Dudley Pope - Ramage And The Rebels

Wagstaffe straightened himself up. "Whether or not they believe it, sir, are we to assume the Delft is hostile?'

'Very much so. But her captain and van Someren regard us as her prize. If she needs to sink us, she will.'

Southwick gave one of his contemptuous snorts. The Delft might be planning to sink us, but what have you in mind for the Delft?' Ramage looked round at the gathered men. 'Any suggestions?'

Lacey said: 'I'd like to start off by bombarding Government House. When I think of all those mosquito and sandfly bites . . . just to kill off some of the former Governor's enemies.'

'It'd be a good idea, if only to teach this damnable former excellency a lesson,' Southwick growled. Topple a few tiles round his ears. Teach him that a gentleman keeps his word.'

'He knows that already,' Aitken said sourly. That's why a scoundrel can always cheat a man of honour.'

'Oh yes, but there's nothing to stop a man of honour boxing his ears afterwards,' Southwick said.

'I'm waiting for ideas,' Ramage said patiently.

'Just open fire on her, sir. We've springs on our cable and our shooting will be accurate,' Wagstaffe said.

They can put a spring on their cable - probably have, in fact - and shoot just as well,' Ramage said. 'We end up with a pounding match at a cable's distance. The first ship reduced to splinters is the loser.'

'What had you in mind, sir?' Aitken asked cautiously.

'I'd like to destroy the Delft with no damage to the Calypso and no casualties to us.'

'Who wouldn't?" Southwick growled impatiently, ruffling his hair. 'No one wants damage or casualties, sir, but short of blowing her out of the water, how can we do that?'

'What's wrong with blowing her out of the water?' Ramage asked innocently.

'It's a waste of our powder,' Southwick chuckled. 'It'd take several tons.'

'Quite,' Ramage said, 'but I had in mind to use hers.'

Six pairs of startled eyes jerked round to stare at him.

'You're teasing us,' Southwick protested.

Ramage shook his head. 'You have to think ahead. After we've destroyed the Delft we still have a problem - my original orders."

'The privateers?" Southwick exclaimed. "Why, we've dealt with them!"

'I'm sure Admiral Foxe-Foote wouldn't agree. We have ten privateers anchored in Amsterdam, but we can't stay here and guard 'em, and we don't have enough men to sail them all to Jamaica. If we leave any behind, the Dutch might take them - or sell them to the French or Spanish.'

'Let's sink those we can't take with us," Southwick said gruffly. They won't yield much prize money, anyway."

'That Nuestra Senora de Antigua' Wagstaffe said bitterly. 'I'd like to see her burn. Pity we can't sort out the survivors of her original crew and put them on board. Anyway, her captain's dead, we know that."

'She would burn well," Ramage said dreamily, and all movement in the cabin stopped. Suddenly he could hear the water lapping under the Calypso's stern, and the gentle whine of the wind in the rigging, and on deck a sentry coughed and then spat over the side.

'Francis Drake, sir?" Aitken asked.

Ramage nodded. Tonight. The wind is holding. About three o'clock, before moonrise. The explosion should take most of the tiles off Government House."

'Shall I start the preparations, sir?'

'Here, hold hard a moment,' Southwick protested. This is all beyond me.'

Wagstaffe laughed happily and said: 'Drake . . . come on, old man, he was a bit before your time, but you must have heard how he launched fireships against the Spanish Armada when it anchored off Gravelines."

'Ah, yes, but although I wasn't there I did hear tell that he didn't sink any Spanish ships with 'em.'

'No, but they cut their cables and ran for their lives.'

'We don't want the Delft cutting and running though; we want her blowing up right where she is,' Southwick declared.

Wagstaffe was enjoying teasing the master. 'Drake would have enjoyed the idea of using a French privateer with a Spanish name to blow up a Dutch frigate.'

'So would I,' Southwick said as he suddenly worked out Ramage's intention. 'And there's a lot of work to be done preparing the Nuestra Senora. For a start she hasn't a single sail bent on.'

Silently in the darkness, always keeping the bulk of the Calypso between them and the Delft, the British frigate's boats had rowed back and forth to the Nuestra Senora ferrying across casks, axes and saws, grapnels, lengths of light chain, coils of ropes and several single and double blocks to make up sheets for the sails to save time searching through the schooner for the originals.

While seamen working under the boatswain and Southwick hoisted the sails up on deck and then bent them on to masts and stays, others removed all the hatches, cut big holes in the few permanent bulkheads so that the wind could blow through the ship and up the hatchways, and lifted off skylights to ensure a good draught.

More men climbed up the rigging and secured the grapnels from chains so that they hung down just above the level of the enemy bulwarks, suspended where they would hook into the Delft's rigging. Two axes rested against the anchor cable bitts; all her guns to the starboard side had been loaded with two shots each and a treble charge of powder, although no gunners would fire them because the barrels would probably burst; only heat or sparks falling into the pans would ignite the gunpowder.

Ramage went into the captain's cabin - it was little more than a large cuddy - and was surprised and thankful at the draught blowing through it; a draught that when the time came would fan the flames like a blacksmith's bellows, although for the moment it did its best to remove the stench in which Brune had lived. He walked forward to where the privateersmen normally lived and where their hammocks were still slung. Several seamen were busy breaking up blocks of pitch and wedging them wherever a ledge in the planking would hold a piece. Several of the hammocks swung gently with the sharp outlines of pieces of pitch revealing their contents.

In another corner half a dozen seamen were busy chopping coils of thick rope into ten - foot lengths, while others frayed the ends and jammed them into the piles of pitch. Every few feet were small casks of tar, identifiable only by their smell, because there was always seepage between the staves. They would not be smashed or have their bungs knocked out until the last moment, and many of them rested on piles of spare satis.

Rennick and his sergeant, each with a long coil of slow match slung round his neck, were at work round the mainmast where ten half - casks of powder, each three and a half feet long, were securely lashed in place, each with its bung uppermost. From a point fifteen feet away several lengths of slow match stretched along the deck, like a thin octopus, the ends disappearing in the bungholes, where they went down into the powder and were held lightly in position by wooden bungs.

'Burns at the rate of two feet a minute, sir,' Rennick explained. There's fifteen feet from this point to the casks. We don't need a slow match to each cask, of course,' he added hurriedly. 'One would be enough, because when one cask goes up they'll all go, but we have plenty of insurance. When the time comes we light as many as possible, but there's no need to do them all.'

The guns?' Ramage asked.

'I finally triple - shotted them on the starboard side - those which will point at the Delft. Those on the larboard side facing us are triple - charged without shot, and the breechings are cut, so when they go off they'll recoil right across the ship.'

'You still have the port fires to arrange?'

'Yes, sir, I thought I'd set them on deck near the wheel. It'll help us see what we're doing for the last minute or two.'

'And that brandy?'