Ramage and the Dido r-18

by Dudley Pope

  Ramage introduced himself and spoke quickly so that the Frenchman would not understand what he was saying to Eames. 'I've only just arrived alongside so I'll go by what you say. This fellow seems to have put up a good fight: do we let him keep his sword?'

  Eames nodded vigorously. 'It was touch and go before you arrived: he fought well enough.'

  Ramage turned to the Frenchman and said in French: 'Please keep your sword and regard yourself as a prisoner at large: you could not be expected to fight on.'

  'The Junon - what happened?'

  'She caught fire and blew up: my boats are looking for survivors - though I don't expect there to be many.'

  'We saw the explosion,' the Frenchman said, 'and we realized our last chance had gone: we just had to fight on against the frigate, but when you approached . . .' The man shrugged his shoulders.

  'You did the wise and honourable thing,' Ramage said. 'Now you'll be taken back to your ship.'

  He repeated it to Rennick. 'He's a prisoner at large. I'm just going to discuss with Captain Eames here who takes possession of the ship.'

  He turned to Eames. 'Is your leg all right? Would you like my surgeon to have a look at it?'

  'No, thank you. I'm all right. That Frenchman seems a decent sort of chap. Put up a deuced determined fight.'

  'Yes. It must have been very depressing for him when he saw the seventy-four blow up: she was his last hope.'

  'Yes, you'd already put paid to the other frigate. By Jove, your broadsides smashed him up.'

  Ramage nodded. 'I was commanding a frigate until recently,' he said drily, 'and I ran into a couple of seventy-fours in the Mediterranean. I speak with experience of both sides when I say there's no disgrace in a frigate hauling down her colours when she meets a seventy-four.'

  'I hope a court of inquiry would agree with you,' Eames said. 'I think some of them expect you to run up a butcher's bill before striking.'

  'Then they've neither experience nor imagination,' Ramage said. 'Now, let's go down to my cabin and decide what we do next.'

  As soon as Eames was seated comfortably in the armchair, his wounded leg supported by a stool, he explained that the Heron was on her way back to England after escorting some John Company ships south of 25° North. 'A couple of them were carrying specie for the Honourable East India Company,' Eames said, 'so it was decided to escort them further south than usual. I was on my way back when the French seventy-four and the two frigates appeared. I was making a bolt for it - though with not much hope of escaping - when I sighted you and you answered the private signal. That was a relief, I can tell you!'

  'I'm bound for the West Indies, as you've probably guessed. What are we going to do about all these French prisoners?'

  'I don't have enough men both to guard and sail two frigates,' Eames said. 'If you can spare me some men to guard one frigate, I'll probably be able to get them both to England.'

  Ramage nodded his head but said: 'I don't know if the first one, the Sylphe, will make it. We'll inspect her, but we may have to set fire to her and just leave you with the Requin. It means you'll lose some prize money, but we may not have the choice.'

  Under the prize rules, if there was another ship in sight at the time that an enemy was captured - in this case the Heron - she shared in the money because the sight of another ship might have affected the enemy's decision to surrender.

  Ramage thought Eames was not a man who could afford to lose prize money, but the other captain said: 'I did notice she was down by the bow when you left her.'

  Ramage realized he had not looked at the Sylphe for a long time and he called to the Marine sentry to pass the word for the first lieutenant. When Aitken arrived he asked him if he had looked at the Sylphe recently. When he said he had not, Ramage sent him back on deck to look with the telescope.

  The Scotsman returned almost immediately with a long face. 'I think she is sinking, sir: she's down by the bow and she's rolling heavily, as though she has a lot of water in her.'

  Ramage grimaced: 'Looks as though we are going to spend most of the day fishing Frenchmen out of the sea.'

  'Our boats are heading back from the Junon,' Aitken said. 'So they'll have done the best they can there.'

  Ramage looked at Eames. 'I think you'd better take the Heron over to the Sylphe and see what's going on. There's no point in my going over because I don't have any boats yet.'

  Eames lifted his wounded leg off the stool. 'Very well. What shall I do if she isn't actually sinking?'

  'If you think a prize crew can get her back to England, make sure the French keep at the pumps, and put some men on board. If it looks as though she's going to sink - that the pumps can't keep up with the leaks - take off the French and set fire to her.'

  The Dido's boats came back with a total of nineteen men from the Junon. 'We searched every bit of wreckage there was,' Hill reported, 'but the only survivors were men who were on deck when she blew up. They tell me there were more, but they drowned because they couldn't swim.'

  'Any of them injured?'

  'Yes, sir: one broken leg, two broken arms and two badly burned. The rest don't have a scratch between them.'

  'Have Bowen deal with them.'

  'They're already down in the cockpit, sir. Rennick has put a guard on the rest.'

  Nineteen survivors out of more than six hundred men. Ramage felt a black depression spreading over him. Being given command of a ship of the line meant, in effect, that all figures had been multiplied by three. The Dido had almost three times the number of men that the Calypso had. In turn that meant that if she sank a ship of the line - the Junon for instance - she was likely to cause three times the number of casualties. Altogether more than twelve hundred men were involved. The figures were quite horrifying. He had just killed more than six hundred men in the Junon, quite apart from any he had killed in the Sylphe, which even now was probably sinking.

  The sentry reported that the master was at the door and Ramage called him in. Southwick seemed to sense Ramage's mood without anything being said, and as he settled in the armchair he said: 'Bad business about the Junon.'

  'I was just thinking about it,' Ramage said. 'More than six hundred dead.'

  Southwick nodded and said quietly: 'Of course, it could have been us. A lucky shot could have set us on fire, and the fire could have spread to the magazine. Hill tells me they picked up nineteen Frenchmen. It could have been nineteen Didos. That really doesn't bear thinking about.'

  'No, it doesn't,' Ramage agreed.

  'Once you realize it's a "them or us" situation, though,' Southwick said conversationally, 'it's surprising how you see it all in a different light.'

  And, Ramage admitted to himself, Southwick was quite right. He had summed up what war really was. Whether you served in a sloop, a brig, a frigate or a ship of the line, in the end it all boiled down to that one phrase: it's either them or us.

  Yes, Southwick was quite right, but Ramage knew that as far as he was concerned he still had a guilty feeling about being the cause of the death of more than six hundred Frenchmen. Yet another part of him knew that if he had not been able to take the Junon like that, it might have been the Dido blowing up. He found he was getting confused.

  'What about the Sylphe?'he asked Southwick, determined to break the train of thought.

  'The Heron's hove-to close to her. She seems to be well down by the bow. If you want my opinion, she's sinking, and there's not a chance of holding on with the pump.'

  'Well, Itold Eames that if he didn't think she could be saved he should take off the men and set fire to her.'

  Southwick sniffed and said: 'We don't have much choice. And good riddance to her: the Heron will have her work cut out getting the Requin back to England.'

  'Her share of the prize money should make up for it,' Ramagesaid.

  'Yes, Eames is a lucky fellow. Or he will be, if he gets the Requin home safely.'

  'We'll have to let him have some Marines,' Ramage said. 'He'll have nearly five hund
red prisoners to guard from the two Frenchmen.'

  'As long as we don't have to take any to the West Indies with us,' Southwick said. 'Eames realizes the problem?'

  'Yes, but I think he'll be glad of some extra Marines.'

  Eames returned in the Heron an hour later to report that he had taken all the French off the Sylphe because in his opinion she would sink of her own accord within a couple of hours, and for that reason he had not set fire to her. Ramage could not see why the fact that she was going to sink should prevent him from setting fire to her, but he decided to say nothing.

  The more immediate problem was that the Heron had 211 Frenchmen from the Sylphe, and there were still 186 on board the Requin. How many men were needed to guard 397 Frenchmen? Plus nineteen from the Junon.

  When Eames came across to the Dido again, Ramage proposed dividing the prisoners into two sections, half in each frigate. The Heron's Marines could guard the ones she had on board, and Ramage would provide twenty-five Marines from the Dido to guard those left on board the Requin.

  'I'll let you have my fifth lieutenant and two midshipmen to handle the prize,' Ramage said. 'Fifteen of your seamen should be enough to sail her. Can you spare them?'

  'Yes. I'll get 'em back as soon as we get to Plymouth. 'Fraid you'll be losing your people permanently.'

  Ramage shrugged his shoulders. 'That's the problem with prizes taken when you are outward bound. If I meet many more people like you, I'll arrive in the West Indies with a skeleton crew!'

  Two hours later, as Ramage watched, the Sylphe finally sank, as Eames had predicted.

  Southwick said: 'That makes two out of two. We've attacked two ships and both have sunk. Or rather one blew up and the other sank. Either way they're destroyed.'

  'Regard it as a precedent,' Ramage said. 'We must make a habit of it.'

  To Ramage's surprise Southwick shook his head and took his hat off, running his fingers through his hair in a familiar gesture. 'I can never get used to watching a ship sinking or blowing up. One minute she's a beautiful object, floating and pleasing to the eye. The next minute, nothing. No, I'll never get used to it. Not,' he added hastily, 'that that isn't the way we should deal with the French. It's just that I love the sight of ships, whatever nationality they are, and I hate to see them destroyed.'

  Ramage nodded his head in agreement. 'I feel the same way, but while there's a war on we must get used to it.'

  Ramage had to admit that the Reverend Benjamin Brewster was handling the funerals well, and he was thankful that the Dido carried a chaplain: he hated reading the funeral service, though he had done so all too often in the Calypso.

  Looking at the bodies lying on the deck, sewn up in their hammocks, Ramage could hardly believe how lucky the Dido had been. Bowen had eight wounded that he was treating down below, but only five men had been killed. Five, and he thought of the more than six hundred who had perished in the Junon.

  A plank had been fitted to the bulwarks by the mainchains, hinged so that the inboard end could be lifted up, and at the moment a body rested on it, covered by a Union Flag. Brewster read the service in a low, even voice and most of the Didos were gathered round him, bareheaded and listening attentively.

  The body belonged to one of the new Didos: Ramage did not recognize the name, except as an entry in the Muster Book, and he was relieved that it was not a Calypso. In fact, not one of the men killed had been a Calypso, a piece of chance which gave him grim satisfaction. Yet he felt it was wrong: he should not favour the former Calypsos; he now commanded the Dido, and every man on board should have an equal status.

  Now Brewster was saying that the men had lost a shipmate, and that somewhere a family had lost a son or a father, and a woman had probably been left a widow. The good thing was, Ramage realized, that Brewster sounded as though he cared. Ramage was reminded of a line by John Donne - something to the effect that 'Each man's death diminishes me'. Brewster gave the impression of being diminished, and Ramage guessed that the men sensed it.

  Then Brewster reached the end of the brief service and a couple of burly seamen up-ended the plank while a third held on to the Union Flag. The body in its hammock slid into the sea and vanished, the body weighted down by a couple of roundshot placed at the man's feet before the hammock was finally sewn up.

  Brewster stood still, Prayer Book in hand, his vestments tugged by the wind, while the next body was placed under the flag on the plank. Once again he read the funeral service, and he had a happy knack of making it sound fresh; there was no sense that he was repeating parrot-fashion a service that he would have to repeat five times.

  Finally the plank tilted for the fifth and last time and Brewster led the men in a hymn. He had chosen one which was a favourite. The men sang it with gusto, and Ramage realized that as soon as they dispersed they would be chattering among themselves, happily, the last few grim minutes forgotten. It was not that these men were cold-blooded or hard-hearted: death was something they had to take in their stride. Dwelling on it would probably drive a man mad, so he mourned at the funeral, sang a hymn and meant it, and then went about his business, ready to go into action again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ramage took his Journal from the drawer. He noted the latitude - the Dido was now sweeping south and already down level with Guadeloupe - and the longitude, which put them about seven hundred miles short of Barbados.

  He still had to write his report on the Junon and Sylphe affair, ready for the admiral at Barbados, and he knew he must get it done quickly because the details were already fading in his memory.

  How was Eames getting on? He decided he did not envy him: getting the Heron back to Plymouth with all those prisoners on board, while shepherding the Requin, would be a constant worry. Apart from fearing that his own prisoners would rise on him, he must watch the Requin all the time, looking for signs of trouble on board. Ramage shrugged: Eames was quite content because - as he had freely admitted - he had never been lucky with prize money, and now he had head money, too, for all the prisoners he had taken from the Sylphe: head money - calculated on the number of prisoners taken - which had come without having to fire a single shot. Ramage could have made a claim for a share, but had decided against it because Eames had put up a spirited fight against the Requin.

  Distances, noon positions, wind directions and strength, courses steered: the facts required for his Journal were mundane: nowhere could he write how exciting it was to be commanding a ship of the line sweeping down to the West Indies in the Trade winds, feeling alive as the ship pitched and rolled her way westward and the sun was warmer every day.

  Nor, for instance, could one mention the flying fish spurting likesmall silver arrows out of the sea and following the crests and troughs until they vanished into the water again. Occasionally they flew high enough to land on deck - twenty or thirty feet - to flap about helplessly until snatched up by seamen who would then try to bribe the cook to boil them. They looked like fat herrings with wings and had much the same colouring and, one of the men had once told Ramage, much the same taste.

  The men liked watching the schools of dolphins which played round the ship from time to time. Play was the right word: they raced and cavorted round the ship like children playing chase in a street; they delighted in swimming fast across the Dido's bow, as if in competition to see which could pass closest to the stem without actually touching. Their speed was amazing: they made the Dido, doing eight knots, look as though she was stopped in the water.

  And then, hundreds of miles from the nearest land, there were the birds - Mother Carey's chickens, swooping low over the water but never seeming to eat or, for that matter, rest. And then came the - to Ramage - exciting day when they sighted their first tropic bird. All white, it always flew with strong wing beats, and was usually going east or west. The first he had seen this voyage passed eastward at eight o'clock in the morning and returned westward at six in the evening. Where had it come from? Where was it going?

  Ramage had often
see colonies of them on the islands: they nested among the cliffs away from people - he remembered seeing them on the west coast of St Eustatius, the north-western side of St Martin and the south and west sides of Antigua, but one rarely sailed from one island to another without at least one of them flying overhead. The odd thing was one could never determine their destination: they never seemed to be bound for any particular island, yet they always flew in a dead straight line. Then there were the whales. One would suddenly become conscious of them surfacing almost alongside, silent and enormous, but occasionally one heard and saw them spouting water into the air. They, like the dolphins, were not alarmed by the sight of a ship of the line ploughing through the water: in fact the bulk seemed to attract them closer, instead of frightening them off.

  But one of the joys of a seventy-four, as far as Ramage was concerned, was 'the captain's walk', the balcony built outside the cabin across the stern and stretching from one side to the other. He could pace along it, looking down at the Dido's curling wake, and he found himself fascinated by the loops and whorls the ship left in the water. At night there was often heavy phosphorescence, when the Dido would seem to be leaving a wide trail of light in the water. At times it was light enough to read a newspaper, and once when talking to Aitken out there he had been able to see every detail of the Scotsman's features.

  More surprising in the darkness were the antics of the fish caught in the Dido's wake: he could see them swimming under water, leaving trails of phosphorescent light. It was ironic that one only saw them in the dark of night: in daylight the reflection from the top of the water prevented any sight of them. Then occasionally in daylight - as if to remind one that the sea was unfriendly - Ramage saw the fin of a shark cutting through the water. And from time to time there would be a sudden flurry as dozens of flying fish suddenly took to the air, or other fish leapt out of the water in a desperate attempt to escape, as some predator attacked them. The effect was the same as throwing a heavy stone into the middle of a pond - the splashes of escaping fish radiated outwards like the spokes of a wheel.