Ramage's Mutiny

by Dudley Pope

  “What ‘appened?”

  “We was sunk.”

  “There you are! Must be barmy, your Mr Ramage.”

  Stafford sighed, as if losing patience with men of such feeble understanding. “The Spaniard was captured—and another ship of the line, too. All because of us. Mr Ramage, rather.”

  The seaman flopped back on the deck. “Maybe so, but your Mr Ramage is going to ‘ave to work miracles at Santa Cruz.”

  “Look,” Jackson said sternly, “you can stop this ‘your Mr Ramage’ talk. He’s your Captain as well, now. Don’t forget the Jocastas mutinied because their Captain flogged ‘em by the score. I’ve been with Mr Ramage since afore he got his first command, and he’s only ever flogged two men …”

  “All right, all right. Just wait until you see Santa Cruz, Jacko. It’ll make yer blood run cold.”

  The first sight of the Spanish Main was a distant view of the grey-blue hump of Punta Peñas, a hundred miles to the east of Santa Cruz and one of the entrances of the great Gulf of Paria, which separated the island of Trinidad from the mainland.

  Southwick shut his telescope with a snap. “A long time since I last clapped eyes on the Dragon’s Mouth,” he commented to Ramage. “A good name for it, too: the currents in there are bad, and you can lose the wind in the lee of the island.”

  Ramage, preoccupied, said sourly: “Well, it doesn’t concern us. I think we’ll reverse our course until dusk—we don’t want to be sighted yet.”

  Southwick had long since given up trying to guess his Captain’s plans: when he was good and ready Mr Ramage would tell him how he proposed cutting out the Jocasta and expect any criticisms or suggestions to be made without hesitation. As he turned away to give the orders to wear the ship and steer back towards Grenada, the Master suspected that at the moment Mr Ramage had no plan.

  He bellowed orders that sent men running towards the sheets and braces controlling the great sails. A quick instruction to the quartermaster set the wheel spinning and soon the Calypso was steering north-east on the starboard tack, sailing along her original track.

  Mr Ramage was thinking hard but he had no plan: that much was clear to Southwick, who watched him pacing up and down. Then he stopped and stared at the horizon, and rubbed the older of the two scars over his right eyebrow. That confirmed it as far as Southwick was concerned: he rubbed that scar only when he was angry or puzzled, and there was nothing to make him angry.

  Southwick watched him as he began walking the quarterdeck again. He was beginning to look like his father: the same easy stride, the wide shoulders, the hands clasped behind his back. His face was maturing too; those brown eyes were more deep-set now and there were tiny wrinkles at the outboard ends of his eyebrows. He was a younger version of his father but with his own sense of humour. He had a disconcerting habit of saying something peculiar with a straight face. If you were not careful you found yourself agreeing before you hauled in what he had said. He had not joked much since the trial of the mutineers, however. It had changed him, but Southwick was hard put to know if it was permanent. He was just the same with the men, he watched all sail-handling with the same sharp eye, he was the same with the officers. Yet Southwick knew he had changed, even if he could not define the difference.

  He was beginning to have a suspicion that Mr Ramage was in fact angry. Not with anything on board the Calypso—he was not a man to suffer in silence; if something had made him angry in the ship he would have been quick to say so. He had said very little about the trial, but he had mentioned Captain Wallis’s behaviour and how free he had been with the cat. And that could be the reason for the change: Mr Ramage trying to keep control of a deep anger—a resentment, almost—against Wallis.

  Mr Ramage had very firm ideas about flogging: he reckoned it ruined a good man and only made a bad man worse. In fact he went further: he was convinced that, except for incorrigible seamen (the kind of men who, on land, would spend a lifetime in and out of jail), if a captain had to resort to the cat-o’-nine-tails the captain was probably at fault.

  He was not in a bad mood exactly: he had passed the word that the men could fish from the taffrail and four of them were perched there now, cussing and joking as they hooked and lost fish, all within a few feet of where Mr Ramage marched up and down as though trying to wear a furrow in the deck planking.

  Whatever Mr Ramage finally decided to do at Santa Cruz—and there was plenty of time, because for the present he was keeping the Calypso a hundred miles to windward of it—the ship’s company was ready. Gunnery drill and sail-handling showed that Captain Edwards had sent over good men from the Invincible. Southwick had expected him to take the opportunity to get rid of his worst men, but he had been fair.

  So the Calypso was ready for anything; as ready as training and preparation could make her. Down in his cabin was a large-scale chart of Santa Cruz which he had drawn up from various sources. Ironically the best information came from one of the mutineers, who would have been hanged by now: that man had drawn a chart from memory—and it was better than anything available in English Harbour. It showed Southwick that, although he had been guilty of murdering his Captain, the man had not been disloyal to his country as he faced the noose. He must have guessed that the information he had about Santa Cruz was vital, but he had not attempted to bargain with it by trying to get his death sentence reduced to transportation, for instance. According to Mr Ramage, the man had been only too glad to help, as though to make amends …

  “Deck there! Sail-ho, on the larboard quarter!”

  Ramage and Southwick reached the rail at the same time and put telescopes to their eyes. They could see nothing: the distant ship was below the curvature of the earth but just visible to the lookout perched high up in the mainmast.

  Ramage turned to the quartermaster: “Pass the word for my coxswain.”

  A hail forward brought Jackson running aft to the quarter-deck, where Ramage handed him a telescope taken from the binnacle drawer. “Get aloft and see what you make of her.”

  Three minutes later, after Jackson had spent a long time balancing himself against the reverse-pendulum movement of the masts as the Calypso rolled, he hailed: “Deck there. She looks like a schooner. She’s steering up to the nor’-east on the same course as us. Could be a Jonathan, sir.”

  Ramage turned to Southwick: “Bear away and run down to her.”

  A ninety-mile line of scattered and tiny islands, reefs and cays ran parallel to the Main and up to sixty miles north of it. A prudent master leaving La Guaira, Barcelona and Cumaná would steer north-west to pass safely to the westward; but if he left Santa Cruz he would instead sail out to the north-east, making sure that the west-going current did not sweep him down to the Testigos, the islands marking the eastern end of the line. He would, Ramage knew, steer for Grenada until, sixty miles or so out from the Main, he could risk bearing away for his destination, but even then he would keep a sharp lookout. Many of the shoals west of Testigos barely showed above water; some of the cays were only a few feet high.

  Ramage took off his hat and mopped his face and neck: the heat seemed solid; the breeze filled the sails but seemed to ignore the men on deck. Above him the great yards creaked as they were braced round; the men at the wheel hauled on the spokes as Southwick gave them a course which should intercept the ship they still could not see from the deck.

  Southwick put a speaking-trumpet to his lips and hailed Jackson: “Masthead there! How is the sail bearing from us now?”

  “Two points on our larboard bow, sir.”

  The Master nodded to himself. The schooner with her fore-and-aft rig would be fast on the wind.

  The hailing had brought Aitken on deck, blinking in the harsh sunlight, and as soon as Southwick had told him of the sighting the First Lieutenant said to Ramage: “Could she have come from Santa Cruz, sir?”

  “She could, and be clawing up to clear the Testigos.”

  “She might have some more Jocastas on board.”

  The
idea obviously had not occurred to Ramage, and his eyes narrowed. “I’m more concerned with finding out what’s happening in Santa Cruz than providing fodder for courts martial.”

  “Quite, sir.” Aitken understood his Captain well enough not to be offended by the remark: he too imagined vividly the thunder of the Invincible’s guns and the hanging figures emerging from the smoke.

  Ramage had the telescope to his eye. “I can just make out her mastheads. Have a boat ready for lowering, Mr Aitken. You’ll be boarding her. Take six Marines. Mr Southwick, we’ll beat to quarters in fifteen minutes’ time.”

  Half an hour later the Calypso was hove-to a hundred yards to windward of the schooner, which had hoisted the American flag, and Ramage watched through his telescope as Aitken and her master talked on deck. After a few minutes the two men went below. The Marines were standing where Aitken had obviously placed them, so the American must be cooperating.

  On board the Calypso the guns were run out, the water which had been splashed across the deck was drying quickly on the hot wood of the planking, and the grains of sand sprinkled over it to give the men a good foothold became myriads of tiny mirrors reflecting the sunlight.

  The sea had the dark blue, almost mauve, of the tropical ocean, the sky, with the sun high, was a harsher blue, hinting at infinite distance which would be revealed when darkness once again brought back the stars. And all the time the sun beat down on the ship, making the deck planking uncomfortably hot and heating metal until it was unpleasant to touch. But there was enough breeze now to keep the men cool, once they had finished the heavy work of loading and running out the guns.

  Ramage walked the width of the quarterdeck swearing to himself that he would not look across at the schooner again until he had made five traverses. Impatience was a tiring and pointless fault, but one he found it very hard to eradicate. One of the few advantages of being made post was that you could indulge yourself more frequently … But now Aitken was dealing with the Jonathan, pumping him dry of information about Santa Cruz, with luck.

  The William and Henrietta of Boston. Shipowners along the east coast of America were no more imaginative than their counterparts across the other side of the Atlantic. Who was William, and was Henrietta his wife? Or had someone named the ship after his father and mother? He did not give a jot, but speculating about such nonsense passed a few more minutes and by then he had made six traverses of the deck, so he could look again.

  He put the glass to his eye. Aitken was on deck again, and folding something and putting it in the canvas pouch he had used to protect the list of known Jocastas from spray. The Marines had not moved and now Aitken was signalling over the side to the boat.

  No mutineers! It was as much the wish not to find mutineers as the hope of discovering the latest information about Santa Cruz that was making him impatient for Aitken’s return. He did not want to be a member of another court martial trying one of Wallis’s victims. Victims was an odd way to think of murderers and mutineers but it was more of a judgement—a diagnosis, Bowen would call it—than an expression of sympathy.

  Now the Calypso’s boat was clear of the schooner. The William and Henrietta was a graceful vessel, a sweeping sheer lifting to a high bow. She was painted a dark blue with a broad white strake, an unusual colour for an American merchantman: they were usually black or green. Then the headsails, which had been backed, were sheeted home and for a minute or two the William and Henrietta’s bow paid off before she fathered way.

  Another neutral ship stopped and boarded; another routine dozen-word entry in the log, one of hundreds made every year by ships of the Royal Navy. While Ramage’s thoughts roamed, Aitken arrived to stand before him, grinning cheerfully. Startled, Ramage glanced round to see that the boat was already hooked on and ready to be hoisted on board.

  Aitken unloaded the pouch. “No mutineers on board, sir, but the master was friendly enough: he left Santa Cruz early yesterday morning and he’s bound for St Augustine, in Florida. Cargo of hides—phew, and do they stink!”

  Ramage waited with growing impatience. The captain had to be cool, unruffled, patient, the fountain of wisdom … which meant that the Captain could not at this moment tell Aitken to stop rambling and report on Santa Cruz.

  “Hides, eh?” he said casually. “Of course, they have a lot of cattle along this coast. Poor quality hides, if I remember correctly: some kind of fly that attacks the skin and causes sores.”

  “Maybe so, sir,” Aitken said, “but the master tells me they fetch a good price in America.”

  “Indeed? What other news from our American friend?”

  “Nothing, sir. He says he always finds a west-going current of between one and two knots from here all the way up to the lee of Grenada, which is what we’d reckoned anyway.”

  “Quite.”

  “And the Jocasta, sir: she’s still there and has her yards crossed and sails bent on, but apparently there’s barely a hundred seamen on board her now. She was full of troops when he arrived, but they were suddenly taken off and marched inland with some of the town garrison. He reckoned more than five hundred of them altogether. There was a lot of talk of trouble up in the hills at a place called”—he paused and took a piece of paper from his pocket—”called Caripe. I don’t know if that’s the way to pronounce it. Anyway, there are hundreds of Indians living up in the mountains who are always making trouble for the Spaniards, and they’ve just massacred the garrison at this place, Caripe. The only troops available to send after ‘em were those on board the Jocasta and some of the garrison.”

  Aitken’s voice was flat. Did he understand the significance of the news he was relating? Ramage, not realizing that Aitken was copying him, was far from sure, but he was thankful for those unknown Indians who, revolting for reasons he could only guess at, had as if by magic removed three hundred soldiers from the Jocasta. That was as good as doubling the number of men he had in the Calypso … Then he remembered the forts. They were the threat; compared with them the prospect of three hundred more or less on board the Jocasta was of little account. Smile, Ramage told himself; Eames was beaten long before he reached Santa Cruz, beaten by a look at the chart.

  “A fortunate coincidence,” Ramage commented. “A pity we can’t help our Indian allies.”

  Aitken nodded as he peered into his canvas pouch. “And then there’s this, sir.” He took out a large sheet of paper which had been folded twice. “The master copied it for me from the one he uses. He vouches for the soundings because he’s taken them himself.”

  Ramage turned his back to the wind. The paper was a good chart of Santa Cruz and the entrance with the forts marked in, and on the windward side of the large rectangular lagoon at the inner end of the channel was drawn the Jocasta, showing that she was secured fore and aft to buoys.

  He handed it back to Aitken. “You’d better give that to Southwick. It’s a great deal better than anything we have.”

  Ramage resumed his pacing. Even a perfunctory look at the new chart did not alter the major characteristics of Santa Cruz: it was still a square lagoon half a mile inland at the end of a channel which began as a narrow slot through the cliffs, although the hills on either side quickly sloped down so that Santa Cruz itself and the land round the lagoon was flat.

  The Jocasta was at the eastern end of the lagoon; the town at the western. And high above the middle of the southern side was the Castillo de Santa Fé, taking its name from the high mountain, Pico de Santa Fé, which stood inland like a giant beacon, a landmark visible for twenty miles, though one which Eames’s chart neglected to mention.

  An American master and a group of Indians: Captain Ramage of the Calypso was finding some improbable allies. He turned to find Aitken waiting to speak to him.

  “I forgot to mention, sir,” he began apologetically, “that the American said there is a Spanish guarda costa patrolling the coast. He saw her steering westwards as he left Santa Cruz. They caught a Dutch ship smuggling a few weeks ago, so they’re on the
watch.”

  Ramage nodded and resumed his pacing. By now the boat had been hoisted on board and was being stowed, men waiting with the canvas cover that kept off the sun in the eternal fight to stop the heat drying out the planking. The Calypso’s guns were being unloaded and run in; a head pump was already gurgling as men swabbed down the decks to wash away the sand. The William and Henrietta was a couple of miles away and sailing fast. There was a lot to be said for a schooner rig, Ramage thought; you soaked up to windward like water through paper.

  Wagstaffe, who was officer of the deck, came up to report that the boat was secured, the guns run in, and the ship ready to get under way again.

  “Carry on,” Ramage said, and went down to his cabin, sending a seaman to tell Aitken and Southwick to report to him with the charts. He slumped down on the settee, pitching his hat on to the desk. He was a hundred miles from Santa Cruz, and had not a single positive idea in his head. He had hoped that after leaving English Harbour a plan would come to mind; that once he was clear of the trial and all the petty irritations inflicted on a ship in harbour, he would suddenly find he had an answer to the problem of cutting out the Jocasta. Instead he had become more certain that it was impossible. The only possible chance was to send in the boats at night; rely on boarding parties creeping along the channel past the forts and seizing the Jocasta and sailing her out. This meant assuming that the Spanish sentries would be asleep.

  It also meant he had to wait for a southerly wind—the only wind that would let the Jocasta sail out. But with Santa Cruz surrounded by mountains and hills, one could never be sure from out to sea what the wind direction would be inside the channel: eddies round a hill and gusts rolling down the side of a mountain could change the wind direction in a given spot by ninety degrees. An east wind at the entrance could mean a south wind inside the lagoon. A north wind at the entrance could mean an east wind in the channel. And the Jocasta would have only the survivors of the boarding parties to man her and sail her out under the fire of three forts which, with all the noise going on, would be wide awake and ready to sink the frigate before she was halfway down the channel. The boats could not tow her out, he thought bitterly, since none would survive for long enough …