by Dudley Pope
The American coxswain's face fell. A visit to a merchant ship just out from England usually meant the gift of newspapers and often some tasty snacks like cheeses. Ramage said: 'You had better take Mr Baker.'
Aitken, overhearing the conversation, turned expectantly, but Ramage said: 'Send Kenton with one boat and Baker with the other and Rennick had better divide his Marines. And make sure the surgeon's mate goes with Bowen.'
'You think it will be as bad as that, sir?'
Ramage watched the merchant ship's sails fill for a few moments as she turned slowly in the wind. 'Yes, it'll be as bad as that.'
It was, in fact, far worse. As the Calypso approached Ramage saw that the merchant ship was low in the water and obviously settling, and Ramage wasted no time in bringing the frigate up to windward, backing the foretopsail and hoisting out the two boats, giving Baker orders that he was to board first and give any necessary orders to Kenton in the second boat.
Ramage had watched through the telescope as Baker boarded with Jackson, swarming up a rope ladder hanging over the merchant ship's quarter. He had paused on the poop, then walked forward, finally going below. He had emerged briefly to signal Kenton to come on board, and Bowen had gone up the ladder as well as Rennick and his sergeant. Then, as far as Ramage could see, they bad systematically searched the ship's accommodation, although it was dear that the hatches were still battened down, the covers, battens and wedges still in place, showing that no one had been down into the cargo holds.
Half an hour later, with the ship settling so deeply that the was becoming unstable, liable to capsize unexpectedly, Ramage had fired a gun to signal the boats to return, and when they were back on board Baker, Kenton, Rennick and Bowen had come to the quarterdeck to report, all of them white - faced and obviously distressed at what they had seen.
'You saw the name on the stern, sir, the Tranquil of London, but there are no ship's papers on board. The captain's cabin, has been looted, his desk smashed up, every drawer emptied out,' Baker said.
He held up a bundle of papers. 'We shall be able to identify most of the bodies of the passengers from these letters, sir, and some of the crew too, I expect. There were some packages addressed to people in Jamaica. They're in the boat and I'll have them brought up.'
Ramage knew he was trying to avoid asking the question just as Baker was avoiding referring to it, but finally he said: 'How many?'
'Fifteen in the ship's company, sir, and nine passengers, five of them women."
'All dead?'
Three were still alive when I found them. One died before Bowen could get on board, and the others - both women - died before he could do anything. The women were raped and then shot or butchered. But the strange thing is none of them seem to have tried to run away.'
'Could they have been standing there, expecting to be taken over to the schooner as prisoners, but suddenly murdered by their guards?' Ramage asked.
Baker nodded miserably. 'I think that's what must have happened. When the privateer sighted us, sir?'
'Yes. The boarding party were probably about to secure the prisoners - or perhaps choosing those likely to be worth ransoming - and preparing to put a prize crew on board and get under way just as we came in sight.'
If I'd waited another hour before tacking, Ramage told himself, the privateer would never have seen us. Working beyond the rim of the horizon, she would have sent her prize off, and those people would still be alive, even though prisoners. As it was, there had been a senseless massacre. The ship was sinking anyway, scuttled with her boats still secured, so why kill everyone? Why not let them take their chance in the boats? It would have cost the privateer nothing. "The quality of mercy . . .' 'Why was she sinking?' 'She carried two 6 - pounders,' Baker said. 'Little more than boat guns, but the privateersman trained one down the com - panionway and fired a shot through the bottom.' 'And there's no indication of the name of the privateer?' 'No, sir, but she was French,' Baker said, motioning to Kenton, who opened the drawstring of a canvas bag and pulled out a handful of blue, white and red cloth. They had this flag ready to bend on her, but they left it behind in the rush.' For a moment Ramage pictured the scene: women screaming as pistols and muskets fired, men begging for mercy as cutlasses slashed at them, and somewhere there, watching, the man who had ordered it all: the privateer captain who was not content with leaving all these people to take their chance in a sinking ship. No, he wanted the satisfaction of murdering them, twenty - four murders which did not put another penny in his pocket nor make his life any safer, because none of the victims could possibly have known his name. Kenton held the hoist of the flag so the doth unrolled like a sheet. He looked up at Ramage. 'It was a terrible sight, sir. Not like battle, where you expect to see bodies and men badly wounded. It was like a slaughterhouse.' Ramage took the bundle of papers from Baker, and knew that for the next few hours he would have to read through many private letters, so that he could identify as many victims as possible. It was nothing compared with what the young lieutenants had just gone through. As Kenton had said, it wasn't like battle. Yet war wasn't made up only of battles, which was why he had sent these youngsters over to the merchant ship. Southwick, Aitken, Wagstaffe . . . they might not have seen this sort of thing before although they expected it, but for Baker and Kenton and probably Rennick, it was a side of war of which they had not yet even dreamed. And Ramage knew that in future they would understand if the captain of the ship in which they were serving refused to show any mercy towards a privateer or privateersmen. 'Look,' Southwick suddenly called, there she goes.' Air trapped in the merchant ship's hull was bunting the hatches, hurling up the planks in showers of spray as canvas covers, battens and wedges tore free. Sacks and crates floated sway as the ship began to heel, yards slewing and dropping as the lifts broke. She heeled towards the Calypso and for a minute they were all looking down on her, a gull's eye view, and then she capsized, fat - bilged and ungainly. The bottom was greenish - brown from the copper sheathing, but here and there small, rectangular black patches showed where sheets of the copper had ripped off. There was a swirling in the water, as though a great whale was submerging, and then she was gone, a few air bubbles making the floating wreckage, planks and sacks, bob and twist Ramage looked towards the eastern horizon. The privateer was now a mere speck several miles to windward, an anonymous killer sneaking into the haze. Astern La Creole was lying hove - to and like the Calypso her gun ports were open. Chasing the privateer was a waste of time; she would vanish IB the night long before the Calypso or La Creole could ever get close.
Aitken looked questioningly at Ramage, who nodded, and a few moments later the men were bracing round the foretop - sail yard while others unscrewed the locks from the guns and coiled up the trigger lines. Cartridges were returned to the magazine, cutlasses and pistols put back in chests. The sand bad been washed from the decks and the hot sun had dried the wood in two or three minutes. Ten minutes later the Calypso's off - watch men were back doing whatever they had been doing when the privateer and her victim had been sighted.
Ramage took one last look round the horizon and went down to his cabin with the handful of papers. It was cool and dark, and he was thankful to be out of the glare of the sun. Watching the funeral of a ship and twenty - four innocent people left him feeling shaky. Should he have read a funeral service as the Tranquil sank? He had not thought of it, because he preferred to mourn in his own way, in a quiet and dark place. He hated the pomp and ritual of church funerals, but he knew the ship's company were great sticklers for ritual. Not for ritual, perhaps, but for 'doing the right thing'. They had a healthy attitude towards the death of one of their shipmates, and their wish to give him what they called a 'proper funeral' was perhaps more because they wanted to please him; to give him the kind of funeral they thought he would like which in turn, Ramage supposed, meant die kind of funeral each man wanted for himself: a time when everyone, from the youngest boy on board to the captain, paid their respects. The people represented by th
e handful of papers now on his desk had not been given a farewell wave. Yet he was sure that no one else had thought of it: Southwick would have been the first to whisper a hint; Jackson had heard Baker's report, and he had said nothing, and the American was not one for keeping his thoughts to himself if the captain's reputation was at stake. No, those who knew what that sinking ship contained had been too shocked to think of anything, and the Tranquil had gone down on her own with a quiet dignity and taken her people with her.
CHAPTER THREE
Ramage took up his pen and inspected the point. The quill was blunt but he could not be bothered to sharpen it. It was a miserable feather, taken from a moulting goose no doubt At least it was from the left wing, for a right - handed writer. After unscrewing the cap of the inkwell he took his journal from a drawer and made a brief entry recording the encounter with the Tranquil. Then he took out a blank sheet of paper and began the draft of a report to the Admiral. Be brief, he told himself; old Foxey - Foote will examine every word, looking for trouble (an admiral's privilege, of course), and the fewer the sentences the fewer the loopholes. The obvious criticism from such an inexperienced admiral was going to be that he did not pursue the privateer, and the equally obvious answer was that in twelve hours of darkness the privateer could be anywhere, and Ramage knew he would be wise to point out that he was acting under the Admiral's orders to proceed to Curacao. He read the draft through again. Less than a full page - that would please the clerk when he came to make the fair copy and also copy it into the letter book.
He took a piece of cloth from the top drawer and carefully wiped the pen dry of ink, then screwed the cap back on the inkwell and put it away. Then he knew he was deliberately putting off looking at those letters.
The first was from the Tranquil's master to his owners, intended to be posted in Jamaica, because the Post Office picket would arrive in England weeks before the convoy with IDS ship. He was reporting that the weather had been fair for the whole voyage so that instead of anchoring at Barbados with the rest of the convoy he had sailed on alone. He had 'topped at Nevis only to buy fresh vegetables for the passengers and then left for Jamaica. He explained that with so many ships calling at Barbados, the price of fruit and vegetables there was often three or four times that in Nevis. A piece of economy, Ramage realized, which had taken the ship out of the convoy and put her some fifty miles farther north than she would have been if she had remained in the convoy when it sailed from Barbados. The reason the ship had gone to Nevis and then come in sight of the privateer had been the high price of fruit and vegetables in Barbados; the reason the Calypso had tacked an hour early - and thus panicked the privateer —had been Captain Ramage's trick on La Creole. . . The wife of a major in the 79th Foot was visiting her parents, who obviously owned a plantation in Jamaica. She had written a letter to her husband in the form of a diary, the last entry being the day before. Ramage pencilled in the two names on another sheet of paper, beneath the name of the master and the name and address of the owners of the ship.
A man living in Jamaica and returning there after a visit to England was writing an angry letter to his agent in London. He was probably a planter, so they would know him in Port Royal. For some reason the agent had not made sure that the furniture, cases of wine and boxes of crockery bought in London had reached the Tranquil before she sailed, and the letter told him in no uncertain terms what a stupid fellow he was. By now the goods would either be in another ship or still in a warehouse in London, but had the agent been sharper they would have sunk in the Tranquil - not that it mattered now, with the owner dead. Ramage copied his name and the name and address of the agent on to his list. Another letter written by a woman. She was rejoining her husband in Jamaica after a visit to England, and she was writing to her mother in Lincolnshire - was it Louth? Her writing was not easy to read. She too described the voyage from London out to Nevis, and told her mother how she was excited at die prospect of seeing her husband and children again, and she wondered if she had been wise to be away so long - eighteen months. But she was glad to be back in the warm weather again - she apologized to her mother but, she admitted, Lincolnshire was cold and damp. Then Ramage realized the woman had written the last few lines only an hour or so ago: a ship had just come in sight, she had written, and was heading towards them. The captain was afraid it was a privateer . . . The captain was sure it was; he could see the Spanish flag . . . The Spaniard had fired some shots across their bow and they were stopping and she was, she told her mother, praying for their deliverance. The name of the Spanish ship, the captain said, was the Nuestra Sefiora de Antigua ... a gentle name, she wrote, and in an hour or two she would complete the letter and tell her mother what had happened. And there the letter ended. But the woman had perhaps not died in vain: the Nuestra Senora de Antigua, and, Ramage vowed, God help her if she was ever sighted by a ship of the Royal Navy.
Ramage found that the letters written by the men were impersonal; they were names and addresses to be added to the list. But the women - they were describing new sights and ventures to distant loved ones, and although Ramage was hard put to avoid feeling he was prying, as he read the written words he felt he was getting to know the writers. And then, as he held the letters, each so vital, each describing minutes in the writer's life and looking forward to future events, like seeing children, arriving in Jamaica, noting how much newly - planted flowering trees and shrubs had grown, once again came the shock of knowing that each writer had ceased to exist; that now each was only someone's memory.
He thought for a moment, chill striking his whole body, that Gianna could well have been in that ship; a passenger for Jamaica. She could have decided on an impulse to sail from England to join him, knowing that she would arrive almost as soon as a letter warning that she was on her way. His father and mother would try to dissuade her; but for too many years the Marchesa di Volterra had ruled her own little country among the Tuscan hills, had too many servants running around after her, too many ministers deferring to her, to hesitate when she wanted to do something.
Her little kingdom had been overrun by Napoleon and she bad fled to England, and there she lived in Cornwall with his parents, old friends of her family, and they were treating her hie a daughter. A somewhat wild and impetuous daughter, fiery tempered and yet gifted with a generous nature and, most important, a sense of humour. That the young Marchesa and their son had fallen in love they regarded as the most natural thing in the world, a fitting and suitable arrangement.
Ramage knew that his father had spent too many years at tea to see anything particularly romantic in the fact that Ramage had rescued the Marchesa from the Tuscan beaches as French cavalry had hunted her: Admiral the Earl of Blazey knew his son had his duty to do, and naturally expected him to do it. That the Marchesa had turned out to be a tiny, black - haired beauty then barely twenty years old and not an ancient and gnarled tyrant was - well, the old Earl had shrugged his shoulders and made no comment, recalling Gianna's mother, whom he had been expecting, not knowing that she had recently died.
Ramage tried to stop his imagination plunging on. Gianna could have been one of these bodies in the Tranquil, and because neither Baker nor Kenton had ever seen her, .the first he would have known would be reading a letter if she had written one, and if Baker or Kenton had been able to find it.
Paolo would have been one of the boarding party had Ramage not forgotten him. Gianna's nephew, whom she had bullied Ramage into taking to sea with him . . . Paolo Orsini, the heir to the kingdom of Volterra, until Gianna married and had children of her own. Young Paolo would have found his aunt - how ridiculous referring to her as the boy's aunt; she was only five or six years older - among the pile of corpses.
Steady, Ramage told himself, bundling up the letters, and realizing that Jackson would have recognized her, this way lies madness: this was how young captains, isolated by the routine and tradition of command, became eccentric, even mad: they sat alone and in their cabins, brooded, thinking this and
fearing that, playing the eternal game of 'if. 'If this had happened, that would have been avoided ... if I had done this ...' The worst of the 'if game was, of course, that it was very easy for a captain to lose confidence in himself: as he read his orders he could, without much difficulty, consider them far more difficult to carry out than they were, and then he would find himself wondering what would happen 'if he failed.
The next stage after that was wondering 'if he would succeed, and once he stepped into that quicksand he was lost; he would fail no matter what happened. That was the one lesson that Ramage had learned about command, dating back to the time when Commodore Nelson - as he then was - first gave him command of the little Kathleen cutter and put Southwick in as master.
Those first orders from the Commodore had been desperate enough, but looking back on them Ramage realized that, young and inexperienced as he was, he had not really thought of failure. There hadn't been time enough to consider it. The important thing was to avoid brooding. Keep your mind occupied - it could be a thick head from drinking too much wine at a reception the night before, or perhaps you were too preoccupied because the ship's company was badly trained - it could be any one of a hundred things, but you were too busy to think of failure, and often because of that you succeeded. Or perhaps you failed, but failed because success was impossible, not because you had gone into battle defeated by your own dark thoughts and lack of confidence.
At that moment Ramage acknowledged yet again how much he owed to Southwick. The old man had served with him for years, always the same, always cheerful, yet always grumbling. Cheerfully grumbling about the ship's company, whichever the ship and however well trained the men, but treating them all like unruly but much loved sons. And, of course, it was not just Southwick: there were those scoundrels Jackson, Stafford and Rossi.
