Ramage's Diamond (24 page)

T
HE SKY
was cloudless, an unbelievable, almost gaudy blue, and the hills and mountains forming a wide bowl round Fort Royal Bay were a fresh green from the night's rain squalls. To the north Ramage could see the truncated top of Mount Pelée, and for once it was clear of its usual cap of cloud. The wind was brisk from the east and the sunlight sparkled from the wavelets. It was, he thought, a good morning to be alive; a piece of good fortune emphasized by the fact that an hour earlier he had attended a funeral service for forty-seven Frenchmen and conducted it for nine Junos.

Each of the fifty-six bodies had been put one by one on the hinged plank at the bulwark just above where the standing part of the foresheet was made fast to the ship's side, and the appropriate flag placed over it. Fifty-six times the plank had been tilted, the flag held, and the body in its shotted hammock slid over the side into the water. He had conducted the service for the Junos and he had asked the Lieutenant who had commanded
La Créole
to carry it out for the Frenchmen; surely one of the few funeral services conducted by a man guarded by armed Marines.

As the
Juno
stretched close-hauled across the mouth of Fort Royal Bay heading for the anchorage off the city, Ramage knew he was really gambling. By comparison last night's capture of the schooners had been a matter of calculation, and he had calculated correctly. Now he needed a gambler's luck, if there was such a thing, because what he was going to attempt was beyond calculation. Like a gambler at Buck's, he could only roll the three dice (in this case the
Juno, La Mutine
and
La Créole
) and hope for the best, knowing that the croupier would rake in men's lives if he lost. His life and the Junos' were at stake.

He glanced aloft to where the Tricolour streamed to leeward, a third again as large as the Red Ensign beneath it. Every available telescope in Fort Royal would be watching it. Over to starboard Aitken was keeping
La Créole
well up to windward, while to larboard Baker was making a good job handling
La Mutine.
Wagstaffe had been disappointed to find that he was not going to get command after all until Ramage had told him his task.

The Junos were exhausted. First they had to transfer all the French wounded to
La Mutine,
where Bowen was still on board, with his instruments and assistants, attending to them. Once the wounded had been made as comfortable as possible in
La Mutine,
the French prisoners were transferred to her as well and secured in the hold, with Marine guards covering them. There was little likelihood of them trying to escape, for Ramage had explained carefully to the French Lieutenant that he intended sending them all into Fort Royal under a flag of truce, providing the Lieutenant gave his word that the total number of men would be entered on the exchange list, and none would ever serve against the British until the equivalent number of British prisoners in French hands had been duly exchanged. The Frenchman had readily agreed—it was a common enough practice—and drawn up a list of the names of the wounded and prisoners and signed it.

Whether or not the French at Fort Royal would honour
La Mutine
's flag of truce when they saw what the
Juno
and
Créole
were doing was a different matter, but Baker had his orders. If necessary he could free the Lieutenant on parole and send him on shore in the schooner's boat to explain matters.

One thing that particularly worried Ramage was the thick anchor cable draped along the
Juno
's starboard side. To a sharp-eyed watcher on the shore it would seem strange, but with luck no one would guess its purpose. That damned cable, a rope ten inches in circumference, was the main reason why the Junos were exhausted: Wagstaffe had worked them hard, fighting the clock. The cable was made fast round the frigate's mizen-mast, then three hundred feet of it was carefully flaked down across the quarterdeck, leading out through the starboard stern-chase port, round the edge of the transom, and then forward along the ship's side to the bow, where the end was made fast with light line that a slash of a cutlass would cut. Thin line secured it every few feet along the ship's side, to prevent it hanging down in a great bight, but that line was merely seizing, and a good tug would break it.

He stood at the quarterdeck rail and looked around the main-deck of a ship which, as the great Tricolour told everyone in Fort Royal, was a French prize captured during the night in the Devil knew what desperate encounter with the two schooners now escorting her back in triumph, their prize crew on board handling her, as Ramage had carefully explained to Wagstaffe and the quartermaster, with somewhat less skill than she had been handled when she had tacked into the bay a few days earlier. It would be too much to expect a short-handed French crew—the schooners had carried only a total of eighty seamen—to be too expert.

He looked at the
Juno
's guns run out along the main-deck. Every twelve-pounder was loaded with case shot so that when fired it would discharge forty-two iron balls, each weighing four ounces. A single broadside of thirteen guns would sweep the enemy with 546 shot, with another 120 weighing two ounces each from the three 6-pounders. Four-ounce and two-ounce shot was too light to inflict much damage on a ship, but sufficiently numerous and heavy to cut down men in swathes.

The guns were ready. The locks were fitted and the spark of the flints had been checked; the trigger lines were neatly coiled on top of the breech and tubs of water for the sponges stood between each pair of guns with match tubs nearby. The ship's boys squatted along the centreline, sitting on their cylindrical wooden cartridge boxes. The gunner was down in the magazine; the guns' crews were hidden against the bulwarks. At each gun port cutlasses were hung ready for all the men, while pikes were in the racks round the masts. Behind each pair of guns, well clear of the recoil, was a stand of muskets, all of them loaded. The decks were wetted and sanded but the planks were so hot that seamen had to keep wetting them afresh, using buckets and taking the water from tubs.

The skylight over Ramage's cabin had been removed and stowed below: it got in the way of the anchor cable as it led to the mizen-mast. A pile of canvas stood by the stern-chase port, ready for use as keckling, to prevent the cable chafing at the edges of the port when it was run out. Wagstaffe had wanted to measure the distance from the mast to the port and lash on the keckling earlier, but Ramage had watched the eastern sky lightening and had told him to leave it: there had still been much to do and very little time.

By now Aitken would have given detailed instructions to the twenty Junos he had on board
La Créole;
Baker and the Marine Lieutenant would have done the same in
La Mutine.
The poor Lieutenant of Marines was the only man disappointed at the role he and his men were to play. Not surprisingly, he was not pleased to be acting as jailer when there was a prospect of hand-to-hand fighting, but with the
Juno
's ship's company now extended over the schooners as well, Ramage could not spare trained seamen to guard the prisoners.

Close-hauled, the
Juno
could just lay the anchored frigate, but the quartermaster gave the men at the wheel an order from time to time that let her yaw, so the luffs of the topsails fluttered for a few moments.

Southwick walked up to him, the great cleaver of a sword hanging from his waist. “The Governor over there must be rubbing his hands, sir.”

“I hope he'll be gnashing his teeth in half an hour or so!”

“No doubt about that,” Southwick said confidently. “Let's just hope this wind holds—it couldn't be better for our purpose. If it suddenly veers to the south-east …” The Master left the sentence uncompleted because if it went round that far the
Juno
would stand a good chance of ending up on the rocks at the foot of Pointe des Nègres, at the northern entrance to the bay. Luckily such a wind on a clear day like this was unlikely.

Southwick then nodded approvingly towards
La Créole
as she tacked, the big fore-and-aft sails swinging over, the headsails flap-ping for a moment before being sheeted home again. “He's enjoying handling her!”

“Aitken's first command,” Ramage commented. “Ironic that it's under the Tricolour! A few extra tacks will give him more confidence.”

“He's going to need it,” Southwick said grimly. “If he arrives five minutes late it might be all up with us!”

“And if we arrive five minutes early it might be all up with him.”

The Master chuckled. “I think he took the point when you gave him his orders, sir.” He looked aft at the anchor cable, which covered most of the quarterdeck like an enormous thick carpet patterned like a regular maze. “If that confounded cable kinks when it begins to run out it'll tear the transom off!”

“Oh, come now,” Ramage said mildly. “We might need some repairs to the taffrail, and Aitken will grumble about chafed paint-work.” He turned and gestured to the quartermaster, who hurriedly signalled to the men to give a slight yaw.

Southwick lifted the quadrant he had been holding and looked towards the anchored frigate. He knew the height of the
Surcouf
's mainmast and had already set the quadrant at an angle the mast would subtend at the distance of one mile.

“Half a mile to go, sir. I mean, she's a mile and a half away.”

Ramage nodded as he looked at a white dome of a building at the western end of the city. It was dead ahead and made an easy reference point for the quartermaster. He turned and gave the order. For the time being the
Juno
would not be steering by the compass; it was going to be nip and tuck as the frigate stretched up towards that dome until the anchored
Surcouf
was to the seaward of the
Juno;
to seaward and, when the
Juno
tacked as the water shallowed, fine on the starboard bow.

La Créole
tacked again and then
La Mutine
tacked and suddenly Southwick pointed at Fort St Louis. Ramage saw a single puff of smoke drifting westward and began counting the seconds. He reached five when there was another puff of smoke. Damnation, he had forgotten the Fort might fire a salute to the victors! The
Juno
's guns were loaded with case and there was no time to start drawing shot now to return a salute.

The thud of a gun close by startled him and he saw smoke drifting away from
La Créole.
“Good for Aitken!” he exclaimed. “He was quick!”

Five seconds later another of
La Créole
's guns fired as those on the Fort continued a salute. “Hope he doesn't get carried away,” Southwick muttered. “It's time all those popguns of his were loaded with shot!”

The
Surcouf
was gradually drawing round on the
Juno
's starboard bow as the British frigate reached the seaward end of the anchorage. Southwick lowered his quadrant and said: “One mile exactly, sir.”

Ramage looked at his watch and then over at
La Créole,
which tacked yet again and began to reach across the
Juno
's stern. Aitken was keeping his head: he had orders to tack under the
Juno
's stern when he judged the frigate was a mile from the
Surcouf,
and perhaps young Orsini, who was on board with him, was using a quadrant.

The French frigate was now on the
Juno
's beam and through the telescope Ramage saw fewer men on board than he had expected. They were all crowding the bulwark, no doubt gleefully, but enviously watching their shipmates bringing in the prize, and he estimated that there were fewer than a hundred. He had expected two or three hundred, and thought
La Créole
's Lieutenant had been deliberately misleading him when he said that less than half the ship's usual complement was working on her.

Looking over the
Juno
's starboard quarter he could see well into the Salée anchorage now and there was no sign of movement on board any of the schooners anchored there, at least none that could be sighted from this distance although he would be able to see if any of them were making sail.

He had been listening for several minutes to the rhythmic chanting of the depth of water from the man standing in the forechains and heaving the lead. The man had orders only to report depths of less than five fathoms, and he was merely calling: “No bottom at five fathoms … No bottom at five fathoms with this line …” Suddenly the note of his voice changed. “Two fathoms! Two fathoms!”

Twelve feet? The frigate drew more than sixteen forward! Ramage snatched up the speaking-trumpet to tack the frigate and a moment later there was a hurried “Belay that, sir!” from the leadsman and then, as if nothing had happened, he continued his chanting: “No bottom at five fathoms …”

By then Southwick was already hurrying down the quarter-deck by ladder and half-way to the forechains. Ramage saw him talking to the leadsman, who was standing on the chain-whale, a line round his waist.

“The damned fool!” he exploded as soon as he returned to the quarterdeck. “He wasn't watching what he was doing and heaved the lead so that it caught up in the chain-whale. He felt the weight on the line, didn't realize it wasn't in the water, and read off the mark!”

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “Thank goodness he said two fathoms and not three: I realized that with two fathoms we'd have been aground already.”

The episode had taken only a minute or two but the shore was now less than half a mile ahead, with the
Juno
making a good six knots. Already Ramage could distinguish people on the beach and the
Surcouf
was half a mile away on the starboard quarter: too far for anyone on board to hear orders shouted in English but close enough for Ramage to make out every detail.