Duroc's face, already purple from years of heavy drinking, looked swollen: his eyes narrowed, his hands clenched: he was about to step towards Ramage, remembered the three pistols, and contented himself with sneering: 'You fight under false colours, eh?'
Tight?' Ramage enquired innocently. There's been no fighting, and you know the rules as well as I: one hoists one's proper colours before opening fire.'
That schooner, then!' Duroc burst out 'She's French. I recognize her. From Fort de France.'
'She was French and you probably did see her in Fort Royal - ' Ramage deliberately used the old name - 'but we captured her, along with this ship.'
Duroc shook his head, like a trapped bull. 'What are you going to do now?' he demanded.
Take possession of La Perle.' The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders and waved at the Calypso's decks. 'I have three hundred men on board - you have a couple of dozen.'
Ramage bowed. Thank you; I was expecting you to have fewer.'
Duroc, unaware what he had revealed, held out both hands, palm upwards. 'You'll never take her. Let me go back on board my boat and let us continue our respective voyages.'
Ramage watched the man's eyes. It was a curious offer, curious and not in keeping with the man's character. Duroc was a fighter; it would have been more in character if he had sworn at Ramage and told him to do his damnedest to capture La Perle. Duroc had a reason for avoiding a fight, and the reason, Ramage guessed, was because he had a particular purpose in wanting to get to Amsterdam. An important passenger? Special supplies? Reinforcements? No, not reinforcements because he had boasted of his three hundred men, which was the number of men the French like to have in a frigate of that size. Whatever it was, Duroc had a reason for wanting to get to Amsterdam. And while the ship was lying hove - to over there, Ramage knew Duroc would never reveal it. Afterwards, he might.
Ramage looked again at the eyes - they were bloodshot now, from rage - and the hands, which were clenched, looked like shoulders of mutton. He turned to Aitken. 'Pass the word for Mr Rennick - we'll keep this fellow in irons for the time being.'
La Perle was soon a mile astern and still hove - to as La Creole continued to tow the Calypso eastward. Orsini, whose French was fluent, had been sent aft to order the French boat crew to climb on board up a rope ladder slung from the taffrail. The nine men had climbed over the taffrail to find themselves staring into the muzzles of pistols and were only too glad to be led below as prisoners.
Ramage wished the Royal Navy would abandon breeches for its officers - in the Tropics, anyway: cotton duck trousers were loose and so much cooler and more comfortable than breeches and stockings. And there was much to be said for a loose - fitting shirt. The French egalite had sartorial advantages.
Very well, he told himself, the first part of the plan has worked: La Perle now has no captain, but whether or not she is also a snake with her head chopped off depends on the French first lieutenant. If he's like Aitken, there is hard and bloody fighting ahead. If he's a fool - well . . .
'Mr Orsini - let me have the French signal book, please.'
He knew the wording of the signals almost by heart, but he dare not risk a mistake in the numbers. It was such a thin volume, it contained so few signals, especially - especially, he made himself say under his breath, when you are going to try to use it to capture a ship. The only ally he had at the moment was the fact that the officers in La Perle would assume that any orders signalled to her from the Calypso would have the approval of Duroc, and would promptly obey them.
La Creole and the Calypso were now a couple of miles from the coast of Curacao and steering diagonally away from it to the south - east. That was no good; he was going to have to crowd La Perle; crowd her just at the time her first lieutenant was getting into a panic.
'Mr Aitken, make a signal to La Creole to tack. But don't hoist it: I want the flags hung over the bow where La Perle can't see them and have Lacey's attention drawn to them by a musket shot. If the Frenchmen see flags being hoisted that they don't recognize . . .'
'Aye aye, sir,' the first lieutenant said briskly.
'And I hope he has plenty of way on that schooner when he puts the helm over.'
'I warned him about that,' Aitken said dryly. 'I didn't want our dead weight pulling his stern bade again and putting him in irons.'
Ramage nodded and looked over towards the island. Once they were on the other tack they would be steering almost directly for the shore. It would take them half an hour to reach the beach, and although half an hour sounded a long time it would seem a matter of moments if anything went wrong. Particularly, Ramage thought grimly, if the person involved was a French lieutenant upon whose shoulders the fate of two frigates and a schooner was suddenly and unexpectedly thrust.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Aitken stood by the binnacle watching the schooner. Lacey had acknowledged the signal to tack and had then turned away a good point to starboard and eased sheets to increase La Creole's speed. The cable running from the schooner's stern to the Calypso's bow now had less of a curve in it, straightened by the extra pull, and when the strain suddenly brought several feet of rope jerking up out of the sea, water spurted from between the strands, like a burly washerwoman wringing out sheets.
Then, with the Calypso now moving faster, the schooner began to turn slowly and deliberately to larboard. Aitken snapped out the order to the quartermaster, who relayed it to the two men at the wheel, and they hauled at the spokes. Almost at once the Calypso began to turn inshore and Ramage watched. The frigate should be round and on her new course by the time La Creole had completed her tack, and during that time the cable would have slackened just enough, dipping deeper under its own weight so that it would act as a spring to dampen the jerk as the frigate's weight came back on it.
'Mr Orsini,' Ramage said quietly, 'you have La Perle's numbers ready to hoist?'
'Aye aye, sir.'
'And number fifty - six?'
'Yes, sir - 'Ship indicated shall take disabled vessel in taw, the course to be steered to be made known in the next signal'.' The signal for the course is bent on ready?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And what course is that?'
'North - east, sir.'
'Very good. Don't get them mixed up.'
Paolo Orsini was angry. His olive skin was flushed; his brown eyes glared. For a start he was wearing a seaman's shirt and white duck trousers, instead of his uniform, and he had no hat, except this straw thing woven out of palm fronds and painted. He was more proud of his uniform than anything except perhaps his name, although fortunately no one had so far strained his loyalties to find out, and he resented his present garb, even though all the officers were similarly dressed.
Not only had Uncle Nicholas - the captain, he corrected himself sarcastically - made him wear these wretched clothes, so that he looked like some damnable sans-culotte, but he kept asking silly questions about the signals. They were the right ones, they were bent on different halyards, they had been checked half a dozen times. Five times by himself, and once furtively by Jackson and Rossi who, with Stafford and the sailmaker, had sewn'up the French flags in the first place and had written what each one was in small figures at the bottom of the hoist. Orsini had been angry when he first saw the figures and had rounded on Jackson, who had just listened and then winked.
Winked! Not offered any explanation to the officer whom the captain bad made responsible for signals, which was himself, but winked. Admittedly no one else could see the wink, but a wink was no way to behave towards a midshipman. Why, he could have taken Jackson to the captain and reported his insolence. Not that that would have done any good, he admitted, his anger melting as quickly as it had arisen, because the captain would have pointed out that Jackson was helping him. And so he was; it was the kind of thing that Jackson did, quietly and without anyone else seeing, and Paolo sheepishly admitted to himself that he was grateful. It was so hot down here in this latitude; too hot to think and certainly too hot to remain good - tempered.
Anyway, the signals made no sense. Was the captain going pazzo? What was the point in this French frigate La Perle taking the Calypso in tow instead of La Creole! Did he have some other task for the schooner? And why tow the Calypso anyway? Why didn't the Calypso cast off the tow and get alongside La Perle, then pour in a few broadsides and board her in the smoke? That's what he would do if he was the captain. Captain Orsini. Dunque, three broadsides and allora, it would be all over.
And this tacking. Just look now: La Creole is towing them straight towards the shore! Mama mia, if she gets into stays on the next tack offshore well all end up on the beach. And you can be sure the Calypso will bilge herself on the only rocks along a mile of sand and spring some planks, so all we'll hear for the next couple of days will be the clanking of the chain pump and the creak of our own muscles. Every man will have to take his turn - in this heat too, when it is too hot to think, let alone pump. And the Dutch cavalry will come galloping along and start sniping at us. Then they'll bring up artillery and the Calypso will not be able to fire back because shell be heeled to seaward and all her guns on the landward side will be pointing up in the air. Accidente, what a mess, and all because Uncle Nicholas didn't - then, to his surprise, he saw they were still a mile from the beach, the Creole towing steadily, and the French frigate still hove - to. The way his imagination ran away with him ... if Uncle Nicholas had the slightest idea, he'd send him back to Aunt Gianna!
Ramage looked at his watch. Five minutes to go. There were nearly two hundred men waiting on the Calypso's lower - deck, which must be like an oven.
'Carry on, Mr Aitken!' he said, 'I'm just going below for a few minutes.'
He clattered down the companionway, noting yet again the comfort of the trousers: going up or down steps in breeches always caused an uncomfortable tightness across the knees. He made his way forward to the messdecks, where the men waited. Not only was it appallingly hot but it was smelly. There was the sickly stench of bilgewater, the last gallons that no pumps could ever clear, and the smell of which was usually cleared away by the downdraught of the sails. At anchor the water settled, but now, with the ship rolling under tow and no sails set, the effect was like stirring up a stagnant pond on a hot, windless day.
The men were grouped round the ladders with their officers. Wagstaffe, the cheery Londoner, was obviously keeping his men amused; he had a good fund of stories and could mimic Stafford's Cockney accent. Baker, the burly young third lieutenant from Bungay, in Suffolk, was quiet; the chance of him telling a funny story to amuse his men was remote, but they all seemed to like him. And finally, of the sea officers, the fourth lieutenant, young Peter Kenton. His shortness and red hair made him conspicuous, and because his heavily freckled face was usually peeling from sunburn, he seemed younger than his twenty - one years. His men looked contented, while Rennick and his Marines were a compact mass of pipeclay.
All of them fell silent as soon as they saw Ramage, a silence not caused by awe but because they were obviously expecting him to say something. He had not
