Ramage's Diamond (21 page)

Ramage looked at Southwick with raised eyebrows. “Don't know of her, sir,” the Master said apologetically, “Thirty-six guns and she looks fairly new.”

Ramage closed his telescope with a snap. “Bear away again, Mr Aitken: steer west by north. We'll just see if they have any more batteries at this end of the Bay. Once we have Pointe des Nègres on our beam I think we'll have rattled the bars loudly enough for today. You've the
Surcouf
's exact position on the chart I assume, Mr Southwick.”

T
WO
nights later Ramage stood on the quarterdeck with Wagstaffe, who was the officer of the deck, as the
Juno
stretched northwards under topsails only. It was a dark night, large banks of cloud frequently covering three-quarters of the sky and blacking out the stars. The glass was steady but by midnight there could be either a clear sky or pouring rain. Ramage grumbled to himself about the unpredictability of tropical weather.

Once again Wagstaffe called to the lookouts on either bow, and again both answered that there was no sign of Diamond Rock. The young lieutenant was nervous and Ramage was trying to decide if he should tell him not to keep hailing the lookouts unnecessarily: they knew well enough what they were looking for and would hail the moment they sighted it. He now wished he had not taken the
Juno
so close to the Rock, but the cloud had thickened only in the last half an hour. Anyway he could bear away out to the westward at any moment and be sure of clearing it, but bearing away was just the sort of thing that allowed the damned droghers and schooners to sneak up the coast, pass through the Fours Channel between Diamond Rock and Diamond Hill and get into Fort Royal. They would be impossible to sight from seaward, hidden against the high land.

He would stay on this course. For the next few weeks they were going to be staying close in to Diamond at night and the sooner everyone got used to the idea the better. The cloud seemed to be getting lower and the wind was freshening: there was a sudden chill which gave warning that it was going to rain in a couple of minutes. He turned to Orsini and said: “Go below and fetch oilskins—mine is on the hook outside the door. And fetch Mr Wagstaffe's and your own at the same time.”

Damn the rain: it would cut visibility to a hundred yards or less. As the Rock carried deep water right up to its side from the south, there was no point in having a man in the chains with a lead. He was still torn between bearing away and carrying on so that Wagstaffe should gain confidence. Then he decided that Wagstaffe's confidence was less important than the safety of the ship. As he turned towards the Lieutenant there was a scurry of feet and a man loomed up out of the darkness: “Rossi, sir, lookout on the starboard bow. There's a sail close under our starboard bow a cable off: I dare not shout!”

“Very well,” Ramage snapped, “warn the man at the main chains not to shout either. Get back forward and tell the other man to keep a sharp lookout to larboard.”

He turned to Wagstaffe: “Send the men to quarters, but no shouting!”

He strained his eyes over to starboard but could see nothing. Now the rain was coming, and he groped in the binnacle box drawer for the night glass. He swung it from ahead to far round on the quarter, but nothing was visible in the darkness and he moved it slowly forward again, resting his arms on the top of the binnacle box. There was a hint of greyness out there, a patch not quite as black as the rest of the night, but he lost it as a squall of rain swept the deck. The shape was distinctive enough—the sails of a schooner on almost the same course as the
Juno
and perhaps two hundred yards ahead on the starboard bow.

He hurried over to the larboard side, almost knocking over Orsini, who held out oilskin coats. He balanced himself and looked over the bow, hoping the squall would not have reached out that far yet. What he saw was the similar grey shape of another schooner! There was no doubt about it; he had spent too many years allowing for the inverted image shown in a night glass.

He sensed rather than heard men hurrying to quarters. Aitken came up in the darkness, buckling on his sword, followed almost immediately by Southwick. He looked around for the Marine Lieutenant and called him over.

The three officers gathered round him and Wagstaffe edged over to hear as much as he could. There was no time to wait for the Third and Fourth Lieutenants.

“Two French schooners, one on either bow, on the same course,” Ramage said crisply. “Probably privateers packed full of men. Perhaps even French troops. I think they are waiting for the rain to stop, then the moment the sky starts clearing and they can see they'll try to board us, one on each side.”

Southwick gave one of his famous sniffs. “They must think we're all asleep.”

“When Rossi spotted the first one, it was more than a cable away. I wonder—”

Ramage broke off: it was not for the Captain of a ship to wonder aloud, but why were these schooners planning an attack on the
Juno
when they had left the
Welcome
brig and Captain Eames's frigate alone? Was a convoy expected or did they fear an attack on the frigate anchored off Fort Royal?

He turned to Orsini. “Run forward, boy. Warn all lookouts not to shout. Tell the larboard lookout there's a second schooner on the larboard bow and stay there yourself, ready to bring back more reports. The lookouts will have lost sight of them in this squall.”

He left his officers standing by the binnacle and walked aft thinking hard. He pictured the two schooners sailing back into Fort Royal tomorrow morning with half their complement on board the
Juno
and a Tricolour flying above the British ensign. That was what the Governor of Fort Royal intended and what the men in the schooners hoped for. It would, he thought, be a great pity to disappoint any of them.

Yet the risk to the
Juno
would be enormous if he carried out the plan forming in his mind. If he failed, and was still alive, a court martial would find him guilty of anything Admiral Davis wanted to charge him with. No more risky, he argued, than taking the
Juno
into action against another frigate. And a convoy
must
be due … He swung round, rejoined the lieutenants and Southwick, and found that the two remaining lieutenants had arrived.

Orsini scurried up to report that Rossi had sighted the starboard schooner again in the same relative position but they had not managed to sight the one to larboard. “Tell 'em to keep a sharp lookout,” Ramage snapped, “the second one is there all right.”

He turned to the officers. “There's not much time, so listen carefully. I want those two schooners to try to board us. I want them alongside, hooked on with grappling irons, because I want to capture them undamaged. The only way we can do it is by surprise. Let them think they are surprising
us:
they'll range alongside and start boarding on both sides. Then we surprise
them:
the whole ship's company will be crouching down behind the bulwarks, waiting for the word to repel boarders. That means we have a hundred men on each side to fight off perhaps a hundred in each schooner, but their freeboard is low, and they'll have to climb up our sides. We stand a good chance of succeeding. I want to capture those schooners undamaged,” he repeated.

Swiftly Ramage gave each of his lieutenants his orders, starting with the Marine officer. As each received his instructions he glided away into the darkness to gather his men, check their arms and make sure they had their instructions.

Finally there were only a dozen seamen and Southwick on the quarterdeck with Ramage, apart from the quartermaster and four men at the wheel. Ramage had doubled the number of men usually at the wheel in case of casualties. The dozen seamen were the former Tritons.

While Aitken and the other lieutenants made sure the rest of the ship's company (including those in the sick bay, since all of them could handle pistols) were equipped with muskets or pistols, boarding-pikes, cutlasses or tomahawks, Ramage gave his orders to the dozen men and Southwick. The old Master was almost chuckling with excitement at the prospect of action. He had an enormous sword slung from a belt over his shoulder—a sword Ramage always called “The Cleaver”—and a brace of pistols tucked in his belt. The dozen former Tritons carried a variety of weapons—apart from a pair of pistols, Ramage had let them choose what other weapons they wanted. Jackson and Stafford had cutlasses, Rossi a pike with a tomahawk tucked blade uppermost into his belt.

Ramage's instructions were brief: the former Tritons and the Master would remain on the quarterdeck and were not to move until Ramage gave the word: they were to act as a reserve and would only join the fight at a point round the bulwarks where it looked as though the French might break through. “But,” Ramage had warned them grimly, “remember that as soon as you can you must get back to the quarterdeck: there might be some other place that needs reinforcement. The moment you get back here remember to reload those barkers: if there are soldiers on board these schooners, they'll know how to use swords …”

“And yourself, sir?” Jackson said, and Ramage realized he had neither sword nor pistols. “I'll be back in a moment, sir,” the American said and ran below.

Orsini appeared again to report that the two schooners were in sight now, both in the same relative positions, according to the new lookouts. Ramage looked at the boy. “Have you a pistol, Paolo?” he asked.

“Under my jacket, sir,” he said. “To keep the powder dry in case there's another squall.”

Ramage thought of the boy's dirk, perhaps Paolo's proudest possession, but little use in the kind of fighting that would soon be sweeping over the
Juno
's decks. “Find yourself a cutlass, boy; don't rely on that dirk. Get forward now, and keep me informed.”

He thought of the afternoon in London when Gianna had asked him to take her nephew to sea with him. He had refused at first, picturing the day when the ship would go into action and he would be torn between sending Paolo to some safe position or letting him do whatever task was appropriate to a midshipman even though he stood a good chance of being killed or maimed. Gianna had insisted that he should not be treated differently from any other midshipman and Ramage had allowed himself to be persuaded. Now with the ship about to go into action he had decided to do as Gianna wished. Paolo was going to have his first taste of battle. If he survived he would not only be proud of his role but he would make a better officer.

Jackson was standing there holding the sword and belt in one hand and the pair of pistols in the other. “With the compliments of the Marchesa, sir,” he said cheerfully. “I left the case down below. Don't reckon there'll be much time for reloading.”

Rossi helped him out of his coat and he slipped the sword belt over his shoulder, put on the coat again and took the pistols, reflecting that it was a long way from Bond Street and Mr Prater's shop in Charing Cross. In the meantime the two French schooners were sailing along as though the
Juno
was their flagship. In the blackness on either bow scores of eyes were watching at this very moment, looking for any change in the frigate's sails. That would be their first warning that she was altering course. They would be cheerful and confident of surprising the British, however, because the
Juno
had kept on the same course and there had been no drumroll sending men to quarters and no shrilling of bos'n's calls. As far as the French were concerned she was jogging along under topsails only, with only half a dozen sleepy lookouts, the men at the wheel, a quartermaster and the officer of the deck on their feet and the rest of the watch probably snatching naps.

He looked over to windward, towards the dark mass of Martinique itself, and saw that the cloud was beginning to break up slightly. Since the schooners could now be seen clearly from the
Juno,
he could expect the attack at any moment. They would edge over slowly on converging courses, then slow down and crash alongside as the frigate came up between them, to slaughter the sleeping
rosbifs.
He looked over each bow with the night glass, spotted the schooners and decided there was time for him to walk round the ship, to see the men and give them a word of encouragement and a word of warning. An accidentally-fired pistol or musket now would ruin everything.

It was a quick inspection: every moment he expected a messenger from Southwick, who had the conn temporarily, warning him that the schooners were altering course …

The men were excited but they had learned their lesson. Those with pistols were anxious to show him that they had them at half cock; those with cutlasses wanted to assure him that the blades had been sharpened on the grindstone. One or two of them had strips of cloth tied round their foreheads—to stop the rain running into their eyes if there was another squall, he supposed.

Then he cursed himself: the problem facing them if any of the French managed to get on board would be identifying friend from foe. He turned to Aitken, who was walking beside him, and said urgently: “Send Benson and half a dozen men down to the Surgeon. I want enough white cloth to make every man a head-band. Bring up sheets, bandages—anything that's white and will tear into strips and see that every man wears one, the lieutenants as well. And tell the men they're free to kill anyone without a headband.”

Aitken hissed the order to Benson, who whispered to the nearest half dozen seamen and vanished below with them. Ramage said: “Everything is a credit to you, Mr Aitken. If we can only be sure the men will stay silent until the last moment …” With that he went back to the quarterdeck and told Stafford to find Benson and collect enough white cloth to make headbands for everyone on the quarterdeck, the men at the wheel and the quartermaster included.

Five minutes later the cloud began clearing quickly from the eastward. The
Juno
's quarterdeck was apparently almost deserted; a night glass on one of the schooners would show only the officer of the deck and half a dozen other men, including those at the wheel. But crouched down below the bulwarks on both sides of the
Juno
were nearly two hundred men, each with a white headband tied securely round his forehead.