Ramage and the Freebooters (35 page)

Southwick shrugged his shoulders. ‘They all sound alike to me.’

‘Exactly. And I’m wondering if they sound alike to the natives.’

‘By Jove,’ Southwick exclaimed, banging the table with his fist. ‘You mean, we could get a native to pass some false signals? Throw the whole system into confusion? Why, we could drive this spy mad! Just think of him listening to us drumming out false information about a schooner sailing. He has to get
his
drummer to thump out “Annul previous signal”; then we follow up with another “Annul…”’

He roared with laughter at the thought, thumping the table to simulate a tom-tom, but then his face fell. ‘Still doesn’t find the privateers, though!’

‘No, but it’s a good idea: we may be able to use it – if we can find someone who talks the language of the drums. Send Maxton down to me as soon as he comes back on board: he might know something.’

As the sky lightened and the
Triton’s
ship’s company were busy scrubbing the decks, polishing brasswork and going through the dozens of jobs carried out at daybreak on board every British ship of war, Ramage slowly shaved himself, deliberately taking his time, trying to find a flaw in his conclusions. They were simple enough to worry him.

First, the spy was so sure his tom-tom and bonfire method would never be discovered that he revealed his knowledge by passing the signal before the schooner sailed. Very well, that probably wasn’t over-confidence on his part – tom-toms were beating most nights, and the two frigates didn’t spot the bonfires.

Secondly, suppose the spy was caught. He might be doing it for money – the privateers would pay well for information. Or he might be French and doing it to further the Revolution – Grenada was only just recovering from Fédon’s Revolt. Once captured, could the spy be forced to reveal where the privateers were based? It was possible. But would it help that much, with only the
Triton
to tackle them? These privateers would be among the fastest vessels in the islands. Going to windward they could sail rings round the
Triton
.

Yet – he ran his hand along his jaw: the razor was blunt – perhaps they could be trapped in their base. The fact that it was well-hidden might also mean it was hard to get out of: maybe the privateers had to use boats to tow themselves out…

There was a knock on the door and Southwick called, ‘Maxton’s here, sir.’

‘Send him in.’

Ramage made the last few strokes with the razor, wiped off the remaining soap, and looked at his face. His eyes were more sunken than usual; his cheeks too. That meant he was worrying more than he realized; a few late nights didn’t do that. He must have lost six or eight pounds in weight. Yet he wasn’t conscious of worrying overmuch.

He walked into the day cabin and saw Maxton standing just inside the door, obviously overawed at his first visit to the captain’s quarters.

‘How were the family, Maxton?’

‘Glad to see me, sah.’

‘Your parents alive?’

‘Yes sah! My father’s a freed slave.’

‘Brothers and sisters?’

‘Four brothers, three sisters, sah. And twenty-seven nephews and nieces.’

‘Congratulations,’ Ramage said, smiling as he tried to average it out. If all seven had wives or husbands, it was nearly four children each. He brushed the irrelevance aside: his approach to the seaman was going to be unorthodox.

‘Ah – Maxton, I need your help.’

‘Yes sah?’

‘You heard the tom-toms last night?’

Maxton’s eyes seemed suddenly to become opaque before he looked away.

‘No sah, I didn’t hear no drums.’

Interesting – he called them ‘drums’.

‘Nothing? You heard nothing?’

‘Nothin’, sah.’

The man moistened his thick lips; his hands wrestled with each other. Perspiration was beading his upper lip and brow, and he looked down at the deck.

‘Well, someone was beating them last night, Maxton.’

‘If you say so, sah.’

‘And the drums were talking, Maxton.’

‘Yes, sah.’

‘But you didn’t hear them?’

‘No sah, I heard nothin’.’

‘Well, I heard them, Maxton. Shall I tell you what they said?’

Maxton’s eyes flickered at Ramage for an instant before looking down again. He was terror-stricken: that much was clear, though Ramage could think of no reason nor guess the man’s thoughts.

‘They were passing a signal, Maxton. They said that a schooner was sailing from St George for Martinique.’

Ramage thought for a moment, suddenly realizing something he had not thought of before – an ordinary bonfire could only signal one fact, unless someone hid the light for a moment or two and showed it again, as the Red Indians did. But Appleby had reported that several trees were burning to make the bonfire, so obviously that was impossible. But hold on – did it mean the bonfires were lit a certain time before the schooner sailed? Two hours before? Was that the prearranged signal? It was worth trying.

‘The drums also said the schooner would sail at ten o’clock, Maxton. And you heard it and you knew what it said.’

‘No sah,’ the man exclaimed, his hands held out as if imploring Ramage to believe him. ‘No sah, I didn’t hear nothin’.’

‘You heard the drum, you knew what it said, and why it was saying it, yet you didn’t warn me. You knew that drum was helping the enemy, Maxton. An enemy you know we’re trying to stop capturing the schooners. The same enemy who tried to kill us several times when we served in the
Kathleen
.’ Then he added as an afterthought: ‘An enemy who is trying to kill me now, Maxton.’

‘Oh no he’s not, sah: he’s just tryin’ to capture the schooners. You see, the freebooters–’

He broke off, realizing he’d just given himself away.

‘Maxton,’ Ramage warned quietly, ‘I won’t bother to warn you about the Articles of War: you know the penalties for helping the enemy by not passing on information to the officers. I’m just sad that you care so little about me and the rest of your shipmates that you’d let us all get killed by walking into a trap.’

For a minute or two Maxton just stood trembling, his eyes large, perspiration running down his face, lips quivering; a man in the grip of a great, perhaps nameless fear. Suddenly he seemed to get control of himself and with an enormous effort of will he said: ‘If I said anythin’ about the message sah, they’d kill all my family and me too.’

‘Who would?’

‘Why, the loogaroos sah,’ he exclaimed, as if surprised Ramage did not know.

The
loupgarou
, the vampire: Ramage remembered the natives’ twin fears, jumbies and
loupgarous
. Of the two, jumbies were less fearsome – evil spirits that could be kept at bay with jumbie beads, which were talismen or lucky charms. Jumbies could be bought off with offerings of money and other things and were mischievous rather than dangerous.

But not
loupgarous
. They came out only at night, flying around unseen in the darkness to attack unsuspecting people and drink their blood, leaving them maimed or dead. And no one knew who they were, for they were really human beings whose spirits emerged from their sleeping bodies and changed into vampires.

They spent the night going about their dreadful business and before dawn returned to the sleeping bodies so that these particular men never knew that, as they slept, they turned into
loupgarous
.

And only the witch doctor could summon up the
loupgarous
; only a witch doctor could order them to attack a particular person. More important though, Ramage realized, no white man could ever persuade a coloured man they did not exist; that they were a lot of nonsense invented by witch doctors. Oh, what was the use, he thought: this was voodoo; black magic practised in Africa for centuries and then transported to the West Indies. It’d be as impossible to persuade a West Indian that
loupgarous
did not exist as to convince a Scots Calvinist that Christ never existed.

But for all that, Ramage knew he needed the information; he needed it so desperately that he had to use questionable methods to get it.

‘Maxton, you believe the witch doctor can order the
loupgarous
to kill you and your family, so naturally you’re frightened of him.’

The West Indian nodded. Suddenly Ramage snapped: ‘Are you frightened of me?’

The man shook his head vigorously, surprise showing on his face. ‘No sah!’

‘Why not? I too can kill you – you’ve broken one of the Articles of War and I can have you hanged. And the Governor can hang your family for abetting you in treason.’

To Ramage’s amazement the West Indian suddenly dropped to his knees, muttering – gabbling, almost – a prayer in what Ramage recognized was crudely pronounced Latin: a Catholic prayer.

Then sickened by what he was doing and what he had to do, he realized Maxton’s terrible predicament. The Catholic priest had, in his childhood, made Maxton a Christian and frightened him to death with visions of hell’s fire and eternal damnation; at the same time the witch doctors had been busy with equally horrifying voodoo threats; of
loupgarous
and jumbies and nameless evils of darkness and ignorance, the extent of which Ramage could only guess.

Maxton’s predicament was in fact worse than Ramage guessed: soon after he had heard the drum and realized what it was saying he had been approached by the witch doctor, who heard he was from the
Triton
and warned him to be silent. But Maxton had earlier planned to go to the white priest that night for a routine confession. It was to have been a long confession – the first for two years. There were many sins for which he sought absolution and which to Maxton seemed grave: killing men, although they were the enemy; swearing, blaspheming and drunkenness. To the priest, a worldly man, when Maxton visited him late at night, they had seemed minor compared with the almost daily stories of knifings, wife-beating, murder and theft.

Maxton had overcome his fears enough to finish his confession with an account of the witch doctor’s visit earlier that night, admitting he was too frightened to warn his captain of the drums’ message. But the priest, not knowing the actual significance of the message and too sleepy to ask, took little notice: he was more concerned at Maxton’s admission that he had not regularly said his prayers and that he had blasphemed with a monotonous regularity for more than two years.

So, his ears ringing with admonitions, Maxton had left the priest’s house no wiser than when he entered, except that the priest had almost brushed aside the drums’ message while the witch doctor threatened him with death over it. And he’d arrived back home to find the witch doctor had been back in his absence and reduced the whole family to a state of terror; so much so that one brother and two sisters swore they’d already seen two
loupgarous
flying among the trees, watching and obviously waiting for them to go to sleep before they began their bloody work.

But none of the others, priest, witch doctor, mother, father, brother or sister, thought of the third factor. Maxton feared the God of the priest; he did what the priest told him because the alternative was hell fire and damnation. And he also feared the gods of the witch doctor.

Ramage, as he watched Maxton, saw the direct conflict between the priest’s orders and the witch doctor’s and guessed Maxton would obey the witch doctor for the very practical reason that whereas the priest only threatened eternal damnation after death (but without any threats of instant death) the witch doctor’s threats were very much more positive and immediate: he promised prompt death at the hands of a
loupgarou
, not only for Maxton but for the whole family.

Yet neither witch doctor nor priest – and least of all Ramage – knew that there was this third factor in Maxton’s life; almost a third god, a man whose orders he obeyed not because they were accompanied with terrible threats, but because he wanted to.

And that man was Lieutenant Ramage.

So now, on his knees in the captain’s cabin, his mind a whirl of conflicting fears and loyalties, Maxton was terrified. Not for himself, he now realized, but for his family and for his captain, both threatened by the same dreadful powers.

Ramage looked down at the man and, recalling how Maxton had grinned at the approach of the Spanish Fleet at the Battle of Cape St Vincent and watched Ramage steer the little cutter
Kathleen
straight for the
San Nicolas
with the same grin, knew that whatever terrified the West Indian was now beyond the comprehension of a white man.

‘Maxton,’ he said gently, but speaking slowly and clearly, ‘there’s a way out of this which can save us all. Tell me honestly, can you read the drums?’

Maxton nodded dumbly.

‘Very well: is it difficult to learn the language they talk?’

The man shook his head.

‘Could Jackson learn enough to send a particular message – not read one – in an afternoon?’

The head nodded.

‘The witch doctor didn’t say you couldn’t teach Jackson, did he?’

‘No sah.’

‘Will you, then? And show him how to make one of these drums?’

Maxton scrambled to his feet: the fear had gone and in its place was enthusiasm. With the speed of a Caribbean thunderstorm clearing to reveal bright blue skies, Maxton had stopped trembling and was eager to help.

‘Yes sah!’ he exclaimed eagerly. ‘But the witch–’

‘The witch doctor will never know – or guess. And rest assured, Maxton, my ju-ju is stronger than his: that I promise you. Now, you’d better report to Mr Southwick.’

After making sure that Maxton was provided with the barrel he needed to make the drum, and that he and Jackson were down in the orlop where the American could begin his first lesson in complete secrecy, using the Marine drummer’s drum, Ramage had gone on shore to visit Fort George.

The Colonel was in his office and greeted Ramage with as much enthusiasm as a considerable thick head from too much rum would allow.

Ramage had given a lot of thought to how he would tackle the task of finding the spy. He’d also thought a lot about Wilson. The Colonel had been very free in his talk about the Governor – but was that because he was an old gossip or because he was shrewed enough to realize Ramage needed to know all about Sir Jason if he was to be able to handle him? Ramage had decided it was the latter.