Ramage's Prize Read online

  Ramage glanced at the mirror and gave his stock an impatient twitch. It annoyed him to have to change into uniform but Southwick and Wilson made a point of it, and at least it gave the cloth an airing—the weather was still humid and warm enough to make mildew grow quickly. He clipped on his sword, picked up his hat and went on deck.

  The Lady Arabella was running up to the north-east before a brisk quartering wind, an all-plain-sail breeze from the west with billowing clouds startlingly white in the early autumn sunshine. The seas rolling eastward were the deep blue of the broad ocean and stippled with just enough white horses to emphasize the irregularity of the waves.

  He watched as two seamen carried up a small table and set it down just forward of the binnacle box. A short length of line hung down from the underside of the table-top and one of the men passed the end through an eyebolt in the deck, heaved down taut and made the rope fast so that as the ship rolled the table could move only a few inches. A third seaman walked up with a Union Flag which he carefully draped over the table. The altar was now ready.

  Mr Much carried out a large brass-bound Bible—Ramage, standing aft by the taffrail, guessed it was the mate’s own copy—and placed it carefully on the table. He then turned and spoke to one of the seamen, who immediately went towards the captain’s cabin. He returned a few moments later, said something to the mate, and then went on to call the ship’s company aft for church. As soon as the men were grouped round the altar, freshly shaven and hair combed and tied in neat queues, Stevens appeared in white nankeen trousers and a dark grey coat, with his usual Sunday black hat perched squarely on his head. He had a weary gait which reminded Ramage of a sad prelate who had long ceased trying to placate a nagging wife.

  Yorke and Southwick were waiting on the starboard side, and they were now joined by Wilson and the Lady Arabella’s Surgeon, Farrell, who stood a few paces apart. Bowen was conspicuously absent—there was more than a hint of the freethinker about Bowen, and in the past Ramage had often been shocked by some of the Surgeon’s comments. Yet if he was honest he had to admit they sometimes left him trying to find answers to disturbing questions. In fact, he thought sourly, he’d spent most of the last month trying to find answers to a different but equally bewildering variety of questions.

  As he stood watching, left hand on the hilt of his sword, Ramage recalled, with a nostalgia that knotted his stomach muscles, all the many Sundays when he had conducted the service in the two ships he had commanded. The toothless John Smith, who usually stood on the capstan with his fiddle, playing some cheerful forebitter as the men heaved on the bars to weigh the anchor, would suck in his cheeks and crease his forehead in a frown of concentration as he sawed out the music of a hymn, and the ship’s company would sing with gusto. When he first went to sea, Ramage suddenly remembered, his father had told him that he would find Divine Service was a ship’s weather glass: if the men did not sing with their hearts in it, he should look for a defect in the captain or officers.

  Stevens stopped abaft the table, clasped his hands behind his back, and slowly stared round the ship’s company.

  The wind hummed in the rigging; the downdraught from the mainsail curving down from high over their heads was chilly and flapped the edges of the Union Flag draped over the table. The Lady Arabella rolled with a ponderousness belying her elegant name as the seas swept up astern and passed under her: Ramage was reminded of a plump fishwife on her way to market. But for all that, it was a comfortable roll; regular enough that the men could balance without effort.

  There was a heavy thump every two or three minutes as the packet’s bow punched into a larger sea, showering up a sparkling spray which the sun scattered with rainbow patterns before it hit the deck and dribbled aft along the scuppers in prosaic rivulets of water. Almost without realizing he was doing it, Ramage braced back his shoulders: a bright and brisk day like this made up for a score of others when the sky was low with scudding grey clouds and wind drove rain and spray in blinding squalls.

  After looking round at the ship’s company—resentfully, it seemed to Ramage, as though conducting the service took him away from other more important work—Stevens removed his hat with a flourish, and everyone followed suit.

  Catching sight of Southwick’s flowing white hair, now fluffing out in the wind, Ramage saw the look of stern disapproval on his face: a ship’s company standing round on deck as though on a quayside waiting for a ferry was obviously not the old Master’s idea of the way Divine Service should be conducted.

  Handing his hat to the nearest seaman, Stevens took a pair of spectacles from a pocket and put them on with great deliberation. He then took a prayer book from another pocket and, after giving a cough intended to get the men’s attention, opened it.

  At that moment the lookout at the bow shouted excitedly: “Sail—ho! Sail to loo’ard on the starboard bow!”

  Ramage immediately watched Stevens. The man tossed the prayer book on to the table, removed his spectacles and thrust them into his pocket before taking his hat back from the seaman. But he did not do what everyone on deck but Ramage had done instinctively as soon as the lookout hailed—look over the starboard bow.

  Stevens turned back to the binnacle box, opened the drawer beneath the compass, took out his telescope, and strode over to the aftermost gun on the starboard side. He climbed up to balance himself on the breech, but before looking through the telescope he turned and called, “Run up our colours, Mr Much.”

  He waited to see two seamen getting ready to hoist the big ensign before putting the telescope to his eye.

  Puzzled at what he had seen, Ramage hurried to the main shrouds, unclipping his sword and handing it to Jackson. As he swung into the ratlines he saw Yorke perched halfway up, and as he scrambled up to join him he saw Southwick hurrying across the deck, obviously having run down to his cabin to collect his telescope.

  Yorke moved to make room for Ramage, pointing without saying a word. On the horizon Ramage saw two tiny white rectangles, like visiting cards standing on end at the far side of a dark blue tablecloth. The hull of the ship was still hidden from sight below the horizon; only the masts and sails had lifted above the curvature of the earth.

  But one glance told him all he needed to know. The ship was not square-rigged, she was a two-masted schooner carrying fore and aft sails. She was hard on the wind on the larboard tack, and she was steering an intercepting course. Miracles apart, there was only one thing she could be.

  By now Southwick, puffing slightly, was beside him on the ratlines and turning to face outboard. He took one look at the horizon and gestured with the telescope. “I needn’t have bothered to get this!”

  “Our lookout must have been asleep,” Yorke commented. “How many guns do you reckon she carries?”

  “A dozen four-pounders. These privateer schooners rely on boarding,” Ramage said.

  “She’s dam’ fast: we’ll have a sight of her hull in a minute or two.”

  Ramage took Southwick’s telescope, adjusted the focus—he had used it so many dozens of times he could do it automatically—and with an arm through a ratline he balanced himself against the Arabella’s roll and put the telescope to his eye.

  The schooner showed up with almost startling clarity in the circular lens: the lower part of her sails were dark where flying spray kept them soaking wet. Suddenly a long, low, black hull lifted for a moment under the sails like a distant whale, and then sank below the horizon again. He glanced down—they were perched about thirty feet up in the ratlines. From that height you could see the horizon at about six and a quarter miles. Again a random wave lifted the privateer’s hull momentarily above the horizon, and he saw the spray slicing up from her stem. Hard to count, but half a dozen gun ports?

  The privateersmen had been wide awake: from well down to leeward they had sighted the packet, estimated her track and hardened in sheets to steer an intercepting course … all this had gone on even before Stevens had removed his hat.

  Automatica
lly Ramage began converting what he could see into a mental diagram. The Lady Arabella was running north-east before a quartering westerly wind, and the privateer was beating to windward on the larboard tack, making good a course somewhere between north-west and nor’-nor’-west. When I come to describe it later to Gianna, Ramage thought irrelevantly, the Arabella will be a coach thundering down a long straight road. The privateer will be a highwayman galloping along another road coming diagonally from the right. Unless Stevens does something about it, both coach and highwayman will meet at the crossroads.

  The privateer is not travelling along her road as fast as the Arabella, my dear, since she’s beating to windward, but that doesn’t matter because the French have less distance to travel to the crossroads: it is about six miles away for the Arabella, but less than three for the privateer.

  But how, Gianna will ask, with that quizzical wrinkling of her brow, could the Arabella escape? And I will smile reassuringly: her fastest point of sailing was with the wind on the beam, so we immediately turned northwards to put the wind on the beam—taking a turning on the left, in other words, leaving Johnny Frenchman over on our right and well down to leeward: so far to leeward he could never beat up to us before nightfall. We would have no trouble dodging him once it was dark. By making a sudden and drastic alteration of course, at daylight on Monday morning there would be nothing to see on the horizon …

  Ramage was brought back to the present with a jerk as both Yorke and Southwick shouted at him, pointing down at the afterdeck, where he saw Stevens standing with a hand cupped behind his ear as if to hear the answer to a question.

  “He just asked what you make of her,” Yorke said sarcastically. “Apparently thinks it might be Westminster Abbey on the horizon.”

  Ramage handed the telescope to Southwick and cupped his hands.

  “Carries no more than a dozen guns. About six miles away.”

  “What nationality?”

  Ramage turned to Yorke in startled disbelief. “Is he joking?” When Yorke shook his head Ramage shouted: “She’s a French privateer schooner on an intercepting course: you’d better turn northward a bit sharpish, Mr Stevens, or she’ll be on you within the hour!”

  “Are you sure, Mr Ramage?”

  Was Stevens a fool or a knave? The most stupid seaman in the Post Office Packet Service—indeed, the youngest cabin boy—knew that such a schooner hard on the wind steering an intercepting course in this part of the Atlantic could only be an enemy privateer.

  “I am absolutely certain, and so are Mr Yorke and Mr Southwick. It’s time you bore up, Mr Stevens; you’ve lost a mile to leeward already!”

  “Can’t act hastily,” Stevens called back fretfully. “We’d soon be at the North Pole if I bore up every time we sighted a strange sail.”

  Southwick nudged Ramage and growled: “First sail we’ve seen for weeks! You give the order, sir: the Tritons will make sure it’s carried out.”

  Ramage took the telescope again without answering. The privateer was hull-up over the horizon now—an indication of how fast the two ships were converging. She was long, low, black with white masts, and sailing fast; well-heeled to the west wind but pointing high. Almost continuous sheets of spray were flying up from her stem and sweeping aft over the foredeck. She looked sleek and graceful, her sails well cut and well trimmed. Her Captain was obviously expecting the packet to turn north and was making sure his helmsmen did not lose an inch to leeward.

  As he returned the telescope to Southwick, Ramage remembered Stevens’ unhurried, unsurprised behaviour when the lookout hailed. Was he a completely unimaginative man who naturally acted slowly in an emergency? Was that why privateers had twice before captured his ship? Surely not—even the slowest-witted of men must have learned a lesson by now.

  Ramage was puzzled, and because he was puzzled he was uncertain what to do. That black-hulled privateer and its crew of a hundred French cut-throats could represent certain capture for everyone in the Arabella and possibly death for some. The Arabella’s choice of escape or capture depended on Stevens’ whim, not on the orders given by the Captain of the French privateer: it depended on how soon the packet bore up and escaped to the north.

  Yet the capture of the Arabella might somehow reveal why many (if not all) of the previous packets had been captured. That was the only reason why the Arabella was graced with the presence of Lieutenant Ramage. The devil take it, he told himself angrily, I’ve talked over the possibility enough times with Yorke and Southwick in the past few weeks. Talked, yes, and there’s the rub: it’s the old story of looking in the cold light of dawn at an idea born in the warm and mellow glow of a late evening’s conversation.

  Very well, the Arabella might be captured. The privateer might be able to get up to her before night came down. Even if she did not, she might outguess the Arabella and find her in the darkness. “Might” should have been the key word, but the way Stevens was behaving it could be a certainty.

  Ramage glanced down at Stevens, trying to guess what was passing through the man’s mind, and saw he was talking to the mate. Suddenly Much waved towards the privateer and made an angry gesture at the starboard side four-pounders, his head jerking like a pigeon’s from the violence of his words. Even from a distance it was clear to Ramage that Stevens’ features were strained and his whole body tense, as though gripped by pain.

  Then he saw the Surgeon walking aft towards the two men. A mediator—or an ally for one of them? Much saw him coming and repeated the gestures, only this time talking to Farrell, who stopped a couple of paces away as though the mate was threatening him. For a few moments the men seemed silenced by the violence of Much’s words; then all three began talking at once, their hands waving wildly. Although the wind carried away their words, their quarrel was obviously a bitter one.

  “Like hucksters haggling in the market,” Yorke commented.

  “What’s the Surgeon doing there?” Ramage murmured, thinking aloud.

  “It’s like watching a play without hearing the actors. My guess is that Mr Much wants to bear up, but fight if it becomes necessary; the gallant Captain can’t make up his mind; and the noble sawbones wants to surrender without ceremony.”

  “Aye,” Southwick growled, “that’s my reading of it.”

  “It’s about what one would expect,” Ramage commented. “I wonder who … Come on, it’s time we joined the party: we’re losing a quarter of a mile to leeward every couple of minutes …”

  With that he climbed down the ratlines and, walking towards Stevens, reminded himself that the packet Captain knew nothing of the real reason why he was on board. Stevens had no inkling that the chance that brought the privateer in sight had made Ramage the key figure in a secret investigation ordered by the Cabinet. As far as Stevens and his officers were concerned, Ramage was just another anxious passenger, and for the moment he must remember to play that role.

  All three men stopped talking as they saw Ramage approaching.

  “Ah,” Stevens said, a reassuring smile trying to struggle across his face but getting lost round his mouth. “Well, Mr Ramage, a pity one of your frigates isn’t up to windward, eh?”

  “The laurels are all for you to win,” Ramage said cheerfully. “I’m sure you’d begrudge having to share them!”

  The smile vanished completely. “Well, Lieutenant, she’s a big ship …”

  “Yes, but smaller than the Arabella, I fancy.”

  “Oh no! Why, she’s pierced for eighteen guns!”

  “Rubbish!” Much snapped. “Might be pierced for ten and carrying eight.”

  Stevens swung round angrily to face the mate. “I’ll thank you to hold your tongue, Mr Much. Just remember I’m the owner of this ship as well as the commander.”

  “Aye, I’m aware of that,” Much said bitterly, “and I rue the day I ever signed on with you again.”

  The Surgeon took a step nearer. “Steady, Much, steady; I’ve warned you of the risk of getting too excited; overheating the blood can
be fatal.” He turned to Ramage. “You mustn’t take too much notice of him, Mr Ramage: he’s overwrought. He refuses my offers of medication.”

  “You hold your tongue,” Much said with a quietness belying his tone. “It’s caused too much trouble already.”

  Ramage waited, trying to discern in the bickering phrases the original causes of what were obviously long-standing and bitter differences which had come to a sudden climax when the privateer hove in sight. Was Much in fact overwrought, and Farrell and Stevens trying to calm him down? Was it some mania that had set Much apart from the rest of the Arabella’s officers and crew? Although Farrell was a poor specimen when seated at a chessboard, he might well be a good doctor. Ramage was angry with himself for having been on board so long without knowing the answers. He felt a gentle pressure from Yorke’s elbow.

  “Well, Captain, can we offer ourselves as a gun’s crew?” Yorke asked with polite enthusiasm. “Or would you prefer us to have musketoons? You’ll outsail that fellow, of course, once you bear up to the north”—he waved airily towards the privateer—”but we might as well be prepared.”

  It was smoothly done and Ramage was grateful: Stevens had been told once again that the Lady Arabella should now be stretching off to the north, leaving the privateer down to leeward, and that his passengers took it for granted that in the unlikely event of the packet being overtaken they would fight.

  “Most civil of you to offer, Mr Yorke,” Stevens said quickly, “but I hope it won’t come to that. I know Mr Ramage is also anxious that we should bear up, and although it won’t help us much I was about to do so when I had to calm down Mr Much. Well, we mustn’t waste any more time,” he added, like a schoolmaster regaining control of an unruly class, “we’ll turn north—see to it, Mr Much.”

  Even before Stevens had finished speaking the mate was shouting the orders that sent men running to sheets and braces, ready to trim the sails as the brig altered course.