Ramage's Devil (39 page)

Funerals! His mind had a macabre twist at times. Ah,
L'Espoir
was furling her courses. Quite unconsciously he began counting the seconds, which merged into minutes, and he began extending his fingers so he could keep a better tally. Finally both courses were furled and he turned to find Aitken grinning at him.

“Short of topmen, short of petty officers, or just aren't in a hurry, sir? I saw you timing them.”

“Just French,” Ramage said. “Latins measure time by different watches and clocks than us!”

Now
L'Espoir
was abreast the western end of the Île Royale and began turning in a graceful arc until she was head to wind and, in a few moments, hove-to just where the pilot canoe had been waiting when the
Calypso
and
La Robuste
arrived. Now only a few sodden logs marked fishpots …

Ramage glanced at his watch and then turned to look at the sun, which was a perfect red orb with the lower edge exactly its own diameter above the horizon. The French captain had about fifteen minutes to decide that the pilot was not coming out tonight and make for the anchorage …

Exactly five minutes later
L'Espoir
's foretopsail was braced up and she bore away towards the
Calypso
and
La Robuste
.

“Send the parties to their stations, Mr Aitken,” Ramage said quietly, and went down to his cabin to collect his pistols and sling a cutlass-belt over his right shoulder.

Back on deck, Ramage steadied the glass against the rigging and studied
L'Espoir,
a graceful but weather-worn ship, in the circular frame of the telescope's lenses. Certainly he had no doubt that she was
L'Espoir:
he had seen in Brest that she was, very unusually, painted a dull russet red: a red very similar to the colour of rust. And, as the last of the sun caught her side squarely, he could see why that colour had been chosen: rust weeps from dozens of bolts streaked her hull as though the tails of dull red cows had been nailed to her side. The paint almost disguised the weeps but they were as obvious to a seaman's eye as the sobs after a weeping woman dried her eyes.

Ramage walked to the taffrail and looked over the stern. Three of the
Calypso
's boats were streamed astern on their painters and the fourth was just securing to the end of the boat boom, after taking Kenton and Martin to
La Robuste
. A rope ladder hanging down from the outer end allowed men to climb up on to the boom; a line running parallel with the boom to the ship's side acted as a handrail.

Ramage had been amused at the sight of many of the men sitting round on the main deck with “prayerbooks” (the small blocks of Portland stone used as holystones to clean the deck), sharpening cutlasses and squaring up the three-sided tips of boarding-pikes. He had forbidden them to hoist up the big grindstone on deck because it made a harsh noise and while no man, however sharp his cutlass, could resist “having a whet” on the stone, the unmistakable noise would carry to Île Royale and Île St Joseph, and make some people wonder.

Or would it? Was he being too cautious? Could anyone on the three islands ever believe that the two frigates anchored close by were British? Fortunately the Tricolour was never run up at the flagstaff by the fortress on the seaward side. He had long ago noticed that while in Revolutionary France waving the Tricolour and yelling Revolutionary slogans was very popular, it was only in Royalist Britain and on board her ships that colours were hoisted and lowered at set times.

Had the
Calypso
and
L'Espoir
been arriving at a British island with its own governor they would have fired a salute, and the fort would have replied. Had Bonaparte decreed special days on which his army and navy were to fire salutes? The Royal Navy, with its very long history, had only six, three of them for the King (birthday, accession and coronation), and the others on the Queen's birthday, the anniversary of the Restoration of Charles II, and what was called “the Gunpowder-Treason” on 5th November. Anyway,
L'Espoir
was not firing any salutes, so obviously salutes were regarded as a waste of Revolutionary gunpowder.

Yes, the captain of
L'Espoir
had chosen where he was going to anchor and the frigate was coming round in a broad sweep which would save her having to tack. And Ramage looked forward at Southwick and Aitken, who were watching from the forward end of the quarterdeck. He nodded and smiled.

The dull red hull of
L'Espoir
now seemed black as the sun finally dipped below the horizon, and Ramage was thankful that twilight in the Tropics was brief. He walked forward to the quarterdeck rail and Aitken, in trousers and a loose smock, his narrow and intense face giving him the look of a Revolutionary, commented: “He timed his arrival perfectly!”

“To suit us, yes! An hour earlier would have given him time to be rowed to Île Royale to report to the governor, and the French sentries opening fire might have led to him discovering the deception. Half an hour later and he would have anchored for the night at the pilot station and waited until tomorrow. Then he certainly would have gone over to the island.”

“As it is, he might come over here expecting to be invited to supper,” Southwick said.

“Oh, I'm sure he'll have supper on board here tonight. What do you propose offering him? The last of the hens had its head chopped off a few days ago.”

“Gunpowder soup, a cut off a round shot, grapeshot stuffed with canister … Does that sound appetizing, sir?”

At that moment a slatting of sails made them look towards
L'Espoir,
which was rounding up, foretopsail aback, halfway between the
Calypso
and
La Robuste
. The new frigate's quarterdeck was perhaps a hundred yards away, and Ramage saw a man, obviously her captain, lift his hat and wave it in a greeting.

Ramage waved back, followed by Southwick and Aitken, and
L'Espoir
came to a stop and then gathered sternway as the wind pushed against the forward side of the foretopsail. An anchor splashed into the dark water as Ramage again put the telescope to his eye.

Enough men on the fo'c's'le to deal with the anchor; enough topmen waiting at the foot of the shrouds to go aloft and furl the sails. Enough, but fewer than
L'Espoir
would have had if she was not armed
en flûte.

L'Espoir
's anchor cable was making less and less of an angle with the water as she moved astern and more cable was paid out; finally she stopped, the curve in the cable disappearing as it was straightened by the weight on it, and at last her captain was satisfied the anchor was well dug in. Both topsails were furled, and while the topmen were busy aloft the rest of the ship's company crowded the side, staring at the other two frigates, the islands and the distant low shore.

“Their first sight of the Tropics,” Southwick commented. “A line of mangroves and three big lumps o' rock with pretentious names.”

“Not pretentious to those prisoners,” Ramage reminded him. “When they sensed the ship was in calmer waters, and then heard the anchor go down … They know it could only be the Île du Diable. No doubt quite a few of them expect to leave their bones here.”

The light was going fast now; already a dozen of the brighter stars and planets were showing through as if shy of anyone knowing they had been there all the time but outshone by the sun.

“I'll go and get meself ready, sir.” Southwick excused himself and went down to his cabin in the gunroom.

“That sword of his, sir,” Aitken said. “Is it a family heirloom? I've never seen anyone using a two-handed sword!”

“Two-handed and double-bladed,” Ramage said. “He doesn't jab or chop with it; he whirls round like a dancer spinning with a scythe. With his white hair flying and him bellowing like a livid bull, nothing clears an enemy's ship's deck faster!”

He looked at his watch, having to hold it up to catch the last of the light. “Just seven. Let's hope Wagstaffe has his people ready.”

“Your orders were clear enough, sir. An hour after sunset, if she came in during the evening.”

Ramage went to the larboard side and looked through the port. Île Royale, just forward of the beam was beginning to blur at the edges, the darkening sky making a smoothing background to the otherwise stark outline. Already
La Robuste
was difficult to see against the distant mangroves, and the russet-coloured
L'Espoir
seemed to have gone to sleep, as though the flurry of activity with anchoring and furling sails had exhausted her.

On board the
Calypso
men were placing lanterns in the normal positions, as though she was greeting the night in the normal way at anchor. A sharp-eyed observer might have wondered why there was no lantern at the eentry port—but then, he might think, who was likely to come on board?

“We can start, Mr Aitken,” Ramage said eventually. “Start by getting those boats still astern hauled round to the boom.”

Nearly every man in the
Calypso
's ship's company was now on the main deck and gathered in groups of twenty around the officers. There was one small group by the mainmast, one which Ramage thought of as “Paolo's Party.”

Paolo stood in front of the four Frenchmen and inspected them. It was now dark and the men were almost invisible: like Paolo and everyone else in the ship, their faces, necks, hands and bare feet were smeared with lampblack, and each man had a wide strip of white duck tied round his head, covering his forehead and knotted behind, the ends left to hang down.

“Now, keep your hands from those headbands,” Paolo instructed in French. “They're the only thing that will distinguish you from the French crew: remember, our people in
La Robuste,
and all the men here, have orders to kill or capture anyone without headbands—except the
déportés,
of course.”

“We understand,
m'sieu,
” Auguste said. “We follow you.”

Ramage stood at the inboard end of the boom. “Mr Rennick, your men should board.”

Rennick, indistinguishable from a cook's mate who had spent the last hour cleaning out the galley coppers, led the way past Ramage followed by his twenty men, and Ramage was surprised how far it was possible to distinguish the white headbands. Rennick was at the end of the boom and beginning to scramble down the ladder, yet his bobbing head was clear.

“Now Mr Southwick … mind that meat cleaver of yours!”

Ramage felt rather than saw the master grip his hand and shake it. “Thanks for letting me go, sir,” the old man said. “Me sword was getting rusty!” he murmured.

He could just see Rennick's boat drifting clear, the men lifting the oars from their stowed positions along the thwarts. Binding all those damned oars with old cloths, bits of worn sail canvas and finally new duck had caused more trouble than anything else. The duck for the headbands and the oars—ah, Ramage felt angry at the thought of it. That blasted purser, asking to whom he should charge it! Well, admittedly the purser would have to pay unless he received a written authorization from the captain to issue it, but that was hardly the moment to burden everyone with bureaucracy. Probably the wretched fellow wanted the signature on the paper before the captain left the ship in case the captain did not come back alive! Anyway, Southwick saved the wretched man's bacon by declaring there was a grave risk that many yards of duck and sail cloth, some mess-deck forms and tables, a couple of dozen worn pistols and twice as many muskets, along with fifty cutlasses whose blades were now so pitted they'd serve better as saws, were going to be written off as “damaged or lost in battle.”

Eighteen, nineteen, twenty … That was Southwick's party. “Mr Aitken …” The first lieutenant looking, Ramage thought, as “lean and hungry” as any yon Cassius with blackened face, led his men out on to the boom just as Southwick's boat drifted clear and close to Rennick's.

Again Ramage counted. Yes, that was Aitken's party.

“Orsini …” The midshipman led his four men along the boom.

“Jackson …” the coxswain appeared out of the darkness, “Lead on.” Yes, he recognized the outline of Stafford. A muttered
“Buona fortuna, commandante,”
came from Rossi. Nine … eleven … fifteen … twenty.

Then Ramage was standing there alone except for a shadowy figure. “Well, bosun, it's the first time you've had command of a frigate! Look after her until I get back!”

“Good luck, sir,” the bosun said. “I'd prefer to come with you.”

“I know, but tonight you have to look after the
Calypso
.”

As Ramage walked out along the boom, hearing the wavelets slapping below, he cursed his own softheartedness. The man who should have been left in command was the gunner, a wretchedly weak-willed man whom Ramage had been intending to replace for a year or more, but the prospect of a long battle with the Board of Ordnance and the Navy Board had made him keep the fellow. It was said that Southwick had not spoken a word to the man for more than a year …

He hitched his cutlass round to the centre of his back and pushed on the two pistols in his belt, and then went down the ladder. He stepped over feet and reached the sternsheets, to find himself with Paolo and the four Frenchmen, the rest of his own group being further forward. Jackson called softly to the man at the bow, who pulled the painter through the block and the boat drifted clear of the ship. The large black mass blotting out the stars on one side was the
Calypso:
the three shapes close by were the other boats. Over there was Île Royale which, like the
Calypso,
was only identifiable because of its outline against the stars.

R
AMAGE was never really sure whether it was a hiss or a purr, but the sound of a boat's cutwater slicing through a calm sea was very restful, like going to sleep on board the ship with wavelets faintly tickling the hull. The men were breathing easily because they were rowing at a comfortable pace and the oars were groaning softly in the rowlocks instead of squeaking and clicking: the cloth lashings and the greasy slush from the cook's coppers wiped into the open-topped square rowlocks were effective.