Ramage & the Saracens (27 page)

Ramage noticed that the
Calypso
was not firing at the two galleys: obviously Aitken had thought about the galley slaves chained to the oars and decided to give them a chance. But Ramage wondered how they were going to get at the Saracens—fighting across the galleys' decks would be risky as far as the slaves were concerned.

Now the Saracens' vessels had stopped drifting: those left afloat were being held by the lines of those that had been secured to them and then sunk. Which meant that they were perfect for the
Calypso
's guns, which had stationary targets at less than fifty yards' range.

In ten minutes the only craft left afloat were the two galleys, and the
Calypso
stopped firing, and so did Jackson's carronade. Ramage saw the frigate hoist out boats and through his telescope saw Aitken climbing down into one of the cutters, which then made for the quay. Ramage stood to one side and waved, and the cutter altered course towards him.

Aitken was jubilant. “I hope you approve of the timing, sir!” Ramage smiled and said: “You were early—thank goodness.”

“I saw all the masts and as soon as I could see the flag was not flying I guessed they were attacking. Then we saw the smoke of the carronade. Just one, sir.”

“That was Jackson and his men firing on the boats. I had to stop the rest because the Saracens attacked them.”

“I hope they didn't spike any,” Aitken said anxiously.

“No—they didn't get near them, in fact. I had to let the seamen and marines drive them off, which meant stopping the carronades firing. All except Jackson's gun: he took no notice and kept on firing at the boats.”

“The galleys,” Aitken said. “I didn't fire into them because of the slaves.”

“Quite right, but now we have to hook out the Saracens.”

“We can board them from the boats, sir.”

Ramage shook his head. “No, these fellows are madmen; our casualties would be enormous. I'm not prepared to lose that many men just to save slaves.”

Damnation, it was a rotten dilemma. How was he to save the slaves without losing dozens of his men? The only way would be to swamp the Saracens; somehow attack them with a couple of hundred men.

It was easy. The idea came to him so quickly that at first he was suspicious of it, and tried to work out what could go wrong. But there seemed to be nothing wrong with it and he described it to Aitken.

“We want the two galleys back alongside the quay, so that we can board them from the land and completely outnumber them.”

“I don't see any problem,” Aitken said. “We just tow them back alongside.”

“Yes, our boats with grapnels. Let them get close enough to heave grapnels on board and then tow them to the quay.”

“Musketry,” Aitken said doubtfully. “The men in the boats will be vulnerable for a long time.”

Again Ramage shook his head. “The Saracens don't seem to have many muskets: they didn't use them when they attacked us, and I doubt if they'd have many in the galleys.”

“Very well, sir, I'll go and give the boats their orders if you'll get your men ready.”

“You'll be using just about all your men,” Ramage commented.

“Yes, sir, but we've managed so far—thanks to Southwick!”

“What's he been doing?”

“Well, I had him dancing all over the quarterdeck, cursing and foaming when we guessed what was happening here. Then I suggested he went and helped at the guns, because we were so short of men, and he went off like a pistol shot. Enjoyed himself enormously. The last I saw of him just before I got into the cutter he no longer had white hair: it was grey from smoke and powder!”

With that Aitken jumped down into the cutter which was quickly rowed back to the frigate. It took fifteen minutes to get all the boats ready and surrounding the galleys, and by then Ramage had all his surviving seamen and marines lining the quay two deep where the galleys would be towed alongside.

The grapnels were flung up from Aitken's boats and before the screaming Saracens realized what was happening all the
Calypso
's boats were hauling the galleys back alongside the quay.

They had only ten yards to go, and while the Saracens lined the landward side of the nearest galley shouting what Ramage assumed were threats intended to curdle the blood, the seamen and marines waited patiently to fight their way on board.

It was while watching the prancing Saracens that Ramage suddenly realized that these were the only survivors of the four hundred or so that had landed: the rest had either been killed in the fighting on shore or drowned as the boats had been sunk by the
Calypso
's relentless fire. How many were there in the galleys? Thirty in each; not more. Sixty left out of more than four hundred. There were going to be many widows in whatever town they called home. More widows than one would at first suppose, Ramage thought, because most men probably had more than one wife …

Ramage saw that the galleys were sufficiently small for his men to line up four and five deep, and he shouted orders to Rennick, Kenton, Martin, and Hill. Had Aitken brought over the blacksmith to free the slaves from their chains?

And then the galleys were alongside and the British seamen and marines were pouring over the bulwarks, shouting and slashing with their cutlasses. It was such a violent and concerted attack, with Ramage and Orsini in the front row, that the Saracens quickly retreated into the second galley.

Ramage, noticing that Jackson, Rossi, Stafford, and the Frenchmen had appeared from somewhere and were surrounding him like a bodyguard, was appalled by the stench: the galleys smelled like middens, and as he found his way from one galley to the next, Ramage just glimpsed the slaves hunched down, seated on benches.

As he slashed and parried, Ramage had to watch his footing: the galley, with its double row of oarsmen each side, had no deck in the accepted sense; the ship seemed to comprise catwalks, a central one down which the men in charge of the slaves presumably walked with their whips.

He scrambled across to the second galley, noting in the red haze of fighting that they had taken the first, and then he saw that several of the Saracens—in fact many of them, those trapped against the bulwarks—were jumping into the sea, a flurry of long robes, turbans and long hair. And then suddenly the fighting was all over; the sudden silence was almost unnerving.

Ramage scrambled back on to the quay again, found Kenton and Martin and said: “Take a couple of dozen seamen and go back towards the guns and bring back our wounded here: the sooner we get them out to the ship so that Bowen can have a go at them, the better.”

“What about the Saracens, sir?” Hill asked.

“Our men first,” Ramage said abruptly.

As the first of the wounded were brought along the quay and made ready to be lowered into the
Calypso
's boats, Kenton gave Ramage the butcher's bill: seventeen Calypsos had been killed and thirteen wounded. There were fifty-seven dead Saracens—many of them killed by the carronades, boat-guns and musketry—and forty-four wounded, most of the men so seriously that they would not last out the night.

Just as Kenton finished his report—after adding that many of the men and women from the town were out helping the wounded—the mayor came up to Ramage, his face serious. He took Ramage's hand and said emotionally: “You saved us—but at what a cost to your men!”

“It was inevitable,” Ramage said. “We were heavily outnumbered.”

The mayor looked across at the galleys, startled by the banging of metal as the blacksmith got to work.

“Go on board and look,” Ramage said. “We're freeing the men who had been taken as slaves. Once we find out where they come from we'll take them back home again.”

The mayor clambered on board the first galley but was soon back, white-faced and clearly shaken by what he had seen.

“What our men have escaped!” he said apologetically. “It turns the stomach …” and before he could say any more he was violently sick. “The stench,” he said apologetically. “But,
Commandante,
” he added, “I was going to tell you that our people are doing what they can for your wounded over there. Unfortunately, we do not have medical supplies. But the dead, we will give them a great funeral—it is the least we can do,” he said when he saw Ramage about to protest. “The
Saraceni
we put in a pit, all of them.”

It took a moment for Ramage to realize the significance of what the mayor had said.

“Not all of them,” he said. “Just the dead.”

“They'll all be dead,” the mayor said grimly. “They would have killed us—but for you. And if we let them escape alive, who knows, they might come back one day, looking for revenge. And you won't be here to protect us. No,
Commandante,
we do it our way; it is safer for us.”

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. Much as the idea of slaughtering wounded men repulsed him, there was no arguing with the mayor's logic: there would not always be a British frigate to protect Licata; the little port would be defenceless in two or three days' time, once the
Calypso
left.

The mayor shook hands again and left just as Kenton and Hill led the second group of wounded. Hill said: “The Italians are taking away our dead, sir: carrying them up to the church.”

“Yes, I know, the mayor has just told me. They want to arrange the funeral—a sort of thanks offering.”

“But the Saracen wounded,” Hill began lamely. “What I mean is, those that were wounded …”

Ramage guessed what Hill was trying to say. “You couldn't stop them?”

“No, sir, they were too quick. We didn't expect anything like that and we were busy attending to our own men fast. When we turned round it was all over. Throats cut.”

“It wasn't your fault,” Ramage said. “These people are frightened that if any Saracens escape they'll be back seeking revenge as soon as we've gone.”

“Can't say I blame ‘em,” Hill said. “A couple of dozen Saracens could cut everyone's throat in this town—judging from the way we saw them fight. No wonder the Italians dread the Saracens.”

“It's a tradition,” Ramage said. “The Saracens have been raiding Italian coastal towns and villages for centuries. It's something that we who were brought up in England will never understand.”

At that moment Aitken came up and reported: “All the slaves have been freed, sir. Some of them are in a bad shape: a few of them have gangrene where the chains chafed them.”

“Once we've got the wounded taken out to the ship, take these Italians across and give them a good meal. As soon as Bowen has finished with our wounded, he can have a look at these fellows.”

The funeral of the dead Calypsos was held next day, with all the people of Licata, right down to crippled old women and stumbling little children, there to pay their last respects. Ramage translated much of the service for the
Calypso
's commission and warrant officers who attended the service, and then made a brief speech in Italian thanking the people of Licata.

Once he was back on board the frigate, Ramage settled down with his clerk to interview all the former slaves freed from the galleys. Bowen had treated the gangrene cases as best he could, and many of the men had bandages round ankles and shins.

Ramage had some trouble with the accents which, apart from being thick Sicilian, varied from village to village, a variation explained by the fact that very few of the men had ever visited other villages.

Slowly Ramage and the clerk progressed along the line of hammocks and benches, noting each man's name and the port he came from. All told the same story of being seized in daylight raids; some added the tragic postscript that their wives and daughters had been taken away too. They had first been taken to a town on the African mainland, and then transferred to the galleys and made to row back to Sicily. And as the clerk wrote down the names and home ports, Ramage realized that they came from every port from Empedocle to Marsala.

After saying good-bye to the mayor of Licata and the people, who lined the quay to cheer and wave, Ramage took the
Calypso
westward, to call in at all the ports and deliver the men who had long since given up hope of ever seeing their homes again. At Marsala—from where the majority of the slaves came—the mayor was so overcome that he wanted to give a banquet for all the

Calypso
's officers, but knowing the town was almost starving Ramage got out of it by inviting the mayor and many of the senior citizens to dinner on board the
Calypso,
lucky to have Orsini help him as translator.

N
APLES Bay looked as splendid as ever, guarded by Mount Vesuvius standing four-square to the eastward. The flagship, three 74s, a frigate and various sloops represented the king's ships, but there were dozens of local craft tacking, running and reaching as they went about their business of fishing, carrying vegetables, or taking passengers from one of the little ports to another round the perimeter of the bay.

The weather was perfect: an almost clear sky, a fresh breeze from the west to raise a few small whitecaps, and the sun glaring down, warm and threatening to be hot by noon. A small white cloud lurked over the top of Vesuvius like a cap, making it seem that smoke was streaming out. Ramage saw it and thought momentarily of Pompeii and Herculaneum, still buried under the lava.

As the
Calypso
glided in there was no signal from the flagship telling him where to anchor, so he picked a spot half a mile to windward and Aitken patiently conned the ship while Southwick went forward to the fo'c'sle to prepare for anchoring. The frigate, under fore- and maintopsails only, seemed in no hurry; she crossed the bay with an elegance that Ramage found pleasing.

On the desk in his cabin was a report addressed to Rear-Admiral Rudd. Ramage had worked hard on it, careful not to omit anything without making it too verbose. And without giving Rudd any grounds for making trouble. After the head-money episode, which had revealed the admiral's preoccupation with money, Ramage had been careful to explain why none of the Saracen ships had been brought in as prizes; all had been sunk in action, except for the two galleys, which were very poor sailers but were due in Naples within the next day or two under the command of Lieutenant George Hill and Midshipman Paolo Orsini. Ramage had been careful to explain that without slaves at the oars and relying only on their sails, it was almost impossible to get the galleys to go to windward, but when last seen—off Licata—both of them were reaching along at three or four knots.