bowels were troubling him and he came to the head, the so-called 'seat of ease' built in the stem, one each side of the bowsprit in an Indiaman like this and merely a wooden form with a circular hole. A seaman sitting there would hear someone climbing the anchor cable.
He had slowed down, his breathing shallow, until he realized that the chances of anyone being there were negligible and anyway it was too late to do anything about it. He resumed the scissor-cutting movement and worked his way up to the hawsehole, where he paused and listened. As soon as he was satisfied that no one had heard him he reached up, carefully holding the blade of the cutlass so that it did not hit a piece of metal and make a clang, and climbed on board.
Looking down at the sea he was almost hypnotized by the reflection of all the stars. He began to shiver as the water dripped off him, and he tried to squeeze as much as he could from his hair. His teeth were going to be chattering in a moment unless he did something about it. He walked aft until the belfry hid him from anyone abaft the fo'c'sle and reached over his shoulder to draw the cutlass, which he put flat on the deck and then removed the belt, now stiff and cold from the salt water. Then he pulled the pin from the stock and unwound it so that he was standing naked, except for the sheath knife on his shin.
Using the edge of his hand he wiped the drops of water from his body like a cook rolling dried pease into a jar; then he rubbed his body briskly. He twisted the stock between his hands, like a washerwoman squeezing the water from a towel, put it on the deck and smoothed it flat with his hands, and then wound it round his hips again, finally securing it with the pin. It was cold and clammy, but even as he put the wet and unyielding cutlass belt round his ribs again and tightened the buckle, he could feel the cloth warming slightly to his body.
Well, he was on board the Earl of Dodsworth and he could have been feeling a lot worse. His shin muscles were telling him he had swum a long distance; his thigh, shoulder and arm muscles were protesting at the climb up the rope, but he felt he could (in case of dire need) swim back to the Calypso and climb up her anchor cable.
As he warmed up and the salt water dried in his nostrils he realized that the ship smelled and sounded almost like a farmyard. There were several hen coops on the fo'c'sle, presumably supplying fresh eggs and white meat for the passengers. And turkeys, too. He could smell sheep's wool and guessed that several animals were tethered below with a couple of cows - no doubt, to provide fresh milk. Passengers were charged so much that they expected fresh food. Some of these passengers probably controlled areas of India as big as a dozen English counties, and were certainly not going to eat salt beef and sauerkraut!
The lantern just abaft the mainmast was dim; in fact the candle inside was obviously guttering, the wick probably fallen over so that it was only partly burning, the rest lying below the melted wax.
Ramage picked up the cutlass. The lives of sixteen passengers and the fate of an East Indiaman depended upon him not making any mistakes in the next few minutes. From infrequent visits to East Indiamen years ago, when he was a hungry midshipman and glad of an invitation to dinner on board - the richness of John Company food was famous among naval officers no matter what their rank - he remembered that the captain's cabin was right aft, with cabins for the most important passengers further forward on the same deck, and the cheaper cabins (for passengers who dined at the tables of the second and third mates) one deck lower.
Well, he needed to find the nearest passenger cabin that he could enter without a privateersman seeing him. He decided that going up and down companionways was the riskiest thing he could do; if a guard saw him, or he accidentally met one on the steps, there could be no doubt that a man rigged out with only a loincloth was an intruder and the alarm would be raised in moments.
Obviously he had to find the forwardmost passenger cabin on the upperdeck. Whether it was to starboard or larboard depended on the route he had to take to dodge the guards. How long since he had left the Calypso? It seemed hours ago. Weeks ago, in fact. It was probably only about twenty minutes at the moment, and very soon his boarding party would be slipping down into the water and beginning their long swim.
He came out from behind the belfry and saw the chimney of the galley. He continued moving to his right, his bare feet occasionally stubbing against an eyebolt or a coil of rope. After kicking one metal fitting - he could not see what it was - with a violence that seemed for a moment to have broken his left big toe, Ramage slowed down: he would have to look ahead at eye level, and then look down at the deck, before he moved. Looking ahead and trusting his feet to luck was an invitation to go sprawling.
Here was the companionway from the fo'c'sle down to the maindeck. He stood at the top and stared aft. Just the flickering lantern: no voices, no movement. Somewhere there a guard or two must be standing or sitting. A guard or a lookout or a privateersman doing both jobs. Eight guards - surely there must be at least two on watch?
The bottom rung creaked, but there was enough swell to make the Earl of Dodsworth pitch slightly, so that she gave a slight bow every minute or two, just enough movement for the masts to creak as they strained the shrouds and to make the yards grumble as they tried to swing round against the pull of the braces. But for the creaks, he thought, he could be moving through a graveyard: lockers, hatches, hen coops and scuttles looked in the darkness like tombs and gravestones, the rising moon, in its last quarter, beginning to give enough light to make the white paint look like marble.
Keeping close against the bulwark, just far enough away to clear the breeches of the guns, Ramage crept aft. Past the foremast and all its dozens of ropes forming the shrouds, halyards, topping lifts . . . Past the third gun, and the roundshot in racks round the hatch coamings, man-of-war fashion, each shot like a black orange resting in a cup-shaped depression cut into the wood.
Halfway to the mainmast he crouched down behind the breech of a gun and concentrated on the lantern. It lit a cone about ten feet in diameter on the deck, and it was set on a low table. Several things glinted to one side, like winking glass eyes. A cut-glass decanter and glasses? Ramage could think of nothing else that would flash in that fashion as he moved his head slightly.
Then, each side of the table, he picked out two easy chairs. The shape of them was indistinct - then he could just make out the figure of a man sprawled in each one. Not just lying back asleep but sprawled in the shapeless lump of a drunken man who had passed out.
The two guards on watch? It seemed likely. That left six others who would presumably be sleeping peacefully until the next pair were roused by these two. Well, the half-dozen were going to get a good long sleep, from the look of it.
He kept still for a few more moments. The hens in the coops forward clucked and then went back to sleep. Finally he was certain these were the only two men on deck, so six privateersmen should be sleeping somewhere below, and so were sixteen passengers, who would be locked in their cabins or bundled all together in a large cabin that could be guarded easily.
Would there be more guards on duty somewhere below? Was it likely? Why put the passengers in a separate cabin when they could be locked in their own cabins? In turn, that meant the other six guards would be sleeping near the passengers' accommodation, ready in an instant should anyone try to escape.
What were these two doing on deck, then? Presumably they were really lookouts; men whose task it was to watch for a boarding party from the Calypso. Could these men be the key to capturing the Earl of Dodsworth? It seemed so; they were (as far as the Lynx and the six guards off watch were concerned) the ones who would raise the alarm, whether the Calypso or the passengers made a move.
They were also, he realized, two of the men who would massacre the hostages in cold blood if they saw any rescue attempt being made from the frigate. At that moment Ramage found that he could cut their throats without a moment's hesitation.
He stood up and walked softly along the deck towards them, keeping well over against the guns so that if the lantern threw any shadow of him in the last few paces it would be seen only from over the side.
In a few moments he was standing beside the nearest man, breathing an unpleasant stench of rum and sweat. Beside him on the deck were an empty decanter and a glass, both on their side, both sparkling as the lantern flame danced and flickered. The man was lean with a narrow face, and he was breathing heavily with his mouth wide open to reveal at most three blackened teeth. The top of his head was bald but the hair growing on each side and the back was long, so that it resembled a mangy black cat curled up asleep. The second man was plumper, his hair tied in a queue, and there were several gold rings on the fingers of his hands, which were clasped across his stomach. There was an empty decanter and glass on the deck beside him, too.
On the table, opposite each man, gleaming dully in the lanternlight, was a pistol. Each was cocked. Each could be reached without the man standing up.
Cut their throats as they sagged back in a cloud of rum fumes? When he thought about the hostages, Ramage guessed he could do it - but was it necessary? He reached out for the nearest pistol, opened the pan and shook out the priming powder, blowing gently to remove the last trace. He repeated it with the second pistol. They still looked ready for use, but anyone squeezing the triggers would be disappointed; there would not even be a flash in the pan.
There was some rope a few feet away, neatly coiled, and in half an hour at the most the Calypsos would be on board. He picked up a pistol by the barrel and hit the nearest man on the side of the head with the butt. He took three steps to the other and hit him, careful not to bang anything with his cutlass, which he had transferred to his left hand.
The startling thing was that the men hardly moved. Perhaps they had slid further down in their chairs, but they still looked as though they had subsided in a drunken stupor, which of course they had, having exchanged in the last few moments one kind of stupor for another.
Ramage quickly pulled a length of rope from the coil, slashed it with his cutlass and then pulled off a second length. It took longer than he anticipated to roll the first man out of his chair and tie his arms and ankles. The second was equally difficult. Each was completely relaxed, as though every bone in his body had turned into calves-foot jelly.
Ramage dragged the two men to the guns, pushing each one into the deeply shadowed area under a barrel. Then, pausing as he decided to leave the lantern there, swinging its door open for a moment to straighten out the wick, he crept over to the main companionway and made his way down the steps.
There was another lantern hanging from the deckhead and it lit a row of doors, eight of them, four on each side. The first was open, the entrance to a black cavern; the rest had keys sticking out of them like tiny branches. The noise of several people snoring was coming from the first cabin. He tried to count the different tones. At least four people.
He crept closer to the door and listened again. Five. Yes, and there was another faint one, little more than steady but heavy breathing: six. The key was in the door, which was made of thick mahogany. The lock was solid brass and until recently had been polished - the Honourable East India Company ships were built of the best of everything. He swung the door gently until it closed and then turned the key. If the men inside were serious about escaping, they could probably break the lock with a few pistol shots, but they would be unlikely to try it in pitch darkness, when the risk of being hurt by a ricocheting ball was considerable.
Ramage decided to unlock the opposite cabin and rouse one of the hostages, to warn him of what was about to happen and leave him to release and warn the others, who would know and trust his voice and could then lock themselves in the safety of their cabins. He put down his cutlass carefully to leave both hands free and made sure the knife was loose in its sheath. As he slowly turned the key he wondered how the Calypsos were going to secure those six guards without a shot being fired. A shot... it needed only one. The moment the guards in the other ships heard a single shot, they would massacre the hostages, twenty-four men, women and children (assuming the sixteen in this ship were safe). That was why he had emptied the priming powder from the two pistols on deck; that was the reason none of the Calypsos had firearms, even though muskets and pistols could have been wrapped in oiled silk and canvas and carried on the rafts.
He was almost startled when the door pressed against him; then he realized he had turned the key and was pulling the handle. Quickly he opened the door wider, noted in the dim light from the lantern that there was a single bed in the middle of the cabin, shut the door behind him in case it swung and banged, and crept
