could see three chairs and hoped he would sit down in the middle one. But the drunken lieutenant must have seen four and sat on the third because a moment later he fell over backwards. The startled look on his face before he hit the deck made Renouf think of a man who found himself falling over a precipice.
The Captain did not move, did not smile and did not start cursing. Nor did he threaten Michelet. In fact he did not even look down at him as the man struggled to his feet.
'Does he often do that?'
The eyebrows were slightly raised and the question might be facetious, or it could be serious. The voice was quiet enough. Renouf knew it could bode ill for the two bomb ketches, because commanding officers had been court-martialled for much less. Travelled in a tumbril for less, because Michelet was on duty, and sleeping or being drunk on duty was punishable by death.
'Er, no sir.' He had not intended to say 'sir', but the Captain had an odd effect on him. Renouf thought of him as 'sir' and the old phrase had slipped out. 'No Citizen, but we have had a long voyage and I'm afraid we all celebrated last night.'
Renouf tried a conspiratorial grin and hoped that the Captain would not smell the fresh wine on Michelet's breath nor appreciate that Lieutenant Renouf shared the responsibility for Michelet's condition, even though he was himself now sober. There was a noticeable tremor of the hands, a redness of the eye, a queasiness of the stomach, but he was sober, the smell of wine on his breath being old and stale from last night's wine. Admittedly he had been pulling a cork when a seaman shouted into his cabin that there was a frigate alongside, and then he vaguely remembered a conversation with someone on board a strange ship the previous night.
'Citizen Michelet reeks of fresh wine; in fact the front of his shirt is still damp from where he spilled it.'
Again, Renouf was puzzled because the Captain's voice was a straightforward observation and gave no indication of his view of Michelet's absurd behaviour. The Captain was in fact talking to Michelet through him, as though Michelet when drunk spoke a foreign language only understood by Renouf, who was expected to translate.
'Has the lieutenant brought his orders?'
Renouf relayed the question by repeating it and hurried across the cabin to collect them as Michelet wrested them from his pocket.
The strange captain opened both sheets, glanced over them to make sure they were the same as the others, and handed them to Renouf, who went back to return them to Michelet and made sure he accidentally stood on the man's foot, hoping the sharp pain would help sober him, but Michelet swore violently, and there was little doubt that the Captain saw what had happened. Nor did the episode help sober up Michelet, who now he was sitting properly in a chair looked pop-eyed, like a freshly landed cod.
'When was the lieutenant last drunk while in command of the Brutus?'
What a question, Renouf thought, as he tried to think of an answer. Michelet was very drunk at least every other day, fine weather or foul, and slightly drunk all the time, and of course a captain was always in command of his ship, unless he was away on leave or official business. Because they had left Brest four months ago, Michelet must have been drunk one hundred and twenty times, if not more, because anniversaries of great victories, birthdays and even landfalls were good enough reasons for him to have extra celebrations. The worst of it was he forced some of his officers and petty officers to join him. One petty officer who came from Caen (which, being the centre of Calvados, meant the man was hardly a stranger to liquor) had finally gone off his head, leaping over the side one night screaming that the guns had broken loose and were running after him. That had been hushed up and described in the log as an accident in which the petty officer had been killed by a fall down a hatchway.
'I don't know, sir - I've never been on board his ship.'
'But you are his senior officer; the two ketches form a squadron.'
'Yes, Citizen, but . . .' he could not think of a 'but' and realized that Michelet's head was drooping; his chin was resting on his chest and he was dribbling, his whole body shaken every minute or two by a prodigious hiccup.
There was no point in trying to save Michelet now; anyone who was not only fool enough to come on board a senior officer's ship drunk but then allowed himself to fall asleep (or drop into a drunken stupor) while being questioned deserved whatever punishment came his way. But in all honesty it might have been me, Renouf thought.
Now the Captain was looking at Renouf as though he could read his thoughts and it was like staring at the muzzles of two cannon. That fool Michelet had scuttled the pair of them. If the Captain started questioning Fructidor'smen about their commanding officer there were two or three who would be only too willing to exaggerate and say Renouf drank too much, just because he had flogged them a few times. No doubt the same went for Michelet.
'Neither of you will be drinking wine again for a long time ...'
He will have to court-martial us, and no court has yet sentenced a man not to drink, Renouf thought.
'. . . because of course you are now both prisoners of war.'
What was that? Renouf repeated the sentence to himself. It had been spoken clearly enough. The accent was indeed Parisian - 'because of course you are now both prisoners of war'.
'Prisoners, Citizen? How can we beprisoners?'
'This is a British ship of war.'
A joke! Not a very good one, but now was the time to laugh, and he had to laugh for Michelet as well. The Captain was not laughing. Not even smiling. In fact he looked serious and might even be sneering.
Now he was calling an order. Was it in English? Mon Dieu, it sounded like it! Renouf had heard English spoken by fishermen before the war. Through the door came the sentry, holding a cutlass and a pistol. Not a French design of pistol. And the man was gesturing that he should go to the door.
'This man is going to take you up on deck so that you can see this ship is flying British colours . . .'
'But Citizen . . . Citizen, she is a French frigate! I recognize the class!'
'She was, until the British captured her in the West Indies. She is now the Calypso, one of His Britannic Majesty's frigates.'
'But... but... I can't believe it!'
'I commanded the ship that captured her, but just go up on deck with this Marine sentry. If you don't believe the evidence of our colours, you are free to speak to any man you see.'
Renouf heard the Captain give a quick order to the man, who took him by the arm after stuffing the pistol back in his belt, and led him out through the door and up the companionway. On deck the sun was just warming the planking and Renouf glanced aft, by now knowing what he would see. There were the British colours, the cloth barely moving in the early morning breeze. He looked across at each bomb ketch in turn and saw that they had not noticed the colours. The fools! Then he realized that although the frigate's port lids were not triced up, all the frigate's guns were manned. One broadside would destroy the Fructidor, the other broadside would reduce the Brutus to kindling.
This aristo of the Royal Navy had brought the Calypso into the bay in the darkness, anchored so that his ship was perfectly positioned between the two ketches, and then patiently waited for the Frenchmen to wake up. Renouf suddenly felt cold as he turned and walked back down to the cabin, followed by the sentry. This captain was a cool one. He must have confidence and a droll sense of humour. But if he intended to kill them all, obviously he would have fired broadsides at first light. Then, as Renouf went back to his chair and sat down again and looked up at the Englishman, he was not so sure.
He suddenly remembered why the name Ramage had seemed vaguely familiar. He had been thinking that he knew it from some French circumstance, but now he remembered the Royal Navy captain who had started off by rescuing that Italian woman aristo from somewhere close to here, and later in the West Indies had completely destroyed the convoy intended to relieve Fort de France, in Martinique.
Now it was coming back to him like a flood tide: that was where Ramage had captured this very frigate. Four frigates had been escorting the convoy and Ramage sank two and captured two. The cabin began to move in the most curious way, as though it was swaying, and then it went blurred, as though he was looking at it under water, and then night suddenly fell.
'Sentry!' Ramage called, 'this blessed Frenchman's just fainted. Get him out of here.'
CHAPTER THREE
Shortly after dawn Ramage was back on the quarterdeck watching the curious outline of the two French ships emerging more sharply as daylight spread across the bay. They were not Mediterranean vessels; he was sure of that. They seemed to be typical galliots of the French Channel ports - except that the mainmasts were set so far aft, and the stays from the mainmast to the stemhead, bowsprit and jibboom seemed fewer than usual but comparatively massive. Odd-looking vessels, obviously, built for a special purpose, but for what?
He looked carefully, beginning at the bow. A comparatively short bowsprit and a long jibboom, three headsails lying in heaps at the foot of the stays, and he could just make out the upper curve of the drum of the windlass. It was a normal windlass and not a capstan, and to be expected. What was that? It looked like the rim of something canted at an angle. The muzzle of an enormous gun? A mortar perhaps? His eyes ran aft past the mainmast and there, just forward of the mizen, was another. These weird vessels were bomb ketches!
What on earth were bomb ketches doing here, along the Italian coast? They were not properly designed bomb ketches, specially built in one of the naval yards, but merchant ship hulls which had been adapted - strengthened to take the weight of the mortars and their enormous recoil, the mainmast stepped further aft, and the rigging simplified so that no shrouds, halyards, sheets and stays went across the fields of fire or, equally important, were close enough to the muzzle flash to catch fire.
Southwick, freshly shaved, hat four-square on his head with wisps of white hair sticking out like hay beneath a nesting hen, his face settled in a cheerful grin, walked up to Ramage as he stood at the binnacle and said: 'A couple of Dunkirkers, eh?'
'I don't know about Dunkirk,' Ramage said, 'but built fairly close. Notice anything else?'
Southwick took off his hat and scratched his head, a typical gesture, like someone tidying the head of a mop. His forehead wrinkled as he concentrated on looking at the ship to starboard. He took Ramage's proffered telescope and adjusted the focus. 'Ah,' he said finally. A few moments later he repeated it. 'Ah. Two mortars.' He
