Ramage & the Rebels Read online

  “Aye,” Southwick rumbled, “making bigger profits than commanders-in-chief.”

  “Taking more risks, too,” Wagstaffe said, and then glanced nervously at Ramage, who began taking the weights off the chart.

  “Lacey—you have a copy of this chart? In fact you’d better go through our chart outfit with Southwick, so you can make copies of anything you don’t have. And the French signal book—you have a copy? The one we captured at Martinique, I mean.”

  “No, I don’t have a copy, sir.”

  Ramage turned to Kenton. “You can help Lacey by making a copy. And Lacey, you treat it like our own signal book: always locked up when not being used, and always in the weighted bag ready to be thrown over the side …” He took out his watch. “Sunset in five hours. Very well, we weigh in three hours—get busy with pencils and paper, gentlemen.”

  C H A P T E R T W O

  THE kneeling seaman carefully removed his plaited straw hat and took a soggy, stringy piece of tobacco from the lining, but before he put it in his mouth and began chewing he commented: “My jaws are getting tired of overhauling this piece: it’s the second day, and there ain’t much taste left. You ‘aven’t got the lend of a piece, ‘ave you, Jacko?”

  “Since when have I ever chewed ‘bacca?”

  “I know, but you might’ve ‘ad a bit tucked away.”

  “Oh yes, as a charm against rheumatism and snake bites.”

  “Oh, you’re a Yankee misery. Now, ‘old the cloth still. Cor, the sun’s bright. You ready with those scissors, Rossi? Wait, let me flatten out that crease. Now, snip away!”

  The three men were crouching down on deck, cutting out the pattern of a pair of trousers drawn on a piece of white duck. Alberto Rossi, the Italian seaman from Genoa, snipped carefully, the tip of his tongue poking out between his lips revealing his concentration.

  The man in the straw hat, Stafford, was a young Cockney for whom the trousers were intended, and who scorned “slops,” the clothing sold by the purser, all of it made to standard patterns. One of the more crushing judgements that a self-respecting seaman could make of another man was: “He’s the sort o’ feller who’d wear pusser’s trousers.”

  Rossi paused a moment with the scissors and inspected the cloth, “Staff, I think you draw the line too tight here—” he gestured with the scissors—”and you might damage yourself. Shall I leave extra cloth?”

  Stafford looked at it doubtfully, certain that his pencilled line had been accurate, but Jackson nudged him. “You pencilled round the outline of the trousers you’re wearing but you forgot to allow for the seams.”

  The Cockney’s face fell. “So I did; I was concentrating on holding the cloth still—in this wind. All right then; give us an extra ‘alf an inch all round, Rosey.”

  All three men stopped and looked round as another group of men kneeling nearby started a violent argument and one of them suddenly stood up, waving a ragged piece of cloth.

  “You bluddy idjit!” he screamed. “Look wotcher dun! Yer’ve cut froo two ficknesses, not one, an’ took off the other leg! I sedjer coodn’t be trusted wiv them bluddy scissors. Ten bob’s worth o’ cloft, that’s whatcher’ve ruined. Why’ncher go’n sit on the jib-boom tossing guineas over the side, heh?”

  “As long as they’re your guineas it’s all the same to me,” the other man answered calmly. “But you marked it and you held it, and I just cut where you said.”

  With another scream of rage the first man flung the piece of cloth down on the deck and jumped up and down on it, shaking his fist. “You rusty cuttle-bung; oooh you milk-livered jakes-scourer, why—”

  “‘Ere, ‘old ‘ard,” the man with the scissors interrupted mildly, “if you go on like that, I shan’t ‘elp you no more.”

  Stafford prodded Rossi. “Come on, snip away; don’t pay no attention to them or you’ll be doing the same. Don’t forget, arf an inch outside the line.”

  Stafford watched carefully and then muttered: “‘Ere, Jacko, ain’t there someone around what’ll lend me a chaw of ‘bacca?”

  “Pay attention to your trousers, otherwise you’ll end up with four legs and no seat, like a broken chair.”

  Finally the trousers were cut out and the front section was held up against Stafford, who looked down at it critically. “Seems all right,” he said doubtfully. “Wotcher fink, Rosey?”

  “Is all right,” the Italian said. “Sta attenti with the stitches. Not those great big ones you put in a sail.”

  “‘Taint often the bosun catches me for sail mending,” Stafford boasted. “I volunteered when the fore-topsail split yesterday, but that was so’s I could get my fingers on a sail needle.”

  “I hope you picked a sharp one. Most of ‘em are rusty,” Jackson said. “They’re the ones left on board by the French—poor quality they are. No guts in the metal; they won’t hold a point.”

  “I did get a nice sharp one, but I can’t find it now,” Stafford admitted. “‘Aven’t got one I could borrow, ‘ave you, Jacko?”

  “‘Bacca, needle—I suppose you’ve got a reel of thread?”

  “Well, not reely; I know Rosey’s got some good fred, and I was ‘oping …”

  The Italian glared at him. “This cloth we just make the cut, Staff; you buy him from the purser? I wonder. The purser not sell any slops since we leave Antigua, and I don’t remember …”

  “Well, I didn’t steal it from any of me shipmates,” Stafford declared hotly, “you know me well enough for that. Why, I’m—”

  “Accidente!” Rossi said sharply. “I was only going to ask why you didn’t take the thread from the purser at the same time, and you need two buttons.”

  “I got the buttons all right,” Stafford admitted, “but old Nipcheese didn’t get the fred out.”

  “Old Nipcheese saw you coming,” Jackson commented. “Not all pursers are daft!”

  Ramage paused at the forward end of the quarterdeck and looked across the ship. It was a scene being repeated on board every one of the King’s ships at sea: Sunday afternoon and “make and mend,” with the men off watch doing just what they wanted.

  Some dozed in the sun, others mended clothes, while yet more were cutting cloth and stitching, making new trousers and shirts and repairing old ones.

  It was curious how fussy the average seaman was about his clothes, Ramage reflected. Expect him to wear slop clothes and he would be outraged; unless he was lazy or particularly unskilled with needle and thread he did not want to wear a purser’s shirt of the same cut and cloth as his shipmate; he wanted a wider or narrower collar, or he sewed the whole shirt with French seams so he could also wear it inside out. His hat would be different; some preferred the natural straw colour of the sennett while others tarred it. Some liked a large hat almost resting on their ears with a wide brim which shaded their eyes and the back of their head; others wanted a narrow brim with a small hat worn high on the head and tilted rakishly forward.

  Some captains tried to force the men to wear the same kind of clothes of the same colour and cut, a sort of ship’s uniform, as though they were Marines or soldiers, but Ramage disagreed with them. His only rule was that his boat’s crew should wear white shirts and trousers and black hats when they rowed him away from the ship on official business, but they were all volunteers and if they did not want to make themselves white trousers they could step down. In fact Aitken reported more than a hundred men clamouring for the dozen places … Eccentric captains (and he admitted there were a few of them) dressed their boats’ crews in absurd rigs—Wilson had made a fool of himself when commanding the Harlequin and the story went that his admiral, taking one took at the men in the boat, asked him if he was commanding a ship or a circus. Wilson was such a fool that most people would have been unsure.

  Ramage glanced at the dog-vanes—corks strung on a line with feathers stuck in them—on top of the bulwark nettings, then up at the scattering of white clouds drifting westward in neat lines. The weather was holding and the wind had backed t
o the east. Sailing in the North-east Trade winds meant that one could be sure that they rarely if ever blew from the north-east. Today the wind had been mostly between east and south-east, so that he could short-tack along the Hispaniola coast and have something of a lee from the short, sharp seas rippling across the top of these larger swell waves which the Calypso did not like: they were just the wrong length, and each time she dug her bow into the bigger ones she came almost to a stop, the wind not strong enough to thrust her through.

  Another few miles, though, and he would be able to turn south, direct for Curaçao. Almost direct, anyway; a course which counteracted a knot of west-going current. With this wind a knot seemed about right. A week or two of strong easterlies always increased the current, but crossing the Caribbean from the Greater Antilles to the Spanish Main reduced navigation (the setting of an exact course, anyway) to inspired guesswork. You hoped for luck and nodded your head knowingly if you made a good landfall.

  The approach to Curaçao from the north was clear of outlying reefs and rocks, and with luck and careful navigation the first the privateers knew that a British frigate and a schooner was after them would be when the island’s lookouts sighted them coming over the horizon. Even then, there might be a few hours of uncertainty because both the Calypso and La Créole were French-built and still used French-cut sails which were distinctive with their deep roaches, and with the ships too far off for their ensigns to be distinguished the worthy burgomasters of Curaçao might be forgiven for thinking their French allies were sending reinforcements or calling in for water and provisions, for which no doubt they would have to pay cash in advance.

  Southwick, who had just been supervising the casting of the log, came up to report the ship was making a little less than six knots. There was land along the north horizon which ended to the eastward as Hispaniola gave way to the Mona Passage, one of the Caribbean’s main gateways into the Atlantic. Just off the south-eastern tip of Hispaniola was the island of Saona, and Ramage pointed to it. “As soon as the eastern end of Saona is in line with the Punta Espada we’ll bear away for Curaçao.”

  “Aye aye, sir. With this light wind it’s going to be a long 330 miles.”

  Ramage pointed at La Créole astern, her great fore and aft sails hardened in, spray flying up from her stem, the ship rising and falling on the swell waves with the easy grace of the flying fish which every now and then flashed up to skim the surface. “Once she gets the wind on the beam you’ll be hard put to hold her: she reaches like a bird, and these conditions suit her.”

  “I know,” Southwick said ruefully, “that’s why I had the men overhauling the stunsails yesterday. We’ll look silly if she has to reduce sail for us to catch up.”

  “If I was young Lacey I’d be making my plans,” Ramage said. “I’d have my best quartermaster chosen, staysails overhauled, largest flying jib bent on ready—and then I’d wait for the Calypso’s signal to alter course south, and I had pass her before Captain Ramage had time to get another signal hoisted!”

  Southwick was chuckling and rubbing his hands together. “Reminds me of the time we were in the Kathleen cutter, sir. Pity we never had a schooner; then we’d know some o’ the tricks.”

  “If you haven’t learned enough tricks in—what is it, forty years?—to beat young Lacey, who has been at sea perhaps eight years, and in command of the Créole for less than eight weeks, it’s time you went back to England and cultivated cabbages. Forty rows of eight cabbages each.”

  “She’s French-built, sir,” Southwick pointed out.

  “So is this ship,” Ramage teased.

  “Let’s have a trial of sailing to windward in a blow, or running with the wind free. That’d show the whippersnapper. But reaching—that’s what schooners are built for.”

  “The trouble is the course is south, so the ‘whippersnapper’ will probably show us,” Ramage said. “And most of the privateers we chase will be schooners, too.” He looked towards the land again. Saona and Punta Espada were almost in line as the Calypso sailed along to the north-east, close-hauled on the starboard tack, as though struggling to stay up to windward and sail through the Mona Passage and into the Atlantic beyond.

  “We’ll cheat a bit,” Ramage said. “Seniority must have its privileges. We’ll go about now. That’s an hour earlier than Lacey expects.”

  Southwick gave an off-key sniff; one which neither acknowledged that he would have an advantage nor admitted that he needed it.

  Ramage called to Wagstaffe, who was officer of the deck, and gave him his orders. A few moments later Orsini, the young midshipman, was busy with a seaman, bending signal flags to a halyard.

  Southwick led the way to the binnacle and stared down at the compass card. “We’re heading nor’-nor’-east on this tack.” He looked up at the luff of the main course and then at the dog-vane. “The wind’s due east, so steering south we’ll have the wind on the beam. If it’d pipe up a bit …”

  By now Wagstaffe, speaking-trumpet in his hand, was giving the first of the orders which would turn the frigate and bring the wind from the starboard side to the larboard. The men stitching and cutting or just lazing, enjoying their “make and mend,” moved themselves out of the way of the men on watch who, in a few moments, would be hauling on tacks and sheets and braces as the great yards swung over.

  The men at the wheel, one each side, watched the quartermaster who was standing to windward of them, alternately eyeing Wagstaffe and the luffs of the sails.

  Ramage savoured the moment. Tacking a well-designed frigate was a joy if properly done, the ship swinging (in this case) through fourteen points of the compass without losing way and then sailing in almost the opposite direction at the same speed. A joy to watch the men you’ve trained moving in apparent confusion, but every man following his own special track, as if the deck was marked out with separate but invisible paths. The sails slamming and flapping, ropes squealing as they rendered through blocks—and then suddenly came peace and quiet as the last order was given with the sails trimmed on the new tack, and the quartermaster calling out the new course being steered. And the ship settled down to the ridge-and-furrow movement like the flight of a woodpecker. Some hours of peace before the next bout of war … the fascination of sea life, he realized, was its strange variety.

  Wagstaffe glanced across at Ramage who, seeing all was ready, nodded and wondered wryly as he looked astern at La Créole whether post captains had played similar tricks on him when he was a nervous young lieutenant commanding the Kathleen cutter. Small and at the time inexplicable episodes now took on meaning; sudden alterations of course, sudden and odd orders hoisted by signal flags when the wind direction meant the flags streamed out end-on and indistinguishable—yes, other post captains had done it. Now, years later, he could admit they were quite right, too: it had kept him on his toes. Even today, when he could rely on his men and had no need personally to watch a horizon for a strange sail or keep an eye on a flagship in anticipation of a hoist of signal flags suddenly appearing, it was rare for anyone on deck to spot them before him. Lookouts up at the masthead would sight a distant ship first because their height of eye gave them a longer range, but …

  His thoughts were interrupted as Wagstaffe snapped orders at the quartermaster, and the men began to spin the wheel. Tacking or wearing off a coastline always gave this curious effect that the ship was still heading in the same direction and it was the land that was sliding one way or the other. Now the whole coastline of Hispaniola seemed to be sliding to the west, as though someone was pulling a rumpled green baize cloth across a table.

  He still found it hard to leave an evolution entirely to the officer of the deck. He had enough self-control to keep his mouth shut, and thus give the impression of not interfering; of treating the whole evolution with lofty disdain, as though merely tacking the ship was beneath the interest of the captain, apart from giving the initial order. Yes, he managed to keep his mouth shut, but sometimes it was difficult—like now, when the win
d is out of the after sails and Wagstaffe is going to be several seconds late in ordering: “Raise tacks and sheets!”

  Then he saw that as Wagstaffe put the speaking-trumpet to his mouth and bellowed the order the lieutenant’s eyes were in fact on Southwick, who was glaring at him. Southwick knew it was late and now Wagstaffe knew, so why, Ramage asked himself, don’t I just admire the view?

  The canvas of the sails was flogging with a noise like great wet slaps. Wagstaffe was bellowing: “Mainsail haul!”—and what the devil were Jackson and his crowd doing? They had suddenly begun pointing upwards after making sure he could see them.

  Up aloft the lookouts at the foremast and mainmast were gesticulating wildly, their hails lost in the slamming of yards and flapping of sails. Quickly Ramage ran to the larboard side as the Calypso’s bow swung. Is that a fleck on the horizon? Perhaps two? Specks that are the sun making light and shadow of the sails of one or more distant ships? He could not be sure.

  Finally Wagstaffe gave the last order: “Haul off all!” and with the quartermaster watching the compass and the luff of the mainsail and cursing the men at the wheel, Ramage heard the excited hails from aloft: “Deck there!”

  For a moment he nearly cupped his hands to reply, but Wagstaffe had the speaking-trumpet and shouted aloft.

  “Mainmasthead,” came the faint shout. “One sail, probably two, fine on the larboard bow, sir!”

  Wagstaffe glanced round and saw Orsini, who was waiting for the order to hoist La Créole’s signal. “Quick, boy, take the bring-’em-near and get aloft. What ships and what courses are they steering!”

  The young midshipman snatched the proffered telescope and raced to the main shrouds. Wagstaffe looked at Ramage, obviously worried about the signal, still bent on the halyard, a heap of coloured cloth, but a glance told Ramage that Lacey was already tacking La Créole without orders: he had probably seen the flags being bent on and saw Orsini suddenly scrambling aloft, and there was now only one order that mattered.