Ramage's Mutiny

by Dudley Pope

  The Calypso was close enough to Castillo San Antonio that anyone with a powerful telescope could see down on to the frigate’s quarterdeck. When the cook’s mate—looking remarkably like Lopez—reached him, Ramage saluted him with a flourish.

  “Captain Lopez!”

  “Well, brother Ramage that’s what Mr Wagstaffe said I was to call you once I got this uniform on—well, as I was saying, sir, Mr Wagstaffe said as ‘ow I was to tell you for sure, sir, that there weren’t no message, sir.”

  “Good. Now I want you and your lieutenant to keep striding up and down here on the quarterdeck. Make sure that you can be seen by everyone in these forts up here—they’re watching us with telescopes. You see the entrance channel? Good, point along it. You’ve just given me my orders. Now I understand what you mean. Oh no I don’t!” He called to the seaman dressed as the Spanish lieutenant. “Come closer—you are supposed to be translating everything to me.”

  Ramage turned back to the cook’s mate. “Point up at one of the forts. Now the other. When I salute, you start marching up and down. Not like a Marine,” he added hastily. “You’re in charge of everything, so swagger about!”

  It was time to hoist the boats out. The men already had their orders—that was the only way to ensure enough confusion to satisfy the watchers from the forts—and Ramage said: “Brother Aitken, the committee would like you to hoist out the boom boats and choose enough men to row them. You’d better double-bank ‘em; it’s not a long row but the quicker we …”

  Ramage turned to the Master as Aitken hurried forward:

  “Brother Southwick, I must disturb your revolutionary thoughts long enough to have the quarter boats lowered.”

  “Aye, brother Ramage. You know, sir, I get a strange feeling when I think this was the way the Jocasta really did come in.”

  Ramage grinned reassuringly. “I had the same feeling yesterday when you and the cook were scattering all that sheep’s blood!”

  Ramage watched the cook’s mate and the seaman: they made a passable counterfeit of the real thing—the cook’s mate was waving his arms, gesturing with Latin exuberance. The seaman, not to be outdone, began gesturing back and Ramage was just going to interrupt when he realized that the real Captain Lopez probably had to put up with a lot of interference from his young but influential second-in-command.

  Shouts from amidships and the squeal of ropes rendering through blocks told him that a tackle was beginning to lift one of the boats and would soon be swinging it over the side and lowering it.

  “Brother Baker,” Ramage called. “To the fo’c’s’le please, and stand by the hawsers ready for taking the ship in tow.”

  “Aye, aye—I mean, yes brother Ramage.”

  Everything was proceeding at a leisurely pace; the current was slowly sweeping the Calypso and the Santa Barbara to the westward, but Ramage had allowed for an hour’s delay. Normally, heaving-to and hoisting out the boats would take less than fifteen minutes. However, the longer the Calypso was lying in front of the two forts the better; the Spaniards were getting used to the idea and there was time for messengers on horseback to be sent off to report to the Mayor. Everyone, Ramage thought to himself, was being reassured; it was another Jocasta all over again; another frigate to be added to His Most Catholic Majesty’s fleet for the expenditure of a small reward to the leading mutineers.

  Finally Aitken came back to the quarterdeck. “All ready for towing, sir—I’m sorry, sir, I mean brother Ramage. The boats are alongside, the hawsers are ready to run.”

  Ramage looked over towards the entrance. He could sail the Calypso another five hundred yards, and save the men rowing, but could the leader of a group of mutineers? Summers could, from his own account, but it was not worth the risk of arousing the suspicion of the Spaniards.

  “It’s time for our Captain Lopez and his lieutenant to return to the Santa Barbara. As soon as they’re clear, we’ll furl the top-sails. First the main, then the fore. That’ll pay off the bow to starboard, and by the time the boats have the slack out of the hawsers we’ll be heading in the right direction.”

  He called over to the cook’s mate, giving instructions. The man strutted over, stopped in front of Ramage and then swung round and pointed dramatically to the maintopsail. A moment later his hand moved out again towards the foretopsail.

  “How’s that, sir?”

  “Fine. Now—you are the translator,” he told the seaman in the lieutenant’s uniform. “Translate!”

  “Do I need any of the armwaving, sir?”

  “No, just talk. All right, that’s enough! Now, Captain, you will go back to the Santa Barbara—after I’ve saluted you.”

  With that Ramage saluted and went to the break of the quarterdeck as the two men walked to the gangway. It was all going well—even to the thin layer of cloud forming to leeward of Pico de Santa Fé, which would cause a spectacular sunset. But in fifteen minutes, he realized, the Calypso would be in the entrance to Santa Cruz, midway between the forts, the muzzles of their guns a bare seventy-five yards away on either side.

  Aloft, the men furled the maintopsail quickly, but they were deliberately careless with the gaskets. Some of the strips of canvas were tied tighter than others; three were not tied at all. The Calypso’s bow began to pay off, and then the foretopsail was furled, and again some gaskets were left untied. All the fewer to untie when he gave the order to let fall the sails, Ramage noted, and was pleased that the men had remembered their orders.

  Now the Calypso’s bow was turning towards the harbour entrance, pulled by the boats which were out of sight from the quarterdeck, hidden by the bow. And the closer the frigate approached, the narrower the channel seemed to become.

  “Brother Aitken,” Ramage said, “take your mutinous thoughts to the fo’c’s’le and pass them aft at the top of your voice if we seem to be straying out of the fairway. I can’t see properly from here.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  At that moment Southwick sidled up to him and sniffed: “Don’t like this one bit, sir—brother, rather.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know. The feeling that those damned Dons are watching every move we make. It’s uncanny. Here we are, towing in, large as life, and they’re just staring at us …”

  “You’d sooner they were shooting, eh?”

  Southwick laughed, a laugh which began deep in his large belly. “Not at this range! But I never guessed, and that’s a fact; I had it all wrong!”

  “Never guessed what?”

  “How you were going to get us into the place, sir—brother! I thought all the blood on the deck was to show how the Santa Barbara captured us. Didn’t seem very likely to me; I nearly said so. Aitken was worried, too.”

  Ramage swung round and stared at the Master. “You never guessed? Why, it was so obvious I didn’t bother to explain!”

  “Not to us, it wasn’t, not until you said we’d mutinied and we were to call each other ‘brother.’ I suppose we’d got it into our heads that you’d take the Santa Barbara in, and leave the Calypso anchored outside. Fill the brig up with men and send her in under the Spanish flag to cut out the Jocasta.”

  “Too risky,” Ramage said, and stared up at Castillo San Antonio, now towering over the Calypso’s larboard side. He counted the muzzles. “Fourteen guns facing this way, and fourteen to seaward. And that other one over there, El Pilar, has twenty to seaward and sixteen covering the channel.”

  “Why too risky with the Santa Barbara alone, sir—brother?” Southwick persisted.

  “The Dons in the forts would get suspicious. Just think about it. If mutineers had handed the Calypso over to Lopez his first concern would be to get her into Santa Cruz. He wouldn’t trust them an inch and he wouldn’t leave her anchored outside with her ship’s company still on board while he went in with the Santa Barbara. Why leave her there? No, he’d want to see her go in first.”

  Southwick sniffed again, showing his doubts. “He might want to rush in first to make sure
he gets all the credit.”

  “No one else can take that away from him. Anyway, if the Santa Barbara went in first, the Mayor, Port Captain, Bishop—they’d all swarm on board. Where would you hide your boarding party? How would you persuade the real Lopez to make the right answers?”

  “Didn’t think of that,” Southwick admitted cheerfully. “We tied ourselves up with the idea of making use of the Santa Barbara. Here! Look at that!”

  Flags had been hoisted from on top of San Antonio. Ramage grabbed a telescope and saw that they made up a three-number signal. Three? There were only one- and two-flag signals in the Spanish book. It was obviously addressed to the Santa Barbara, and whoever had ordered it to be hoisted knew that Lopez would understand it. What the devil could it mean? Suddenly the fourteen muzzles came into sharp focus. Through the telescope he could see the heads of the Spanish artillerymen. There was an officer peering down at them, using a small glass.

  What if they opened fire? The Calypso must not fire back. Cause confusion—yes, if San Antonio opened fire, Ramage decided, then the Calypso would hoist signal flags wherever a signal halyard was rove. Two-flag signals which would send the Spaniards running to the book; two-flag signals which would buy time because every minute that passed saw the Calypso getting further along the channel, further from the muzzles of those guns.

  Fear was chilling him; the breeze dried the cold perspiration that was soaking his shirt. Three flags, three pieces of coloured bunting flapping at the top of San Antonio’s flagstaff, could wreck everything. He glanced at the channel. If there was any chance of the Calypso being badly damaged, he’d sink her so that she blocked the middle of the channel.

  He swung the telescope round to look at the Santa Barbara and remembered telling Wagstaffe that the whole operation could depend on him. It could, and at this moment it did. He saw two flags being hoisted on board the brig: number 50. Yes, Wagstaffe had been quick to react; number 50 meant: “Signal not understood though flags distinguished.”

  What the devil were the Dons asking Lopez? Something was needed to divert their attention! Ramage picked up the speaking-trumpet, noting that the Calypso was now in the middle of the channel and precisely between the two forts.

  “All you men—quickly, get up in the rigging and stand by to cheer. You on the fo’c’s’le, get muskets and pistols and stand by to fire into the air when I give the word!”

  In a minute the shrouds of all three masts were thick with men.

  “Now—wave like madmen. Stand by to cheer. Hip, hip …”

  “Hurrah!” two hundred voices shouted and the roar echoed down the channel, the sound bouncing from the hills.

  “Hip, hip …”

  “Hurrah!”

  “Hip, hip …”

  “Hurrah!”

  By now startled birds were wheeling and more faces appeared along the walls of the forts.

  “Stand by with those muskets and pistols. Ready? Fire!”

  A ragged volley echoed along the hills. More faces appeared at the walls.

  “Now, just cheer like madmen! You’re mutineers getting your freedom!”

  The men shouted, screamed and waved, and for a moment Ramage wondered if the Jocasta’s men had behaved like that when they arrived off La Guaira. Someone waved back from the walls of San Antonio and was followed by another man. Soon twenty or thirty Spaniards were waving, and more joined in from the walls of El Pilar.

  “That should convince ‘em,” Southwick grunted. “It’s nearly convinced me!”

  The wind in the channel was not as strong as Ramage had expected; the four boats were towing the Calypso at a good speed, two knots or more, because the forts had now drawn aft until they were on each quarter.

  “We’ve got through the gate,” Southwick commented. “I hope we don’t find it closed when we want to get out! How do you reckon we’re doing for time, sir—brother, rather. Sorry, sir, I can’t get used to it.”

  Ramage looked at his watch. “We’re doing well enough. It’ll be dark in about forty-five minutes.”

  “Supposing the Captain of the Jocasta—or whatever they call her now—supposing he hasn’t received the word that we’re coming in?”

  Ramage walked to the ship’s side and peered out through a gun port, then returned to the rail. “He’ll have his orders by now, but even if he hasn’t the musket shots will rouse him enough to find out what’s going on.”

  The steep hills on either side of the channel were now beginning to slope down; a hundred yards ahead the land was flat. Then Ramage saw the hills to larboard stop abruptly and the eastern half of the lagoon came in sight—with the Jocasta lying there, her bow to the north, seeming placid and content, like a cow in a meadow.

  Southwick, telescope to his eye, began describing what he saw, as though reading from a list: “All her sails bent on—courses, topsails and t’gallants. Sheets and braces are rove—that’s a relief. Headsails are bent on and the sheets leading to larboard; she’s ready to get under way on the starboard tack. Gun ports closed. Hey, what the devil is going on?”

  Ramage was looking by now, watching a score or more men swarming along the Jocasta’s larboard side. They were dragging large white cylinders … putting fenders in place; the big sausage-shaped cylinders made of old rope and used to protect the side of the ship when she went alongside in the dockyard, or secured next to another ship.

  “That answers a question,” Southwick commented cheerfully. “They’re expecting us!”

  Ramage went down the quarterdeck ladder and walked forward to join Aitken on the fo’c’s’le. It was a curious sensation—the ship gliding along in a silence broken only by the creaking of the boats’ oars and the rustling of the water at the stem. The light was going quickly now, and with the last of the colour fading from the hills the water turned silvery-grey. Although the land was flat on each side and a track ran parallel with the water, presumably leading up to each fort, there was a lot of under-growth: bushes and stunted trees stretched into the distance, finally climbing up the side of the hills to reach the foundations of the forts.

  For a moment, as he glanced aft and saw the two forts, squat and walls black in the shadows, Ramage felt sick as he thought of the orders he had given Rennick. When he had drawn up the plan he had tried to assume the worst, that the countryside would be rocky and covered with bushes. It was no worse than he had anticipated, but there seemed little chance that even one of the Marines would survive the night’s work. Forty Marines, yet the Admiral would consider their lives a small price to pay for the Jocasta.

  “We’ll go alongside the Jocasta just as we planned,” he told Aitken. “They’re expecting us. I want us towed round so that our bow is to seaward, too. You give the orders to the boats; I want to come alongside as though an admiral was watching.”

  “But, sir—but, brother Ramage: would they expect a gang of mutineers to do it perfectly?”

  “The Spanish Captain of the Jocasta is very proud of his new ship. He’s ready to sail. All the paintwork is new. We want him coming on board us with a welcoming smile, not screaming with rage because we’ve just ripped out channels and rigging or scored his paint!”

  Aitken grinned sheepishly. “I don’t have your knack o’ imagining myself in the enemy’s boots, sir!”

  Ramage walked aft, giving orders as he went. Baker came hurrying up to supervise men preparing lines along the starboard side, ready for securing to the Jocasta; other seamen were placing loaded muskets out of sight under the carriages of the guns. All now had pistols stuck in their trousertops and cutlass belts over their shoulders, though the cutlasses were still scattered round the deck, apparently in random piles.

  As soon as he reached the quarterdeck Ramage told Southwick: “Have the yards braced sharp up so we don’t hook up in the Jocasta; then make sure the topmen don’t move five yards from the ratlines.”

  “Brother Ramage,” Jackson called from abaft the wheel. “I’ve a pair of pistols here ready for you, sir.”

/>   “I’ll get them in a minute or two.”

  Hellfire, it was getting dark quickly now. He looked aft along the channel and was thankful to see that the Santa Barbara was just coming into the entrance, her two boats out ahead like water beetles, the brig little more than a black blob. There was no disturbance along the walls of San Antonio, no flashes of guns or muskets, so whatever that three-flag signal had meant, it obviously did not matter. The commandants of the forts must be relieved—the horse was in the stable and the door was bolted. What were they doing up there now? Toasting each other, no doubt; slapping themselves on the back and jeering at the English Navy and its mutinous men.

  He could smell the plants and shrubs growing on shore: the faint hint of spices. They were only a few hundred yards from the mangroves and he thought he smelled charcoal—a charcoal-burner at work, or someone preparing to cook his supper? And the curious high-pitched rattling of frogs, blurred by distance. And above him the creak of the great yards as they were braced round so that the outboard ends should not foul those of the Jocasta. Let’s hope the Jocasta’s Captain remembers, too …

  Looking forward again he was startled to find that the Calypso had finally reached the end of the channel and was now gliding into the lagoon. And over to the west, at the far end of the lagoon, were the dim lights of Santa Cruz itself. It would be hot in the houses; the small windows kept the sun out but the rooms trapped the heat of candles. Little pinpoints of light dancing on the water showed that fishermen were busy near the town, fishing with lanterns, and there were four dark shapes, merchant ships at anchor off the quay. Three were laden, one was high in the water. A peaceful scene, Ramage noted; over there, almost a mile away, people were going about their evening business. Wives would be preparing meals, old men would be supping wine. Some of them might notice a frigate being towed into the lagoon but few would be interested; curiosity counted for very little in the Spanish character.