by Dudley Pope
Rossi had no sooner left the cabin than Southwick arrived, reporting that Much had the conn, and asking if the Marchesa was safe. Ramage brought him up to date, and then the old Master ran a hand through his white hair. “Now what, sir?”
“We wait for daylight. Get some sleep. Early breakfast …”
“I’ll stand a watch if you like,” Yorke said. “Otherwise neither of you is going to get much rest.”
Ramage nodded. “Much, too. Highly irregular, of course; the Admiralty would not approve. But we seem to be in a highly irregular ship!”
“Aye,” Southwick said heavily, “this ship is one of the bad ones. People can laugh at the idea, but some ships are just bad: they get bad men on board, and bad things happen to them. I felt it the moment I came on board in Kingston.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BY daylight next morning the Arabella was stretching northwards along the Portuguese coast in a fresh south-westerly wind, with Porto broad on the starboard beam and forty miles away and Cabo Finisterra some 130 miles ahead. The cloud was well broken and, Ramage noted thankfully, the glass was steady.
By now Gianna and the mutineers would have eaten the breakfast Ramage had arranged to be passed down to them. The Tritons had received their orders, and Jackson, after inspecting the prisoners and the hostage, reported that Harris, locked in one of the cabins, had pleaded that Maxton should not guard him again. Apparently the West Indian had reduced the man to a state of gibbering terror before being relieved by another Triton.
Although thankful that settled weather meant he did not have to keep his meagre crew busy reefing or furling sails. Ramage was far from pleased that this late in the season it was going to be a sunny day. The mutineers had only to look up the hatch or skylight to see the sun’s direction and know immediately which way the Arabella was heading, so there was no chance for slowly bearing away and running up the River Douro to Porto, or turning back for Lisbon, telling the mutineers the wind had shifted. But for the sun, it would have worked, though there was the risk that running into a neutral port would make the mutineers panic when they suddenly discovered what had happened.
If those five men down on the messdeck panicked, there was no telling what would happen to Gianna: men in a panic ceased to be human. Ramage had spent a good five minutes drumming the point into the Tritons that the only hope of rescuing the Marchesa was to apply a steady but mounting pressure on the mutineers. A gradual pressure, which would lead them to surrender; not a sudden pressure that would make them behave like rats in a trap. It was only a fine distinction; one he knew he would never dare to make unless the alternative was—he forced himself to face it—the murder of Gianna.
As he paced up and down the weather side of the afterdeck—after listening to Yorke conduct a brief funeral service for the dead sentry Duncan—Ramage tried to drive away the depression, doubts and fears by telling himself that if he had ever been asked to name the dozen or so men he would want with him in a situation such as this, he would have named those he had. Even Wilson, with his staccato speech and love of porter, was proving reliable, and the Tritons liked working with him.
And in the Admiralty at this moment the First Lord considered Lieutenant Ramage had made wild allegations about the Post Office packets which he would never be able to prove. Well, he thought bitterly, I may not live long enough to get the word to Lord Spencer, but there will be proof enough if just one of the Tritons or the Arabella’s passengers survive.
Southwick interrupted his thoughts. “Not a sail in sight, sir. What time do you want to make a start?”
Ramage took out his watch. Three minutes to seven o’clock. The horizon is clear, the wind is steady … There’s no excuse for putting it off any longer.
“At seven o’clock, Mr Southwick. Pass the word quietly.”
As the Master strode away, shoulders braced back, hat jammed square on his head and a picture of confidence, Ramage wondered if he dare call him back and cancel it all. It was a damnably desperate attempt. Yet Yorke was right: if it did not work, they were no worse off—unless the mutineers panicked.
Yorke joined him. “By now you’re scared stiff.”
“Does it show?” a startled Ramage demanded.
“No, on the contrary, you look your usual arrogant and assured self,” Yorke said lightly, “but you’d hardly be human if you weren’t scared!”
“What about you?”
“The same. Does it show?”
Ramage laughed. “No, you look your usual debonair self, the idol of—”
“Deck there! Sail ho!” came a shout from the foremast, and Ramage recognized Stafford’s voice.
“Deck here—where away?” Much hailed.
“Four points on the larboard bow, sir, just on the ‘orizon.”
“What can you make of it?”
“Too far off, sir.”
“Keep a sharp lookout.”
Ramage nodded approvingly: Much was doing well.
“Pass the word for Captain Yorke!” the mate shouted.
A seaman took up the cry at the companion-way leading to the captain’s cabin.
Yorke hurried over, waited a minute, and then called as though he had just come up the ladder, “What is it, Mr Much?”
“Strange sail, sir, on the larboard bow. Wouldn’t expect to see anyone out there unless she was up to mischief.”
Ramage knew that at least one of the mutineers would be crouched on the ladder, listening carefully.
“Well, send a man up with a telescope, Mr Much: we don’t want to get taken by another French privateer, do we.”
“Indeed not! We’ve enough trouble already.”
That, Ramage thought, is the Machiavelli touch: to raise the mutineers’ hopes of rescue with the idea that a French ship was on the horizon.
While Much ordered one of the Tritons to take up a telescope, Stafford called again. “May be fairly big, sir, an’ I think she’s steering east.”
Two minutes later the man with the telescope hailed, “Deck there! She’s bigger than a privateer an’—oh, there she goes: she’s letting fall her royals, sir.”
“Very well,” Yorke shouted, “let me know the moment you have an idea what she is.”
Much had walked forward to the foremast, as though to be nearer the lookouts overhead, and called back to Yorke nervously, “I don’t like it, Captain; seems to me anyone out there and on that course must be a ship-o’-war or a privateer.”
“Let’s hope she’s one of ours, then.”
“Aye—but could be French or Spanish, hovering off the coast to pick up someone like us.”
“You think I ought to send the men to quarters?”
“‘Taint for me to say,” Much answered, though the tone of his voice belied the words.
There was an excited yell from the lookout with the telescope. “Deck there! Reckon she’s a frigate, an’ she looks like a Frenchman.”
“Can’t you make out her colours?” Yorke asked anxiously.
“No, sir, she’s almost bows-on; but her sheer don’t look English.”
“You hear that, Mr Much?” Yorke called.
“Course I do, sir,” Much said crossly.
“Well then—well, I think we must send the men to quarters! Where the deuce is Mr Southwick? He’s supposed to know all about this sort of thing. Hey, you men; pass the word for the Master!”
Yorke turned and winked at Ramage and gave Much a reassuring wave.
Southwick came up the companion-way. “You sent for me, sir.”
“Of course I did! Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear the lookouts hailing?”
“Yes, sir, but you’re the Captain,” Southwick said sulkily, “and I’m off watch.”
“Well, send the men to quarters! Aloft there—what can you see?”
“She’s a frigate all right, sir.”
“French or British, blast you?”
“Can’t rightly say yet, sir.”
Southwick began bellowing at the men to go to
quarters, and Ramage pictured the mutineers grinning to themselves. And Gianna—if she had followed the instructions passed by Rossi she should be weeping by now …
“I say, Mr Southwick,” Yorke said loudly, “I think we should bear away for Porto, you know.”
“Never a chance, Mr Yorke. Forty miles to go. Yon frigate will be up with us in half an hour, probably less.”
“But we can’t fight a frigate!”
“Nor can we run from this one, Mr Yorke,” Southwick said sarcastically.
“But if we can’t fight and we can’t run, what shall we do?”
“Haul down our colours in good time! Won’t be the first time for this ship!”
“Oh dear me! Then we’ll all be taken prisoner.”
“Aye, we’ll be prisoners, and our prisoners will become free men, guzzling red wine and pretending they’re all heroes.”
By now the Tritons had cast the lashings from the guns, tubs of water were in place and Jackson reported to Yorke from abaft the foremast, asking loudly whether the guns should be loaded with roundshot or grape. Yorke told him roundshot, then changed his mind twice before the lookout interrupted by hailing, “Deck there!—the frigate’s hauling her wind.”
Yorke glanced over the weather side. “We can just see her from the deck now. Send down that blasted telescope!”
Yorke had just the right amount of petulance in his voice, Ramage noted; the uncertain impatience of a badly frightened man who was being overwhelmed by events.
Yorke called to Much, who was still by the foremast. “What do you make of her?”
“She’s a frigate right enough.”
“French or British?”
“Wouldn’t rightly know. But she’s coming round to the north a bit so we should make out her colours soon.”
“But she’s closing fast!”
“We can’t do any more’n we’re doing, sir, so it don’t matter what flag she’s flying until we’re in range of her guns!”
“I expect a more helpful attitude, Mr Much,” Yorke said sharply.
The Tritons had broad grins on their faces: they were enjoying the various exchanges. Ramage looked at his watch, tapped Yorke on the shoulder and waved to Much, who promptly shouted to the lookout above him, “You sure she’s French? From the cut of these topsails she looks British to me!”
“The other chap’s just gorn down wiv the telescope,” Stafford’s Cockney voice complained. “I never said nuthing right from the time I got up ‘ere about ‘er being French. It was ‘im. Took the telescope, he did; never let me ‘ave a look, he didn’t, and now you—”
“Belay it!” Much shouted angrily. “You think she’s British?”
“Yus, an’ if I ‘ad the bring-’em-near I could say for sure.”
At that moment Southwick’s voice boomed along the deck. “She’s British all right: I can’t make out her colours yet, but I recognize her.”
“Very well,” Yorke said loudly, “now what do we do? We don’t want her rushing down and shooting at us! Supposing she doesn’t see our colours? What then, Mr Southwick, what then, eh?”
“Hoist the private signal.”
“What private signal?”
“Mr Ramage had the list in his desk: special one for each day of the month, the challenge and reply.”
“Well, go and find it—here are the keys to the desk.”
Ramage could imagine the mutineers, at first elated at the thought of a French frigate rescuing them, now terrified at the picture of a British frigate hove-to to windward … a picture which included them eventually hanging by the neck from a noose at the yardarm. The grim warning contained in the Commission that Ramage read aloud at Lisbon might come to mind, and the reference to the Articles of War. Now the pressure was being slowly applied; pressure that—if everyone kept to the plan—would increase steadily over the next fifteen minutes …
The private signal was hoisted, a few Tritons near the forehatch speculated in bloodcurdling detail about the imminent fate of the mutineers below.
Ramage saw one of the Tritons suddenly go to the hatch, listen a few moments and then wave urgently to Much, who was standing a few feet away. The mate called something down to the mutineers, listened, then hurried aft.
“The mutineers, sir,” he reported to Ramage. “They’re asking to see the Captain: they say it’s urgent!”
“Tell them the Captain is coming, but their spokesman is to stay at the bottom of the ladder. If he got a chance to look round the horizon …”
Much went forward as Yorke came over to Ramage and asked, “They want to bargain?”
“Perhaps. They might offer to free Gianna now in return for their freedom and immunity from arrest. That’s their best plan.”
“And we accept?”
Ramage nodded. “We accept anything that gets Gianna out of there safely.”
“Anything?”
“Look, we argued about the ethics of all this last night,” Ramage said quietly. “So go and hear what they have to say.”
Ramage followed Yorke and crouched down behind the gun, where he could hear one side of the dialogue. Yorke stood close to the hatch to make sure the mutineers’ spokesman stayed at the foot of the ladder.
“Well, what d’you want?” he demanded in an uncompromising voice. “Bargain? You think I’m going to bargain with a bunch of mutineers when there’s one of our frigates up to windward?”
Ramage peered round the breech of the gun. From the beginning he had known there was only one move the mutineers might make that would wreck his plan. He had tried to increase the odds against them thinking of it by pretending a French frigate was closing in, but he dared not keep that up for too long because of the danger that they would panic if the frigate’s identity changed at the very last moment. Had he applied the pressure too soon? Given them a few extra minutes to recognize that they still had a weapon?
Yorke was tense as he stood listening; then he took a step forward, as though angry enough to want to seize the man at the foot of the ladder. He spoke slowly and distinctly, as though determined the mutineers should not misunderstand him.
“You are threatening cold-blooded murder. A completely pointless murder. A murder that can gain you nothing. The moment you committed such a foul act we would be down there and I swear that within thirty seconds not one of you would be left alive.”
And as Yorke listened to the mutineer’s reply, Ramage knew he had lost the gamble: it had been a ten to one chance that they would think of it. Reasonable odds. But when you gambled you needed luck or a big purse, and his purse contained only Gianna’s life. Yet perhaps he was wrong: perhaps they were demanding something else. Yorke’s reply would—
“I can’t stop that frigate coming down to us!” Yorke said angrily. “What do you expect me to do? Shout a couple of miles? For all I know the Admiralty has sent her out to escort us to England. What do I do then? Tell her Captain we don’t need him? He’ll want to know where Mr Ramage is. What do I say? How do I explain why I’m in command? Dammit,” Yorke exploded, “he’ll probably think I’m a mutineer!”
He paused as the mutineer said something, then declared abruptly, “I’m going to talk it over with Mr Southwick. Stay there, the sentry up here has orders to shoot anyone who sticks his head over the coaming.”
Ramage got up and hurried aft, where Yorke joined him and asked wrathfully, “You heard all that?”
“Only your side of it.”
“They say they’ll kill the Marchesa if I let the frigate approach.”
“What good do they think that’ll do them?” Ramage asked quietly.
“They say if the frigate sends a boarding party they’ll be shot or hanged anyway, so they’ve nothing more to lose if they kill the Marchesa as well. The scoundrel reminded me they couldn’t be killed twice.”
Ramage nodded. “I hoped they’d be too scared to think of forcing us to keep the frigate away. Or if they did, they’d decide it would be impossible.”
He rub
bed the scars over his brow and saw Southwick shaking his head, occupied in his own thoughts. Then the old Master came over to him and said quietly, “Don’t chance anything, sir; they’re desperate men. I’d sooner go into Coruña and hand myself over to the Spanish than risk the Marchesa being harmed.”
“Me too,” Yorke said, “and the Devil take the report to the First Lord. Anyway, even if this horse won’t start, you’ve still got another in the stable.”
“Aye,” Southwick said, “we can pretend the frigate is satisfied with the private signal and goes about her business. It gives us a bit more time. We can’t risk calling their bluff, sir …”
And Ramage knew both men were right; his gamble had failed but, as Yorke had said, there was still one more chance. “Very well,” he told Yorke, “tell them you and Southwick will try to reassure the frigate. Say you can’t make any promises—and remind ‘em we have the bosun and some mutineers up here in irons …”
“They’ve thought about that,” Yorke said. “The fellow said they were all in the same position, whether they were down on the messdeck or in irons. He’s right, too,” he added ruefully.
Twenty minutes later, with the imaginary frigate dropping astern on its way to Lisbon, apparently reassured by the Arabella’s private signal, Yorke came back after reporting the fact to the mutineers.
“They say that someone can talk to the Marchesa this afternoon,” he told Ramage. “They refused to agree to Rossi at first, but I said she might want some woman’s things that she’d be too embarrassed to shout about in front of a lot of strangers, whereas speaking in her own language to Rossi …”
“Thanks,” Ramage said. “Let’s go down to my cabin; I’m so damned depressed.”
Sitting in the same chairs, with the carpet still damp where a couple of seamen had tried to scrub away the stains of the bosun’s blood, Yorke said, “It looks as though we’ve no choice but to head for Coruña.”
“You don’t think the second plan will work?”
“I’m afraid not. They’re really desperate down there. If you’d seen that bloody man’s eyes …” He shuddered at the thought.
