Ramage nodded. 'Yes, the number of men and the times they leave or board the Lynx. By the way, Martin, if you suspect there are isolated rocks, get a second boat so that you can sink a line between the two of you and sweep the bottom. Or anyway drag to a definite depth.'
'How deep, sir?'
'Five fathoms,' Ramage said. Few ships drawing thirty feet would ever anchor here; the phrase 'Swept to thirty feet' written on a chart was a warning that below five fathoms there might be isolated rocks to foul an anchor cable. It was all too common for a ship's cable to wind itself round rock or coral as she headed first one way and then another with each change of wind or tide, and often the first hint of trouble came only when trying to weigh - or the rock chafed through the rope and the ship found herself drifting, her cable cut and an anchor lost.
Turning to Rossi and Stafford, each of whom was now wearing a canvas apron to keep some of the water off them as they hauled up the lead, he said: 'You'll find Mr Martin will take you close to one or two of the prizes as you row a line of soundings. Tell him anything you notice - number of guns, how many guards, if any passengers are on deck, if sheets, braces or tacks have been unrove . . . you know the sort of thing.'
A few minutes later the boat was heading for the first rock, and through the telescope Ramage could see that she was being watched by the privateersmen. Once she was past the Lynx and the men started heaving the lead as the boat was rowed slowly across the bay, the privateersmen lost interest: the Calypso's boat was doing what their captain had said he had orders to do ...
Ramage snapped the telescope shut and said to Aitken: 'You have your shipwatchers at work?'
Aitken grinned and said: 'The privateersmen won't spot them if you can't see them, sir.'
Together they walked over to Bowen: the surgeon was wedged into the shadowy corner of a gunport, a slate on his knees.
'Not much to report, sir. There are at least eight guards. They had eight women walking the deck for half an hour, and then eight men - I presume the husbands; they were not dressed as seamen - for another half an hour. They used the after companionway.'
That was an important point: it meant that in the Earl of Dodsworth, one of the Honourable East India Company's newest ships, the sixteen passengers were almost certainly being kept prisoner in their own cabins. Eight married couples, eight cabins. Or were some of the women daughters with separate cabins? Or one or two of the men bachelors? It was a hopeless problem to work out. East Indiamen varied in the number of passengers they carried: there were different classes, the people ranging from important members of theCompany and its military service to clerks and writers, as they were called. Those big ships normally carried a couple of dozen passengers, the dozen most important paying a hundred pounds each (with food and linen extra) for the passage and the honour of dining at the captain's table.
Bowen grunted and wrote on his slate. 'Another four women, and the same eight guards - I recognize their shirts.' He picked up the telescope again. 'The guards have cutlasses. I presume pistols, too, but I can't distinguish them.'
'Looks as though they put a limit of eight prisoners on deck at any one time,' Aitken commented. 'Probably means eight guards. These four women will have four husbands . . .'
'Why not exercise the four men with the women, then?' Bowen asked.
'I've no idea,' Aitken answered. 'Modest privateers, no doubt.'
Ramage said: 'Keeping the wives separate from the husbands creates uncertainty. The men worry about their women; the women are lost without their husbands.' And I should know, he thought; the Herveys will have long since arrived in Paris and Gianna will have gone on to Volterra - providing Bonaparte has not already arrested her or the Herveys persuaded her to abandon the journey. At that moment he realized for the first time that the Corsican was cunning enough to keep his secret police away from her: his spies might well have told him that there were desperate men in Volterra who, the minute the Marchesa returned to rule again, would do Bonaparte's work for him ...
'Have you any idea if she's homeward or outward bound?' Aitken asked Bowen.
'Homeward, I should think,' the surgeon said promptly. 'Every piece of standing and running rigging is grey; the sun has bleached the John Company colours -' he indicated the flag flapping in the breeze, the red bars now a faded pink. 'Before the first of January this year John Company ships flew that ensign, seven white and six red horizontal stripes, with an old Union in the upper canton of the fly. If she's come from India she won't yet know of the change in the Union.'
Aitken nodded and grinned. 'For a surgeon, you're well informed on flag etiquette.'
'I always remember Southwick saying it looked like alternate slices of lean and fat bacon, but the only change now is adding the red saltire of the Irish after the Act of Union.'
Ramage watched Martin turn his boat as it reached the first rock and stop while a seaman hove the lead for the first sounding. Not above four fathoms, from the look of it, and close to the Lynx. Would the privateer draw more than a couple of fathoms, twelve feet, on that length? Perhaps, to give a bite when she was driving to windward after a prize. If they had any sense, they 'd anchor closer in, where it was too shallow for the Calypso, to guard against a surprise attack. Still, it was proof enough of their confidence that they had not done so: they must be sure that Captain Ramage would never risk the hostages who at the sound of the first shot would have their throats cut...
He walked with Aitken to where Southwick, with the second telescope, was watching the second British ship and the Dutch one. 'Nothing very exciting, sir,' the master reported. 'The British ship, the Amethyst, seems to have ten passengers and four guards. They had three women on deck for half an hour, then seven men. Same four guards, and I haven't seen anyone else. The Dutchman's the Friesland. I reckon both ships are homeward bound: new rigging here and there, but simply replacing worn.'
'Amethyst ... do you remember the Topaz?' Ramage asked.
Why, surely she must be one of Mr Yorke's ships - weren't all of them named after precious stones, sir?'
'Yes, but I don't know how many he has. A dozen or so, I think.'
'Well,' Southwick said, as though announcing his verdict after judging a case, 'I've seldom seen a ship in such good shape: I was going to comment that her owners didn't stint the master when it came to paint and ropework. So she could be one of his fleet. He'll be grateful to us.'
'So far all we've done is look at her,' Ramage said sourly. 'Are you sure about the number of guards in the ships?'
'Yes, four in each. What's Bowen report on the Earl of Dodsworth?'
'Eight guards for sixteen passengers.'
'Ah, Army officers going on leave! The privateersmen are wary of those in John Company's military service. A few wild subalterns will not take kindly to being prisoners.'
'Good thinking,' Ramage said, irritated that he had not worked it out for himself. 'But why not keep them on shore with the seamen?'
Southwick sniffed, a slightly patronizing sniff that Ramage, who could have answered his own question a moment after he had spoken it, knew only too well: it said, without uttering a word, that 'old Southwick' knew most of the answers. He often did, too, which was why the sniff infuriated every officer in the Calypso.
Very well, the Company's military officers were being kept on board the Earl of Dodsworth because it was easier to guard prisoners locked in a cabin than kept in a tent among a few score seamen. The passenger cabins of a John Company ship were substantial, probably mahogany; the cabins of a man of war were canvas stretched over light wooden frames . . .
The bosun, lying comfortable along the barrel of the fourth gun on the starboard side, proffered his slate but Ramage, glimpsing the sprawling writing, said: 'Tell me in your own words.'
'Well, this Heliotrope –'he pronounced the name correctly, having listened to his orders from Aitken, but spoke it with the distaste of a bishop's wife referring at breakfast to an errant curate, '- has four privateersmen on board as guards, an' six passengers - two men and two women and two children, a boy an' a girl. Guards armed with cutlasses. No muskets. Perhaps pistols but I couldn't see any. Passengers kept aft - probably in their own cabins. They pump the ship once an hour for about ten minutes. All French ships leak, so it's nothing to worry about. Sails furled, sheets, tacks and braces rove... s'about all, sir.'
It was very good, considering the bosun had no telescope.
'Did they pump while the prisoners were on deck?'
'No, sir: they brought up the women and children first and exercised 'em: then pumped; then brought the men up. They're due to pump again any minute.'
The gunner, the only man in the ship Ramage disliked and regarded as incompetent, but did nothing about changing, had kept a sharp lookout on the remaining ship, the French Commerce. 'No prisoners brought up while I've been watching, sir. Four privateersmen just walking about and leaning on the taffrail, spitting. Not all at once; I've distinguished four different men. Seem to have no duties; one comes on deck and looks round, then I don't see anyone for half an hour.'
As they walked back to the quarterdeck, Aitken said to Ramage: 'The Earl of Dodsworth seems their prize of prizes, then the Amethyst, Heliotrope and Friesland rank equal.'
Roughly one guard to two hostages, Ramage noted. Tomás and Hart were not making idle threats about murdering them if necessary: each guard would have a pistol and a cutlass...
He left Aitken on the quarterdeck watching Martin's progress sounding towards the second rock. He saw the other two boats lying to grapnels off the beach, so the two surveying parties should be at work. Ramage sat down at his desk with a sigh and pulled his notes towards him. He wrote a second page, naming the five ships, and listing the number of passengers and guards. Then he added up the totals - forty passengers (seventeen women, twenty-one men and two children) and twenty-four guards.
Assuming the five ships had the usual number of officers and men, there would be sixty-five or seventy officers and men being guarded on shore, and given that there was no suitable building, this would be the biggest task for the privateersmen - unless . . . Ramage's stomach shrivelled at the idea: unless all those officers, petty officers and seamen had been warned that any attempt at escape would mean the massacre of the passengers. That would explain why the passengers were under guard in the ships and the crews on shore when the Calypso arrived. The passengers were already the hostages; it had taken no stroke of genius to tell the Calypso what they had already told the crews of their prizes.
Ramage was just realizing the hopelessness of his position when he thought of the second privateer, due in any day with more prizes. More ships, more passengers, more guards, and her own crew to reinforce the Lynx's men watching the prisoners on shore. There was no reason to suppose she would be less successful than the Lynx, so any day now there could be another five prizes here, with forty-eight guards watching eighty hostages . . . Enough privateersmen with enough hostages, Ramage realized - and wished he had gone on halfpay, as Gianna had wanted - to force the Calypso to surrender. And he knew, without giving it a moment's more thought, that the instant Tomás or Hart demanded the surrender of the Calypso as the price for not massacring eighty hostages, he would agree. He had no choice, although no court martial could ever agree because none of the captains forming the court would ever believe that Tomás and Hart would carry out their threat. One had to see both men's eyes to understand that: they were both outcasts from the human race by their own choice. In wartime, privateers
