Ramage's Diamond

CHAPTER FOUR

Ramage was sitting at his desk, trying to finish all the forms the Rear-Admiral would require when they arrived in Barbados, when Southwick came down with the noon position written on a piece of paper. He pointed to the longitude. 'We're making our westing. If this wind holds, we should make a fast passage.'

Ramage glanced at the figures as he gestured to the Master to sit down. The old man put his hat on the cabin sole and wriggled himself comfortable, a movement that Ramage knew from long experience meant he wanted to have a serious talk about something.

Ramage looked at him quizzically. 'How do you think our "Monday morning" went?'

'Better than I expected, sir,' Southwick said frankly. ‘A lot better than I thought possible when we dropped the Lizard astern.'

'You and Aitken have worked hard,' Ramage said.

Southwick shook his head. "Twasn't Aitken and 'twasn't me, sir. The credit is yours.'

'Mine?' Ramage was obviously startled.

'Yours and those dozen scalawags of ours. I must admit I never appreciated them fully when we were in the Triton but they turned the trick here. What with you wielding the stick and carrot from the quarterdeck and those fellows sermonizing on the lower deck like some of Mr Wesley's preachers, the ship's company - well, they're a deal different from the crowd I first clapped eyes on when I boarded at Spithead!'

Ramage rubbed his jaw reflectively. 'Well, all that's past now. I wonder what the Admiral has in store for us at Barbados.'

'Convoy work,' Southwick said gloomily, 'I can feel it in my bones. Taking a dozen merchantmen from Barbados to Grenada and waiting a week while they drum up business, and then take the mules on to St Vincent and St Lucia, and the same there, and an even more infuriating sail up to Antigua with them dropping astern at night and French privateers scurrying out of Martinique to snap 'em up. Mules,' he repeated crossly, 'there isn't a master of a merchant ship that isn't a mule!'

'It may not be as bad as all that,' Ramage said mildly. There was no harm in confiding in the Master. In many ways theirs was a strange relationship; one which had begun years earlier in the Mediterranean when Ramage took over his first command, the Kathleen cutter. He had been given her, he imagined, because Commodore Nelson had taken a liking to him. He had been lucky, as a very green lieutenant with his first command, that Southwick arrived as the Kathleen's master. Southwick was old enough to be his father and was probably one of the finest seamen in the Navy. He could handle the toughest ship's company, treating them like a benevolent father or the Devil's drill sergeant, as the occasion required. Apart from his skill as a Master, though, what had endeared him to Ramage was the way the old man, without ever once overstepping the invisible line separating the captain of the ship from the master (who was only a warrant, not a commission officer), had never let him make a mistake. At times there had been an almost imperceptible shake of the head, at others a cough, occasionally one of the famous sniffs. More important perhaps, was the knowledge that the old Master was on board, a cyclopaedia of knowledge, always at hand, and whom Ramage had never seen ruffled, whether at the prospect of having the tiny cutter rammed by a Spanish line-of-battleship - for that was how the Kathleen had been lost - or by a hurricane, which had sent the Triton brig's masts by the board.

'I'm carrying orders from the First Lord to Rear-Admiral Davis for some special operation,' he said.

'I guessed as much,' Southwick said. 'But is the Juno named in them?'

Ramage shook his head. 'I don't think so. When His Lordship gave me my orders, they were simply "to make the best of my way" ' - he parroted the traditional phrase - "to Barbados, place myself under Admiral Davis's command, and deliver the usual budget of papers. His Lordship did just mention that there was a special operation forthcoming . . .'

'Aye, but if he didn't name the Juno then it won't be for us, sir,' Southwick's voice was even gloomier. 'The Admiral has probably asked for more frigates - admirals never do have enough o' them. His Lordship decided to give you the Juno, since you've just been made post, and send her out to Admiral Davis. If there's any special operation you can be sure the Admiral has his favourites; he won't give plums to a stranger - you don't know him, do you, sir?'

Ramage shook his head. Southwick was right and only echoed his own opinion. The Juno was just another frigate bringing out orders and mail for the Windward and Leeward Islands station; it would be convoy work through the islands. The favoured few captains would be away patrolling the areas off the Spanish Main where there was a chance of finding enemy ships and taking prizes; those out of favour would be with the convoys. An admiral could make a young frigate captain rich in this way (and himself, too, since he shared in the prize money), and one could not blame him if he favoured the captains who had served with him a long time.

That was one of the advantages of becoming an admiral and commanding a station like Jamaica or the Windwards: in time you could promote the young lieutenants you liked or trusted. The simple reason was that the West Indies was an unhealthy spot. A frigate's first lieutenant died of yellow fever - whereupon the admiral promoted the third lieutenant of his flagship and sent him over. A captain died and the admiral exercised his privilege of making a lieutenant post in the dead man's place - often the first lieutenant of his flagship - knowing that the Admiralty would confirm the appointment.

A favoured young junior officer, a fourth lieutenant, say, coming out to the West Indies in an Admiral's flagship would be very unlucky if he was not the captain of a frigate by the time the admiral was replaced two or three years later. He would need only average luck to make several hundred pounds in prize money, and Ramage could think of half a dozen young captains who had served under Sir Hyde Parker at Jamaica (though Sir Hyde was among the more notorious admirals who played the game of favourites) whose frigates had never escorted a convoy; they had spent their time patrolling, cruising - call it what you will, it meant searching for the enemy, which in turn meant prize money. And each of those captains now had several thousand pounds safely in the Funds, apart from the early promotion which meant that their names were high on the Navy List.

So far as Rear-Admiral Davis was concerned, Captain Ramage and the Juno would be another junior captain and another frigate. Perhaps that was what Lord St Vincent had intended in giving him the command. Certainly he had had his share of excitement in the past few years, enough of his dispatches published in the Gazette, and he was probably being unreasonable in expecting it to continue. Perhaps, he thought wryly, His Lordship intended Captain Ramage to settle down a bit...

'Is all your paperwork ready for the Admiral?' he asked Southwick.

'Nearly, sir. I'll have it ready by tomorrow.'

'You'd better check up on the gunner, carpenter and bos'n.'

Southwick picked up his hat. 'I'll do that now; they can fill in their forms while you are seeing the lieutenants.' He paused and scratched his head. 'I - er, well, I was quite impressed this morning, sir; I don't think we have much to worry about, whether it is convoys or hurricanes.'

Ramage grinned and the Master left the cabin. It was typical of the old man's sense of fairness and concern for the ship that he put in a good word for the four young officers who were, technically, his superiors - though it would be a very unwise junior lieutenant that ran foul of a master, and most first lieutenants trod delicately.

Late that night, as he filled in his Journal, Ramage reviewed the day. He had deliberately made no comment to the lieutenants, so that when he mustered the men aft just before sunset they had no idea of their Captain's verdict on the morning's activities. From the looks on all their faces and the shuffling, they had obviously condemned themselves - that much was very clear. Gathered round the scuttlebutt getting their mugs of water, under the watchful eye of a Marine sentry, sweeping the decks in pairs, stitching an old awning - clearly they had talked among themselves and decided that the morning had been a disaster; that the Captain had mustered them aft simply to tell them that the rest of the voyage to Barbados was going to be a prolonged punishment.

Hard put to it to keep a straight face, Ramage had clasped his hands behind his back, scowled, and walked along the ranks of the men, looking them up and down. Half of them looked as though they were about to jump over the side, preferring to take their chance with Neptune and the sharks. Despite the harrowing morning, the men were neatly turned out: queues had been re-tied, hats were worn square, shirts tugged hard to hide creases.

He had then walked back to stand aft, facing them, and told them quite bluntly they had all done well; far better than he had expected when he had mustered them aft off the Lizard. That had produced smiles, and his comment that he no longer despaired of eventually making seamen of them had put a delighted grin under every hat. And he had everyone's attention when he pointed out that although what they had done this morning had been exercises, the time might come any day or night when they would be doing it to save their lives,

So with the men going off to their supper chattering cheerfully and obviously vastly relieved, he had then had Aitken, Wagstaffe, Baker and Lacey down to the great cabin for the inquest. They had arrived as nervous as poachers hauled before the magistrate, and Ramage called his steward to fetch glasses. He had talked to them about nothing in particular for fifteen or twenty minutes as they sipped their sherry, All four had waited to see what Ramage would drink, and promptly followed suit, the only difference being that they failed to notice that Ramage did not touch his drink. Only Southwick and Bowen knew that Ramage never drank anything at sea.

Finally Aitken had made a weak joke about Monday mornings, and Ramage had laughed more heartily than the quality of the joke warranted, and made a joke himself. Slowly the four youngsters relaxed slightly. Ramage was startled to find himself regarding them as youngsters, although Aitken was his own age, Wagstaffe and Baker a year younger and only Lacey really qualified, being just twenty-one years old.

They were four completely different types of men. Aitken was tall with auburn hair and a thin, almost gaunt face. His skin would never tan; already his face was burned red by the sun and his nose was peeling. He spoke quietly with a calm Highland burr, his grey eyes missing nothing. Wagstaffe, a Londoner, was short and stocky with large brown eyes that gave his face a deceptively innocent expression. He spoke briskly, thought quickly and, like Aitken, was respected by the ship's company. Baker came from Bungay, in Suffolk, and had the East Anglian quietness that could be mistaken for slyness. The smallest of the four lieutenants, he moved with the smoothness of a cat, as though sent on board the Juno as a deliberate contrast to Lacey, who was thin and loose-limbed and once provoked the comment from Southwick that he looked as if each of his joints could be tightened up another half turn. He too was quietly spoken, and there was no mistaking that he hailed from Somerset.

Although Ramage sat on the settee with Aitken at the other end and the other three grouped round in comfortable chairs, their eyes kept straying to the desk, where a glass weight held down a piece of paper. Aitken must have told them that on it were written the times of the morning's evolutions.

Although they had relaxed slightly as they sipped their sherries, they were still too tense, as if they knew that the ship's magazine was below them and were afraid the Captain might explode it. Finally Ramage guessed that any further attempt to ease the tension was a waste of time and, as far as the lieutenants were concerned, probably only prolonged the agony.

So he had commented in a conversational tone on the morning's times and then asked Wagstaffe the first question. The Second Lieutenant had carefully put down his glass - Ramage thought for a moment he was trying to gain time, then saw that he wanted to have his hands free to gesture. The question had been totally unexpected and Ramage noticed the other three furrow their brows, obviously trying to think what they might be asked. Wagstaffe had done well, and so had Baker. Lacey knew the answer to the question but was almost too nervous to give it. And Aitken had not been deceived that Ramage had reached the Fourth Lieutenant without asking the First Lieutenant a question.

When Ramage had asked him to explain what mistakes if any the others made, Aitken had described them with the coolness and fairness of a judge summing up before a jury. On several points Ramage interrupted only to point out that there were often two or three different ways of doing things, and at the end Aitken made a point that Ramage had borne in mind from the start - that actually faced with, for example, a bowsprit and jibboom torn away, it was easier to remember everything that had to be done because you could see it, whereas sitting in the great cabin you could only imagine it. Ramage had agreed - and then pointed out that each and every one of the operations they had been discussing might have to be carried out on a pitch-dark night, probably with a gale blowing off a lee shore, since only bad weather or battle damage were likely to cause the mishaps ...

But he was satisfied with their answers and told them so, and as he bade them goodnight he had repeated the phrase he had used to Aitken earlier: 'It's the unexpected that sinks ships.' From the look on their faces he guessed that the First Lieutenant had already quoted it, probably with some embellishments of his own.

So now, Ramage told himself as he shut the Journal and put it away in a drawer, the Juno was as prepared as he could make her for anything that Admiral Davis or the French had in store. It would probably be convoy work, but despite Southwick's gloomy attitude, it could provide some excitement. The Windward Islands at the southern end of the chain were effectively split from the Leeward Islands to the north by the French in Martinique and Guadeloupe. At Martinique the harbour of Fort Royal - anchorage rather, since Fort Royal itself was on one side of an enormous, wedge-shaped bay - was large enough for a whole fleet, with plenty of room for them to swing. Guadeloupe, shaped like a ragged butterfly pinned to a board, was one of those islands with dozens of small bays protected by reefs, and designed by a spiteful Nature as a perfect haven for privateers.

For a minute or two he listened to the seas hissing past the Juno's hull as the rudder pintles grumbled in the gudgeons. Although he had been up long before dawn he did not feel sleepy. With the Juno making some two hundred miles a day, they would soon be in Barbados, anchoring under the watchful eye of the Admiral. There was little at the moment to raise his wrath; not one man on the sick list, thanks to Bowen, who must be one of the finest surgeons in the Service; not one man killed or injured in an accident; not one sail blown out, though that was due more to the eagle eye of Southwick, who saw to it that sails were sent down for repairs in good time: most of the sails in the Juno's outfit were as ripe as pears, the canvas so old that the sailmaker swore incessantly as he tried to make stitches hold when sewing in new cloths or cringles.

If the Admiral wanted to time the ship's company he would find they could make sail, reef and furl as fast and as well as any frigate Ramage could remember. The only thing that could spoil it all would be for him to make a mistake while bringing the Juno into Carlisle Bay at Barbados or have a gun misfire when firing the salute, throwing out the timing. Or for the cable to kink while running through the hawse so the anchor touched the bottom a couple of minutes late, putting the ship a hundred yards or so away from where she should have anchored and perhaps letting her drift into another ship - the flagship, for instance.

Ramage tugged his ear thoughtfully. Many a new ship joining an admiral had through some small mistake given her captain a poor reputation with the admiral that he never lived down. An anchor buoy rope too short for the depth of water, so that with the anchor down the buoy was submerged; some delay in hoisting out a boat: some trifling form not filled in and delivered to the admiral . . . There was also, Ramage remembered with a grin, the case of the captain who brought his ship in with a great flourish and began firing the salute without the gunner having made sure the guns were unshotted: the first gun of the salute had put a roundshot through the governor's stables, though fortunately without killing grooms or horses.

He picked up his hat and went up the companionway, acknowledging the Marine sentry's salute. It was a glorious tropical night with more stars than seemed believable. Orion's Belt, Sirius like a glinting diamond, the Milky Way wider, longer and much more distinct than in northern latitudes, and the Pole Star very low on the starboard beam, a bare twelve degrees above the horizon and the navigator's friend. In the northern hemisphere the number of degrees the Pole Star was above the horizon throughout the night was your latitude: they would soon be in twelve degrees of latitude, running their westing down to arrive at Barbados, which was also in twelve degrees, and the Pole Star would be a dozen degrees above the horizon, having dipped a little every night from the fifty degrees of the English Channel. Being sure of your longitude, though, was a different matter ...

These nights before reaching Barbados were always the best part of a voyage to the West Indies: you remembered all the good things of the Caribbean, and forgot the bad - the whining mosquitoes that destroyed sleep, the wretched and almost invisible sand flies at dawn and sunset which attacked you as though armed with red-hot needles, the sweltering heat and humidity, the appalling sickness ...

The West Indies: from the time he was a young midshipman who would not need a razor for another year or so, the words had fascinated him. In later years he had come to know them well, from the cliffs and mountains and thick green rain forests of the southern islands of the Windwards like Grenada, St Vincent and St Lucia, to the flatter Antigua of the Leewards, drier and almost arid in parts, from the smoothly rounded high hills - one could hardly call them mountains, and they always reminded him of Tuscany - of the Virgin Islands to the green lushness and mountains of Hispaniola and Jamaica.

The clear blue waters where you could often see the bottom at fifty feet, watching barracuda dart like silver daggers into a shoal of small fish, and the slower, grey shapes of sharks swimming smoothly, looking and waiting. And seeing the Spanish mackerel suddenly leap out of the water like a silver arrow in an arc a dozen feet high to land ten yards away in the midst of a swarm of silversides. The pelicans, outrageous looking birds and gawky when you watched them perched on a broken mangrove stump, holding out their wings like scarecrows, drying their feathers, but masters of the air when you saw them gliding along with wingtips an inch or two above the water, or searching higher in a strong wind, and suddenly diving vertically into the water, to fill the sack of skin under their long beak with fish. And the tiny laughing gulls harrying the good-natured pelicans, following them as they dived and as soon as they surfaced perching on their heads or backs, waiting eagerly to snatch any small fish that might escape from the pelican's beak. The black frigate birds, true scavengers of the sea, long forked tails and thin wings like enormously overgrown swallows, but without the swallow's beauty - indeed, they were menacing-looking birds, all black except for some with white breasts. The frigate bird would often hover high over some headland for an hour at a time, a black speck seemingly motionless, and then swoop and pick up some piece of garbage, never getting its feathers wet, rarely trying for a live fish. He was looking for a piece of rotten fruit, or a dead fish, stinking and bloated.

And the land: always the palm trees, their fronds rustling with the evening breeze, and the flamboyant - now, at the beginning of the hurricane season, they would be flowering, the whole tree a great mass of scarlet as though it was on fire. The frangipani, a spindly tree with flowers like stars with a most delicate perfume. And the belle of the night, which he had been lucky enough to see a few times: a great flower that spent weeks preparing, and then bloomed in one night, becoming a mass of golden strands in a white cup. By next morning, as soon as there was any heat in the sun, it closed up and died, it's brief beauty never seen unless someone came along with a lantern.

Long beaches with dazzling white sand, fringed by palms and often backed by mountains covered with thick rain forests; miles of steep cliffs and fallen rocks; low-lying coasts deeply indented with bays as though rats had gnawed them and with thick mangroves lining the banks, the leaves dark green and dense, the roots growing in and out of the water like thousands of gnarled, tortured fingers grasping down to the bottom or reaching up towards the sky.

Termites, white ants, teredos ... a fallen tree was soon attacked by termites which left the outside bark apparently sound but when you touched it the trunk began to crumble; wooden houses could look well-painted but a jab with your finger might show the inside of the wood riddled by white ants. A proud ship floating at anchor in a bay whose blueness was so bright as to seem artificial, and its bottom a honeycomb where teredo had eaten up and down the grain of the wood, never breaking through the sides of the plank.

The heat ... for much of the year bearable because the Trade winds were cooling, but at other times, during the hurricane season, so humid that every movement was an effort that soaked you in perspiration. When iron rusted at a tremendous rate and cloth mildewed; when a wise captain spending any time at anchor aired sails at least every two days, and always after rain, A morning rainstorm without the sails being aired in the afternoon was asking for the black spots of mildew to speckle the sail after a warm night.

Much beauty - indeed, a man who had never seen the Caribbean could never fully understand beauty - but always it went hand in hand with violence, the violence of Nature: whether the sudden hurricane that tore down half a town, ripped up plantations like a great scythe, washed away tons of soil with torrential rain, and sank ships as though they were children's toy boats, or the sudden violence of sickness that struck a man or woman so that twelve hours after they walked into their homes, laughing and well, they were dying of yellow fever, shuddering in the grip of malaria or dying in agonizing spasms from the bloody flux. Violence, always violence, and never more so than among the planters, many of whom had lived in the islands for several generations. Sugar was the main produce and with it came rum, the cheapest of the 'hot waters', and they drank heavily, and were short-tempered, quarrelsome and often petty as those living in small communities tended to be, clannish and petulant - and hospitable, too; quick to take offence if their hospitality was not accepted.

So the West Indies were, for him, a violent contradiction: the mysterious beauty of the belle of the night alongside the ugliness of a man dying from the black vomit; the glory of a flamboyant tree contrasting with the termite-ridden log lying beside it. And over it, war, always war. That secluded bay with the sparkling beach and waving palms could be an anchorage for enemy privateers; that sail on the horizon could be a French ship of the line. Like an animal in the jungle or a fish in the sea, one always had to be on guard: against the unknown sail and the unknown cloud - for an innocent grey cloud could in five minutes become a vicious line squall which, catching a ship all aback, might send her masts crashing by the board or shred the sails from the yards. And coral reefs and shoals - one watched the colour of the sea for the hint of pale green or brown that warned of shallows, reefs or rocks, for the waters of the islands were only roughly charted, and one's own eyes were the best charts unless you wanted to rip out the ship's bottom. Many a captain's first warning of a reef was the sight of a row of pelicans apparently standing on the water - whereas in fact they had their feet firmly on rocks a few inches below the surface.

Ramage walked aft to the taffrail and looked astern, where the ship's bubbling wake was a stream of pale green fire, like a meteor's tail, phosphorescence that no one understood but which was often bright enough to read by. In a few days he would be back in the West Indies, where promotion was often fast for those that survived, and he wondered how he would find Rear-Admiral Davis. One thing was certain: he would do his best to bring the Juno into Carlisle Bay so that no one could fault her.