The matelot swayed, a puzzled vacant expression on his face, waiting for the pain to start, and everyone expected blood to spurt because clearly Ramage's knife had just eviscerated the man.
Instead his trousers fell down in a heap round his ankles.
'Next time it won't be your trousers,' Ramage said. 'Now, where are the keys to free the prisoners?'
The sailor stood, speechless and paralysed by fear.
Ramage prodded him with the pistol, forcing him to take a step back. The man had enough presence of mind to step out of his trousers and Sarah picked them up, checked if they had a pocket, and finding they had not, walked to the ship's side and threw them into the sea.
'It doesn't make up for my torn dress,' she said to no one in particular, 'but it is very satisfying!'
Auguste had taken command of his brother, Louis and Gilbert, and had them lined up with the muskets covering the other matelots. Auguste picked up the lantern and then, as an afterthought, put it down again, took the big bottle of rum and tossed it over the bulwark. 'Madame has the right idea,' he said, 'no one gets fighting drunk without spirits to drink and,' he added slyly, 'no man is a hero without his trousers.'
With that he took out his knife and cut the belts of the other three matelots, leaving them standing with their trousers round their ankles. 'Forgive me, madame,' he said to Sarah, 'but I am following your husband's example.'
'I am a married woman,' she said demurely.
'What a wife,' one of the matelots muttered. 'She uses a pistol like a filleting knife. '
'I need another lantern,' Ramage said to Gilbert. 'Will you get ours up from the boat? Take Louis with you and bring the cutlasses too. This fellow,' he tapped the sailor on the head with the flat of the knife, 'will suffer if his friends misbehave while you are gone.'
As soon as Gilbert and Louis returned with the lantern and cutlasses, Ramage commented: 'Time is short: that shot may bring over inquisitive people.' To the trouserless seaman, who seemed to be the senior of the survivors, he said: 'Now we free the British prisoners. If you want to live to an old age, you will help.'
The matelot haltingly explained that the irons had only four bars running through them, secured by four padlocks, and the four keys were on a hook in the cabin the bosun had been using. Suddenly Ramage remembered the other two guards. Where were they?
Ramage sent Gilbert with his lantern down the companionway into the gunroom ahead of the matelot and himself. The lantern lit the steps and showed the matelot's movements clearly. Since the stroke that had cut his belt and lost him his trousers, it was clear that the man feared the blade more than the pistol, which surprised Ramage. Perhaps the wretched matelot's imagination conjured up a more horrifying picture of what a knife could do to a man walking about clad only in a thick woollen jersey and a pair of felt shoes obviously cobbled up by a clumsy sailmaker.
The sailor pointed to the second lieutenant's cabin and followed Gilbert into it. The two men took up all the space and Ramage stood at the doorway, with the point of the knife just resting on the base of the matelot's spine, so that he moved slowly and very obviously kept clear of Gilbert and the lantern.
Finally he reached round very slowly, offering four large keys to Ramage, like an acolyte at communion. 'These are the ones, sir.'
'You carry them. Call to the other two guards and warn them to put their weapons down, or you'll die. Now we go and undo those padlocks.'
The next cabin was empty. 'The captain was here,' the matelot said hastily, 'but he was so ill they took him to the hospital yesterday.'
Ramage felt a surge of relief. He had not looked forward to interviewing a captain who drove his crew to mutiny, whatever his state of health.
The two guards were collapsed in a drunken stupor and the prisoners were lying at the fore end of the lowerdeck. Iron rings protruded from the deck so that metal rods through leg irons needed only a padlock at one end - the other was too bulbous to pass through the eye - to secure each of the four rows of men. They all looked up, and although blinking and squinting in the lantern light, all were wide awake, obviously roused by the pistol shot.
Ramage decided it would be easier to ensure their attention if he left them prone on the deck for a few more minutes so he waved the matelot to one side, telling him to be ready.
'Gentlemen,' Ramage said loudly. 'I am Captain Ramage, of the King's Service. I spoke to one of your lieutenants while delivering potatoes - ah,' he pointed, 'it was you. Very well, in a few minutes you will all be free. I have this fellow here and three other French seamen on deck as prisoners and the bosun is dead - you heard the shot. But listen carefully: in addition to this man' - he gestured towards Gilbert - 'there are three other Frenchmen up there, dressed in fishermen's clothes. Two of them do not speak English but all three are responsible for your rescue. So be very careful.
'I shall put the six French guards in the open boat we came out in, and cast them adrift so that they can row into Brest Harbour with one oar and report what's happened. That will save us guarding prisoners, and there's been enough killing for tonight.'
There was some murmuring from three men who Ramage guessed were the lieutenants and the master. Very well, he would deal with them in a moment.
'The guards will report that the Murex has been recaptured by the English and sailed. Anyway that will be obvious to anyone standing on the beach. So, within ten minutes at the most of those irons being unlocked, I want this ship tacking down the Gullet under topsails. We'll let the anchor cable run to save time.
'Two more things. My wife is on deck. ' He then let a hard note come into his voice. 'Any orders I give will not be questioned. I have taken command of this ship. I do not have my commission but it is dated September 1797. Nor do I have orders from the Admiralty, but anyone doubting my authority can go off in the boat with the French guards and become a prisoner of war. '
CHAPTER SEVEN
The description of him dressed in a French fisherman's smock and trousers, and standing on the quarterdeck of one of the King's ships with his wife beside him wearing a badly torn dress cobbled up with sailmaker's thread, would soon, Ramage mused, be another story added to the fund of bizarre yarns which already seemed to surround him.
At least a westerly gale was not screaming over the ebb tide and kicking up the hideous sea for which Brest Roads were notorious; at least the stars were out and the moon had risen. And if there had been no war, he would regard this as the start of a pleasant voyage. But now in an instant it could all turn out very difficult. If one of those anchored French ships opened fire and the three forts lining the cliffs along the Gullet followed suit, then in this light wind the Murex would be battered ...
He picked up the speaking trumpet and the coppery smell seemed to complete the series of memories taking him back to the Calypso, to the Triton and then to the Kathleen.
'Let that cable run, Mr Phillips ... Foretopmen there: let fall the foretopsail.... Stand by, maintopmen!'
Strange orders, but ones carefully phrased because he had so few seamen. That delivery of potatoes had saved him - knowing how many men he would have available to handle the ship had allowed him to work out a rough general quarter, watch and station bill for two lieutenants, master and eleven seamen.
And what a bill! Seven sail handlers: four seamen for letting fall the foretopsail, three for loosing the maintopsail. Then the foretopmen had to slide down swiftly from aloft to haul on the halyards, and as soon as the yard was up, they had to hoist the jibs and staysails. The maintopmen in turn had to race down to tend their own halyard and then help the four remaining seamen who were to haul on sheets and braces to trim the yards and sails.
Of those four, two would have been helping the second lieutenant, Bridges, to let the anchor cable run ... The master, Phillips, would be on the fo'c'sle, making sure that the cable ran out through the hawse without snagging, and the headsails and their sheets did not wrap round things in that tenacious embrace so beloved of moving ropes. And he wondered if Swan, the young first lieutenant who was now waiting at the wheel, could remember how to box the compass in quarterpoints! It was something he would have known when he took his examination for lieutenant and, having passed, would have forgotten it...
Damnation, this wind was light... Better not too strong with such a tiny crew, but he needed enough breeze to get those topsails drawing and give him steerage way over the ebbing tide - by the time the Murex was drawing level with Pointe St Mathieu he would have dodged enough rocks and reefs to sink a fleet. The first of them was just abreast Fort de Delec, the dark walls of which he could already see perched up on the cliff on his starboard hand.
Ah! At last the foretopsail tumbled down as the men slashed the gaskets. He had made sure they had knives (it meant raiding the galley) to save valuable time: untying knotted gaskets (it was sure to be the last one that jammed) could cost three or four minutes.
Two men were coming down hand over hand along the forestay! The other two were coming down the usual way, using the shrouds. A puff of wind caught the sail so that it flapped like a woman shaking a damp sheet. To Ramage's ears, by now abnormally sensitive to noise, it seemed every ship in the anchorage must hear the Murex's foretopsail sounding like a ragged broadside.
Now the maintopsail flopped down with the elegant casualness of canvas in light airs.
A rapid thumping, as though a great snake was escaping from a box, ended with a splash and a cheerful hail from Phillips: 'Cable away, sir!'
'Very well, Mr Phillips,' Ramage called through the trumpet and warned Swan at the wheel, 'Be ready to meet her - the bow will pay off to starboard but for the moment the ebb has got her!'
The brig, with her bow now heading north as though she wanted to sail up the Penfeld river and into Brest, was in fact being swept sideways by the ebb down the Gullet towards the wide entrance, a dozen miles away and stretching five miles or so between Pointe St Mathieu on the starboard side and the Camaret peninsula to larboard.
The seamen were like ants at the base of each mast. Up, up, up! The heavy foretopsail yard inched its way upwards on the halyard and then a bellowed order saw it settle and the sheets tautening, giving shape to the sail.
The wind was still west; the feathers on the string of corks forming the telltale on the larboard side reassured him about that as they bobbed in the moonlight.
'I can feel some weight on the wheel now, sir,' Swan reported, as Ramage saw the maintopsail yard begin its slow rise up the mast. Damnation take the foretopmen, they had to make haste with those headsails: brigs were the devil to tack without jibs and staysail drawing, and already the Murex was gathering way as though she wanted to run up on the rocks in front of the Château.
Ramage lifted the speaking trumpet. He had to make them get a move on without frightening them into making silly mistakes. 'Foretopsail sheet men - aft those sheets! Brace men - brace sharp up!' Strangely-worded orders, but he had no afterguard.
Now he could see the sail outlined against the stars and it was setting perfectly, and Swan was cautiously turning the wheel a few more spokes.
'Maintopsail sheet men, are you ready? Take the strain - now, run it aft! Another six feet! Heave now, heave. Right, belay that! Now, you men at the braces,
