'Pretend,' Ramage growled.
After a few minutes, Sarah walked past where Ramage was waiting in the lee of the halfdeck. 'As soon as we spread out, the guards would get excited and make us bunch up together.'
Riley had heard her words and began shouting: 'Come on, you women! Keep together; this ain't a parade to church, yer know!'
'Perfect,' Sarah said. 'That's just the sort of thing they used to say.'
Jackson suddenly called urgently: 'There's a boat leaving the Lynx!'
It had to happen, Ramage thought bitterly, pulling off his uniform jacket. A man in a white shirt could be a guard because the bulwarks hid his breeches. He stared at the Lynx through the gunports, using a telescope he had found in the binnacle drawer. Four men at the oars, a couple of men sitting in the sternsheets. Not Tomás, nor Hart. Nor was the boat in any rush: whatever she was doing and wherever she was going, it was something routine. If she came to the Earl of Dodsworth ...
With the exception of the Marchioness, who was sitting in a chair right aft, the women were in a bunch, Sarah being closest to him. She had very quickly worked out a way of talking to him.
'Er, Captain...'
He turned, lowering the telescope.
'Yes, 'Miss for now'?'
'Lady Sarah, actually, Captain...' Ramage recognized the querulous voice of Mrs Donaldson, a big-boned woman who was the wife of the owner of jute factories in Madras. 'Her father is a marquis, you know.'
'Forgive me, Lady Sarah,' Ramage said, and from the impatient shake of the head knew he had not added to his knowledge of her. As Lady Sarah she could be the unmarried daughter of the Marquis, but if she had married someone without a title, she would still be Lady Sarah. Only if she had married someone with a title of his own could she have become 'Lady Blank'. But. . . the devil take it, he could not even remember the Rockleys' family name!
'Is the boat coming here?' demanded Mrs Donaldson.
'To us or the Commerce. I can't tell yet because the Commerce is almost between us and the privateer.'
'The hostages in the Commerce - your men have not rescued them yet?'
'The Commerce has no passengers, as far as we can make out.'
'What happens if the boat comes here?'
'If the men come on board, then we have lost the game.'
'Why? How ridiculous! There can only be a dozen men in that boat!'
'Half a dozen,' he could not resist correcting her, particularly since the number had no relevance.
'Well, you have two dozen! You can easily capture them,' Mrs Donaldson declared. 'Why, we women could deal with them!'
'I'm sure you could,' Ramage said gently. 'And having killed or secured them, then what happens?'
As Mrs Donaldson gave her views Ramage saw that Sarah had at last realized the problem: she bit her lower lip between her teeth, but Mrs Donaldson, in a patronizing voice, announced: 'Why, we add them to our prisoners and tell that horrible privateer man that now we have hostages, and if he doesn't go away we'll hang them all! Won't we, ladies!' She looked round her for agreement. A couple said, 'Yes, of course,' with the eagerness of nitwits, while the others were watching Sarah, perhaps unsure of what was making her doubtful but, after having her as a neighbour for so long, aware of Mrs Donaldson's intellectual shortcomings.
'I assure you, madam, that the privateer captain would not jib at the sight of a dozen of his men dangling by their necks from nooses: privateers are desperate men, and if only a few survive the action, it means their share of the spoils is bigger.'
'Don't you believe it, Mr Ramage -'
'Lord Ramage,' Sarah corrected, ignoring Ramage's request in her exasperation.
'Oh, indeed? One of the Blazeys, then? How interesting. St Kew, in Cornwall, isn't it? You must be the Earl of Blazey's son -'
'If that boat does not return safely to the Lynx, madam,' Ramage interrupted her, 'the privateer captain will give a signal which will result in all the passengers in the Friesland and Heliotrope being killed by the guards. Four men and four women in the Dutch ship, two men, two women and two children in the French.'
'Oh dear me, what will happen? You must do something, young man; do something at once!'
'He is trying to decide now, and he doesn't need your help,' one of the women said. 'Come on, leave the captain to his business.' With that the woman walked aft, followed by several of the others. Mrs Donaldson, however, stood where she was, twirling her parasol and tapping a foot.
'Young man, I demand to know what you intend doing!'
Ramage nodded to Rossi, who politely but firmly took Mrs Donaldson's arm. 'Signora, is down to your cabin now, the sun is too strong.'
'But I don't wish -'
'This way,' Rossi said, 'is dangerous, too much sun.' He took Mrs Donaldson's parasol and held it so low she could hardly see and, with her protesting that she liked the sun, the Italian had her almost trotting along the deck.
'I'm sorry,' Sarah murmured, 'I continually underestimate you.'
'Not now you don't; I've no idea what we do if that boat comes here. Kill or capture them to save ourselves, and kill the passengers in both the remaining ships - or surrender ourselves and save the others.'
'How many passengers in the Heliotrope and Friesland?'
'Fourteen.'
'Compared with sixteen here and how many in the Amethyst?'
'You have to balance twenty-six freed with fourteen still held hostage.'
'So you've already considered it from that point of view,' she said. 'Like a butcher weighing up meat.'
He sighed and lifted the telescope. 'I happened to know the figures; I've been living with them for the last few days. You were the first hostages to be released only because you were the nearest to the Calypso,' he added brutally, 'and the Amethyst was the next nearest.'
'I should have thought you would have considered it your duty to rescue the largest British ship first anyway,' she said, a cold flatness in her voice.
'I'm not rescuing any particular ship. My men and I are saving lives of innocent people - or trying to.'
'Don't say that to my father- he was the Governor General of Bengal.'
'I know - I remembered that at breakfast.'
'So that had no bearing on your rescuing us first?' Obviously she found it hard to believe.
He snapped the telescope shut with a vicious movement. 'You are at liberty to question my officers when you have the chance. We knew nothing of the identity of any of the hostages.'
'You mean the privateersmen said nothing to you?'
'Do they know?'
'Well, I'm sure they do. Someone must have told them!'
'I doubt it. I believe that they don't know for the simple reason that they could get almost a king's ransom for your father. A Governor General's ransom, anyway. How much would the British government pay to free him? Or the directors of the East India Company? They'd pay whatever was demanded.'
'Well, you've saved them the expense,' she said, it has cost you what must be a very irritating encounter with me. And if that boat comes here, I suppose everything is wasted anyway.'
'The boat isn't coming here.'
'How do you know?'
Ramage stared at her and then gave her the telescope. 'Give it to Mrs Donaldson when you've finished. The rectangular boxes they are lifting from the water are lobster pots.' He bowed and went down the companionway, knowing that his hands were shaking with anger but both surprised and pleased with himself for not showing it. Mrs Donaldson - thank goodness Rossi had understood that unspoken order. But Sarah - there was no way of lowering a parasol over her. He wondered what she looked like, lying naked on a bed. Well, he would never know, but one thing was certain: she could be damned annoying fully dressed on the upper deck.
He could just make out the first stars in Orion's Belt as they rose over the hills, and he glanced across at the black shape which was the Heliotrope. It was going to be a long swim tonight: the Heliotrope was much farther from the Earl of Dodsworth than the East Indiaman was from the Calypso, and his own job was going to be a lot more difficult because he would be warning French passengers. Still, he spoke good enough French to deal with that. Much worse was the problem facing Aitken, who had to board the Friesland and warn a number of Dutch men and women.
It was so peaceful - and so improbable that Captain Ramage, commanding the Calypso frigate, should be sitting here on number four gun, starboard side, in a John Company ship anchored off an Atlantic island so small few had heard of it. And thinking so many random thoughts his head seemed to be a mill stream in flood.
His fingers traced the 'GRII' cast into the gun between the trunnions. Not a new gun, by any means, but not used enough times to make a gun from the previous reign less useful. Well cared for, of course; he could feel the smoothness revealing many coats of gun lacquer, and in daylight he had seen that the ropes of the breeching, side and train tackles were in good condition: one could tell that without twisting the rope to see if the heart was still a golden brown, even though the outside had weathered grey.
It was a still night. The current kept the ships heading west of north as though they were half a dozen compass needles, but each one's heading was slightly different, so it was easy to see how the current came round the northern headland and curved into the bay with a scouring movement before meeting the southern headland and running out again.
That faint scent, crushed nettles and yet containing the muskiness he associated with the East he had never seen, and then the rustle of silk and the voice he knew he would never forget. 'You sit there with head bent like Atlas carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders,' she murmured.
He reached out and took her hand in a movement which seemed quite natural. 'The weight of my world, and that's quite enough!'
'We haven't made it any lighter - people like Mrs Donaldson and me. 'You must do something at once.' ' She mimicked Mrs Donaldson. 'I shudder every time I think about this morning.' She gave a curious start, like a suppressed hiccough.
'You've been crying, too. Not about that, surely?'
