Dudley Pope - Ramage's Devil

Aitken was inspecting LaRobuste with a telescope. 'I can see Wagstaffe watching. There are a few men on deck and they look very French.' He closed the telescope and looked aloft and forward to check the Calypso. 'We do, too, sir.' He sniffed in a fair imitation of Southwick. 'And I can't wait to have the men back at work with the brick dust putting a shine on our brasswork. It's so green that the ship begins to look like those copper roofs in Copenhagen.'

'1 didn't know you'd ever been there.'

'Copenhagen, Elsinore, Christiania, Malmö, Stockholm ... Yes, I know the Cattegat and Skagerrak, sir. In fact every time I see some weathered copper or brass I think of Copenhagen. Those spires and towers make it a lovely city. You know it?'

Ramage nodded, and both men were aware that they were using this inane conversation to pass the time. As they watched, L'Espoir seemed to slow down, but they knew that it was their own reactions quickening.

Opening his telescope again and carefully lining up the focusing ring he had filed in the eyepiece tube, Ramage looked carefully at the peak at the western end of Île Royale. The church stood shadowed and the big western door closed. The flagstaff was bare and there was no movement round the building.

Obviously the garrison commander or préfet had listened to the pilot's story that Brest had la peste and that although the two frigates already arrived had lost only a few men, a third frigate still on her way was believed to have lost many more. The garrison commander would assume that this frigate was the third and that she, even more than the other two, must be prevented from bringing la peste to the three islands which were already crowded with convicts and déportés. Only one hospital, the pilot book said, and Ramage could picture it: built of stone, small windows, one or perhaps two small wards, four beds in each, and nearby a cemetery situated in a place where there was a reasonable thickness of earth on the rock. And both hospital and cemetery within a short distance of the church: one did not walk far in the sun in a latitude of five degrees North, and funerals were always held within twenty-four hours of death.

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 LaRobuste.

'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 LaRobuste. 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 maindeck 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 roundshot, 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.