Governor Ramage R. N. (38 page)

“A Spaniard seeing
La Perla
sailing close to his own coast and flying a Spanish ensign would assume she was Spanish. And so would a Frenchman. They'd have no reason to think anything else.”

Yorke looked keenly at Ramage. “A few miles off the coast past Puerto Rico and all the way to the western end of Hispaniola, then a dash down to Jamaica?”

Ramage nodded. “As close to the coast as we dare.”

“Supposing the French want to board us to check up?” Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “Let them. We have all the ship's papers and unless the Frenchman commanding the boarding party spoke fluent Spanish, which is unlikely, I think I could pass myself off as a Spaniard. I might even do it with a Spanish privateer—the accents vary enormously from province to province.”

St Brieuc nodded. “You could, I am sure. When you were talking to that wretched man Colon I remember thinking I would not have thought you were English.”

“The point is,” Ramage said with a grin, “would you have thought I was Spanish? Anyway, have either of you gentlemen any suggestions for improving my plan?”

All of them shook their heads.

“Right,” Ramage said, standing up, “then we sail for Jamaica tomorrow morning as soon as the breeze starts.”

After dinner Ramage felt Maxine's foot touching his under the table, and a moment later she said casually to her father, “Nicholas and I are going to have a last walk along the edge of the bay.”

“Don't make yourselves sad,” he said. “When your mother and I went along there this afternoon we felt quite doleful.”

“We always seem to be leaving places we love,” Maxine said bitterly as she stood and took Ramage's arm. “We won't be long.”

She knew now that she loved him, and she was on the verge of accepting that it was hopeless. Obviously he loved someone else; only that could account for his stiffness. She still wanted him to herself for half an hour tonight, for half an hour when he would not be preoccupied with privateers and hurricanes and hunting for treasure.

By now they were picking their way along the short stretch of sandy beach beside the jetty. The schooner was a dark shape against the stars, and the air was alive with the high-pitched, rapid croaking of tree frogs.

She held her skirt clear of the ground with her left hand and clutched his arm tightly with her right, and pictured in her mind the way he would be frowning as he looked at the ground to make sure she did not trip. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw his right hand move up to his brow. He was rubbing those scars!

It took another ten minutes before they reached the spot she had chosen. It was another small beach with several boulders on it, one of which made a natural seat.

“Here,” she said, “let us sit for a few minutes and thank Culebra and say goodbye.”

He sat and she realized there was no energy in him. It was as though he was suddenly completely exhausted.

She turned and looked at him.

“You are tired,” she said. “It has been a terrible month.” He shook his head. “Not terrible. Exciting, yes.”

“The hurricane, the treasure hunt … yes, exciting enough,” she said.

“And you,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I wish I had met you a long time ago.”

“Why ‘a long time ago?'”

“Before you were married,” he said shyly.

Suddenly she shivered and knew an instant later that he had noticed it.

“I'm sorry,” he said quietly, “that was a tactless thing to say.” She reached up and held his face with both hands.

“Yes, a tactless thing to say … what do you know of my husband?”

“Nothing, apart from his name and the fact that you obviously love him.” He said it gently, almost sadly.

“Do you know how much I love him?” she whispered. “You never talk about him—as though remembering him makes you unhappy.”

“It does, very unhappy. But Nicholas, not for the reason you think.” She was still whispering, and her hands moved back so her fingers were twined in his hair, gently pulling him towards her.

“Not for the reason you think,” she repeated. “No—the memory of him makes me unhappy because I hate him. I wish he was dead!”

From the way he suddenly gripped her shoulders she knew he had not understood, and she startled herself with the harshness of her voice and her words as she continued. “You are afraid of making a cuckold of the man who betrayed me, my mother and my father to the agents of the Directory?”

“Here!” she said, and took one of his hands. She pulled at the front of her dress and guided his hand down over her breast. “There—and there—and there: you feel the scars? My husband caused them. The torturers of the Directory actually used a redhot poker. They wanted to know where my father was.”

“And you said nothing,” he said, bemused both by what she said and the fact his hand was not only still on her breast but that she was pressing it to her, and he could feel the nipple stiffening under his palm.

“They let me go and then followed me secretly because they thought I would lead the way to my father. It was in Paris,” she said, “but I was looking for my husband, because I wanted to kill him. My parents were in Brittany and escaped to London, and I managed to follow them. And now,” she added simply, “I am here.”

“I was so jealous,” Ramage said. “And I—”

He was going to say that although he was in love with her he did not even know her real name, but managed to smother the sentence by kissing her.

By nine o'clock next morning the light breeze that had been blowing from the north most of the night veered to the east and freshened, and Ramage waited impatiently as
La Perla
's boat was hoisted in after returning from across the bay.

Jackson left the group of seamen and came over to Ramage to report.

“Where did you leave them?”

“The headland you pointed out, sir; Punta Colorada. Over there, on the western side of the entrance.”

“Any tracks or paths there?”

“Didn't see any, sir. Plenty of trees and bushes. Not hard to get through. Maybe three hours or so back to here.”

“They gave no trouble?”

“No, sir. The Lieutenant complained about the long walk back.”

Ramage grunted sourly. “He's lucky!”

“We told him that, sir.”

The problem of what to do with
Teniente
Colon and his troops, and
La Perla
's Master and crew, had been solved by locking the soldiers and sailors in the large house with the bricked-up windows used as the slaves' barracks, and taking Colon and the master to the other side of the bay with the one key that would open the enormous padlock on the door. The prisoners were crowded, but Ramage had little sympathy for the soldiers.

The slaves had been given the choice of joining the Royal Navy or staying on Snake Island. Five, including Roberto, had volunteered. The remainder preferred the known life of slavery to the unknown perils of the Navy.

As soon as the boat was secured, Ramage gave a swift series of orders that saw
La Perla
's lines taken in, headsails hoisted, the big foresail and even larger mainsail set and the schooner reaching smoothly down the bay towards the narrow entrance. The wind funnelling round the hills was freshening every minute, but inside the bay the water was flat, its surface only pewtered.

Southwick turned to Ramage and nodded: “She goes well.”

“We've trimmed her too much by the bow!”

The Master walked to the bow and peered over the lee side; then came aft and looked over the taffrail at the wake. He waved the two men away from the big tiller and took it himself, holding it firmly but with hands sensing the feel of the rudder in the water.

He told the two helmsmen to take over the tiller again, and said to Ramage: “Two tons. Sorry, sir.”

Ramage laughed cheerfully. “You're allowed ten tons of leeway with a new ship!”

“Don't worry, sir,” Southwick said, mollified as soon as he realized that Ramage's original remark was intended as a comment, not a criticism, “I'll have her trimmed as soon as we get round the point. I made allowances for doing that.”

Ramage slapped Southwick on the back—the first time the Master had ever known him do that to anyone—and exclaimed: “Mr Southwick, do you realize the significance of what you've just said?”

The Master looked startled. “No, sir! I made allowances for trimming her. I mean,” he added hastily, “I had the holds loaded so I could shift—why, of course, the treasure, sir! The coins are the easiest to move.”

“Exactly! How many masters in the service use gold and silver as ballast?”

Southwick grinned delightedly. “Good Heavens, I didn't think of it that way! I'll put it in the log—'Shifted so-and-so tons of Spanish doubloons to trim the ship.' That'll make a good yarn to tell in Portsmouth!”

By ten o'clock
La Perla
had passed out through the entrance, eased sheets for the reach along the edge of the reefs down to Punta del Soldado at the south-western corner of the island, and rounded it to bear away before a soldier's wind.

To the westward, Puerto Rico was shimmering in the heat with the island of Vieques a long, low shape to the south-west. If Snake Island, Vieques and Puerto Rico formed three sides of a square, the fourth was made up of an almost impassable barrier of small cays stretching in a long line between the northern ends of Puerto Rico and Snake Island.

Without the Spanish charts Ramage could not have risked the passage between Vieques and the cays, but he guessed
La Perla
would use that channel on her way to Ponce, and to pass south of Vieques might arouse suspicion.

The sun, climbing high now, would be almost directly overhead in a couple of hours. Streaks of pale green, and brown marks in the sea—like dirty fingermarks on a bright-blue enamel dish—showed where reefs lay just below the surface waiting to rip the bottom out of an unwary ship. Some of the shoals rose above the surface to expose coral whitening in the sun, making islets for the dozens of solemn and dignified pelicans soaring, diving lazily, or watching indifferently as
La Perla
passed within a few hundred yards.

“Feels strange, doesn't it?” Ramage commented to Yorke, nodding towards the Spanish ensign.

“It certainly does. A trifle florid, isn't it?”

The horizontal stripes of red, gold and red were rarely seen at sea by British eyes.

“It's legal, I assume?” Yorke asked. “I mean, if we get taken by a Spanish ship of the line, we won't be hanged as freebooters or pirates or anything?”

“Perfectly legal,” Ramage said. “You have to hoist your own flag before you open fire on someone, that's all.”

“Barbarous!” Yorke said with a shudder.

“You're looking at it only from the point of view of a potential victim.”

“True enough; I was born a potential victim.”

“It looks different if you use it as a trick to capture a prize.”

“I'm a peace-loving man,” Yorke said. “With an inborn respect for flags.”

“So am I,” Ramage said blandly. “I just don't believe everything I see!”

By late afternoon
La Perla
was passing through the channel between Vieques and the south-east corner of Puerto Rico. Punta Tuna on the starboard bow was the last piece of high land they would see until they had passed westward along the length of Puerto Rico and crossed the Mona Passage to sight the eastern end of Hispaniola.

Just before darkness Ramage searched the horizon with his telescope. There were no sails in sight. Lookouts along the coast should be quite happy:
La Perla
had left Snake Island according to schedule, making for Ponce. What they would not know was that the schooner would pass Ponce in the darkness, and unless the wind dropped away in the night, would be beyond Puerto Rico and out of sight by sunrise.

R
AMAGE always found Jamaica one of the most exciting of tropical landfalls, with the peaks of the aptly named Blue Mountains showing up fifty miles away. They were sighted low on the western horizon just before sunset on the fifth day.

Responsibility for the safety of a small schooner with important passengers and laden with a king's ransom in treasure meant that Ramage, Southwick and Yorke did not have more than two hours' uninterrupted sleep after leaving Snake Island. Once across the Mona Passage, with Hispaniola a few miles on the starboard beam, the lookouts had done little else than hail “Deck there!” and report a sail in sight.

Each time Ramage had to thrust aside his training as a naval officer and try to think with the mind of the fictitious Spanish captain that he had become. If anyone boarded them he had to remember that he was ostensibly on passage from Puerto Rico to Havana, Cuba, with provisions for Havana's garrison and seamen intended for a frigate being commissioned there. It sounded likely, and only four ships had inquired—one Spanish, and two French privateers, and a French national sloop. Ramage was thankful not to have sighted a British frigate; he was in no mood to be delayed while he tried to persuade some sceptical post captain of the truth of his improbable story.

He had ordered Southwick to reduce sail for the rest of the night to ensure that they arrived off Morant Point, at the eastern end of Jamaica, soon after dawn.

The St Brieucs were on deck at sunrise, eager for their first good look at the island they had many times despaired of ever seeing, and Maxine's excitement was catching. “It is so green—and so mountainous!” she exclaimed to Ramage.

“When Columbus was describing it to Queen Isabella, he crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it on the table.”

“Where is Port Royal?” she asked.

“Just to the right of the highest peak. But there's not much of it left after an earthquake and a hurricane. Kingston is the main harbour now.”