Ramage & The Freebooters

by Pope, Dudley

  ‘Captain here – that you, Jackson?’

  ‘Aye, sir. Thought I saw something over there on the starboard bow…’ As he reached Ramage he pushed him gently backwards. ‘…A fishing boat or something.’

  Ramage clutched Southwick’s arm and pulled him back, too, letting Jackson position them where he wanted.

  The Master was quick enough to recall Jackson was not on watch.

  ‘Lookouts haven’t reported it yet,’ he growled. ‘Suppose you were just leaning on the rail thinking o’ some doxy in Portsmouth. I can’t see anything.’

  Both Ramage and Southwick felt Jackson give them a warning touch and saw him turn away towards the approaching group.

  ‘Damned fellow’s probably drunk.’ Ramage commented loudly, nudging the Master again. ‘I can’t see anything either.’

  ‘Disgraceful,’ Southwick growled. ‘Dangerous having a fellow walking round the ship imagining things. Remember I once had a drunken sailor sitting out on the bowsprit-end in the dark pretending he was Commodore Nelson in another ship and shouting we’d collide. Gave a damned good imitation of the Commodore’s voice, too: fooled me completely – I dam’ nearly tacked: quite thought we were in for a collision.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Ramage. ‘Don’t bore me with that story, Mr Southwick: you forget I was commanding the ship.’

  ‘And you were, by God!’ exclaimed Southwick, and Ramage wasn’t too sure whether the Master was saying the first thing that came into his head, to divert the men at the wheel and cover whatever Jackson was doing, or whether he’d genuinely forgotten that the drunken seaman had been Stafford, and it happened in the Kathleen.

  Albert Dyson had been cook’s mate in the Triton for eleven months and in the Navy three years. The cook’s mate was the man who had to light the galley fire, clean out the ashes, polish the big copper kettles in which the food was cooked, and skim off the fat which floated to the surface of the water when salt meat was boiled.

  The removal of this fat, known as slush, provided the only call on any skills he had, since he needed no knowledge of cooking. The slush could be sold to various of the ship’s company, illicitly and at a profit, because they liked to spread it on the weevily and otherwise tasteless biscuit officially known as ‘bread’ and which varied between a brick-like hardness or crumbling softness, depending on its age. And he shared his obvious nickname with every other cook’s mate in the Service.

  ‘Slushy’ Dyson was an angry little man as he swung a leg over the wooden form and stood up. The other men sitting round the table and talking in low voices made him angry. The plan was simple enough and still a complete secret; but now, half an hour before the mutiny was due to start, this blasted argument had started. Although everyone agreed the plan was simple – and sure to succeed – he’d expected objections from some of the men: there was always some awkward bleeder who thought he knew better; but no, there’d been none.

  Then at the last minute the trouble had come from his own mess, from the very man who’d been their spokesman. Admittedly Harris had been very quiet since the Triton had sailed and hadn’t spoken a word. That, Dyson now realized, should have made him suspicious.

  More important, though, Dyson’s feelings were hurt. He’d always admired Harris – a man whose book learning didn’t make him act superior about it; in fact he was always ready to read or write a letter without wanting a tot for his trouble. But now he’d turned nasty.

  Dyson objected to being called ‘A smelly blob of pig grease’ – he’d like to see Harris skimming off all that slush and not get any on his clothes. It’s bound to make a chap stink – but everyone was always trying to get a mug of slush free, Harris included. And often he’d given it them – he, Slushy Dyson, who stood to get a crack on the head with the big ladle if the cook ever got to know about it, since the cook took three-quarters of whatever the slush was sold for, be it rum, bacca or credit.

  Dyson walked aft to go up on deck: he wanted fresh air and some peace to think things over. They’d wreck everything with their talk. They had their rights – ‘course they had, otherwise why would the whole Fleet have mutinied? Hundreds of seamen – thousands in fact – knew they had their rights; and that’s why the Fleet had rose and why some of the ships had hoisted the red flag, though he didn’t agree with that – the so-called ‘bloody flag’ smelled of revolutionaries.

  Sucking in his breath with an angry gesture, he walked round one of the men from the Lively stitching a shin and began climbing the ladder. Two more of them round the coaming: they littered up the ship. All too hoity-toity they were, just because they’d served with the new captain.

  He’s a bit of a lad though, Dyson admitted as his hands grasped the top rungs: fancy just chopping the anchor cable like that! Well, it didn’t make any difference, although Dyson hoped the lad wouldn’t get hurt – from what these chaps said he was brave enough, though Dyson admitted he hoped Mr Ramage didn’t get any more ideas about putting the ship across the bows of a Spanish sail of the line. Then he laughed to himself – no, tonight’s work’d see to that! He stepped on to the deck and turned aft.

  Black shapes beside him, a sharp prick on each side of his stomach just below his ribs. Both of his arms seized and twisted, making him arch his back so his stomach stuck out. Knives! Why, it’s mur—

  ‘Don’t make a sound; keep the walking!’

  That bloody Italian! Dyson was being forced to walk and he glanced the other way: the West Indian chap.

  ‘All right, all right, take the bloody knives–’

  ‘Shut up!’ Maxton hissed, pressing harder with his knife.

  The muscles in Dyson’s legs began to dissolve; his stomach felt soft and vulnerable, his rib cage hollow except for a heart beating fit to burst. He was going to faint. Oh gawd, if I faint I’ll fall, and they’ll knife me a’fore they know what’s happening, he told himself. He shut his eyes and strained to stay conscious. Ah, that’s better. Breathe deeply. Ow! He just stopped himself shouting in pain: the sudden deep breathing made both men wary and both reacted by pressing harder with their knives.

  Dyson gulped and began breathing normally and the pressure eased slightly. He kept his eyes shut. They’d stopped walking but he was sure he was going to pass out. Suddenly he felt as though he was falling and thought he was fainting until, in the moment before his head hit the deck, he realized he’d been dropped down a hatch.

  Maxton jumped down and landed astride Dyson’s sprawling body, which was faintly illuminated by a lantern at the forward end of the wardroom, and Rossi dropped down beside him.

  ‘Out cold as mutton,’ Mutton said briefly as he jumped up and began dragging the man forward towards the small hatch in the middle of the wardroom.

  It took them less than four minutes to get Dyson down the breadroom scuttle, along a narrow passage and into the breadroom itself. The door was shut but unlocked, the key still in the keyhole.

  They bundled the man over and heaved him across the top of some bags of bread, then left, turning the key but leaving it in the lock outside.

  ‘Right, Maxie,’ Rossi whispered. ‘Back up on deck and report to Jacko.’

  Ramage and Southwick, pacing back and forth in front of the wheel, were holding an animated conversation. Ramage had invented a scurrilous story about an unpopular admiral who had died two years earlier – a story he knew the men at the wheel would lap up and repeat, so he could count on their attention being focused on him. Southwick supplemented the story from time to time, and then Ramage saw two shadows gliding forward.

  He touched Southwick’s arm and they walked a few yards along the weather side.

  ‘Well, I think our first guest is snugged down for the night. Did you recognize him?’

  ‘No – hardly saw him,’ Southwick whispered. ‘That blasted surgeon – just when you want him to be making a noise he’s as silent as the grave.’

  ‘Silent as an empty bottle,’ Ramage said. ‘Probably passed out. We should have kept him away from it
until later. Still, we couldn’t be sure when… I’d like to know what the hell is going on.’

  ‘Well,’ Southwick whispered cheerfully, ‘our lads seem to be getting on all right without us. The watch changes in a few minutes.’

  Harris stood at the main chains staring into the darkness. Usually he liked lookout duty because it gave him time and peace to think over things: to recall the lessons at school and often to wish he’d paid more attention to the teacher. Learning was a wonderful thing: there was so much to learn; so much he wanted to know. So little opportunity to learn. He envied midshipmen and it annoyed him, in the bigger ships, when he saw them sitting round the master skylarking instead of listening to what they were being taught.

  The sharp prick of pain beside each kidney, the twist of each arm, the knowledge a man was standing each side of him in the darkness, happened so suddenly in the midst of a mental picture of his childhood schoolroom that it took several moments to sort out memory from reality. Then a voice said with a quietness which only emphasized its viciousness: ‘Keep quiet, Harris: not a word, not a movement…’

  ‘What…?’

  The points of the knives boring into his back silenced him. The two men seemed to be waiting for something. Then the same man said: ‘If you want to live, make the walk with us and don’t call for the help; otherwise…’ the knife at his right side gave a momentarily harder jab.

  Harris nodded agreement and felt himself being turned to face aft. A twist on each arm braced his shoulders back and he was walking. One man was the Italian: he’d recognize that accent and curious grammar anywhere. The other was the West Indian.

  And Harris, being an intelligent man, did not try to explain that they’d made a mistake. A minute later he was pitched down the companionway and was still conscious when Maxton landed on his back, winding him.

  In a painful haze of gasping for breath he knew he was being dragged feet first through the wardroom. Again he felt himself falling but despite the pain he stayed conscious. Then the stink of mouldy bread, hands gripping his arms and feet, a swift swinging and his body was being heaved up on to something, then a thump. As he groped he felt the rough sacking of bread bags. Distantly, as he finally lost consciousness, he heard a door shut and the metallic scraping of a key turning in a lock.

  He had just recovered when the door opened and in the dim lantern light he saw Brookland flung into the cabin, bleeding and whimpering with fear.

  The foretopman had, as Rossi and Maxton seized him in the darkness, taken a massive gulp of air to shout. Or so it seemed to Rossi who simultaneously raised the knife a few inches, sticking it expertly into the fleshy pan of the man’s shoulder, and clapped a hand over his mouth.

  Brookland – who had in fact been about to scream with fear, not bellow a warning – felt his shirt warm and wet and sticky and was then nearly responsible for his own death because he fainted. His body suddenly went limp and both men, momentarily thinking he was going to try to break loose, were about to kill him before they realized what had happened.

  Unlike Dyson, Brookland regained consciousness as he hit the deck at the foot of the companionway. Muzzily trying to work out what was happening and with his mind so recently full of mutiny, he thought the Marines had gone over to the officers. Then he felt his feet being lifted and he was dragged across the deck. Again a sudden drop and he was lying with his head spinning, a lantern lighting up a strange part of the ship. No – he was by the breadroom door and the bloody Italian was unlocking the door and the West Indian was holding the lantern – and the light glinted on a thin blade of shiny steel.

  Being a Catholic, Brookland began muttering aloud a hurried prayer but Maxton, failing to catch the words, suddenly lunged down to warn him to be silent. Mistaking the gesture Brookland, thinking he was within a second of being murdered, shut his eyes and began whimpering like a child, calling to all the saints he could remember.

  There was no pain but he felt his body moving through the air and marvelled death was so painless. The marvelling was short-lived: Rossi and Maxton had flung him so far into the breadroom he fell face downwards on to Dyson, whose left foot caught him in the solar plexus so that for several moments he wheezed painfully, fighting to get his breath.

  The door shut and it was dark again.

  At that moment Dyson recovered consciousness.

  ‘So ’elp me,’ he groaned, ‘what the ’ell’s going on? Who’s ’ere?’

  Harris answered.

  ‘’Arris? You all right?’

  ‘Yes, but I think Brooky’s in a bad way.’

  ‘Must be ’im on top o’ me an’ bleeding like a stuck pig: I can’t lift ’im orf.’

  ‘Slide out from under then,’ Harris growled unsympathetically, and crawled towards them.

  ‘This you or Brooky?’

  ‘Me – Brooky’s just ’ere. ’E’s bleeding from the shoulder. Hold ‘ard a minute, I’ve found the wound… No, it’s nothing. Just a shallow dig. ’Ere, Brooky…’

  He shook the man who, having regained his breath, was sobbing again. ‘Brooky, pull yourself together. What ’appened?’

  ‘They grabbed me. Stabbed me. Gawd, ten or twenty times from the feel of it. I’m bleeding ter death.’

  Two pair of hands felt all over his body.

  ‘No you’re not,’ Harris said crisply, ‘just a cut in the shoulder. Who did it?’

  ‘That dago and the nigger. You?’

  ‘Same. What about you, Slushy?’

  ‘They caught me, too.’

  ‘Where the hell did you get to?’ Harris demanded. ‘You just left the mess and went forward. We searched everywhere; then the watch changed and we had to get to our stations.’

  ‘I just went up on deck to get a bit o’ clean air,’ Dyson said sourly. ‘You lot were making me sick.’

  ‘Well, what happened?’

  ‘Those two jumped on me as soon as I got on deck.’

  ‘Did you see Mr Ramage or Mr Southwick? They part of it?’

  ‘Not so far as I know,’ Dyson said.

  ‘I didn’t see them either: just the dago and the West Indian,’ Brookland added.

  Harris was silent a few moments, then said: ‘What the hell can they be up to? Good gawd – you don’t reckon the Livelies are mutinying, do you? Why, those sons of bitches might be trying to carry the ship into a French port. Quick, we must warn the captain!’

  ‘Warn him my bare backside,’ Dyson said viciously. ‘They can kill him for all I care. They’ve been braggin’ about him long enough. I’m sick of the sound of his bleedin’ name!’

  ‘Use your brain, you fool,’ Harris said urgently. ‘If they carry this ship to a French port it’ll mean we’ll be prisoners. The Frogs won’t encourage mutineers – the idea might spread! Want to rot in a French jail for the rest of your life?’

  ‘Sink me!’ Dyson exclaimed. ‘Hadn’t thought of–’

  At that moment they heard the key turn, and as the door opened they saw Rossi holding a lantern and, framed in the doorway, outlined by the light, was Jackson, a belaying pin in one hand and a bottle of rum in the other.

  Normally Jackson would never stand out in a crowd. His face was thin, but because Rossi was holding the lantern low the shadows from the jawbone and cheeks made it look cadaverous and menacing. And now, as he stood glaring down at the three men lying on the bags of bread, he seemed to them to be emitting a cold anger, like a full moon glimpsed through lowering black storm clouds.

  Harris glanced from the belaying pin to the rum bottle and back again, and was frightened. Then both Dyson and Brookland began whimpering as they thought they’d guessed their fate: that Jackson was going to get drunk, and while he drank, he was going to amuse himself by beating them to death with the belaying pin for trying to spoil his plans.

  Jackson, seeing three pairs of terrified eyes glancing from his left hand to his right, suddenly read their thoughts and almost laughed. Instead, to mask any twitch of a mouth hard put to restrain a grin, he m
otioned Rossi and Maxton into the breadroom and then looked out through the door.

  ‘Staff – come on down and look at our three choirboys!’

  A few moments later Stafford stepped into the room and shut the door.

  ‘My, my! Wot ’ave you been doin’, Brooky? You’re all covered in blood. Not yor blood, I ’ope? And bruvver ’Arris, the edjicated able seaman. Well, and Slushy Dyson! What you all doin‘’ere? Not robbin’ the ship’s company of their bread, I ’ope?’

  He turned to Jackson and said archly: ‘Jacko, you know what I suspect?’

  The American shook his head.

  ‘I fink they was – oh, dear me, that the wicked word should ever ’ave to pass me lips… But Jacko, the truth must be told: I fink they was gambling…’

  ‘No!’ exclaimed Jackson, falling in with Stafford’s serious manner. ‘Not that, surely?’

  Rossi shook the lantern. ‘Not the gambling? Accidente! Gambling in one of the King’s ships! What would His Royal Majesty say to that!’

  ‘Nah,’ Stafford said with a sudden harshness that startled the three men on the bread bags. ‘Nah, not gamblin’ in one of the King’s ships, Rossi; gamblin’ wiv one of the King’s ships.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Jackson said. ‘Hold the lantern up a bit, Rossi,’ he added, as he was drawling his words. ‘Bit more – that’s it. Let’s have a good last look at them.’

  By now Maxton too had caught on to the by-play and was tossing his knife from one hand to the other.

  ‘“Dust to dust and Slushy to slush”,’ he intoned in his deep, rich voice.

  Stafford held up his hands. ‘Nah, nah, Maxie, don’t be blasphemious, and anyway, Slushy’s my bird.’

  ‘Oh no he’s not: I want him.’

  ‘Well, yer can’t ’ave ’im, so there. Maxie! Take yer pick from the uvvers. What’s wrong with Brooky?’

  ‘Somebody’s already started on him: he’s second-hand. I want a new one.’