Southwick, telescope under one arm, said lugubriously: 'I've been watching those privateers for an hour or two. There's something odd about 'em, but I'm damned if I know what it is.'
They might be like us, brandy in - the water casks.'
Southwick grimaced: he had not been allowed to forget the purser's concern, nor had he yet devised a satisfactory way of disposing of it.
Ramage settled himself in the sternsheets, careful that the butts of the pistols did not jab his ribs, and the gig cast off. Jackson steered the boat at the head of a small armada: immediately astern was the launch with twenty - four boarders and commanded by Wagstaffe, then the pinnace with sixteen under Baker and finally the cutter with another sixteen under Kenton, who was enjoying his first command in what he hoped would be an action.
In Ramage's gig Rennick sat stiffly on a thwart with his Marines, and, although his head did not move, his eyes missed nothing: any sign of movement on board the privateers, a grease stain on a Marine's tunic, a button missing, a musket butt whose woodwork showed a scratch which had not been carefully stained and then waxed.
As the gig leapt forward, the rowers' faces soon glistening and then running with perspiration, Ramage watched the sides of the channel and the privateers with all the concentration of a hungry poacher uncertain whether the gamekeeper really was ill in bed. Small rowing boats from which two or three men had been fishing suddenly scurried for the shore as they saw the boarders leaving the Calypso; men who had been working on the quays or walking along the paths lining the banks farther down stopped to watch, the more prudent of them then disappearing. A woman snatched up a small child and ran back towards Punda; a soldier on the Otrabanda side stood still, obviously uncertain what to do. Shutters slammed shut across many windows of houses facing the channel and sent gulls squawking off in alarm.
Then, as the gig approached, Ramage watched the privateers. The ten were anchored in pairs, the Trade wind swinging them diagonally across the channel. Presumably each pair was secured together to make it easier for the maintenance parties: half a dozen men could just as easily look after two privateers rafted up alongside each other as one. The first pair soon obscured his view of the rest, but they were all big vessels. The nearest was the largest and smartest - a schooner perhaps a little smaller than La Creole. He counted the ports - she was pierced for ten guns, and a couple of bowchasers. Were they carronades, intended to sweep the victim's deck with grapeshot as she approached? Black hull, buff masts, white topmasts. Booms Mack, which was strange. All the paint was dull and neglected, yet the sun reflecting from some of the rigging showed that it had been recently tarred.
The second privateer, beyond, was ketch - rigged, her hull painted green, the dark - green of slave ships, the colour of mangrove leaves so that they could hide in the narrow inlets, their hulls blending with the bushes lining the banks. Her lower masts were buff and her topmasts white, so anyone looking for them would be unlikely to spot them against the white of clouds. Ramage once remembered explaining all that to an Army officer, who expected the topmasts to be blue, to match the sky, not realizing that in the Tropics, and particularly on the Guinea coast, there was nearly always broken cloud scudding along. Yes, with that sweeping sheer and low freeboard the ketch was probably a former slaver now finding that in wartime privateering was more profitable.
He felt sure that the nearest privateer, the schooner, belonged to Brune; the leader, or most senior of the privateers, would choose the best berth. In an emergency, the schooner would be the first out of the harbour because she was the nearest to the entrance. And when Brune was on board but felt lie an evening in one of Amsterdam's brothels or cafes his boat had the shortest distance to row. ''
There I A definite movement behind that bowchaser, which was a carronade. And a blur of blue behind the first gun, die washed - out blue that French seamen always favoured. Ramage stood up, drawing his cutlass and waving it a couple of times to attract the attention of the boats astern before pointing to left and right. Even without looking astern he knew that Wagstaffe had started to turn the launch to larboard and Baker would swing the pinnace out to starboard, while Kenton moved over to larboard a few yards with the cutter to be between Ramage and Wagstaffe. The four boats, in line abreast, now made a series of individual targets and as, they took up their positions the men rowed even harder at the oars.
Suddenly the schooner's carronade and first two guns were run out, their barrels jabbing from the ports like black, accusing fingers. Ramage, feeling that the gig was rowing right into the muzzle of the carronade, suddenly stood up again and, using the speaking trumpet that he had brought with him, shouted in French: 'If you fire, we will give no quarter!'
For more than a minute nothing happened and Ramage reckoned that the threat, the sight of four boats laden with boarders, and the harbour entrance blocked by a British frigate, was going to be enough to make the men in the privateers surrender. But the carronade gave an obscene red wink; suddenly yellow, oily smoke spurted out and with a noise like ripping calico the sea fifteen yards away to starboard erupted as if a hundred great fish had broken the surface in a gigantic leap to escape a marauding shark.
The crash of the gun firing was deafening but a moment later, as if from a great distance, Ramage heard Stafford's voice, a mixture of awe and scorn: The capting'd flog us if we aimed that bad I'
'And hell flog you anyway unless you put your back into that oar,' Jackson snarled. They shouldn't miss with the next round.'
The Frog wiv the grapeshot'll drop it on 'is foot and waste time cussing.'
Ramage saw that the second and third guns, 6 - pounders, were trained more to larboard, at the launch and the cutter.
'Quick,' Ramage snapped at Rennick, 'have your men fire at the ports!'
He cursed himself for not doing it sooner. The chances of a musket ball hitting Frenchmen were slight - any Marine who could fire through a port from a fast - moving boat would be a king among sharpshooters - but the thud of musket balls into woodwork might spoil the enemy gunners' concentration. The gig's oarsmen's ears would soon be ringing as the muskets fired over their heads, but it was the only chance of saving the men in the other boats.
Rennick snapped an order that could be heard in all the boats and in a moment the Marines were standing, one knee on the thwarts. Ramage could hear a succession of dicks as the men cocked the locks and then, within a couple more seconds, all had fired and some were coughing as the smoke drifted back and caught their throats.
Forty yards to go: Ramage could see dried salt forming a grey band two or three feet broad above the privateer's water - line and the black paint had the mauvish tinge that came from too much sun, salt - and age. The seams of the hull planking were opening up with the heat of the sun constantly on one side.
The bow!' he called to Jackson. 'Stand by, men; well board over her bow: up the bobstay, anchor cable, anchor stock - men with broad shoulders give the little chaps a leg - up!'
The Marines were frantically ramming home fresh shot as they reloaded their muskets, and now most of them were priming. 'One more volley through the ports, sir?' Rennick asked. They've all got pistols.'
And why not, Ramage thought they were dose enough now that at least a few shot should get through the ports, and discharged muskets 'could be left in the boat because, as Rennick had just pointed out, each Marine had a pistol, like the seamen.
'Very well, but aim with care!'
Again mere was what seemed a ragged volley which in fact showed that each man was firing carefully, aiming for the narrow gap between gun and bulwark. There was more space at the top, but they were now so dose that the barrel of the gun helped protect the French gunners.
Suddenly there was an enormous crash, a thump of invisible pressure, and smoke filled the boat, followed by a distant shriek and confused shouting. The sun darkened and then lightened, and Ramage felt his lungs burning as he breathed in gun smoke. But his men were still rowing; the oars were still squeaking in the rowlocks and they came out into the sunlight again.
He glanced round to larboard, guessing what he would see. The second gun had fired and the cutter was now just a swirl in the water with splintered planking and oars floating away. Heads were bobbing about in the wreckage - several heads. Wagstaffe and the launch were still rowing fast but farther away now because, Ramage was glad to note, the second lieutenant was making for the schooner's stern, which also took him out of the arc of fire of the first gun. With Ramage's men boarding over the bow and Wagstaffe's over the transom, with luck Baker would board amidships, providing Ramage's men could silence that carronade.
Ramage twisted his cutlass belt round so that the blade hung down his back and would not trip him; he pushed the pistols more firmly into his waistband and jammed his hat firmly on his head.
Twenty yards, ten, five - and then the gig was under the privateer's bow, the oars were backing water to stop the boat, and there was a wild scramble as men began climbing, Ramage grabbed the thick, rusty lower fluke of the spare anchor and kicked upwards. The top edge of the planking, doubled for a couple of feet below the sheer line, made a narrow ledge for his feet so that he was held horizontally. He paused for a moment and saw that one swing up with his legs would enable him to catch his feet in the bottom edge of the port for the bowchase gun, the carronade that had missed the gig but which by now must have been reloaded and ready to fire.
He tensed his muscles and heaved upwards, and a moment later was standing spreadeagled across the port, off balance and leaning inboard with his belly against the wide muzzle of the gun. At the breech, four feet away, he saw a blur of movement: a man to one side cocked the flintlock; a second man, behind and beyond the recoil of the gun, began to take the strain on a lanyard - the trigger line which fired the gun. Within a moment the carronade would fire and blow him in half - the men were apparently aiming for Baker and the pinnace at the very moment that Ramage appeared at the port. He tugged for one of his pistols. It came clear of the waistband and his thumb cocked it as one of the Frenchmen screamed a warning to the others and lashed out at Ramage with a handspike, a six - foot - long steel - tipped lever used to move the other guns and which would have crushed Ramage's head if the tip had not caught the side of the face of another man in the French gun's crew. Ramage, still seeing it all as a blur, aimed along the lanyard towards the man at the end and fired; then regaining his balance he wriggled sideways round the barrel and in through the port just as the man with the lanyard - the gun captain, in fact - collapsed within a foot of the man hit by the handspike.
As he tugged his second pistol free he sensed rather than saw men rushing past him: his own men from the gig who, coming over the bow, had not found so fast a route on board. The rest of the carronade's crew had vanished - fled aft, presumably, when they saw the Calypsos coming over the bow. But as Ramage looked back out of the port to see where the other boats were, he realized that the fighting had stopped: the privateer's crew were dead or had surrendered.
Then in the sea a few yards away he saw the expanding circle of splintered wood, the remains of the cutter with men clinging to the wreckage. Wagstaffe had obeyed his orders and not stopped with the launch, but now a boat could go back and pick up survivors. Jackson was standing in front of him, grinning cheerfully. 'All surrendered, three wounded, and this chap here - ' he pointed to the man hit by the handspike - 'and one dead, the one you shot, sir.'
'And our casualties?'
'None on board here, sir, but the cutter . . .'
'Yes, get back and pick up the survivors; I can see several men holding on to wreckage.'
Then Wagstaffe was reporting and then Baker, and after making sure the prisoners were being guarded, Ramage led them in a dash to the second privateer alongside, but there was no one on board. There were still eight more privateers to be secured, and after returning to the schooner and leaving instructions for securing the prisoners, he ordered the men back into the boats. As an afterthought he ordered one of the guards to lower the French flag, and the man paused a
