auguste.

'They're not using the captain's cabin.'

Sarah said: 'There are several men on deck sitting round the lantern - do you see them, Auguste?'

The Frenchman grunted and then counted aloud as an explanation why he had said nothing. '... three, four ... five. Two missing. Are they guarding the prisoners?'

'They could be fetching more rum or lying drunk on the deck,' Louis said. 'Perhaps we should row round for another hour and keep counting. As soon as seven have fallen down drunk, we can board!'

Ramage only just managed to stop himself making the usual joke about one Englishman being equal to three Frenchmen. These men, apart from not being trained seamen, were good: they had the right spirit and they hated the régime. Do not, he told himself, underestimate hate: it drives men to show the kind of bravery they never thought themselves capable of, yet it can just as easily warp their judgement.

'She's close on our bow - we're just beginning our run down her starboard side,' Auguste reported to Ramage, his voice punctuated by the creaking of the four oars, the slap of the oar blades in the water, and hiss of the stem as the boat drove on.

'Ho! Ohé, that boat!' The hail from the Murex's deck was definite: the voice was sober. 'Answer!' Ramage told Auguste, whose voice carried better and had a local accent.

'Ho yourself!' Auguste shouted back. 'I don't like rosbifs shouting at me.' His voice sounded genuinely offended.

'We're not rosbifs!'the voice answered indignantly. 'We are honest Frenchmen guarding the rosbifs.'

'You speak French like a rosbif,' Auguste said sourly.

'Watch your tongue: I come from Besançon. Now, why do you fish so close to us?'

'Ha!' Auguste called back contemptuously. 'So you think you own the whole sea, eh? Why, you are even standing on the deck of a rosbif ship, not a good French ship.'

'Answer: why do you fish so close?' This time it was another, harsher voice: Ramage thought he recognized it as belonging to the bosun.

'To catch fish!' exclaimed Auguste. 'You're no seaman if you can't see that!'

'What do you mean? I'm the bosun; I command this ship!'

'For the time being,' Auguste said contemptuously. 'But you've not yet learned that fish always gather round a ship at anchor. They feed off all the weed and things growing on the bottom. They like the shade on a sunny day -'

'And from the light of the moon too, I suppose. Afraid it will drive them mad, eh?'

'And they like to eat the scraps you all throw over the side. Salt beef and salt pork may not seem very tasty to you, but to a fish it is a banquet.'

By now the boat was within a few yards of the Murex's side.

'To save all this rowing, with my back giving me trouble again,' Ramage said in a lugubrious voice, 'can't we fish from your decks? Then our hooks go down where the fish are thickest.'

The bosun answered quickly. 'Yes - but you have to give us a quarter of your catch!'

'You're a hard man,' Ramage complained. 'Five wives and eleven children depend on what we catch.'

'You should have thought of that before you got married,' the bosun sneered. 'A quarter of your catch and I'll let you on board.'

'Oh very well,' Ramage said grudgingly, and Auguste, in an appropriately officious voice, gave the orders to the men at the oars which brought the boat alongside.

Ramage murmured: 'Pistols if you can hide them; otherwise just knives.'

'The bait bucket,' Sarah whispered. 'Put the pistols in the bait bucket and I'll carry it with my scarf on top.'

Louis called up to the bosun: 'I'm coming on board with the painter while they coil our fishing lines.' He touched Ramage to get his approval.

Ramage turned to Sarah. 'You go after Louis and flirt with the bosun. I'll bring the bucket and give it to you to hold as soon as I can.'

He glanced up and saw that none of the French guards were looking over the rail. Swiftly he pushed a knife and its sheath down the inside of his trousers and made sure the belt was tight enough to hold it. It was a pity that the cutlasses would have to be left under the thwarts, but Gilbert and Albert were putting the loaded pistols into the bucket with the deftness of fishwives packing sprats. Sprat - improbably, he remembered, it was the same word in both English and French.

'Your scarf, madame,' Gilbert whispered, and Ramage said loudly, 'Now are we ready? Gilbert - supposing you go up, and then you and Louis can help the lady at the top.'

As soon as Gilbert started climbing the battens fitted like thin steps up the Murex's side, Sarah began cursing, using words which would be familiar to a fisherman's wife but which Ramage was startled to find that she not only knew but used as though they were commonplace.

'Such steps - why no rope ladder? In this skirt? Do the rosbifs never have women on board? It's fortunate I wear no corset. Look the other way, you lechers; I am tucking my skirt in my belt.'

She grabbed the hem of her skirt and Ramage glimpsed long slim legs as she tucked in the cloth. 'This will occupy their thoughts!' she murmured to Ramage, and before he had time to reply she had grabbed the highest batten she could reach and started climbing.

'Forgive me, captain,' Auguste murmured to Ramage, and then called in a raucous voice to Louis and Gilbert on the Murex's deck: 'Why you went aloft too soon! From here one sees la citoyenne quite differently!'

'Keep your eyes down, you old dog,' Ramage said hotly in what he hoped was the correct tone for an aggrieved husband, but he found himself continuing to watch Sarah's progress. A young woman's legs in the moonlight: certainly they did not help concentration. And since the sight made his own throat tighten he could guess the effect on Auguste.

A jab in the ribs from the bucket and a casual, 'Your turn, and tell Louis and Gilbert to stand by to take the lines,' came from Auguste.

The lines! He had forgotten all about the fishing lines. The prospect of fishermen arriving without them was only slightly less absurd than the idea of a Royal Navy post-captain on his honeymoon climbing up the side of a surrendered brig holding a bait bucket filled with loaded pistols concealed by his wife's headscarf.

He slung the greasy rope handle of the wooden pail over his left arm and began the climb. Usually sideboys held out sideropes for the captain, and the first lieutenant waited on deck ready to give a smart salute. This time there would be a surly French bosun ...

The bucket slid down his arm and hit the ship's side with a thud. Ramage's heart seemed to stop beating for a moment, but the pistols did not make a metallic clunk and anyway, he thought sheepishly, there's no one up there watching me. But as he slid the handle back to the crook of his elbow he saw that now there was: not the bosun but the man who presumably was the sentry.

Ramage's head came level with the deck, and in the moonlight he saw Sarah a few feet away, talking to the bosun. Amidships and sitting on forms round the grating, on which stood a lantern and a wicker-covered demijohn of rum, several seamen were watching idly.

As soon as the bosun saw Ramage he left Sarah and came over. 'You came with the potatoes,' he said, his voice only slightly slurred by the rum. He had not shaved for several days or washed - it seemed to Ramage for even longer. His jersey and trousers had the greasy and rumpled look that showed he usually slept 'all standing', the British seaman's phrase for sleeping fully clothed.

'A quarter of your catch, eh? That is agreed?'

'Yes, of course,' Ramage said, continuing to walk towards Sarah so that the bosun had to follow. 'Let's hope we get a good catch. My dear,' he said to Sarah, 'here is the bait bucket: look after it while we sort out the lines.'

He held the bucket low so that as she took it she would not reveal its weight by letting it drop a few inches, and at the same moment Ramage turned to the bosun to divert his attention and said querulously: 'Never get a good catch with a full or new moon, you know. Moonlight seems to frighten the fish, or put them off food.'

'A quarter, though,' the bosun muttered as Sarah took the bucket and turned aft, saying in the voice of a dutiful wife that she would help bait the hooks as soon as they brought the lines.

By now Albert was on board and hauling up fishing lines from a cursing Auguste, who was putting on a noisy and effective act of being afraid of being caught on the hooks.

Louis and Gilbert came up to help and Ramage, seizing the opportunity of gathering all his men close to the bucket so they could collect their pistols, called: 'Hoist up all the lines - we have more room to untangle them on this ship's deck. Look, there's plenty of space aft there.'

Ramage walked along the gangway and, noting that the only lantern on deck was on the grating, giving the drinkers enough light to see when their glasses were nearly empty, shouted down to Auguste: 'Merde! Hurry up or it'll be dawn!'

The bosun watched. 'You'll catch yourself on those hooks,' he sneered.

'Then you won't get a quarter,' Gilbert said.

'We'll see,' the bosun said, and Ramage tried to decide whether or not he imagined a curious inflexion in the voice. Finally he decided that it was just the man's local accent combined with a normal sneering and bullying manner.

As soon as the lines were all on board, the four Frenchmen, led by Ramage, carried them aft to where Sarah waited. The light was poor and confusing, a muddling blend of faint moonlight and a weak yellow glow - an artist would call it a wash - from the lantern on the grating.

The bosun, Ramage noted thankfully, had remained at the gangway, and the sentry had gone back to rejoin his three fellow seamen sitting and sprawling on the forms. So the sentry had a musket - he had left it propped against the edge of the coaming - and Ramage saw there were two more within reach of the other sailors.

As Ramage busied himself with the fishing lines close to the taffrail, he managed to indicate to the men that he wanted them working with their backs to the bosun so that Sarah could give them their pistols. As the men moved casually into position Ramage suddenly thought of the fourteen Britons being held as prisoners somewhere below and the captain imprisoned by rheumatism. Eleven seamen, the master and two lieutenants - they would be in irons, probably somewhere forward on the lowerdeck.

Tonight the Murex brig, he thought grimly, certainly holds an odd collection of people, ranging from the daughter of a marquis to seven French sailors loyal to the Revolution, a post-captain in the Royal Navy, and a rheumatic lieutenant, and four Frenchmen who, although perhaps not entirely Royalist, were certainly against the First Consul.

When the ingredients were mixed together, he mused as he saw Sarah dip into the bucket and give Auguste a pistol, it would be like mixing charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre, each in themselves harmless but in the right proportion forming gunpowder and needing only a spark -

'Step back from those fishing lines!'

The bosun's sudden bellow paralysed the five men.

'Woman! Come over here!'

Rape, Ramage thought: the bosun and his men intend to rape Sarah. And only Auguste has a pistol: the bosun shouted before Sarah had time to give out the others.

'Oh, lieutenant!' Sarah said, her voice apparently trembling with fear. 'What do you want me for?'

'Ah, no, not for that yet,' the bosun boomed, although the regret at any delay was obvious in his voice. 'You'll make a good hostage against the behaviour of your husband and his friends.'

Ramage saw that the bosun was aiming a musket at them. The other men were now laughing but still sprawled on the forms, two of them holding mugs in their hands.

Ramage said: 'What are we supposed to do? We are poor fishermen. You gave us permission to fish.'

'Ah yes, but you do not keep yourself informed, citizen. From midnight, patrols are searching all the streets and houses of Brest to find more seamen. A thousand more. The First Consul needs many more men for all these ships,' he said, waving a hand towards the main anchorage. 'We received orders during the day to see if any of the British prisoners in this ship want to volunteer - and then tonight the five of you row past...'

'Oh my poor husband!' Sarah moaned, but Ramage noticed she still clutched the bucket to her, like a mother clasping her child.

Ramage took two steps towards her but the bosun snarled: 'Halt - another step and I shoot you dead.' He glanced over his shoulder at his men. 'To arms, citizens! Cover them with your muskets.'

There was a clatter as one of the forms tipped over, and Ramage saw the men pick up their muskets and cock them. Five muskets ... He had not seen the others lying on the deck beyond the coaming.

Now the bosun was getting excited by the nearness of Sarah. 'Ah yes, the fisherman's wife! Well, take a good look at him, my dear, because you'll not see him again for a long time. A very long time. Ever again, perhaps, if the English fight like they did before.'

Ramage took another step forward but the bosun swung the barrel of the musket. 'Stand still. We'll be taking you below in a minute.'

With that he turned to Sarah. 'Yes, look well at your man.' Then, with a sudden movement of one hand he ripped away the front of Sarah's dress and as her breasts shone in the moonlight he screamed at Ramage: 'Look! Look, you fish pedlar - you won't see her again for a very long time. But' - he paused, staring wide-eyed and slack-mouthed at Sarah as she tried to clutch her dress closed with one hand, the other still holding the bucket - 'I'll look after her for you, won't I, my dear?'

He reached across and pulled Sarah's hand away so that the torn dress again gaped open. 'Look after these wretches,' the bosun ordered his men. 'Now,' he said to Sarah, almost slobbering the words, 'you come down to my cabin!'

'No,' she said, calmly and clearly, 'and you put the musket down on the deck and order your men to come over one at a time and put their muskets beside it!'

The bosun stood, jaw dropped in surprise and then gave a harsh, ugly laugh.

'Be careful,' Sarah warned. 'Your life is in danger.' Her voice was cold but the bosun was too excited to notice.

'Oh, she has spirit, this one!' he exclaimed.

'No,' Sarah said, taking a step forward, 'a pistol.'

A moment later the bosun pulled in his bulging stomach as the muzzle of Sarah's pistol jabbed it.

'You would never dare! Ho!' he half turned to his men and called over his shoulder: 'Watch me pull this hen off her nest!' He reached out and grabbed Sarah's dress again.

Ramage saw the men beginning to move, uncertain what was happening because Sarah's hand holding the pistol was hidden from them by the bosun's bulky body. Suddenly there was a bright flash and bang and a scream from the bosun, who staggered back three steps and then collapsed on the deck.

'Seize her, seize her!' one of the matelots screamed and then, as Sarah made a sudden movement and said something to the quartet that Ramage did not hear, the man shouted urgently: 'No! Don't move! The cow has another pistol! Don't shoot, citoyenne - it was all in jest!'

By now Ramage was running towards the bucket, a hand groping for a pistol and cocking it as he kept an eye on the four matelots. In one almost continuous movement he was moving towards them with the pistol aimed. Behind him he could hear the thudding feet and then the clicking of locks as the pistols were cocked.

'My wife has dealt with the bosun. Unless you all put your muskets down I shall shoot you - the man nearest the mainmast. My friends - ah, here they are - will shoot the rest of you.'

He said to Auguste conversationally: 'I have the man on the right in my sights. The next is for you. Then Gilbert and then Louis.'

The four matelots seemed frozen by the speed of events. 'Muskets down on the deck,' Ramage reminded them.

Sarah said with the same calm: 'Shoot one of them, to encourage the others!'

The matelots heard her and hastily put the guns down on the deck. 'Collect them up, Gilbert and Albert. Now you,' he gestured to the nearest man, 'come here.'

As the matelot reluctantly walked the few feet, outlined against the brighter light thrown by the lantern and clearly expecting to be shot, Ramage wrenched his knife from its sheath and held it in his left hand.

'Closer,' he ordered. 'Come on, stand close to me, my friend!'

The matelot was a plump, pleasant-looking man with a chubby face, but now his brow was soaked in perspiration as though water was dribbling from his hair; his eyes jerked from pistol to knife and his tongue ran round his lips as though chasing an elusive word.

'Closer,' Ramage said as the man stopped a couple of paces away. Then, as he shuffled forward a step, Ramage's knife curving towards him flashed briefly in the lantern light and several people gasped and Sarah dropped the now empty bucket with a crash and tried to muffle a scream.

The matelot swayed, a puzzled vacant expression on his face, waiting for the pain to start, and everyone expected blood to spurt because clearly Ramage's knife had just eviscerated the man.

Instead his trousers fell down in a heap round his ankles.

'Next time it won't be your trousers,' Ramage said. 'Now, where are the keys to free the prisoners?'

The sailor stood, speechless and paralysed by fear.

Ramage prodded him with the pistol, forcing him to take a step back. The man had enough presence of mind to step out of his trousers and Sarah picked them up, checked if they had a pocket, and finding they had not, walked to the ship's side and threw them into the sea.

'It doesn't make up for my torn dress,' she said to no one in particular, 'but it is very satisfying!'

Auguste had taken command of his brother, Louis and Gilbert, and had them lined up with the muskets covering the other matelots. Auguste picked up the lantern and then, as an afterthought, put it down again, took the big bottle of rum and tossed it over the bulwark. 'Madame has the right idea,' he said, 'no one gets fighting drunk without spirits to drink and,' he added slyly, 'no man is a hero without his trousers.'

With that he took out his knife and cut the belts of the other three matelots, leaving them standing with their trousers round their ankles. 'Forgive me, madame,' he said to Sarah, 'but I am following your husband's example.'

'I am a married woman,' she said demurely.

'What a wife,' one of the matelots muttered. 'She uses a pistol like a filleting knife. '

'I need another lantern,' Ramage said to Gilbert. 'Will you get ours up from the boat? Take Louis with you and bring the cutlasses too. This fellow,' he tapped the sailor on the head with the flat of the knife, 'will suffer if his friends misbehave while you are gone.'

As soon as Gilbert and Louis returned with the lantern and cutlasses, Ramage commented: 'Time is short: that shot may bring over inquisitive people.' To the trouserless seaman, who seemed to be the senior of the survivors, he said: 'Now we free the British prisoners. If you want to live to an old age, you will help.'

The matelot haltingly explained that the irons had only four bars running through them, secured by four padlocks, and the four keys were on a hook in the cabin the bosun had been using. Suddenly Ramage remembered the other two guards. Where were they?

Ramage sent Gilbert with his lantern down the companionway into the gunroom ahead of the matelot and himself. The lantern lit the steps and showed the matelot's movements clearly. Since the stroke that had cut his belt and lost him his trousers, it was clear that the man feared the blade more than the pistol, which surprised Ramage. Perhaps the wretched matelot's imagination conjured up a more horrifying picture of what a knife could do to a man walking about clad only in a thick woollen jersey and a pair of felt shoes obviously cobbled up by a clumsy sailmaker.

The sailor pointed to the second lieutenant's cabin and followed Gilbert into it. The two men took up all the space and Ramage stood at the doorway, with the point of the knife just resting on the base of the matelot's spine, so that he moved slowly and very obviously kept clear of Gilbert and the lantern.

Finally he reached round very slowly, offering four large keys to Ramage, like an acolyte at communion. 'These are the ones, sir.'

'You carry them. Call to the other two guards and warn them to put their weapons down, or you'll die. Now we go and undo those padlocks.'

The next cabin was empty. 'The captain was here,' the matelot said hastily, 'but he was so ill they took him to the hospital yesterday.'

Ramage felt a surge of relief. He had not looked forward to interviewing a captain who drove his crew to mutiny, whatever his state of health.

The two guards were collapsed in a drunken stupor and the prisoners were lying at the fore end of the lowerdeck. Iron rings protruded from the deck so that metal rods through leg irons needed only a padlock at one end - the other was too bulbous to pass through the eye - to secure each of the four rows of men. They all looked up, and although blinking and squinting in the lantern light, all were wide awake, obviously roused by the pistol shot.

Ramage decided it would be easier to ensure their attention if he left them prone on the deck for a few more minutes so he waved the matelot to one side, telling him to be ready.

'Gentlemen,' Ramage said loudly. 'I am Captain Ramage, of the King's Service. I spoke to one of your lieutenants while delivering potatoes - ah,' he pointed, 'it was you. Very well, in a few minutes you will all be free. I have this fellow here and three other French seamen on deck as prisoners and the bosun is dead - you heard the shot. But listen carefully: in addition to this man' - he gestured towards Gilbert - 'there are three other Frenchmen up there, dressed in fishermen's clothes. Two of them do not speak English but all three are responsible for your rescue. So be very careful.

'I shall put the six French guards in the open boat we came out in, and cast them adrift so that they can row into Brest Harbour with one oar and report what's happened. That will save us guarding prisoners, and there's been enough killing for tonight.'

There was some murmuring from three men who Ramage guessed were the lieutenants and the master. Very well, he would deal with them in a moment.

'The guards will report that the Murex has been recaptured by the English and sailed. Anyway that will be obvious to anyone standing on the beach. So, within ten minutes at the most of those irons being unlocked, I want this ship tacking down the Gullet under topsails. We'll let the anchor cable run to save time.

'Two more things. My wife is on deck. ' He then let a hard note come into his voice. 'Any orders I give will not be questioned. I have taken command of this ship. I do not have my commission but it is dated September 1797. Nor do I have orders from the Admiralty, but anyone doubting my authority can go off in the boat with the French guards and become a prisoner of war. '