Ramage and the Dido (35 page)

Nor were there: the Didos were forcing the Frenchmen aft, past the mainshrouds and into the arms of the men who had boarded from aft: the French were caught in between. And, almost more important, Ramage saw that other Didos following up the boarders were crouching down, setting new fires.

For a moment he thought of the French captain: the man would be in agony, seeing his ship slowly begin to blaze, set on fire by an enemy he could not dislodge. And he must be cursing at having put ashore some of his men: he would now be glad of anyone who could wield a cutlass or stab with a pike.

Southwick was gesticulating aloft and Ramage looked up to see that the great foreyard itself was now on fire, the dry wood obviously set ablaze by the burning canvas. Then he noticed that flames or sparks had set fire to the next sail: the foretopsail was now beginning to burn.

There were now twenty or more fires burning on the fo’c’sle: the burning sail spread about by Jackson and Stafford had started three or four others, and the original one round the forebitts had spread across twelve feet or more of deck, lapping at the foot of the foremast like flaming waves at a mangrove root.

The fires, Ramage realised, were more than the French could put out without using a fire engine: no buckets would douse the flames. And the fire engine was not on deck: it would take them ten minutes to manhandle it up from below.

Just at that moment the whole maincourse dropped to the deck as the ropebands burned through along with the gaskets. The blazing mass of canvas blanketed almost the whole width of the ship, and at that moment Ramage knew the ship was doomed: the canvas was a massive torch. The flames lit up the whole ship, and nothing now could save her.

The time had come to save the Didos. Already the French were breaking off the fight and dashing to the blazing sail, wrenching at the unburned parts in a hopeless attempt to pull them clear. But the sail was enormous: it lay across the deck like a sinuous fiery dragon, spurting flame and sparks.

The fires were now crackling like burning bracken, and the
Achille
was lit up as though by a dozen small suns. The Frenchmen who had been fighting on the gangway were now all struggling with the burning sail, and the Didos were watching them.

‘Why don’t we attack ‘em?’ bawled Southwick.

‘It’s time for us to go,’ Ramage shouted back. ‘The fires have taken a good hold.’

With that he shouted: ‘Didos – to the boats!’

The nearest men heard him and began to make their way forward, ready to climb down into the boats. What about the boarding parties aft – would they be able to see that the forward parties were withdrawing? He could not risk it, and looked round for Orsini.

‘Can you get through to the after parties and tell them to withdraw? At once!’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Orsini, delighted at being given a special task. There was so much movement amidships that he saw no difficulty getting through in the confusion.

As he walked forward Ramage was surprised at how successful his men had been in setting fires. Apart from the big blazes where the foresail had dropped down and round the forebitts, there were many more smaller ones where flames had got a firm grip on woodwork. A six-foot section of the bulwark was now burning fiercely in one place and a twelve-foot section in another. The whole deck was burning at the foot of the belfry and the galley chimney stood up amid a sea of flames.

The boarders were now climbing down into the boats, and Ramage reflected on how he had imagined this episode might have ended: that the French would drive them back into the boats amid a withering fire of musketry. Instead the men were boarding with as little concern as they had shown when they first boarded the boats from the
Dido.

He and Southwick had looked at the bodies left on the gangway. Five Didos were dead, and he saw that four wounded were being helped down into the boats. There were many French dead on the section of the gangway where they had been fighting. There were more aft. How many of the after boarding parties had lost their lives?

Finally the last of the men had scrambled off the Marine’s walk and the beakhead, and Ramage said to Southwick: ‘It’s our turn now.’

‘Not as agile as I was,’ grunted the old master as he clambered through the headrails, ‘and this blasted scabbard hooks in everything.’

‘At least we can see this time,’ Ramage said. When they had climbed up it had been by the light of the stars, which were often hidden by clouds. Now every detail showed up in the light of the flames. In fact, Ramage thought, they add an urgency to everything: the flames must now be spreading down below, making an octopus-like progress towards the magazine.

And when they reached the magazine, he thought grimly, we all want to be at least half a mile away: the explosion will tear the
Achille
apart and scatter the wreckage like chaff before the wind.

And, as he scrambled into the launch, Jackson giving him a helping hand, he realised the wind had freshened: the boats were pitching and rolling as the waves hit the
Achille
and swirled back. A wind…the bellows that would spread all those fires. He glanced up and was startled at the view from this angle: the burning sails were making great crosses of fire, and the foreyard was well ablaze. Any moment the slings and jeers would burn through and it would come crashing down, like the gates of hell opening.

The gates of hell…he had thought of that because the whole scene was unreal. Now the
Achille
was mottled with so many fires that even if they had a couple of fire engines working, as well as all the washdeck pumps, they could never control half of them.

‘Shove off,’ Ramage ordered Jackson, and he commented to Southwick, who was alongside him in the pinnace: ‘It’s a terrible sight.’

‘Aye, it is that. The French captain must be going mad – he hasn’t even got the fire engine on deck.’

‘He never expected an attack like this. He didn’t even expect boarders, judging from the lack of sentries.’

‘What did he expect us to do – stay on board playing cards and drinking gin?’

‘Apparently,’ Ramage said with a grin. ‘I think he made the mistake of thinking that because he was stuck on a rock then we wouldn’t make a move, either. Or else – more than likely – he knows his ship is finished and assumed we knew, so that we wouldn’t try anything.’

‘You mean we might have done all this–’ Southwick waved towards the burning ship, ‘–for nothing?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ Ramage said. ‘But it wasn’t a risk I could take. It seemed to me that fetching shipwrights from Fort Royal, apart from using their own carpenters, could put the ship to rights and she could be towed off. And that’s what the admiral would think.’

‘Well, we’ve made a thorough job of it. Ah, there are some boats – one, two, three. The after boarding party has got away. Just look how those flames are lighting up the
Dido!’

By now, as the launch and pinnace were rowed back, the seventy-four showed up in the darkness as though someone was shining a huge lantern on her: the sails seemed luminous and the rigging showed up like netting, the bowsprit and jib-boom jutting out like a vast fishing rod.

Jackson steered the launch back to the
Dido,
with the other boats following, and soon Ramage was climbing back on board. Once on deck he turned to look at the
Achille
and she was a terrible sight: most striking were the yards, all of which had now caught fire, and all the rigging staying the masts was burning as thin red lines pointing up into the sky. The whole of the fo’c’sle now seemed ablaze and there was a big fire amidships, where the maincourse had fallen.

In the light of the flames he could just distinguish the other three boats approaching the
Dido,
the blades of the oars flashing as they were lifted out of the water. How many casualties had there been among the after boarding parties? He only hoped Orsini was safe.

‘A terrible sight, sir,’ said Aitken, who had been waiting at the entryport. ‘You made a perfect job of it.’

‘Yes, they can’t save her now. The wind freshened at just the right moment – it was as though we had a thousand bellows at work.’

‘Many casualties, sir?’

‘Five dead in our party and four wounded. We left the dead on board. I’ll give you their names presently.’

The other three boats were soon alongside and the excited Kenton was the first on board, his face twisting into a delighted smile as he greeted Ramage. ‘Well, you got your end burning first, sir, but we soon caught up!’

‘How many men did you lose?’ Ramage asked soberly.

‘Seven dead and five wounded, sir.’

‘Is Orsini with you?’

‘Yes, sir, he’s helping get the wounded on board.’

At that moment Kenton turned and looked at the
Achille,
seeing her clearly for the first time from the height of the
Dido
’s
deck. ‘Ye Gods, just look at her. Those masts and yards, they look like great crosses – burning on her grave.’

The four officers stood and watched, silenced by the sheer horror of what they were seeing. Finally Southwick said: ‘Her magazine will go up any minute now.’

The words were hardly out of his mouth before the flaming mass of ship suddenly disintegrated and there was a gigantic thunderclap which almost stunned them. Blazing yards, burning beams, deck planks and futtocks were hurled up into the sky, curving down in precise parabolas. The flash of the explosion had blinded them all for several moments, and then the night seemed blacker than ever, with just the memory of what they had seen burned deeply into their minds. It was a sight, Ramage realised, that he would never forget.

The
Scourge
met them off Diamond Rock soon after noon and both ships hove to while Hill came on board to report on his trip to Barbados. First of all he handed over a sealed packet from the admiral, then he said delightedly: ‘The admiral is buying the
Sirène
and all the merchant ships have been condemned in the prize court in Bridgetown: they held a special hearing so that I could give evidence. By the way, what happened to the
Achille,
sir?’

‘We blew her up during the night,’ Ramage said shortly.

‘Thank goodness for that,’ Hill exclaimed. ‘The admiral was very worried about her: he thought the French might repair her and get her off. He wouldn’t be persuaded, even though I did my best to tell him how firmly she was wedged on that reef.’

‘Well, now she’s floating in tiny pieces off Pointe des Nègres and the French have no ships of war in Fort Royal.’

‘That’ll cheer up the admiral even more, sir,’ Hill said. ‘He was delighted about the convoy – but he’ll be telling you all about that in his letter, I expect.’

‘Yes, I’ll go below and read it. Now, you had better start getting your prize crews back on board here. You must have been crowded in the
Scourge.’

‘It’s not far from Barbados, and most of the men have been sleeping on deck. I think they’ve enjoyed their cruise!’

In his cabin Ramage sat down at his desk and slit open the letter from the admiral. It was a long letter and started off, after the usual preliminaries, with congratulating Ramage on capturing the
Sirène
and the convoy. He was buying in the
Sirène
and the prize court had condemned all the merchantmen. But he was worried, he wrote, about the
Achille.
Ramage was to take immediate steps to make her unseaworthy, either by gunfire or some other means. The important thing was that the French should not have the use of a ship of the line at Fort Royal. Having accomplished that, Cameron continued, Ramage should return to Barbados without loss of time to take part in another operation of considerable importance.

An operation of ‘considerable importance’ – what could that be? Stopping the convoy getting into Martinique was, he would have thought, just such an operation. What else was there going on in the Windward Islands that needed a ship of the line? At least the admiral was not still short of frigates – he had just received the
Alerte
and the
Sirène
and the
Volage
with her mango plants, which should have cheered him up, apart from allowing him to promote a lot of his favourite young officers. A commander-in-chief, he thought, was in a happy position. First of all, he could send his favourite frigate captains out cruising in the best areas for capturing prizes. Then he collected his share of the prize money from every capture. After that he could promote favourites into the prizes, if he bought them into the King’s service. If you were a young lieutenant, Ramage thought cynically, the way to rapid promotion lay in becoming a commander-in-chief’s favourite.

He folded up the letter and called for Luckhurst to copy it into the letter book. He then walked through to the sick bay to talk to Bowen and see the men wounded the previous night. Bowen was his usual cheerful self and reported: ‘All the patients are doing well. Four of them will be back on duty in a week. The rest I’ll have to keep a bit longer.’

‘The first time you have had any work to do for days,’ Ramage said teasingly.

‘You’d be the first to complain if I had many on the sick list,’ Bowen said. ‘So far we’ve been lucky. Only gunshot wounds. Let’s be thankful we haven’t had a visit from the black vomit.’

‘I say a prayer of thanks every day,’ Ramage said soberly.

He went on deck to find that the last of the Didos were coming back on board from the
Scourge,
and he told Orsini: ‘Give Mr Bennett a hail and tell him to come on board.’

The brig would have to be left behind, continuing her lonely patrol off Fort Royal, but it was necessary to give Lieutenant Bennett his orders. The next few weeks were going to be dull for him, compared to the past week or so that the
Dido
had been around, but the young lieutenant had seen one of his former enemies, the
Alerte,
captured, and had arrived back just too late to see the other one blown up.