Ramage & the Renegades Read online

  “Jacko!” Stafford said as soon as he found the American on deck among the crowd of men who were preparing to hoist a gun out of a port.

  “Jacko, you ‘eard the scuttlebutt? About the Captain?”

  The tall, narrow-faced American whose sandy hair was thinning, seemed to freeze. He turned round slowly and stared at Stafford. “No. He’s all right, isn’t he?”

  The Cockney seaman laughed, not realizing the effect his question had on the Captain’s coxswain. “Yus, he’s all right—what harm could come to him in London? No, he’s bringing the Marchesa down to see us. And his father and mother. Old ‘Blaze-away’ himself!”

  “You gave me a scare,” Jackson said, turning back to give orders to the men straining at the rope. “I thought something dreadful had happened.”

  “You don’t trust him on his own!”

  “I’ve picked him up unconscious enough times, bleeding like a stuck pig from a sword cut or a bullet, never to take anything for granted.”

  “An’ he’s saved you enough times,” Stafford said, intending to tease.

  “Five times up to now,” Jackson said soberly. “If I stay with him I may reach old age and see South Carolina again.”

  “You don’t seem very pleased at the idea o’ seein’ the Marchesa again.”

  “I am. It’s just I’m still cold all over from your clumsiness. And his father. What a sailor he was. The Countess must be a remarkable woman, judging from her husband and her son.”

  “There’s Rossi—hey, Rossi, hear about the Marchesa?”

  The Italian seaman looked up. He had no need to ask “What Marchesa?” but because of the tone of Stafford’s voice he suddenly grinned. “Are they getting married?”

  “Nah, nothing like that. But they—she and the Captain and his father and mother—are coming down to see the ship tomorrer. Probably coming down specially to see Signor Alberto Rossi, once the pride o’ Genoa!”

  “Watch out,” Jackson muttered, “here comes the bosun.”

  The two seamen began heaving on the rope while Jackson went to the gun and made sure the cap squares holding the trunnions down on to the carriage had been pulled up and swung back out of the way. He checked that the sling was square, so that as soon as the men hauled down on the yard tackle the gun, weighing nearly a ton, would rise vertically and not damage anything. He went to the port and looked over the side. The hoy was secured alongside; the men in it were waiting patiently for the next gun to be lowered to them and join the five already lying in the bottom of the hoy, wedged with bags of sand so that they could not move.

  Stafford gave a shiver as a gust of wind swept down the reach, pushing at the frigate so that she strained at the heavy ropes securing her by the bow to the mooring buoy. “This east wind—goes right through you. All that time in the West Indies and Mediterranington makes yer blood thin.”

  “Mediterranean,” Jackson said, automatically correcting Stafford, who had a remarkable inability to pronounce place names correctly. “It’s the damp in the cold that makes it worse. I’m surprised the Captain is bringing visitors with the ship in such a mess. Anyway, how do you know about it?”

  “That chap Hodges. He’s the First Lieutenant’s servant while the other fellow’s on leave, and ‘e ‘eard Mr Aitken and Mr Southwick talking about it. An’ we’re going to have to tiddly up the chair; the rats have been chewing the red baize.”

  “Anything to get away from these guns,” Rossi said wearily. “Accidente, twenty men should make light work of hoisting one gun, but they seem to leave the hoist to me.”

  Stafford laughed and said: “You mean to say it’s too heavy? A French gun? You ought to be able to lift it up like a baby out of a cradle, without usin’ a tackle.”

  He helped heave down on the fall and added: “‘Ere, the Marchesa’s goin’ ter ‘ave a surprise when she sees Mr Orsini. You’d never think he first came on board a shy boy trippin’ over every rope in sight and slippin’ on every step of a companion-way.”

  Paolo Orsini had just left the First Lieutenant and his head was in a whirl. He had expected to be given a couple of days’ leave so that he could visit his aunt and the Captain, and of course, the Earl and Countess, at the Palace Street house. He had never thought for a moment that all of them might visit the ship. His aunt knew what a frigate was like because one had brought her to England from the Mediterranean after the Captain (and men like Jackson, Rossi and Stafford) had rescued her from a beach in Tuscany, but now she was to visit the Calypso she would see not only the ship in which he served but which he had helped capture. And since then the Calypso had been in action—well, how many times was it? He found he could not remember; his memory was blurred by the time he had been second-in-command to “Blower” Martin in a bomb ketch, and when he had (all too briefly) commanded a captured tartane.

  He had grown a good couple of inches; the sleeves of all his jackets were too short, so that his wrists stuck out like sections of bamboo; the legs of his breeches ended just on his kneecaps, making them very uncomfortable—so much so that most of the time he felt like a hobbled horse, though on watch at night he pulled them down so that the waistband was tight against his hips.

  There was no chance of getting on shore and buying new uniforms here in Chatham: he had hinted to Mr Aitken, who had pointed to the shiny elbows and mildewed lapels of his own uniform and said dourly: “This is ma best—you see what the Tropics did to it!”

  The Tropics were a destroyer: leave a jacket hung in a locker for a week and it grew a fine crop of green mildew wherever a trace of food or drink had spilled on it. Leather, whether boots, shoes, belts or scabbards, grew rich yellow and green mildew as fields sprouted new grass and clover. Iron and steel rusted: a sword or dirk left in its scabbard for a few weeks would rust even if coated with grease—the rust seemed to grow beneath the coating. Rope lost its springiness and became dead, apparently from the sunlight, although no one could explain exactly what happened. Sails suffered too; the humidity and constant Tropical showers brought on the mildew, while the blazing sun took the life out of the threads so that it was easy to poke a finger through canvas which looked perfectly sound. Even worse, the material was so weak that the stitches securing a patch just ripped it away like a slashing knife. He had seen a patch blown clean out of a sail—and a few moments later the sail itself had split, starting from the hole left by the departed patch. Yes, most interesting, but what the devil was it that the First Lieutenant had ordered him to do? Quickly Paolo tried to remember the conversation. Mr Aitken had said he had just received a letter from the Captain saying he was bringing the Marchesa and his parents down to Chatham for a visit to the Calypso, and he wished Midshipman Orsini, able seaman Jackson, and ordinary seamen Rossi and Stafford to be available. Then he said they would be coming down by carriage and mentioned the name of the hotel they would use. And the Commissioner of the dockyard was making his yawl available and they would be leaving the jetty of the Commissioner’s residence to board the ship at ten o’clock in the forenoon. Then what? The chair! That was it: the red baize needed replacing; and a whip had to be rove on the starboard main yardarm.

  The English language was sometimes absurd. On land a whip was something you used on a horse or mule; in a ship it was a small block and a rope. Then there was a block—on land that was a large piece of something, like a block of wood. In a ship a block was what men on land called a pulley. And a sheet! That was the most hilarious of all—on land you found a sheet on a bed, although you could also have a sheet of paper. In a ship a sheet was a rope attached to the corner of a sail to control its shape. A seaman did not “put” a rope through a pulley, he rove it through a block, or he was ordered to reeve it. Paolo saw the First Lieutenant coming up the companion-way. Damn, where was the chair stowed? The bosun would know.

  Aitken paused and looked round him. To an untrained eye there was chaos, with seamen running here and there like ants when their anthill was disturbed, but a seaman could distinguish order
. Apart from young Orsini—clearly he had been standing daydreaming—the seventh 12-pounder was already hoisted out and slung over the side, the men under Jackson lowering it into the hoy.

  But devil take it, how was he to have the ship ready for tomorrow’s visitors? The Captain would understand and, from what everyone said, the Marchesa would too. But Admiral the Earl of Blazey was the fifth most senior Admiral in the Navy (he knew that because the moment he received the Captain’s letter, he had looked up the father in the latest edition of Steele’s List of the Navy). Still, even a senior admiral would make allowances for the necessary activity. So that left the Admiral’s wife. Well, all admirals’ wives brought only misery and harassment to first lieutenants, whether of frigates or 100-gun flagships, and the Countess of Blazey was unlikely to be an exception.

  Orsini had finally bestirred himself: no doubt asking the bosun where the chair was stowed. He was a remarkable young lad, and Aitken looked forward to meeting the aunt. It was curious how at first, when he joined the Captain, he had assumed that Paolo’s aunt, the Marchesa, was a wrinkled old Italian dragon, full of unpredictable whims and with enough influence to break a post captain with a pointing index finger and a mere lieutenant with a flick of a little finger. He had been quickly corrected by those who knew her—old Southwick, for instance, who doted on her—and told that she was five feet tall, about 23 years old, and the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. She had striking blue-black hair, large brown eyes—and, when she felt like it, was imperious.

  Still, that was not surprising, because she had once ruled the kingdom of Volterra; her family had done so for centuries, until Bonaparte’s invading army forced her to flee to the coast, to be rescued by the Captain—then a junior lieutenant. And they had fallen in love. Hardened sinners like Jackson, Stafford and Rossi, who were in the ship’s boat that rowed her to safety (even though one of Bonaparte’s cavalrymen had put a bullet in her shoulder), fell in love with her too.

  He admitted he had not at first been too pleased when the Captain told him that the Marchesa’s nephew would be joining the ship as a midshipman: he had visions of a spoiled Italian brat expecting privileges and constantly running to the Captain. Instead the Marchesa’s nephew (who would inherit the kingdom of Volterra if she had no children) was quite as tough as a young Scot of the same age would have been. He had proved something of a contradiction. He was hopeless at mathematics (and he and Southwick had to be careful about that, because the Captain’s own mathematics were said to be sufficient and no more) and tended to daydream, and he was famous throughout the ship for his forgetfulness. But in action, with round shot and musket-balls whistling about his ears, cutlasses flashing and clanging, and the odds against him at about ten to one, then he had the quickness of a snake, the cunning and ingenuity of a highwayman, the clear thinking of a gambler, and the bravery of—well, someone like the Captain, or Southwick.

  Aitken knew little of Italian character, but from what he had heard and seen (people like the seaman Rossi), Paolo Orsini was a happy mixture of the best of the British and Italian characters. As important as his behaviour in action was his attitude towards the day-to-day running of the ship: he was a leader. Aitken doubted if he was yet sixteen years old, but as a midshipman he had to give orders to seamen who had been at sea for twice as many years as he had lived. With many young midshipmen this led to trouble—and with old ones, too: failing their lieutenants’ examination, or passing but not getting a ship, resulted in midshipmen of forty who were almost invariably bitter drunkards. Orsini had such a cheerful manner, and he had learned so fast and was so anxious to go on learning, that he was the ship’s favourite. He had heard seamen exchanging stories of Orsini’s exploits in action, and they were related with pride, as one man might boast about his village’s prize-fighting cock.

  He spotted a white mop of hair up on the fo’c’s’le, showing Southwick busy with some men. He had to discuss with the Master the programme for tomorrow’s visitors because the old man knew them all. Then, Aitken decided, he would inform the lieutenants and then, before the midday meal, muster the men and tell them: they would want to get their queues retied and start the day with clean shirts. It was a Thursday, so they had to shave, but they would have done so anyway.

  “The Frenchies made it fancy enough,” the bosun said as he held up the legless chair for Paolo’s inspection. “The lady sits on the seat, then this bar drops across the front from arm to arm and locks to hold her in. She sits back and up and away she goes.”

  “Yes,” Paolo said doubtfully. “As soon as someone’s rove the whip I’ll try it out. Then we’ll change some of this red baize. It looks as though the rat did not like it.”

  “Not surprised, sir; it’s the same baize that’s used for covering the handle o’ a cat-o’-nine-tails and the bag to put it in. Not that we need it with this Captain.”

  “No. I’ve never seen a flogging,” Paolo said, with all the curiosity of the young. “Is it really bad?”

  “You probably won’t ever see one if you serve with Mr Ramage ‘cos he don’t believe in flogging; but yes, it’s ‘orrible. Most frigates like us’d have at least three or four a week. Not because the captains are cruel but a few bad men keep getting drunk or regularly make mischief. Mr Ramage managed long ago to get rid of the few bad apples and keep the good ones.”

  Paolo looked up at the starboard main yardarm. One man was passing a rope through a block while a second paid out more from a coil slung over his shoulder. Paolo picked up the chair and walked over to one of the guns, followed by a puzzled bosun. Holding it by the arm he lifted it and then banged the seat across the breech of the gun. Dust particles lifted in a cloud.

  “Just making sure there’s no dry rot or woodworm at work under that baize,” he said. “Seems strong enough.” He looked up again and saw that one end of the rope had almost reached the deck. “Come on, hoist me up to the yardarm; I weigh a good deal more than my aunt or the Countess.”

  At ten o’clock next morning Ramage, once again wearing the heavy blue coat of a post captain, with its gold-braided lapels and the single heavy epaulet on his right shoulder indicating that he had less than three years’ seniority, stood on the Commissioner’s jetty and looked across the muddy Medway at the Calypso.

  He had expected to find her heeled to starboard or larboard because the French guns had been hoisted out on one side or the other and lowered into the hoys. Instead she was floating on an even keel; all the yards were square.

  “She looks very smart, Nicholas,” his mother said.

  “Very French, that sheer,” the Admiral commented. “A handsome ship. Not surprised they bought her into the Service after you captured her. A nice pile of prize-money for your men.”

  “With that and the money from the convoy we captured, most of them would be rated wealthy by their neighbours,” Ramage said. “They deserved it!”

  “The yawl, my Lord,” Wedge said, gesturing to the white-painted boat at the end of the jetty.” The Dockyard Commissioner looked to Ramage like a Gillray cartoon of a corrupt public official: rolls of fat began at his chin like canvas hose and circled to below his hips. His eyes were never still, jerking from face to face as if frightened of missing a proffered bribe or a warning glance.

  “Yes, yes,” the Earl said impatiently, “we’re having a look at the ship from here.”

  “And very nice she seems, sir,” Wedge said predictably, like an ingratiating parson entertaining the patron of his living to tea.

  Ramage turned to Gianna. “Watch this,” he said, having just realized that the two figures on the quarterdeck were Aitken and Southwick but there was not another man in sight on board the ship. Wedge had spotted this too, and was grumbling to himself just loudly enough for Ramage to hear. “Seem to be asleep on board there. So much work to be done. The rest of the guns to be hoisted out …”

  Suddenly the shrouds of the fore, main and mizenmasts changed in appearance from thin cobwebs of rope to thick trunks of t
rees as scores of men raced up the ratlines. The first kept going and a couple of dozen walked out along the topgallant yards while below more spaced themselves at arm’s length on the topsail yards and the fore and main-yards. In a matter of moments the men were equally spaced out on all the yards, facing forward with arms outstretched, the tips each man’s fingers touching those of his neighbours on each side.

  Gianna gave a gasp of surprise and pleasure and the Countess, who had so often seen a ship’s company man the yards years earlier, turned to her son. “You shouldn’t have arranged that just for us, Nicholas!”

  “I didn’t,” Ramage admitted. “You can thank Aitken and Southwick when we get on board. Anyway, let’s go out to her now.”

  The yawl came alongside the Calypso and hooked on. The Earl looked at Ramage, who nodded. By the custom of the Navy, the senior officer was the last into a boat when leaving a ship but the first out when coming alongside.

  Two side ropes hung down, one each side of the battens forming narrow steps, or ledges, secured to the ship’s side from just above the waterline to the entry port at deck level. The ropes, knotted with diamond knots and covered with red baize, hung a couple of feet away from the hull, held out by sideboys at a comfortable distance for a climber to grip them, like the banisters of a staircase, as he made his way up the side. The ship’s side was manned—the normal routine for the visit of a flag officer or captain.

  The Admiral went up with a briskness that surprised Ramage, and Gianna was just beginning to get up from the thwart and gather her skirt round her when Ramage gestured to her to remain seated. The Countess had not moved and smiled reassuringly at Gianna, guessing that although she had been in a frigate several times before she had never made an official visit.

  Gianna’s eye was caught by a red object high above her, and a rope dropped into the stern of the boat and then another dropped into the bow. A moment later a seaman slid down each one and nimbly scrambled to the middle of the boat in time to catch and hold the red object as it was lowered into the boat, and which she now recognized as a sort of chair suspended on a rope which went up to the main-yard.