Ramage and the Freebooters (9 page)

‘I don’t know, sir. All I–’

‘Well?’

‘–all I do is write the letters for them that can’t write, sir, and read letters from home. The men – well, they sort of rely on me.’

It was so simple and so obviously true. To the men Harris would be ‘educated’; an obvious choice as a spokesman. They hadn’t so much chosen him as left it to him. Yet if the Admiralty acted harshly, interpreted the Articles of War literally, it could –

‘You realize you can be hanged for what you’ve done?’

‘Hanged, sir? Me, sir? Why, I…’

The man was stockily built, with a round and cheerful face, and fair hair that refused to grow at any normal angle from his head. He was the man in the shop helping the butcher, the baker or the grocer serve the customers: quietly spoken, honest, well-meaning… And now the cheerful face was frightened: perspiration forming on the upper lip, hands clasped tightly behind the back, a slight sagging in at the chest, the shoulders coming forward, as if half-expecting a blow. And Ramage knew the man was hurriedly recalling the dozens of times he’d heard the Articles of War read aloud by the captain – at least once a month all the time he was at sea.

Ramage let him think for a full couple of minutes, then said quietly: ‘I’ll refresh your memory. Article Three, for instance: anyone who “shall give, hold or entertain intelligence to or with any Enemy or Rebel…” – punishable by death. Article four: failing to tell a superior officer about any letter or message from an enemy or rebel within twelve hours – death or such punishment as the court awards. Article Five: endeavouring to corrupt – same punishment. Article Nineteen: making a mutinous assembly, contempt to a superior officer – same punishment. Then there are numbers Twenty, concealing “any traitorous or mutinous practice or design”; Twenty-one, any complaints about victuals to be made quietly to a superior officer, not used to create a disturbance; Twenty-two, disobeying the lawful command of a superior officer; Twenty-three, using reproachful or provoking speeches or gestures–’

‘But sir, all I–’

‘The delegates are rebels, Harris: they are rebels against their officers, captains, admirals and King… You “entertained intelligence” from them: you listened to what they said and obeyed them by joining the mutiny. You didn’t tell a superior officer within twelve hours. By talking about the mutiny with the rest of the men you “took part in a mutinous assembly”. You told the twenty-five men who joined from the
Lively
that the
Triton
had mutinied, and you and your shipmates scared them into joining you… Harris you can be hanged under half a dozen of the Articles of War: you’ve done things where the Articles don’t even give a court an option – it would have to condemn you to death…’

‘But I only told Mr Southwick–’

‘And the men from the
Lively
.’

‘–well, yes, I just sort of told them – they knew already, though.’

‘Knew what?’

‘That the Fleet had mutinied.’

‘They didn’t know the
Triton
had: you told them. Article Nineteen – you’re guilty under both parts, and death the penalty for each. Twenty, Twenty-one…’

‘But I just
told
’em, sir. I didn’t make ’em join in. Anyone could have
told
’em: it just happened to be me.’

‘Harris,’ Ramage said quietly, ‘on the table beside you: the mahogany box.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Open it.’

Warily the man opened the lid.

‘What do you see?’

‘Pair o’ pistols, sir. Bag o’ shot, powder flask an’ all that.’

‘Take out a pistol and load it.’

The man was trembling now but fascinated by handling the most beautifully made pistol he’d probably ever seen. He poured a measure of powder down the muzzle, took a wad from a fitted box and rammed it home, then put in a round lead shot and rammed that home.

‘The priming powder is in the smaller flask.’

Harris poured a measure from the flask on to the pan and closed the steel.

‘Now load the other one.’

He’d gained more confidence and loaded it faster. Just as he finished and before he had time to put it down Ramage, still speaking quietly, said: ‘Now pick up the other one.’

The man stood there, slightly hunched, a pistol in each hand.

‘Cock them.’

A click from the right hand; a click from the left.

‘Now, Harris, as you’ve probably guessed, those duelling pistols have hair triggers. The most accurate pistols ever made.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Harris said, bemused and puzzled by what was happening.

‘Now raise your right hand – higher – point the pistol at me, Harris. Come on!’

The man’s hand was shaking so much Ramage hoped he’d remember the warning about the hair triggers.

‘Now Harris – you can shoot me, and use the other pistol on Mr Southwick. Then you can take over command of the
Triton
. You could sail her over to Boulogne or Calais – or Cherbourg, even Havre de Grace. Bonaparte’d pay you prize money for the ship – you’d all get a share: enough to live in comfort in France for the rest of your lives. Providing Bonaparte wins the war, of course.’

‘But, sir,’ Harris wailed, the pistols dropping to his side. ‘Sir, none of us want anything like that.’

‘But Harris,’ Ramage said coldly, motioning him to put the pistols down on the table, ‘if you shot me and Mr Southwick you’d be no guiltier than you are already. You can’t be hanged more than once. Mutiny, intelligence with rebels, treason – a couple of murders won’t make matters much worse.’

Even in the chilly light Ramage could see the man was almost fainting.

‘Sit down!’

Harris sagged on the edge of the settee behind him, head between his hands, his whole body trembling.

Ramage was sickened by what he’d been forced to do; but now the most intelligent of the original Tritons fully understood the significance of the Fleet’s action. And Harris sat there realizing, for the first time, how close his neck was to the noose at one end of a rope rove from a block at the foreyardarm.

Even now Harris was probably imagining the coarse rasping of the rope on his skin, the knot jammed against one side of his neck; imagining a shouted order and the sudden crash of a gun firing on the deck below where he’d been standing. Then the garrotting while his body soared straight up in the air as men ran with the other end…

Ramage said: ‘Harris, my precise orders are known to very few people: the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Port Admiral and Mr Southwick. But I’ll tell you this much: this is going to be a long voyage. You already know nearly half the ship’s company have served with me before. Only a few weeks ago I had to give them orders which they knew should have resulted in them being killed by the Spaniards. Even before that several of them risked death many times at my side. They’ve never flinched and they’ve never refused. In fact they carried out those orders cheerfully. You know all this?’

‘Partly, sir; they was telling us last night.’

‘Well, I command a different ship now. More than half the crew haven’t served with me. The point is, Harris, I may have to give similar orders again…’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Those orders will have to be obeyed.’

‘And they will be, sir, if it’s up to me!’

‘Yet my first order – to weigh anchor – was not. Hardly a good start.’

‘But sir–’

‘That’s all, Harris: carry on.’

The man wanted to say something but Ramage waved him through the door.

How many such men were there in the Fleet, in those great sail of the line, each with a ship’s company of seven or eight hundred? Perhaps barely one in a hundred was a real trouble-maker, which left ninety-nine Harrises, all equally guilty in law but in fact guilty only of putting their trust in hot-heads; of being led astray; of believing they had a just cause of complaint and that once the Admiralty knew of it, they’d put it right…

Ramage took off his coat. It was a chilly morning but the coat was sodden with perspiration. And watching his own hands trembling he knew he wasn’t a born gambler. He could sit back and plan the gamble, work out the odds and place his bet. But he lost his nerve just before the card turned face up and, more important, there was no thrill, no pleasure in it; just fear.

And the fear was like a fogbank: it penetrated everywhere and extended an unknown distance. It could last an hour or a week, and no man caught in it could drive it away.

Southwick watched Ramage’s hand. Both men were bending over the chart spread on the table in Ramage’s cabin and the
Triton
had long since picked up the men from the cutter and got under way again to pass the entrance to the Beaulieu River, where four years earlier, the brig had been built under old Henry Adams’ supervision at Buckler’s Hard.

As he waited for Ramage to speak the Master wondered if old Adams was still alive. In view of some of the rubbish they were hammering together these days and calling ships, he reflected, it’s a comfort to be in one that old Harry kept his eye on. Planked with oak cut from the New Forest, her ironwork wrought at the works at Sowley Pond just near the shipyard – aye, there wasn’t much to worry about as far as the
Triton’s
hull was concerned. And give him another day or two with the masts, spars and rigging and there’d be no worry on that score either.

Ramage’s hand moved to pick up the dividers. After opening them against the latitude scale he ‘walked’ them across the chart from the Needles to Ushant, the island just off the north-western tip of France. He held one point of the dividers on Ushant and as he spoke Southwick noted the hand was rock solid: not a tremor to reveal nervousness or excitement.

‘It’s a hundred and eighty miles from the Needles to Ushant.’

‘Aye, sir, and I’ll put my money on the wind staying north-west.’

Ramage nodded. ‘The cloud’s well broken up now, and we carry the ebb for another four or five hours.’

That hand
ought
to be trembling a bit, Southwick thought enviously. The lad’s been given orders tough enough to challenge an experienced frigate captain, and has just got under way in circumstances that’d daunt an admiral backed up by half a dozen companies of loyal Marines.

Who’d have thought of forcing a crew to make sail by cutting the cable and giving them the option of drowning or carrying out his orders? Now he’s starting off on a four-thousand-mile voyage with a sullen and still mutinous crew. Why, he can’t even be sure he’ll see the night out: there’s precious little to stop them from slitting his throat as soon as it’s dark and running the ship across the Channel to Cherbourg or Le Havre – neither’s more than about sixty miles away, and they’d have a soldier’s wind…

‘It’s just as likely to veer as back,’ Ramage said. ‘So we’ll take a chance it stays northerly, and make our departure from the Lizard, which is…’

He walked the dividers again.

‘…just about a hundred and fifty miles.’

‘Seems a pity to lose all that southing since the wind’s fair.’

‘I agree; but it’d be madness to round Ushant too close. Privateers, a couple of frigates…there’s bound to be Frenchmen hovering off there to snap up something like the
Triton
. They know despatches for the squadrons are sent by cutters and such like. And they know small vessels like to cut the corners, instead of keeping well out.’

‘Suppose so,’ Southwick said gloomily. ‘But the Lizard to Ushant’s nearly ninety miles: we have to sail that much extra – more if the wind backs south-west and heads us.’

‘Since we’ve more than four thousand to cover altogether, logging another ninety shouldn’t be too much of a strain.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ Southwick said hurriedly. ‘I was thinking of the time. Could cost us a day; make us a day late finding the squadrons off Brest and Cadiz.’

‘Well, trying to save a day might end up with us in Brest as prisoners, and the
Triton
a French prize.’

‘There’s that to it,’ Southwick admitted.

‘And by the time we’re off the Lizard,’ Ramage said casually, ‘we’ll know a bit more about the crew…’

‘You mean, if they’re still mutinous we could put into Plymouth?’

‘Yes – and they’re less likely to do anything mutinous while they know the English coast is just to the north, and as far as they’re concerned there’s more than a chance of us meeting a frigate – or even a sail of the line – coming over the horizon bound for Plymouth or Spithead. But if they knew the French coast was only a few miles to leeward…’

‘Quite so,’ Southwick agreed, ‘but if I was a mutineer I’d have a go tonight: I’d sooner make for Cherbourg or Le Havre than Brest… Still, I admit I never did like taking Ushant too close. With gales springing up in a couple of hours, that’s the most iron-bound coast in Christendom. Just look at it.’ His finger jabbed the chart where, between Ushant and Brest, dozens of crosses marked shoals and individual rocks.

Ramage snapped the dividers shut.

‘Watch and watch about for you and me tonight, Mr Southwick. You can have the master’s mate with you. I’m glad Appleby managed to catch that cutter in time.’

‘You’ll have Jackson, I hope, sir?’

‘Yes. And I must get down to making up the general quarter, watch and station bill. I wonder how many ships have gone through the Needles without one?’

Southwick laughed as he took some courses off the chart. ‘So far we haven’t needed it, thanks to your axemanship!’

‘I’m glad they didn’t fell me,’ Ramage said as he left the cabin and went up the companionway. Walking up and down the weather side of the quarterdeck he was glad of a few minutes of peace: it was good to be at sea again.

The
Triton
, helped along by the ebb, had been making all of ten knots as she surged past Hurst Castle at the western end of the Solent and began to butt into the swell waves from the open sea. But the wind was offshore and the sea did little more than kick up a popple on top of the swell so the
Triton’s
bow only occasionally sliced off the top of a crest and sent it showering up in a cloud of spray.