Ramage and the Freebooters (43 page)

‘They’re using a lantern,’ Jackson whispered.

‘Must be,’ Ramage said humorously, ‘–only one bout of cursing.’

‘Means we’ll have the advantage – our eyes accustomed to the darkness.’

For a moment Ramage weighed the advantages of kicking over the lantern as soon as they leapt out, then decided that the surprise and confusion outweighed it.

A rasping as the four battens round the hatch were slid out, then the heavy canvas tarpaulin was dragged off.

The tingling, as though his arms and legs had pins and needles; stomach shrinking, full of cold water; arm and leg muscles tensing but feeling weak, as if they’d let him down when the moment came for a supreme effort. Ramage’s breathing was shallow and perspiration felt cold now on his forehead.

I have to lead these men, he told himself coldly: they look to me. He bent down and flipped open the strap over the sheath of his throwing-knife, then methodically picked up his pistols, checked each was at half-cock, and stuck them in the waist band of his breeches. Quietly he drew his cutlass.

‘Stand by, Tritons!’ he whispered hoarsely, his voice almost drowned as one of the big beams was suddenly lifted and dragged clear, exposing a long narrow slot through which he could see stars shining. The weak flame of the lantern lit the underside of furled sails and part of the rigging, so that it looked like long spiders’ webs covered with hoar frost.

Another plank lifted and was dragged clear, and the sight of a man’s head outlined against the sky. A second man standing astride the gap and bending down to lift an end of the next beam. And a third and a fourth man helping, lifting and hurling it clear so it fell to the deck with a crash.

Six more beams to be lifted out. Would someone pick up the lantern and peer down into the hold to see what the
Jorum
was carrying before the last was hoisted clear?

Ramage’s question was answered by one of the men calling to someone several yards away. ‘Tell Dupont and the rest of ’em we’re nearly ready.’

Footsteps receding? Ramage was certain he heard the tread of someone walking along a wooden jetty. But where on earth could they be, with a jetty? Damnation! So concerned about the jetty, Ramage had wasted several seconds before realizing he must attack immediately, before ‘Dupont and the rest of ’em’ arrived, and promptly bellowed: ‘Get ’em, Tritons!’

As he grabbed the edge of the coaming and swung himself up it seemed the entire hold erupted with hundreds of men screaming ‘Tritons! Tritons! Tritons!’

The four men lifting off the beams ran for the bulwark yelling wildly in fear and surprise. A pistol exploded just beside Ramage and one of the men sank slowly to the deck, as if overcome with weariness. The second hesitated a moment, standing on top of the bulwark, and another pistol fired, toppling him over. By now the third and fourth man had leapt clean over the bulwark and were running along the jetty towards the shore.

Ramage turned and ran aft, surprised to hear himself screaming ‘Tritons!’ and instinctively striking sideways as a sword blade gleamed momentarily in the darkness. Sensing rather than seeing there was a group of four or five men standing near the tiller, he slashed at the dark shape of his attacker with the cutlass while trying to drag a pistol from his waistband with his left hand.

A surge of Tritons overwhelmed the men by the tiller and, as Ramage realized his opponent was a better than average swordsman the man suddenly flung his cutlass at Ramage’s head and leapt over the side into the water.

Within a couple of minutes there was almost complete silence on the schooner’s deck and the croaking of frogs and screams of frightened birds was all Ramage could hear as he hurriedly checked his men. No one had even a scratch to report. The first two privateersmen were dead beside the bulwark; two of the five standing aft were dead, the rest dying.

‘Jackson! Make the prisoners say what happened to Gorton. Evans, you ready with those signal rockets? Right, fire one and make sure it doesn’t foul the rigging!’

Even before Jackson had time to start, one of the Tritons was calling that Gorton and the rest of the
Jorum’s
crew were tied up in the cuddy, and a minute later, while Ramage peered around him, trying to make out where the schooner was and if the two privateers were nearby, Gorton came up, swinging his arms as if he was cold.

‘You’ve got the ship back then, sir!’ he exclaimed. ‘Sorry about this slapping but the ropes numbed my arms. We’re in Marigot, sir. They didn’t make any secret of it. As soon as someone called Dupont came on board – he’s their leader – we were going to have our throats cut!’

Ramage peered round, still trying to spot where the privateers were anchored and Gorton said, ‘There’s one of them over there…’ pointing to the east, where Ramage could just pick out the shape of a vessel dark against the mangroves growing to the water’s edge. ‘And the other’s just beyond.’

‘Find a–’

He spun round with an oath as a sudden hissing roar and a flash behind him seemed a prelude to the schooner blowing up; but a rocket snaking up into the sky to burst into five red stars told him Evans had carried out his orders.

‘Gorton – keep an eye on those privateers: watch for boats pulling over towards us. Can you find your night-glass?’

‘Aye aye, sir!’

‘Jackson – take all the men with musketoons and half a dozen more and get out along that jetty: stop this fellow Dupont and his men!’

What now? Everything was happening so fast and not at all the way he had expected: instead of all twenty of the Tritons fighting a sudden, short and savage battle with all the privateersmen, it might now turn into a long-drawn-out siege, with the
Jorum
a fortress.

Could the
Triton
ever get into here? If the privateers put springs on their cables and hauled themselves round they could train their broadsides on to the
Jorum
…

Jackson had already assembled the men with musketoons and had them scrambling over the bulwark on to the jetty, but he was arguing with several other men who wanted to be among the other half dozen.

‘Take more, Jackson!’

‘Aye aye, sir!’ With that Jackson and the rest of the men were scrambling over the bulwark and running along the jetty.

Gorton called: ‘Boats leaving both privateers, sir.’

Ramage acknowledged. Would they try to board, or land on the shore and attack along the jetty?

But what was puzzling him was Gorton’s certainty that this was Marigot Bay. It seemed completely landlocked.

‘Where’s the entrance?’

Gorton grunted. ‘That’s what’s puzzling me, sir. There’s the high hills to the south – they’re clear enough. And to the north – that’s the ridge there. Well, the entrance is between the two.’

‘But it’s closed off completely – why, you can see palm trees growing across.’

‘I know, sir.’

Suddenly a loud popping and flashing of flame at the landward end of the jetty showed that Dupont and his men were attacking. The musket flashes seemed almost continuous from landward, punctuated by the occasional heavier boom of one of the Tritons’ musketoons firing. Jackson’s men were heavily outnumbered – and they hadn’t much shelter. Even worse, they were having to stay close to the jetty so Dupont’s men couldn’t cut off their escape route back to the schooner.

Ramage rubbed his brow. From the other side the privateers’ boats were approaching fast. No shooting – obviously they were hoping they wouldn’t be seen; hoping that Dupont and his men attacking along the jetty would occupy the Tritons’ attention.

And in the meantime the
Jorum
was secured alongside the jetty, no longer a Trojan horse but a bullock tied up in a stall at the slaughterhouse. And the French call us
rosbifs
, Ramage thought irrelevantly.

Although the musket-fire on shore was easing, it was now interspersed with the challenge ‘
Triton
!’ showing it was almost hand-to-hand. The privateers’ boats were perhaps fifty yards away. And he felt a slight breeze on the back of his neck, from the north-east he noted automatically, and then nearly jumped with the realization it was blowing towards the palm trees on the sandspit…

Should he or not? Out of the frying pan? Well, the pan was pretty hot… He yelled out a string of orders: for the grenade men to wait on the larboard side, others to stand by to cut the mooring warps, with more ready to push the
Jorum
clear of the jetty. The remainder, he shouted, were to stand by at the schooner’s taffrail with pistols, ready to fire along the jetty.

Who to send to Jackson?

As if sensing the thought, Gorton said: ‘What can I do, sir? I’m standing here like a spare topsail halyard.’

‘Get along the jetty to Jackson. Tell him as soon as I shout “Tritons!” he’s to get his men back on board. We’ll try to cover them with pistols.’

‘What about–’

‘Get moving, Gorton!’

The man cleared the bulwark in one leap; a moment later Ramage heard him running along the jetty. Then he cursed – he’d forgotten to tell him to shout when Jackson was ready…

The privateers’ boats – five of them – were closing fast, moving silently like water beetles across a village pond, silent but heading directly for the
Jorum
. Each one of these freebooters knew more about boarding an enemy in the dark than any twenty men in one of the King’s ships. If only Jackson arrived back as they… No, that was asking too much.

Five boats, twenty or more men in each. A hundred men, and Dupont had – forty or fifty? He felt sick. Trojan horse! It’d been a wild idea and Wilson had known it – that was why he had wanted that report written for the Governor. An obituary. A two-page obituary for twenty Tritons.

As he stood frightened and despairing that once again he had acted without enough thought, he felt the wind chill on his cheek. The offshore breeze had begun, and a few moments later he saw the fronds of the palms moving gently as it reached them.

But better the
Jorum
stranded on the beach by those palms, where they would have something of a moat all round them, than stuck here at the end of the jetty.

He filled his lungs and shouted: ‘Jackson! Are you ready there?’

‘Aye aye, sir!’

‘Tritons!’

He was almost screaming now with excitement and relief.

‘Aft there – ready with your pistols! Shoot down anyone without a white headband – but watch out for Gorton!’

Feet thundering along the jetty, pursued by musket shots. The dull flash and crack of a musketoon as the Tritons covered their retreat.

‘Cast off all lines!’

Ropes splashed into the water forward, and then aft.

A quick glance round showed the privateers’ boats were twenty yards off.

‘Grenade men – stand by to light your fuses!’

Then he thought of Evans and shouted for him, hoping he hadn’t gone with Jackson.

The Welshman was standing nearby.

‘Quick – light a false-fire!’

Seamen scrambling over the bulwarks from the jetty, white bands round their brows; pistols whiplashing as the Tritons at the taffrail fired along the jetty. Sparks close by, then suddenly Evans’ false-fire lit up the whole schooner in its ghostly blue light.

‘Grenade men – crouch down! The boats are coming alongside. When I give the word light your fuses from the false-fire and drop the grenades into the boats!’

He was thankful the grenades had no more than five-second fuses. Two wounded men being lifted over the bulwark. Then Jackson standing in front of him, wild-eyed in the light of the false-fire.

‘Dupont’s got fifty men or more, sir. We lost two dead, and two wounded.’

‘Very well. Five boats approaching on the larboard side. Get your men ready but keep clear of the side until I give the word. We’ve cast off from the jetty.’

He looked over the larboard side: damn, he’d left it late.

‘Grenade men: light and drop ’em in the boats – smartly now!’

The men crouched round the false-fire with the grenades, holding them so the fuses, sticking out like wicks, were in the flame. As soon as the fuses sparked the men ran to the side, paused a moment – Ramage realized the bright light had dazzled them – and then dropped the grenades. Almost at once there were shouts from the boats and the crack of pistols fired upwards. One of the Tritons slowly toppled backwards without a sound, a dark stain on his headband.

‘Start bearing off!’ Ramage yelled. ‘Heave her off the jetty!’

A great flash and a deep, sullen roar on the starboard side, then another. Screams of men in terrible pain, screams of men almost witless with fear. It was raining, and pieces of wood were falling on deck. Two more explosions, then a third. Ramage realized the grenades had not only blown up the boats but the explosions were showering water and wreckage over the schooner’s deck.

Then Jackson was yelling something from the rail but Ramage couldn’t hear from where he was standing at the starboard side exhorting the men to shove harder at boathooks – some had even snatched up the hatch beams – to get the schooner away from the jetty.

More yells from the taffrail. What the devil were they shouting about? Glancing back along the jetty it wasn’t hard to guess: a black mass, a giant caterpillar, was advancing slowly along it – Dupont’s men, and the Tritons at the taffrail were hurriedly reloading their pistols.

‘Jackson! Musketoon-men aft – sweep the jetty. Smartly now!’

Conscious that Gorton was working feverishly at the bulwark, Ramage then heard Jackson’s wail that there’d been no time to reload the musketoons. Dupont’s men were twenty yards away. Although the
Jorum
was slowly moving along the jetty, its angle to the wind was too small to stop her bumping back against it. But every moment she was clear she was drifting farther towards the end.

Flashes of musket-fire from Dupont’s men: very wary now, firing and reloading as they came; not realizing there wasn’t a loaded pistol or musketoon in the schooner. Maybe those terrible explosions had scared them.

Again the
Jorum
was shoved away from the jetty, moving four or five yards and then beginning to drift back towards it as the Tritons hurriedly tried to push her off once more.