Ramage's Mutiny

by Dudley Pope

  He had described the court martial, but had forgotten to tell her that Summers had been rescued by the Kathleen. The story would sadden her because he had been given command of the cutter just after rescuing her: she had stayed in Bastia while he sailed northward up the Corsican coast to see what could be done about the stranded Belette. Later Gianna, the valuable refugee, had sailed for Gibraltar with him in the Kathleen. Yet he wanted to tell her about Summers; about the tragic coincidence which had made the seaman’s rescuer one of the five judges who had to condemn him to death.

  He finished one side of the page and then turned it over to give news of Gianna’s favourites, Jackson, Stafford and Rossi. He described how they, and most of the frigate’s men, had spent the morning dirtying the decks, but he gave no explanation: that would follow later, when he knew the result, but he could imagine Gianna turning the page impatiently. “Read this to father,” he wrote, “and make him wait a few minutes before telling him the rest of the story, which I hope to write tomorrow.”

  Ramage wiped the pen and put it in the rack. If only he could guess the rest of the story! By midnight—if he was still alive—he would know; but by midnight something unexpected might have happened so that Gianna never received the letter. Now the depression and doubting was coming back … It always happened: like the cold and misery of the hour before dawn, this chill spread over him before going into battle. Not exactly fear but something dam’ close to it. The feeling of not being sure whether he was going to be sick or fall ill with a fever, yet appearing confident or whimsical, firm or flippant, in front of his officers and men.

  There was shouting on deck: Aitken was giving orders that would get the ship under way again, so Wagstaffe must have boarded and his boat would be towing astern. A minute or two later the Marine sentry announced him and the Lieutenant, his face sunburned despite his tan—there was no awning over the Santa Barbara’s quarterdeck—appeared, clear-eyed and cheerful.

  “How do you find the Santa Barbara?” Ramage asked.

  “She handles well, sir. Just about every rope is badly stretched and turned end for end, but the sails are in good condition. The whole ship’s riddled with vermin, though; the lice are fighting the fleas for a chance to get at us.”

  Ramage nodded and told Wagstaffe to sit in the chair beside the desk to receive his orders.

  “First, the papers. This is a copy of the signals in the Spanish signal book and here are drawings of the flags—Orsini has been busy with his watercolours in case the actual flags aren’t marked. These are your written orders—don’t bother to read them now because I want to talk to you about them—and here,” Ramage paused a moment as he selected a roll from the rack over his head, “is a chart which shows all we know about Santa Cruz.”

  For the next fifteen minutes Ramage outlined what Wagstaffe and the Santa Barbara would do. There were three possibilities, and he emphasized that he would probably leave it to the last moment before deciding which to select. “Now, the boats. Your two boats and the Marines are the key to the whole thing. They must work fast but they mustn’t make mistakes. Pick a dozen good men for each one. I’ll let you have more if you think it leaves you short.”

  Wagstaffe shook his head. “No, sir, just the extra boat will be enough.” He hesitated, and then began: “But, sir …”

  Ramage raised an eyebrow, guessing what was coming. “Could—well, sir, Baker is experienced now, and I feel I can be of more help if I—”

  Ramage held up his hand. “You have this job for one reason. I need Aitken for something else. You are next senior. In fact if you make one mistake you’ll wreck everything. I’ve told you all the alternatives that I can think of, but I can’t be expected to guess everything the Dons can do.”

  He spoke very deliberately. “It’s a great mistake to assume the enemy is a fool: many battles are lost through underestimating the opposition. But sometimes the enemy can be more foolish than you expect, or unprepared, or a dozen other things. For instance, the three hundred soldiers on board the Jocasta have just been taken off and sent into the hills against the Indians. That was unexpected from everyone’s point of view.”

  He tapped the top of the desk for emphasis. “The forts may blow us out of the water, the Mayor may come out in a gilded barge to take the Captain-General’s nephew to a banquet, you might run the Santa Barbara aground, it might suddenly pour with rain so we can’t see what we’re doing … You agree all those things are possible?”

  Wagstaffe nodded uneasily, wishing he had kept his mouth shut.

  “Very well. In every case you will have to do the right thing without waiting for orders from me. And there could be a dozen more things.”

  The Second Lieutenant was still not convinced, but then Ramage said: “Aitken wants to change jobs with you. He doesn’t know what I have in mind for him, but he’d like to command the Santa Barbara. Do you really want to exchange?”

  Wagstaffe paused for a second and then shook his head vigorously. “No, sir; indeed, I’m flattered you have such trust in me.”

  Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “You can do it, all right; it’s just that I don’t want you to underestimate what you might have to do. And remember, no more men on deck than the Santa Barbara had in her original Spanish crew—twenty, was it?”

  “Twenty-one, sir. Oh yes, I need a fat man.”

  “Do you, by Jove!”

  “The Spanish Captain: he’s a very distinctive—ah, shape. There’s a spare uniform on board. I thought I might—”

  “Take the cook’s mate,” Ramage said, and laughed at the thought of the plump little man dressed up as the Captain of the Santa Barbara. “Take care of him, though; no one slaughters and dresses a sheep better than he does. Any questions? Very well, you’d better get back on board the Santa Barbara and steer for Santa Cruz. But wait for a few minutes while I give Rennick his orders.”

  In his cabin an hour later Ramage looked round at Aitken, Baker, Southwick and Paolo. Either the plan was better than he thought or familiarity was breeding affection. He had explained it three times now—to Wagstaffe, Rennick and now the three staying with him in the Calypso—and so far no one had pointed out a flaw. Nor, he realized, had anyone pointed out how much it depended on luck, so their opinions were of little significance. He looked across at the First Lieutenant.

  “Aitken—you have everything ready?”

  The Scotsman tapped the rolled chart and signal book. “Ready for whatever is served up, sir.”

  “Baker … Southwick?”

  Neither the Third Lieutenant nor the Master had any questions, and Ramage glanced across to Paolo, who was present as part of his training. “Orsini, you look as though something is bothering you!”

  “Should I have a cutlass or a pistol, sir?”

  Ramage smiled at the boy’s eager face. “Have both. Now, you understand what you have to do?”

  “Oh yes, sir!”

  “Very well. Now, gentlemen, I want to emphasize this. In a few hours you’ll be actors on a stage, but if you’re unconvincing you’ll get cannonballs fired at you, not boos and catcalls.”

  They all laughed, but they knew that the Captain was only just joking. Ramage guessed that no group of the King’s officers had ever received such bizarre orders. He had a sense of unreality in giving them, and could only admire the way they had all simply nodded from time to time as he spoke, as though they were routine instructions for entering harbour and saluting the Commander-in-Chief. No doubting looks, no carefully-worded questions intended to hint that the Captain was wrong. On the contrary: if anything they seemed both amused and pleased with their orders.

  “Very well, Mr Aitken; muster the ship’s company aft and I’ll let them into the secret.”

  Ten minutes later Ramage stood on top of the big capstan looking down at his men grouped round him on the quarter-deck. He was puzzled and his face was flushed. Just at the moment the men should have been looking serious and listening attentively, they had burst out laughin
g. Jackson, the cook, Rossi, Stafford, the shrivelled little gunner were amused; they were slapping each other on the back and two or three were pretending to start a hornpipe.

  Suddenly he realized the significance of their reaction and he grinned and waited for the laughter to subside, as though he had expected it. Then he held up his hand.

  “Tomorrow, I’ll remind you, is a new day. Half a dozen of you will have to clean up the decks, and the First Lieutenant will need half a dozen men to polish the brass—”

  He broke off again as the men roared with laughter, and one man—was it Stafford?—called out: “Half a dozen men? You’re spoiling us, sir.” This was the moment to stop; they were in high spirits and just in the mood for the task in hand. He gave a wave, vaulted off the capstan and went down the companion-way to his cabin, catching sight of Pico de Santa Fé as he turned. It was very close now, towering high and forbidding; he could imagine it being the legendary home of proud and vengeful Indian gods …

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE SUN was low enough to throw the eastern sides of the tumbling hills and cone-shaped Pico de Santa Fé into deep shadow. The channel into Santa Cruz was now a dark slot cut through the cliffs, a forbidding canyon at the far end of which Ramage could just see the lagoon with the castle of Santa Fé crouched at the foot of the peak, a square block of stone, its battlements like bared teeth, its guns covering every inch of the entrance.

  The wind was light, the sky clear except for streaks of cloud on the horizon, and Ramage felt strangely free. He looked down at his bare feet and was vaguely surprised to see his toes on the planking of the quarterdeck, the flesh startlingly white compared with his tanned hands. The white duck trousers were suitably creased and grubby but a good deal more comfortable than breeches and stockings. A bloodstained purser’s shirt, open at the neck, felt light and loose after years of wearing a stock and heavy uniform coat. His hair was bound at the back with a bit of cord and like everyone else on board he was unshaven and unwashed. It took very little to change the Calypso into a ship apparently run by mutineers.

  Southwick was pacing round the quarterdeck like a bear dressed up for a carnival: he too was wearing a pair of purser’s trousers and a bloodstained shirt, and his usually unruly white hair looked more than ever like a twice-used mop. He had a pistol tucked into the top of his trousers; his great sword slapped against his leg as he walked. The once-smart First Lieutenant now wore a red shirt; his white duck trousers were smeared with blood and dirt. A black cloth served as a scarf tied over his hair and gave him the look of a Highland brigand.

  The Calypso’s cook was—under orders—swaggering round the ship with a great meat cleaver hanging from his waist; thirty men were perched in various parts of the rigging while a dozen more were skylarking, occasionally scrambling down the mainstay. The frigate yawed from time to time, and Ramage knew that all the Spaniards watching from Castillo San Antonio and its twin of El Pilar must realize she was being badly sailed. What they did not see was Jackson, acting as quartermaster and giving the orders to the men at the wheel which produced the sudden flapping of the topsails. The courses and topgallants were badly furled—it had taken Southwick an hour before he was satisfied with them, straining his patience as he complained that it was harder to furl them badly than neatly.

  Ramage walked aft, hitching at the cutlass-belt over his shoulder and kicking at a piece of bread lying on the deck. The ship stank of rum; not fifteen minutes ago Southwick and the purser had sluiced a bucket of it over the quarterdeck and now a barrel was lashed against the skylight with half a dozen mugs beside it. It normally held forty gallons of rum and was obviously placed so that any man could have a mugful when he felt like it—or so it would seem to a casual eye.

  The Santa Barbara was following a hundred yards astern, sailing in the Calypso’s wake, the red, gold and red of the Spanish flag streaming out in the breeze. From her foremast flew two flag signals—”Lead the fleet” and “Keep in close order.” The Calypso, like an obedient bear obeying a small boy, was leading the way into Santa Cruz, obviously a prize. Instead of the Red Ensign, she also flew the flag of Spain; a flag of the same size as the one hoisted in the Santa Barbara, which had obviously supplied it. And from her foreyardarm the frigate flew two more flags which the Spanish lookouts should by now have interpreted: a plain red flag—the “bloody flag” of buccaneer days and now the symbol of revolution—and below it, obviously vanquished, a Red Ensign.

  “Brother Jackson,” Ramage called, “I’ll trouble you to bear up for a moment and shiver those luffs!”

  “Aye, aye, brother Ramage,” Jackson said cheerfully.

  “Brother Ramage,” Southwick called self-consciously, “according to my revolutionary quadrant we’re exactly a mile off the entrance.”

  Ramage nodded. They were approaching the coast at an angle, and there was now no doubt that the wind in the channel was blowing out through the entrance. In another ten minutes they would be in position. He looked aft anxiously, but Wagstaffe was waiting deliberately in the Santa Barbara: he could measure distances as well as Southwick. One mile: they were within range of the guns of both forts, but neither had opened fire.

  “Brother Jackson,” Ramage growled, “there’s no need to flog the sails into shreds. If you luff too much again I’ll bring you before the committee.”

  All the men on the quarterdeck laughed cheerfully and gave their Captain credit for being a waggish fellow, but in fact Ramage could detect a stiffness among them. The habit of discipline, the respect for officers and obedience to orders was hard to drop in a couple of hours, but they were now supposed to be mutineers. There were no officers on board; according to the story that each of them would tell if questioned, all the officers had been murdered two days ago and their new officers were the leaders of the mutiny—brother Ramage (the former bosun), brother Aitken (a Marine sergeant) and brother Southwick (who, Ramage decided, had been the cook’s mate, a choice which brought Southwick close to mutiny). The automatic use of the word “brother” might serve to convince a doubting Spaniard; it might gain a few minutes when seconds mattered. Or it might be a complete waste of time. In any case, Ramage had decided, it amused the men; it took their minds off the menace of the forts.

  “Brother Ramage!” a seaman hailed from aloft. “The Santa Barbara’s hoisting a signal!”

  Ramage put the telescope to his eye. Number 29.

  “Brother Aitken, I’ll trouble you to heave-to the ship, but not too skilfully please.”

  Having spent all his sea-going life in ships that were always handled correctly, Aitken had to concentrate on his orders so that as the Calypso’s bow swung across the eye of the wind the fore-topsail was not braced up enough to ensure that the pressure on the forward side trying to push the frigate’s bow one way was balanced by the pressure on the after sails trying to thrust the bow the other. Instead of lying stopped in the water like a waiting seagull, the bow continued to swing.

  “Brother Aitken!” Ramage said, surprised how easily he could substitute “brother” for the more usual “mister.” “If we wear right round now and try again I think we’d demonstrate to our new Spanish friends on shore that we are lubbers!”

  “Aye, aye, sir—brother, rather.”

  The Calypso’s bow paid right off, spinning the ship round like a top. Sails flapped and slatted like enormous curtains, then filled with a bang; men hauled on sheets and braces, Jackson gave quick, sharp commands to the men at the wheel. The Santa Barbara, taken by surprise, had to bear away to avoid risk of collision and then tack to get up to windward of the frigate.

  Soon the Calypso was lying hove-to, with the Santa Barbara hove-to a hundred yards to windward. Ramage could see the corpulent cook’s mate over on the brig, resplendent in the gold-trimmed uniform of a Spanish captain, climbing down into the brig’s boat, which had been towing astern and was now hauled alongside. With him was a seaman rigged out in a lieutenant’s uniform. Now the boat was cast off and the seamen began
rowing down to the Calypso.

  Army officers would be watching with telescopes from the walls of the forts. Ramage hoped it would all be clear to them by now. Somewhere along the coast the Santa Barbara, one of His Most Catholic Majesty’s ships, would have found the Calypso flying the “bloody flag” of mutiny and with her mutineers anxious to follow in the footsteps of the Jocasta. Captain Lopez would have ordered her to make for Santa Cruz after having put people on board to keep an eye on things.

  Hoisting the signal “Lead the fleet,” the Santa Barbara had then followed the Calypso. Now, off the entrance to Santa Cruz, Lopez would have found the wind foul for the entrance, so that both the Calypso and the Santa Barbara would have to be towed in. What could be more natural than having both ships heave-to while he went across to the Calypso to give the mutinous Englishmen their final orders?

  The Santa Barbara’s boat came alongside and the cook’s mate climbed on board with his lieutenant to make his way to the quarterdeck while the boat was hauled aft to tow astern. The cook’s mate’s appearance at the gangway was met with hoots of laughter and catcalls: he was a popular man and, with the cook, one of the wealthiest men on the lower deck. Selling slush to his shipmates was one of his perquisites: it helped soften the board-like bread, or bind it together when it had become so old it began to crumble. The cook’s mate had quick wits and a ready tongue, and as he made his way aft he kept up a barrage of imitation Spanish. Finally he reached the quarterdeck with his lieutenant and Ramage called: “Don’t salute anyone: come up to me!”