Ramage's Devil r-13

by Dudley Pope

  With that he was running up the companionway to the maindeck and was just in time to see twenty or so Frenchmen retreating before Southwick, Ferris and Martin, but fighting back-to-back with twenty more who were slowly driving Aitken and fewer than a dozen men aft, trapping them against the capstan.

  Aitken was still slashing with his cutlass and turned away shouting incomprehensible encouragement to his men when Ramage saw one of the Frenchmen break from the group and run towards Aitken, holding his cutlass like a pike.

  There was no time to shout a warning - Aitken would never hear it - and Ramage hurled his cutlass, leaping after the spinning blade. The hilt caught the side of the Frenchman's head, he staggered, and a moment later Ramage had an arm round the man's neck and they both swayed, a shouting Aitken flicking away the cutlass of another attacker but still unaware that he had nearly been cut down.

  The Frenchman was burly, two or three inches taller than Ramage, and he wore no shirt. His body was slippery from perspiration, but now, no longer stunned, he wrenched away from Ramage's grasp after punching him in the face, took a step back, and lifted his cutlass for the slash that Ramage knew would split his head in two, and for the moment he was too dizzy to do anything but stand there.

  The Frenchman's blade swung up, only the sharp edge shiny; Ramage registered dully that the blade must be rusty and only the cutting edge clean. Up, up the blade went and the Frenchman's eyes held his: the head was the target and the Frenchman was not going to be distracted.

  The Frenchman's face contracted slightly, the body flexed and the right shoulder twisted an inch or two as the muscles drew at the arm. Ramage sensed rather than saw that not one of his own men was within ten feet and no one had noticed this lonely and one-sided duel.

  The Frenchman was grinning: two teeth missing in front at the bottom. Unshaven. The arm coming down now. Sarah. Jean-Jacques. Such a waste, but no pain -

  But the arm was still upraised and the Frenchman was looking up and tugging. In an instant Ramage realized that the man had held the cutlass too vertically as he raised it for the final blow and the point had caught in the deckhead above. As he struggled to free it, Ramage moved two paces closer, kicked the man in the groin and then picked up his own cutlass. That made seven.

  He turned to join Aitken and found that in the few moments of the strange duel, which had seemed at the time to be lasting ages, his own party had combined with the first lieutenant's and driven the Frenchmen forward again, squeezing them against Southwick's party.

  Ramage jumped up on to the capstan head and crouched to avoid the deckbeams. It was easier to look across the maindeck from here. Two, four, eight ... twelve ... thirteen ... sixteen ... All the rest wore white bands round their heads. And here were Southwick, Ferris and Martin coming along the starboard side, grinning.

  'Just going to give Aitken a hand!' Southwick said and led his men in a scramble over the cranked pump handle.

  So apart from a few unwounded but surrendering Frenchmen, the maindeck was suddenly secure. But the déportés? For a moment he had a clear picture of fifty people in irons at the fore end of the lowerdeck, their throats cut by some rabid Revolutionary.

  Jackson was beside him now, with Stafford and Rossi. 'Lost you for a moment, sir,' the American said.

  'It was a long moment,' Ramage said, 'but come on!'

  He jumped off the capstan and snatched up a lantern lying on its side, flipped open the door and straightened the wick. Fortunately it could only just have been knocked over because the wax had not run. He shut the door and clattered down the companionway to find himself outside the gunroom again. What the devil had made him go up on the maindeck after leaving those five men on guard? The whole reason for the voyage and this attack was waiting at the forward end of the lowerdeck, and he remembered with sick fear that Paolo had not reported, nor Gilbert, nor Auguste.

  He was past the afterhatch; there, like a vast tree trunk, was the mainmast. Now the mainhatch and past these forms lying over the deck, an indication of the way the Frenchmen had been surprised.

  Candles alight on the tables. There was a lantern, two lanterns, moving about right up forward, and now he could see a mass of bodies lying on the deck. And two or three men moving among them - murderous Republicans cutting the throats of the déportés?

  He was concentrating so carefully on not tripping in the half-darkness that he was almost among the slaughtered déportés before he realized it, and he looked up with his cutlass raised to find that the nearest rabid Republican killer with the lantern was in fact Paolo.

  'Your friend is in the last row, sir,' Paolo said calmly, not realizing how close to death he had been. 'I understand that the key to unlock these irons is in the captain's possession. A Captain Magon, I believe.'

  Ramage stepped over the prone people to where Gilbert was kneeling. There, his ankle held by a leg iron, was Jean-Jacques, who looked up and grinned and said: 'I hardly expected to see you here. Is Sarah with you?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Ramage stepped out on to the jetty where the group of Frenchmen stood with a white flag on a staff, and the wind tugged at the similar white flag being held up in the cutter's bow. Gilbert and Paolo followed and as Jackson stood a French officer held up a hand and said in French: 'Only one man, the captain.'

  Ramage stopped. 'Where is the island governor?'

  'At the fortress, waiting for you.'

  'My letter suggesting a truce said we meet and negotiate on this jetty.'

  The French officer shrugged his shoulders. 'It is not my concern. My orders are to escort you to the fort.'

  Ramage turned to his men. 'We go back to the ship.' He then said to the French officer: 'I shall return in half an hour. If the governor is not here, L'Espoir will then be blown up.'

  'But her crew!'

  Ramage raised his eyebrows in what he hoped was a cold and callous glare. 'What about them?'

  'They will all be killed!'

  'The survivors, yes. Many were killed last night. The rest... well, that depends on the governor. Half an hour then. If he is not here, we shall sail at once, and L'Espoir will vanish a few minutes later.' He looked across the anchorage and laughed. 'Perhaps not vanish: you will see plenty of smoke and an abundance of wreckage!'

  'A moment,' the French officer said hurriedly, 'we can reach an accommodation.'

  'I assure you that we cannot,' Ramage said stiffly. 'I talk only to the governor. No one on Île Royale, the Île du Diable or the Île St Joseph - or for that matter down in Cayenne - is performing a favour for me. I am offering him the lives of sixty-four French seamen from L'Espoir. They treated the déportés so shamefully they will never be exchanged from England. The wounded certainly will not survive the voyage...' he paused and composed himself for another cold-blooded laugh. It came out quite satisfactorily judging from the look on Jackson's face. '... And I have grave doubts about the unwounded. My men have no sympathy...' He gave an expressive shrug and waved a hand towards the broad Atlantic on the other side of the island, a gesture which he saw achieved its purpose in conjuring up a picture of shark fins cutting through the water.

  The Frenchman pointed towards the seaward end of the jetty, 'm'sieu, you speak French like a Frenchman. Walk a few steps with me -'

  'Tell your party to stay by the boat,' Ramage snapped as he saw a couple of lieutenants begin to follow.

  The officer snapped out an order which froze the men. Lot's wife, Ramage thought, and looked curiously at the officer. He did not recognize the man's uniform, which was well cut in green cloth. It had black buttons with a design or initials on them. If his rank was a captain or major, one would have expected ... His thoughts were interrupted as the man tried to smile, indicating that they should walk the few paces which would take them to the end of the jetty and out of earshot of everyone else.

  When they stopped, Ramage turned to the man and guessed the answer before he said: 'Well?'

  'There is no need to go to the fort; we can negot
iate here.'

  'You command the garrison?'

  'I command all three islands.'

  'And you are?'

  'General Beaupré.'

  'Prove it.'

  He was a solidly built man with a flowing black moustache and brown eyes that were friendly. Not at all what one expected of a jailer, Ramage decided.

  'Lieutenant Miot!' Beaupré called.

  'Oui, mon général?'

  Ramage nodded. 'All right - you are a general. We negotiate. I have three French frigates, not two - the two farthest from us I captured recently, one last night and the other last week. The nearest I captured a couple of years ago and she is now commissioned into the Royal Navy.'

  'You want to exchange something for the two frigates?' General Beaupré was incredulous.

  'No, I was simply introducing you to the situation. L'Espoir, the frigate that arrived last night, was bringing you more than fifty déportés. '

  'Yes, I guessed that. They would be kept on the other island.' He pointed. 'The Île du Diable is for déportés, who are of course political prisoners. The criminals are kept on Île St Joseph and here, on Île Royale.'

  'I am not interested in the criminals,' Ramage said. 'I will exchange my prisoners, the men from L'Espoir and La Robuste, for all the déportés you have on the Île du Diable.'

  The general's face fell. 'But I don't have any déportés!'

  'Where are they?' Ramage demanded.

  'With the treaty that ended the war, they were all sent back to France. Why should we detain them in peacetime? I have only criminals now. And what people they are. Every one of them, men and women, think nothing of murder! But déportés now, why that is absurd.'

  'Because we are all at peace, eh?'

  'Yes, of course,' the general said. 'When you mentioned déportés in L'Espoir - that was a slip of the tongue, was it not? You meant "convicts".'

  Ramage shook his head slowly, angry with himself for not realizing. His note sent on shore earlier had merely said that the ships did not have la peste on board, that the shooting and shouting of the previous night had been caused by the capture of L'Espoir by men of the Royal Navy. Ramage had suggested a truce to discuss the disposal of French wounded and prisoners; he had forgotten the most important item of news.

  'No, déportés. The war has started again.'

  The general paled. 'War,' he muttered. 'I thought it was piracy. War ... I suppose L'Espoir also brought dispatches giving me the news.'

  'I expect so,' Ramage said. 'We have not gone through all the papers yet. However, what about the exchange?'

  The general faced Ramage squarely. 'I have no déportés. If you wish, we will visit the three islands and you can question any one you like. Convicts - yes, scores, and you are welcome to them. The déportés in L'Espoir would have been the first for a year, and the buildings for them on the Île du Diable are falling down - termites, white ants, the rain ... Nothing lasts, be it buildings or men. Termites or the black vomit,' he said hopelessly. 'We're all exiles here ... the convicts are locked up at night. But are their jailers free?'

  He suddenly shook his head, apparently startled that he should have been confiding in not only a foreigner but now, apparently, an enemy.

  He said: 'Shall we inspect this island first and then go to Diable and St Joseph? Once the sun gets up...'

  Once the sun gets up these islands must be among the hottest, most unpleasant and unhealthy in the world, but that was not the reason Ramage shook his head. The general had obviously been speaking the truth about the déportés, and when the man rambled off on that brief soliloquy it was because he knew that a new war only prolonged his stay on the islands, where the sun, sea, the fevers and the swamps ensured that the jailer was as much a prisoner as the jailed.

  'I accept your word,' Ramage said. 'Our boats will start landing the French wounded as soon as I return on board and give the order. Then we will land the French seamen we hold as prisoners, first from La Robuste and then from L'Espoir. All this under a flag of truce, eh?'

  'A flag of truce,' the general echoed. 'You are being generous,' he admitted, 'since I have nothing to give you in return.'

  Ramage was not about to tell him that prisoners were a confounded nuisance in a ship of war. 'Very well, then we are agreed.'

  'Your name,' the general said. 'I read it on the letter. Of course you know it is a French word, too. But I know you by reputation. I can only hope you go back to La Manche: my countrymen would not welcome your arrival to Martinique or Guadeloupe...'

  Ramage stood up from behind his desk and smiled at Aitken and Wagstaffe. 'Very well, then, each frigate is to keep a couple of cables apart by day, and one cable by night, and the rendezvous is Carlisle Bay, Barbados.'

  'Thank you, sir,' Aitken said. 'Being L'Espoir's temporary first lieutenant is going to be good experience for Kenton.'

  Southwick, who was staying in the Calypso with Ramage, laughed and commented to Wagstaffe: 'And young Orsini will learn a lot being your second and third lieutenant!'

  Ramage said to Wagstaffe: 'Are you happy with just Martin and Orsini? Until we get up to Trinidad the wind can chop about.'

  'We'll be all right, sir. Do you think the admiral there will buy 'em in?'

  'Two frigates in good condition with no damage - except for a few nicks from pistol balls in one of them? I should think he'll be only too glad. You'll all be rich men!'

  'They haven't done too badly up to now,' Southwick said. 'Enough in the Funds to retire as knights of the shire!'

  'And you!' Wagstaffe exclaimed. 'Since you began serving with Mr Ramage, you've made enough money to buy ten taverns and ten breweries to supply them!'

  'I'm not complaining,' Southwick said, and turning to Wagstaffe said seriously: 'You could let young Orsini think we shall be depending on his positions.'

  Wagstaffe nodded. 'I'll let him think that, but I expect he'll come along with some workings that put us in the middle of the sugar cane in Demerara!'

  As the two lieutenants left the cabin with Southwick, Ramage walked through to the coach, where a Frenchman was busy writing. 'Jean-Jacques, we sail in half an hour. Judging by the way that quill is bobbing, you've now recovered enough to tell me what happened when they arrested you in Brest.'

  'Yes, yes,' the Frenchman agreed. 'But first you must tell me the - how do you say, "the butcher's bill"?'

  'Yes, and it makes a sad story. L'Espoir had 127 officers and men on board when she anchored here last night, and fifty-four déportés. The captain and two of the three lieutenants were killed in our attack, and twenty-seven petty officers and seamen. Thirty-three more were wounded.'

  'More than half of them killed or wounded,' Jean-Jacques said. 'They fought hard.'

  Ramage was silent. The French had fought hard, but they knew they were fighting to survive. Most men tried to stay alive. The bravery came when you risked your life just to save others or obey orders. Jean-Jacques looked up at Ramage.

  'Because we déportés were the cause, I hardly dare ask your casualties: it is like asking a man how many of his family have just been killed.'

  'Eight killed and nineteen wounded. Three of the wounded won't see another sunset but the others will be standing a watch before we land you all at Portsmouth.'

  'Sarah. You said last night that she was safe and well. I prayed that she would have come to no harm under my roof.'

  'Gilbert and Louis...'

  'Yes, they obeyed my orders. These other two, Auguste and Albert, tell me about them. I was too excited and too exhausted to understand about a ship called the Murex. A British brig, Gilbert said, and Sarah shot the man in command? Tell me,' he said anxiously, 'was that not... well, rather drastic?'

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