Ramage & the Rebels (4 page)

Now, he thought to himself, he was twenty-five years old and the strides from his home in Somerset in the shadow of the Quantocks were beginning to show: he had not seen Nether Stowey for four years, not since he passed for lieutenant. And in those four years, thanks almost entirely to Mr Ramage, he had progressed from the most junior officer in the
Juno
's gunroom to the most junior officer in the
Calypso
's gunroom and then, after that last wild voyage, command of
La Créole
schooner.

His own command. Magic words and they could be as heady as a strong rum punch. He was still a lieutenant, of course; orders came to him addressed to Lieutenant William Lacey. But on board
La Créole
he was “the captain,” with two commissioned officers under him, second master instead of a master, and a sergeant of Marines.

La Créole
was a witch of a ship. The French could build fast vessels, and it was fitting that he should be commanding one that he had helped to capture. And he was thankful that Admiral Davis had finally left her with her original French name, instead of calling her “Diamond” after the Diamond Rock, off Martinique, where she had been captured. That had been the original intention.

“Creole” came off the tongue nicely. Most of the Creole women he had met so far had been extraordinarily beautiful; slim and sleek like the schooner, with jutting breasts under bright dresses. “Your ship?” “Oh, I command the
Créole,
that black schooner over there.” “Weren't you at the capture of Diamond Rock, and then the cutting out of the
Jocasta?
” And he would admit—with becoming modesty, of course—that he was. At that moment he glanced up and saw Mr Ramage was watching him, and he flushed because the Captain's deep-set eyes seemed to bore right into him, revealing his thoughts and fears—and perhaps his hopes, too.

When Ramage asked him if all was going well with
La Créole
he was thankful he could answer honestly that there were no problems.

“How many men are you mustering?”

“Fifty-one, sir, and ten Marines and a sergeant.”

“And you have ten 6-pounders?”

“And the two 12-pounder carronades they fitted at Antigua.” “She handles well?”

“Like a witch, sir. Clean bottom, coppered—just the vessel for privateering!”

“Which she was doing up to the time we captured her.” “Was she, sir?” Lacey was surprised. “I thought she was a French national ship.”

“No, she was a privateer out of Fort Royal, but the French Navy took her over, and a sister ship, the day before they attacked us.”

Lacey would never forget the night those two schooners attacked the frigate in the darkness, trying to board. But—well, although it happened only a few weeks ago, it seemed part of another life: the nervous young lieutenant who had been hard put to keep his head amid all the cracking of muskets and pistols, the yelling and screaming and the clash of cutlasses—yes, and the screams of wounded men: that had surprised him. Now that frightened young lieutenant commanded his own ship, one of the two schooners that made the attack, and he wasn't frightened: at least, not in sailing her. It may be different when I take her into battle, he admitted to himself; but I haven't run away when going into action with Mr Ramage these several times, and maybe I've learned something from him. But keeping a clear head in the middle of a battle and never being frightened—that's what made Mr Ramage unique.

Suddenly Lacey felt cheerful because he thought he could see why he had been called on board the
Calypso:
the Admiral was sending the frigate on some operation or other and
La Créole
was to go with her. Perhaps Mr Ramage had even asked for him …

“You are up to establishment, then?”

“Yes, sir; Admiral Davis was very good at English Harbour: he gave me a full complement of men and Marines, and there's no one on the sick list.”

“And your officers?”

“Both lieutenants are excellent, sir. Young but good. The second master is steady enough—could be Southwick's younger brother. And the Marine sergeant is one of the best. I wouldn't change a man, sir.”

“You're lucky,” Ramage said soberly, looking back at some of the ships he had commanded. “A captain's only as good as his ship's company. When you're considering whether or not to weed out a particular man it's worth remembering that. One rotten apple, you know. ‘When in doubt, weed him out!'”

Lacey sensed Ramage was waiting for something, and after a few minutes of small talk he heard several people coming down the companion-way and the sentry's hoarse call: “The orficers, sir.”

And suddenly they were all in the cabin—Aitken the First Lieutenant, Wagstaffe the Second, Baker the Third, and young Peter Kenton, the small and red-haired youngster who had taken his place as Fourth Lieutenant, and Southwick, white hair flowing and looking even younger, his skin taut, as though years of salt spray had never given wrinkles a chance to get a grip. And Rennick, still looking as though he had been levered into his uniform with a shoe-horn, still red-faced and still with the cheery exuberance of a fairground barker.

This is what he missed when he sat in the captain's cabin of
La Créole.
It was hardly bigger than his old cabin in the
Juno
(from which he could talk to the other officers without bothering to open the door), but it was solitary. The lieutenants and warrant officers ate in their gunroom; he had his meals in his own cabin. On deck the officers walked the lee side and left him the weather side, the captain's privilege. But there was no one to whom he could chat; no one spoke to him unless first spoken to because he was the captain.

And even now he sensed it: there was a friendly smile from Aitken, who was way above him in seniority on the lieutenants' list, but the Scotsman's smile had that slight remoteness about it; the remoteness he sensed always existed with his lieutenants in
La Créole,
as though command had slipped a pane of glass between them. And the same from Wagstaffe and Baker, while young Kenton glanced at him with something approaching awe. He sensed it and now he understood it: these men were lieutenants in the
Calypso,
and in the case of Aitken likely to get command of his own frigate before long. But at this particular moment they did not command their own ships while he did: he alone among them was referred to in his own ship as “the captain.” Of course, he did not have the rank of post captain, like Mr Ramage, allowing him to command a fifth-rate ship or bigger; he was still only a lieutenant, but officers in other ships would describe him as “the captain” of
La Créole,
referring to the job he carried out, not the actual rank he held in the Navy List.

“The captain.” Those were the two words making that difference; they put that pane of glass between a man and those who had been his friends. Yet it had to be; this was what discipline entailed, a remoteness. A captain who tried to remain intimate with his officers or friendly with his seamen was, quite invariably, a bad officer, even though he might be a pleasant enough man. Mr Ramage never courted popularity; he was by turns surly, witty, bitter, silent, chatty—but he set the pace; he laid out the terms, as it were. The quarterdeck could be a chilly place on the hottest day if Mr Ramage was in a surly mood or angry over some incident. They weren't frequent, but he could remember them well enough. And, for that matter, he suddenly realized there were days when he too was surly; days when
La Créole
's quarterdeck must seem chilly, and now he thought about it he realized they were more frequent than they should be, but he was still finding his way, sometimes irritated by mistakes he made and sometimes irritated by the mistakes of others; particularly when he had deliberately left them on their own to do something, determined not to nag and interfere—and then he had found he should have interfered; that few officers and petty officers had enough confidence to work on their own. And of course his own standards were rising, the more he learned about command.

In response to Ramage's wave, the men sat or stood where they wanted. Southwick subsided at his usual place, the single armchair; Rennick stood by the door, head bent because of the low beams, as if his uniform was too tight for sitting. Kenton, attending his first such meeting, stood looking lost until Ramage pointed to a chair.

Kenton was five feet four inches tall, exactly the height under the deck beams. Whereas Aitken's face was pale but slightly tanned, Kenton's was pink and peeling, and heavily freckled. Kenton loved the Tropics but the sun scorched him, making him pay a high price for his red hair. The son of a half-pay captain, Kenton was 21 years old and had passed for lieutenant within three months of reaching his twentieth birthday, the earliest that he could be promoted.

Southwick, who had served with Ramage for several years and was old enough to be the father of anyone in the cabin, guessed cheerfully: “The Gulf of Mexico—patrol off Veracruz to look for the Spanish treasure fleet …”

“Of course,” Ramage said. “You can have six men and the jolly-boat, and start at dusk.”

The other officers grinned: Southwick's bloodthirsty attitude was well known. His round and cheerful face and white hair gave him the appearance of a gentle bishop or a benign village butcher: a man in his early sixties who could inspire confidence in old ladies and who would sit back in an armchair with a favourite grandchild on each knee. As the austere Aitken later admitted, this had been his first impression of Southwick, and one which lasted until the first time they had gone into action, when he saw the old man transformed into a formidable fighter wielding a sword of incredible size, a two-handed sword that might have come straight from a Viking legend. It was then that Aitken had christened him “the benevolent butcher.”

“The Admiral could have sent us to Veracruz,” Ramage said, “but no doubt he thought that because we have all done very well with prize-money in the past few months, he'd better send us somewhere else.”

The officers all smiled, realizing that Ramage was tantalizing them.

“He's given us an interesting operation for the
Calypso—
just a comfortable cruise. Lacey and the
Créole
will be doing all the work—and getting all the glory.”

Everyone turned to look at Lacey, most of them more than a little envious, like members of a family at the reading of a rich uncle's will and wondering why their youngest cousin had been given all the sugarplums.

Southwick gave one of his famous sniffs, a great intake of air which signalled disapproval without actually putting it into words. Ramage had heard such sniffs scores of times in the past, when the old Master had disapproved of something Ramage was planning. There were in fact various grades. A loud but brief sniff meant that Southwick would not have done it that way, although it might not be entirely wrong. If he thought something was wrong, the sniff was loud and long. If it was followed by a drawn-out “Weeelll, sir,” by the rules of the game Ramage would raise his eyebrows questioningly, which Southwick then interpreted as permission to disagree, and he would speak his thoughts.

It had taken Aitken some time to realize it was in fact a code which had evolved between the Master and Mr Ramage over a long period; they had served together from the very day that Mr Ramage received his first command as a young lieutenant. Since then the pair of them had gone into battle a dozen times or more, been dismasted in a hurricane, lost their ship on a reef, been marooned on an island, found buried treasure … It took a stranger a long while to understand the significance of the sniffs, and from the look of it only Aitken had suddenly realized that Southwick had in effect made a statement.

Aitken reckoned that Mr Ramage was ignoring it because Southwick's sniff was based on too little information. The fact that
La Créole
was going to do the work and get any glory meant that the task was one which could not be carried out by the
Calypso.
That much was obvious to Aitken, who was content to wait patiently.

“While we were in Antigua you heard about the increasing privateer activity, and how they are snapping up merchant ships sailing to or from Jamaica,” Ramage said. “Well, it's worse than we thought and, more important, the frigates patrolling the coasts of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Cuba are all reporting
fewer
French, Spanish and Dutch privateers at the big ports.”

Southwick ran his hand through his hair and growled: “They need to keep a sharper lookout!”

“Or look elsewhere for them,” Ramage said quietly, and everyone glanced up, realizing that those five words were not a chance remark but a clue.

“The Main,” Southwick speculated. “Shallow water, dozens of likely bays lined with mangrove swamps—and swarming with mosquitoes, of course. Maracaibo, the Gulf of Venezuela, Riohacha, Santa Marta, Baranquilla, all the way round to Portobelo

… Most of ‘em too shallow for us, but not for the privateers, or for the
Créole
…”

Ramage nodded and turned towards Rennick. “There's going to be plenty of boatwork for us, backing up the
Créole.
I shall want those Marines of yours getting in and out of boats as though they were born under the thwarts. And your men, Lacey. When a privateer escapes into water too shallow for
La Créole,
then you send boats in, and ours will follow when possible. I want you to exercise your men in hoisting out boats, rowing with muffled oars, using a compass in the dark, handling a boat gun, carrying pistols without them going off accidentally … And don't anyone expect we shall be doing this only in calm weather. You know the Trades blow half a gale out of a clear blue sky, with lumpy sea …”

“Which end of the Main do we start, sir?” Aitken asked.