Ramage and the Freebooters (29 page)

‘If I could see him…’

‘Of course – look’ee, Ramage, I’ll arrange it for this afternoon. That’ll head off the deputation, too. I’ll send word – maybe you’d like to go up to see him – lovely house on the other side of the lagoon?’

‘At four o’clock then, sir? And transport?’

‘Of course, of course…’

The house of Mr Rondin was large and spacious as became a leading businessman of Grenada and cool with high ceilings. But there was too much silver, too much ornate chinaware, too many cut-glass decanters on display to indicate anything but that the Rondin’s were
nouveaux riches
.

And Rondin greeted Ramage with a curious obsequiousness in a large, octagonal drawing-room which had windows on five sides. A tall, angular man with white hair smoothed unfashionably flat on his scalp, his face equally unfashionably tanned by the sun, he bowed a greeting: ‘My Lord, I am John Rondin.’

Since he never used his title in the Service, for a moment Ramage was startled: then he realized Colonel Wilson must have emphasized it, probably making the most of what the Admiral had sent him. A lieutenant and a small brig was not much of a hand to deal; but shuffling in that the lieutenant was a lord and heir to one of the country’s oldest earldoms – well, it might take one trick, or at least divert some attention from the smallness of his ship.

As he shook hands, Ramage sensed Rondin’s grey eyes were missing nothing – yet there was no impression of prying. As soon as they were seated in comfortable cane armchairs and the coloured butler was pouring them drinks, Rondin said: ‘Does the Admiral intend sending more ships to reinforce you, my Lord?’

Ramage inclined his head towards the butler. Rondin nodded almost imperceptibly and promptly changed the subject: ‘You had a pleasant voyage from England?’

‘Yes – good weather most of the time, apart from the usual blows in the Bay of Biscay.’

‘Ah – the underwriters’ nightmare! I wonder how much that Bay’s cost them in claims for total losses…’

Ramage laughed. ‘Not enough to make them refuse to cover that part of the voyage.’

‘True – they grumble, they increase premiums, but they rarely go bankrupt.’

‘The essence of underwriting. Rather like being a bookmaker – always hedge your bets.’

‘And that’s just what it is,’ Rondin said, motioning the butler to leave.

As soon as the door was closed he continued: ‘You were quite right, my Lord: that man has been with me twenty years, but walls can have ears.’

Realizing his caution had reflected on Rondin’s employees, Ramage began to apologize but Rondin waved his hand.

‘You were quite right. I think I can guess what’s in your mind, but I’ll know in good time. Now tell me, do you expect reinforcements?’

‘No.’ Ramage said bluntly. ‘That doesn’t mean the Admiral isn’t very worried, but he hasn’t any other ships to spare.’ Ramage considered the lie was justifiable. ‘Yet I begin to wonder if a dozen frigates would help. However,’ he added warily, ‘I’d be glad of your views.’

Rondin lifted his glass and held it against the light, looking questioningly at the rich brown liquid. ‘I should have thought a dozen frigates would be just about enough – but forgive me, I’m not a naval man, merely a poor ship-owner becoming even poorer as the weeks go by…’

‘Perhaps I’ve misunderstood the situation, sir,’ Ramage said innocently. ‘Surely the schooners are being lost between here and Martinique?’

The ship-owner nodded.

‘And to privateers which – as far as anyone knows – materialize out of thin air, make their capture, and vanish with the schooner?’

Again Rondin nodded, and Ramage searched for a simile.

‘Then surely, it’s rather like a farmer losing cattle between the farmyard and the meadow. He sees them leave the farmyard, watches them part of the way to the meadow – and they don’t come back at milking time.’

Rondin said: ‘Yes – somewhat simplified, that’s the position.’

‘Yet with only 160 miles to sail to Martinique and two frigates patrolling the route, the schooners were still captured, even though they were almost in sight of a frigate most of the time.’

‘Yes – in daylight, anyway, but don’t forget they make part of the passage at night.’

‘No, I wasn’t forgetting; that’s why a dozen frigates are either not enough or too many. On a moonless night, visibility is about half a mile, so to cover the night passage you’d need a frigate at least every mile. Ten hours of darkness at say five knots – fifty frigates…’

Rondin twiddled his glass and said nothing for a full two minutes, his eyes focused on the tip of Ramage’s sword scabbard. Ramage waited, wondering if the idea would come to Rondin: it would be easier if the ship-owner thought of it: there’d be a lot more collaboration if Rondin thought he was nourishing his own plan.

Finally the man began talking, as if to himself.

‘The wolf is hiding in a wood very near to the farmhouse… Perhaps somewhere so near that no one thinks of looking there… He has powerful ears, eyes, nose… Or maybe his mate is even nearer and warns him…’

Ramage was thankful that Rondin was shrewd; but how near the farmyard would he accept as feasible? It was worth letting the idea mature a while before going into detail. So Ramage asked: ‘Can I have some facts now, Mr Rondin; details of how many ships have been lost, dates, cargoes, nationalities of their masters, where bound – that kind of thing?’

Rondin walked over to a desk. ‘I have most of the answers here: I recently wrote a report to the Governor listing the schooners lost and the dates they sailed.’

Taking out four or five sheets of paper, he glanced at them and gave them to Ramage, who asked: ‘Are schooners bound for Martinique the only ones lost?’

‘Yes.’

‘Never those for St Lucia or St Vincent?’

‘Few go to either island. Cargoes are transhipped at Martinique: that’s where the home trade assembles to wait for a convoy.’

‘Is there any pattern to the losses? Any particular cargoes or particular owners?’

‘No – I’ve looked already.’

‘And the sequence of losses – three schooners lost one after the other, say, then two get through safely?’

Rondin shook his head.

‘What about those that get through to Martinique – have any been captured on the return voyage?’

Rondin’s face suddenly became animated.

‘That’s strange – and I hadn’t thought about it! No, not one that reached Martinique has ever been captured on the way back – when it was sailing empty in other words. Surely that’s very significant?’

Ramage shook his head. ‘Only in showing a laden schooner is valuable and one in ballast isn’t. Privateersmen are interested in cargoes, not hulls. No profit in a hull – they can’t sell a schooner as a prize.’

‘What do you think they do with them?’

‘I don’t know – perhaps sink them or sail them down to the Spanish Main. That’s a possibility, but it means using a lot of men as prize crews – and getting them back again.’

‘And you don’t think it’s likely?’

‘For the moment, no,’ Ramage said. ‘But before I ask my next question, let’s go over again the facts we know. Although some schooners leaving here bound for Martinique never arrive at Fort Royal, there’s no indication they pass it. Therefore they’re captured between here and somewhere south of Martinique. Yet all the islands between Grenada and Martinique are British owned, and only St Vincent and St Lucia are of any size. No French or Spanish islands to leeward – unless you count the Spanish Main. And the privateersmen want the cargoes, not the hulls…’

Rondin said quietly, ‘I think I can guess that next question of yours. If I’d thought of it earlier, we might have solved all this business long ago. Instead it takes a young naval lieutenant who hasn’t been in Grenada for more than a few hours!’

Ramage smiled. ‘I think you’d better hear the question first and make sure it’s the same.’

‘It is; I’m certain of that. It’s the key to the whole thing. But you ask it!’

‘Very well. Where do the privateersmen dispose of the cargoes since these are all British islands?’

The ship-owner nodded. ‘And all the time we could only think of our ships being lost! We went to see the Governor; the Governor wrote to Admiral Robinson, and he sent frigates which searched… If only I’d sat down and thought!’

‘The trade returns for each of the islands,’ Ramage said. ‘How often are they produced? I mean, can we compare each island’s exports
to England
for say, each of the last six months and see which one’s suddenly increased?’

Rondin stood up and began walking back and forth across the room, staring out over the lagoon and towards the setting sun. Then he began talking angrily.

‘We can’t get those figures for months but, by God, they’ll not only give the answer but they’ll show what’s happening. What a fool I am! Hundreds of tons of produce leaving Grenada and then vanishing – yet it can’t vanish! But I of all men should have known: nothing has a commercial value unless there’s a market for it. Somewhere, somehow, those hundreds of tons of stolen produce are being sold and shipped to England. But sold by whom – and to whom?’

He turned to Ramage, arms outstretched. ‘Give me a frank answer. Do you think that’s the only possibility? That after the cargoes are stolen, they’re shipped out of some other island in the normal way of trade – legally as it were? That these thieves have a way of channelling their booty through plantation-owners?’

Ramage nodded. ‘It’s my guess; as you’ve just said, nothing has a value unless there’s a market for it. At least, not in this sense. Who would systematically steal something if he couldn’t dispose of it?’

Rondin flopped down in his chair and drained his glass with a gesture that seemed to Ramage approaching despair. Bellowing for the butler to refill it, he muttered: ‘It means our own people are betraying us: other plantation-owners in some other island.’

‘Only one or two, perhaps,’ Ramage pointed out, pausing as the butler came in, refilled Rondin’s glass, noted Ramage’s was still untouched, and left the room again.

‘But since the trade returns can’t help us,’ he continued, ‘we’re almost back where we started – watching the schooners sailing out of the harbour entrance and vanishing.’

‘Yes – forgive me young man: this is a hard blow for a man in my position. Competition in business, yes that’s fair and one expects it; but treachery…’

Back on board the
Triton
Ramage read through the papers given him by Rondin, thought briefly of the captured schooners’ cargoes, and decided to read the papers yet again, despite the fact the heat made him feel sleepy.

The figures of the losses were detailed. In the past four months, thirty-one schooners had sailed from Grenada for Martinique and twenty-one had been captured. As he read the names and the dates they sailed the drowsiness vanished: there was a pattern!

If a schooner sailed several days after another, it was captured. If a third sailed within two days it invariably arrived safely in Martinique but a fourth leaving a couple of days later would be captured. When the fifth and sixth sailed almost immediately, they’d get through. But not the seventh if it waited two or three days.

He rubbed his forehead, excited but puzzled. A pattern, yes, but what was its significance? Then in a few moments it dawned on him that the pattern was set by the time it took to unload one schooner. Unload and get rid of the cargo, to be more precise.

Again he checked through the list of ships and dates. No, although there was not one instance where the privateers had taken a schooner less than four days after capturing another, there were many cases where schooners had arrived safely in Martinique having sailed less than four days after one which
had
been captured.

Four days…yet Rondin had assured him it was not difficult to unload a schooner in one day, though more usually it took two.

Why four days, then? Surely the privateersmen weren’t short of men? Ramage pictured them swinging the sacks of cocoa beans and barrels of molasses up and out of the holds and over the side on to the jetty then –
jetty
! Did they have a jetty? A jetty with a road which carts could use to carry away sacks and barrels?

Perhaps not, he thought excitedly; supposing they had to unload in some isolated spot which could be reached only along tracks suitable for pack animals?

One or two sacks for each animal… Sacks which if left piled up on the ground would spoil in the heavy tropical showers: molasses barrels which would split and leak in the heat of the sun… That could reduce the unloading time to four days: four days in which they dare not bring in another prize.

Dare not? The cargo would be safe enough if left in the schooner’s hold. Well, that raised another question: why, with one prize being unloaded in their lair, did the privateersmen let another potential prize escape them? Why not capture it, leave the hatch covers on, and unload it at their leisure?

Again his imagination wandered. He thought of warships waiting at anchor for powder hoys to arrive alongside; of dozens of merchantmen lying at anchor in the Thames after a big convoy arrived in the London river at the end of a voyage from half-way round the world. At anchor, waiting until there was a space at a dock…space at a dock.

Was there room enough only for one vessel where the privateers unloaded the prize schooners – and perhaps the privateers as well? Not enough room for two? Or some reason why there shouldn’t be two? That made sense; it answered a question – or provided a possible answer.

Assume a schooner carried a hundred tons of cargo in hundredweight sacks – 2,000 sacks. And a mule could carry, say, four sacks, a donkey two, a human being one. Five hundred mule trips, a thousand donkey trips…

How the devil would privateersmen – even if in league with many plantation-owners – get enough mules or donkeys or slaves to carry that number of sacks very far? Yet surely it had to be carried a good distance to get it to a port where it could be loaded again. Unless…

He reached up for charts rolled up in the rack above his head; charts covering the islands between Grenada and Martinique, and began looking at the bays and inlets. There were dozens: the outline of each island was irregular, like a broken piece of cheese, the bays and inlets bitten out by rats.